Can humans eventually control and manipulate geology and geography of the planet?

[sushi]

like can we create build land/oceans/entire continents out of nothing, stop earthquakes and volcanoes?
turn mountains into flatland, and flatlands into moutains? change the map of the earth.

land ocean and tectonic plates seem to be a fixed sum, but will we have the technology to change, control and manipulate it?

what kardashev scale would that be?

 

[sushi]

 

[scorpiomover]

like can we create build land/oceans/entire continents out of nothing, stop earthquakes and volcanoes?
turn mountains into flatland, and flatlands into moutains? change the map of the earth.
land ocean and tectonic plates seem to be a fixed sum, but will we have the technology to change, control and manipulate it?

That's called Terraforming.

what kardashev scale would that be?

The Kardashev scale measures the amount of energy we can use.
Different measure.

 

[EndogenousRebel]

It takes way too many resources and effort to this in on a large and impact scale. Countries would rather work with the already changing Earth than weaken themselves financially to do something... risky? impractical?

If I remember correctly for example Russia has sent people to live on icecaps that are melting and in a couple decades will probably claim the land that appears as sea level rises in general. If they do this, they would have access to more of the world and be less limited, such as being able to more easily trade with Canada.

Not saying we won't eventually learn to terraform, I'm saying that until further notice, it's a skill we wouldn't be practicing until it is absolutely necessary. In typical human fashion

 

[sushi]

like can we create build land/oceans/entire continents out of nothing, stop earthquakes and volcanoes?
turn mountains into flatland, and flatlands into moutains? change the map of the earth.
land ocean and tectonic plates seem to be a fixed sum, but will we have the technology to change, control and manipulate it?

That's called Terraforming.

what kardashev scale would that be?

The Kardashev scale measures the amount of energy we can use.
Different measure.

terraforming involves changing the atmosphere and climate, and rainfall.
its more like geoengineering or manipulating continental plates.

Countries that are suffering severe land scarcity needs to create more land (such as Japan) or flatten mountain ranges.

 

[moody]

We already have in small ways, like building dams and made-made lakes, or carving our mountains for roads/property. That being said, there will always a limit/other environmental factors that will arise to effect the ways people influence geography.

 

[scorpiomover]

like can we create build land/oceans/entire continents out of nothing, stop earthquakes and volcanoes?
turn mountains into flatland, and flatlands into moutains? change the map of the earth.
land ocean and tectonic plates seem to be a fixed sum, but will we have the technology to change, control and manipulate it?

That's called Terraforming.

what kardashev scale would that be?

The Kardashev scale measures the amount of energy we can use.
Different measure.

terraforming involves changing the atmosphere and climate, and rainfall.
its more like geoengineering or manipulating continental plates.

Countries that are suffering severe land scarcity needs to create more land (such as Japan) or flatten mountain ranges.

Geography of Japan - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

Japan occupies 377,973.89 km^2 .
About 73% of Japan is mountainous.
So 275,920.9397 km^2 of base area of Japan is mountainous.

Japan's highest mountain is Mount Fuji, with an elevation of 3,776 m (12,388 ft).
Assume a conic shape. Volume of a cone = 1/3 x the base area x height.
= 1/3 x 275,920.9397 km^2 x 3.776 km = 347,292.48943573 km^3
= 347 x 10^3 km^3 = 347 x 10^3 x10^6 cubic metres = 347 x10^3 x10^6 x10^6 cm^3
= 347 thousand trillion cc.
That's a lot of dirt to move.

Also, with that much dirt piled high, if people are not extremely careful about moving it, they could trigger a landslide of trillions of cc of dirt that could bury Tokyo, Osaka, and thousands of small villages.

So flattening the mountain ranges of Japan would be a massive geological engineering project, that would be on a far greater scale than simple cloud-seeding that changes rainfall.

Can you see the challenges with that?

 

[EndogenousRebel]

As I implied earlier, we would rather adapt to the world than change it. I imagine the more aptly named geoengineering would only arise in certain situations. In times of extreme prosperity or socioeconomic crises for example.

For example if there were a population issue we may adapt and learn how to build homes and cities in the ground. Maybe Japan would creatively solve their limited living space by living along and within mountain walls. The issue with landslides is still there, but the nature of the question is asking could we ever get around these obstacles. I believe we could, it's just that nothing is motivating us to do so.

 

[peoplesuck]

If we could engineer clouds to hold more moisture we could change the werrld.
get on that shit.
I would help but im eating pudding.

 

[sushi]

As I implied earlier, we would rather adapt to the world than change it. I imagine the more aptly named geoengineering would only arise in certain situations. In times of extreme prosperity or socioeconomic crises for example.

For example if there were a population issue we may adapt and learn how to build homes and cities in the ground. Maybe Japan would creatively solve their limited living space by living along and within mountain walls. The issue with landslides is still there, but the nature of the question is asking could we ever get around these obstacles. I believe we could, it's just that nothing is motivating us to do so.

its more easy to fill the ocean to create new lands and space rather than dig a shether deep inside mountains. but maybe underground is another way to solve lack of space and population density. The depth of the oceans is the challenge to create lands.

 

[EndogenousRebel]

its more easy to fill the ocean to create new lands and space rather than dig a shether inside mountains. but maybe underground is another way to solve lack of space and population density. The depth of the oceans is the challenge to create lands.

Hm idk the logistics on that. Transporting land from one place to another in large amounts is definitely something we can do, it would basically be moving beaches out farther. Why couldn't we maybe do both if the goal is to expand living space?

