• vmaziman@lemm.ee
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    1 year ago

    I would agree if mining the rocks on earth didn’t cause ecological collapses and kill off animals and displace indigenous and exploit underprivileged ethnic classes in post colonial hellholes

    • vmaziman@lemm.ee
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      1 year ago

      I’m sure mining in space will have its own problems but at least it can’t kill our biosphere

      • schmidtster@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        There’s been studies that have found metal particles in the atmosphere, so anything entering and exiting are seemingly shedding particles.

        So it’s likely to cause issues down the road unfortunately.

        • Neshura@bookwormstory.social
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          1 year ago

          I’ll take the issue down the road over the one already in my doorstep any time of the week.

          Atmospheric pollution is at least something that seems fixable with extraterrestrial resources. Ruined biospheres due to mining on earth seems less avoidable/fixable unless we go back to pre-industrial living standards.

          • schmidtster@lemmy.world
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            1 year ago

            How would it be fixable? The more stuff entering and exiting the atmosphere, the more particles. The particles aren’t from manufacturing on earth from what I read.

            • Neshura@bookwormstory.social
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              1 year ago

              Particles we can bind with chemical reactions (like ad-blu for diesel engines), would be expensive and we would need to be careful to select chemical reactions that actually solve the problem but fundamentally it’s a fixable problem.

              • schmidtster@lemmy.world
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                1 year ago

                Right, so by adding more chemicals, causing more unknown issues, we can fix an unknown issue. Which we would need to strip earth for even more to get to be able to use.

                Makes total sense!

                • Neshura@bookwormstory.social
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                  1 year ago

                  Adding chemicals to reduce pollution is how every internal combustion engine works, especially diesel engines.

                  Sodium reacts explosively with water, Chlorine is a lethal substance to humans yet when the two chemicals react they become a necessary part for our bodies. There are ways to turn toxic/harmful materials into harmless ones by adding more chemicals. The key part is making sure the result is actually harmless, which we can.

                  Edit: also in how far would we need to strip earth further for this solution? In this scenario we’re already mining asteroids in space and there are (to my knowledge) no natural materials we can find only on earth, if anything there is stuff we can’t find on earth but do in abundance in space (like Helium).

                  • schmidtster@lemmy.world
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                    1 year ago

                    Just because it can reduce pollution in a combustion engine doesn’t mean it translates to removing metal particulates from the atmosphere. Those are wholefully different scenarios.

                    We still barely comprehend the dangers of what we put in the atmosphere 3 decades ago, let’s not be adding more. Especially so when it’s completely unproven to this date.

                    You claim it’s a fixable problem, yet there is no proven method. And how could there be, we just found out about this issue this bloody week lmfao.

          • AA5B@lemmy.world
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            1 year ago

            How. Ruined biosphere from mining affects many discrete places that can be cleaned up, in theory. Messing up the atmosphere affects all biospheres, is much more vast, and we have to breathe in the meantime

            Look at current mining - true crimes against the environment in specific places but do not directly impact most humans. Could you say that about messing up the atmosphere?

            • FaceDeer@kbin.social
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              1 year ago

              Isn’t one of the current hot topics among environmentalists carbon capture, which is “cleaning up” the atmosphere as a whole?

              • shottymcb@lemm.ee
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                1 year ago

                The only thing carbon capture cleans up is CO2, and it’s not remotely feasible because it would require orders of magnitude more energy than the entire planet consumes even if it were 100% efficient, which it isn’t close to being.

      • Allseer@futurology.today
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        1 year ago

        the asteroid belt is like a protective barrier. if earth’s orbit was on a flat surface the belt would be on it too. this imaginary plane is where earth is most likely to collide with extraterrestrial objects. so if it was possible to reduce the asteroid belt to half its current mass, earth would technically be more vulnerable to collisions along our orbital path. it’s not the biggest threat but i felt the need to explain that.