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Answers To: Asteroid Impact Advantage
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- Answers To: Asteroid Impact Advantage
Answers To: Asteroid Impact Advantage[____] [____] [____] Prioritizing low probability impacts like a large asteroid would make us paralyzed in everyday life if we followed their logic. We wouldn’t leave the house for fear of dying in a car crash or being struck by lightning. David Meskill, Assistant professor of history at Dowling University, 12/9/2009 “The "One Percent Doctrine" and Environmental Faith,” Dec 9, http://davidmeskill.blogspot.com/2009/12/one-percent-doctrine-and-environmental.html Tom Friedman's piece today in the Times on the environment is one of the flimsiest pieces by a major columnist that I can remember ever reading. He applies Cheney's "one percent doctrine" (which is similar to the environmentalists' "precautionary principle") to the risk of environmental armageddon. But this doctrine is both intellectually incoherent and practically irrelevant. It is intellectually incoherent because it cannot be applied consistently in a world with many potential disaster scenarios. In addition to the global-warming risk, there's also the asteroid-hitting-the-earth risk, the terrorists-with-nuclear-weapons risk (Cheney's original scenario), the super-duper-pandemic risk, etc. Since each of these risks, on the "one percent doctrine," would deserve all of our attention, we cannot address all of them simultaneously. That is, even within the one-percent mentality, we'd have to begin prioritizing, making choices and trade-offs. But why then should we only make these trade-offs between responses to disaster scenarios? Why not also choose between them and other, much more cotidien, things we value? Why treat the unlikely but cataclysmic event as somehow fundamentally different, something that cannot be integrated into all the other calculations we make? And in fact, this is how we behave all the time. We get into our cars in order to buy a cup of coffee, even though there's some chance we will be killed on the way to the coffee shop. We are constantly risking death, if slightly, in order to pursue the things we value. Any creature that adopted the "precautionary principle" would sit at home - no, not even there, since there is some chance the building might collapse. That creature would neither be able to act, nor not act, since it would nowhere discover perfect safety. Answers To: Asteroid Impact Advantage[____] [____] We should not worry about asteroids right now. Humans are much more likely to cause extinction to themselves than an impact far in the future. Farhad Manjoo, Staff writer for Slate Magazine, 1/18/2002, “The Sky is Falling? No Sweat,” http://www.wired.com/science/discoveries/news/2002/01/49837 Ever since Armageddon and Deep Impact awakened people to the danger of asteroids three years ago, there is increased worry about a collision each time an asteroid passes nearby. This week on Usenet, for example, it was possible to find people advocating the creation of Martian colonies as a way to make sure the human species survives after a big crash. Some people took issue with this suggestion. One reader of the sci.skeptic newsgroup warned that "a Mars colony would produce a small carbon copy of our Earth habitat but on rather less promising ground," and instead suggested that programs such as Pravdo's be expanded and that governments begin to seriously think about safe asteroid deflection techniques. Asteroid deflection is a well-studied topic, Pravdo said, but the various suggestions made by scientists are not generally known to the rest of the public. In addition to nuclear weapons, there may also be a variety of other ways to prevent disaster. For example, an asteroid expert told Space.com a couple years ago that "attaching a giant solar sail to the asteroid" might guide it away, and using "a giant parabolic mirror to concentrate the sun's rays and vaporize rock on the surface of the asteroid" could also do the trick. For obvious reasons, these ideas are difficult to test. "Even though some technology exists, it would have to be applied in a different way, and we wouldn't know if it would work," Pravdo said. Of course, these days, the fear of an asteroid extinction is not the first thing that comes to mind. "Right now, (humans) are the greatest threat to the survival of the human species," wrote J. Scott Miller in a discussion on Usenet's sci.space.science newsgroup. "We have built enough nuclear weapons to do the job, we have developed the biological and chemical capabilities to do the job. So, let's not point out there for possible extinction until we control down here." Answers To: Asteroid Impact Advantage[____] [____] A large asteroid impact would not cause extinction. The “impact winter” that the affirmative claims is extremely exaggerated. James Marusek, U.S. Navy Nuclear Physicist and Engineer, 3/5/2007 “Comet and Asteroid Threat Impact Analysis,” http://www.aero.org/conferences/planetarydefense/2007papers/P4-3--Marusek-Paper.pdf It has been theorized that the impact of a large comet or asteroid and the resulting fires would throw up so much dust and ash in the stratosphere that it would shut off sunlight from the surface of the planet. This would plunge the Earth into a period of darkness lasting many months and even years. In the absence of sunlight, solar heating of the Earth’s surface would come to a halt. This will lead to a severe cooling of the continents approximately 70°F (39°C) below normal and lead to an "impact winter".2 An "impact winter" is similar to a "nuclear winter" but more severe, and could lead to a new Ice Age. I feel that the threat of a dust generated "impact winter" is vastly overstated and that any dust generated "impact winter" will not be anywhere near as severe nor last as long as some predict. • According to research from geologist, Kevin Pope, the K/T impact did not generate the quantities of fine dust needed to block the Sun completely and choke off photosynthesis. Approximately 99% of the debris produced was in the form of spherules, which are too coarse and heavy to remain suspended in the upper atmosphere for very long. Only 1% of the debris is fine dust generated from pulverized rock. If this fine dust were spread out across the entire globe, it would represent a thickness of ~ 0.001 inches (0.03 mm). Therefore the hypothesis of an "impact winter" is vastly overstated.24 • Just as dust that is kicked up into the atmosphere will block sunlight from hitting the earth, the dust will also act as an insulator trapping heat at the Earth’s surface. This includes the heat from (1) the impact and fireball, (2) firestorms, (3) fuel fires – oil, natural gas, coal, timber, methane hydrate, and (4) lava flows and volcanoes. This trapping effect will slow the decent of the temperature fall, and retard the onset of the "impact winter". 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