This is all under the assumption that displacing large amounts of land along land formations doesn't have any negative affects. The Earth the way it is having time to settle and always moving under the crust already has earthquakes as it is. Maybe releasing pressure from one area could be a good thing? Lots of questions to ask.

 

[sushi]

@EndongeneousRebel

I was thinking using nanobots to eat away mountains and create flat plains.

ocean is just filling up the bottom , or converting oceans/water to land.

In Hong Kong, we suffer from extreme land scacrity, like Japan, because most of the land is moutainous and we are surrounded by oceans. most of the islands are mountainous, meaning most of the land is unusable.

 

[Kuu]

If we had the capacity to geoengineer to the scale you're thinking of, it wouldn't be worth it. It would then be easier to build your own habitats like an O'neil cylinder, that you can entirely control, rather than go to the enormous expense of altering a planet with unpredictable consecuences.

In any case land scarcity is a fake problem. There is lots and lots of land. It is not to be solved with changing the earth, but changing our archaic social structures.

 

[Rebis]

Terraforming in conjunction with natural processes like creating an atmosphere to scave away solar winds would be realistic, like with mars creating artificial atmospheres through warming of the planet and magnetizing poles. The solution to that is more of a kickstarter rather than complete manipulation of land.

We have to consider the energy needed to terraform a planet, where that energy would come from, the necessity to terraform a whole planet (as oppose to what we're doing now in colonizing areas interconnected with roads). How would we create land on the sea, just move pre-existing land or would we change an abundant element like silicon into a multi-purpose material?

If we had the capacity to geoengineer to the scale you're thinking of, it wouldn't be worth it. It would then be easier to build your own habitats like an O'neil cylinder, that you can entirely control, rather than go to the enormous expense of altering a planet with unpredictable consecuences.

In any case land scarcity is a fake problem. There is lots and lots of land. It is not to be solved with changing the earth, but changing our archaic social structures.

O'neill Cyclinder is a cool idea, utilises way more surface area than conventional land. It is stuck in space though, artificial conditions aren't the best. And yes land isn't a problem by any means, though colonising other planets should be a priority for a "Giant leap for Mankind".

 

[sushi]

If we had the capacity to geoengineer to the scale you're thinking of, it wouldn't be worth it. It would then be easier to build your own habitats like an O'neil cylinder, that you can entirely control, rather than go to the enormous expense of altering a planet with unpredictable consecuences.

In any case land scarcity is a fake problem. There is lots and lots of land. It is not to be solved with changing the earth, but changing our archaic social structures.

land scarcity not a problem in north america or austrialia/russia. In areas where population density is high and moutainous, it is a problem.

 

[Rebis]

If we had the capacity to geoengineer to the scale you're thinking of, it wouldn't be worth it. It would then be easier to build your own habitats like an O'neil cylinder, that you can entirely control, rather than go to the enormous expense of altering a planet with unpredictable consecuences.

In any case land scarcity is a fake problem. There is lots and lots of land. It is not to be solved with changing the earth, but changing our archaic social structures.

land scarcity not a problem in north america or austrialia/russia. In areas where population density is high and moutainous, it is a problem.

On a planetary scale land is not scarce

Sent from my VOG-L09 using Tapatalk

 

[ZenRaiden]

One step a time we can probably do anything. Question then is will we ever do that and does it mean anything. Its possible at some point we will be even able to make whole new planets.

 

[dragula]

what kardashev scale would that be?

As that scale is based on energy consumption: still below 1

 

[Rebis]

The kardashev scale is a romanticized concept that doesn't offer much utility outside of indulging in science-fiction universes where we're a multi-planetary species.

It's mentioned dis proportionally to it's utility: Unless we meet aliens or expand to another planet it's just a buzz-idea.

 

[dragula]

I guess we won't mention all these projects observing possible habitable exoplanets.

Exoplanets - NASA Science

Overview Most of the exoplanets discovered so far are in a relatively small region of our galaxy, the Milky Way. (“Small” meaning within thousands of light-years of our solar system; one light-year equals 5.88 trillion miles, or 9.46 trillion kilometers.) Even the closest known exoplanet to...

exoplanets.nasa.gov

 

[Rebis]

Titan looks to be a good fit for colonisation.

 

[sushi]

recently i am thinking about the problem of rising sea levels, there seems to be no approach out of this mess other than a means to convert volumes of water to land, or new ways to create land.

 

[Ex-User (9086)]

It's definitely possible and it's being done to control flooding, create artificial dams, reservoirs etc. We are changing the global climate, although this one we don't control yet.

If we're being realistic; much of the terraforming won't happen unless there's a large enough group of land owners or nations involved that feel pressed to implement drastic measures on a greater scale. Most of the large scale terraforming will happen on other objects in the solar system, including complete strip-mining of some asteroids or possibly whole planets.

The earth will remain mostly what it is because it's too finely divided between competing control groups and competing agents. It might get some climate control going in the coming decades. Disaster prevention? - yes, disastrous changes? - no.

Kardashev scales, oldschool eh? Arguably Kardashev 0.5 can do everything on their planet with time. It's a matter of scaling and technology. If we get to Kardashev 1 it will be more subdivided into let's say EU holding 15% power output, USA another 15%, Asia 45% and so on. If changes need to happen within a lifetime then a multi planetary Kardashev 1 could do it, so Kardashev 1.4 .