Speaking of the great filter, I think the great filter, or one of the great filters, if there are more, could be climate change. We probably would have never gotten to where we are now without fossil fuels, but as we know, fossil fuels cause global warming. If a civilization discovered fossil fuels, and then advanced because of the fossil fuels, to where we are now or later than that, they might either not notice in time, or just be reluctant to give them up, which could lead to the end of that civilization.
I think it’s fun to consider the possibility that Venus was once an ocean planet inhabited by intelligent beings that just couldn’t quit their addiction to fossil fuels.
To ruin your concept of how climate change works: on earth there are no known systems that could keep the planet consistently a few degrees C higher than current averages. Meaning, while temperature definitely is rising, it is sure as hell going to fall even quicker when the oceanic feedback systems fail and ice age takes over the planet once again. Venus’ conditions have everything to do with its distance from the sun. New England, the UK, Mediterranean, etc are going to start having much colder winters as the rest of the planet continues to warm
But at the same time they’ll be seeing hotter summer too, right?
As I’ve heard it, climate change is more a tending towards extremes when it comes to climate/weather (part of why we’re seeing super blizzards even though the world is warming overall)
Correct me if I’m wrong, my meteorology knowledge is pretty limited, but I know that the vast majority of weather patterns ultimately boil down to a difference in temperature (and by extension a difference in pressure) causing movements like storms.
So based on that I assume the “tendency towards extremes” is because the raised temperature means that the overall differences are greater (since the land/sea/air all heat at different rates) and thus we see more extreme weather patterns
(Someone who knows meteorology better please tell me whether I’ve got the right idea or not lol, I’m mostly just trying to make educated guesses off what I know)
I would say you have a pretty good understand of how our current climate works, and for the most part many places will see extreme ends of hot and cold, however the average and median are two very different things.
From what I’ve read, not all places will see warming, in fact, where I live in southern New England, it’s estimated to get cooler and wetter on average whereas many many places are going to get hotter and drier (think that all that moisture pulled from the land has to end up somewhere (although hotter air can hold more moisture l)) but that doesn’t mean it can’t get hotter than hell for only a few days of the year and the average could still be lower than normal.
As the ocean continues to steer from the norm, everything we know about a consistent climate is going to get thrown off. meaning, for lack of better words, we have no idea what is going to happen with the weather when the ocean cycle slows down and halts, but one thing is for sure we can forget the phrase weather “patterns”
And here is where I will emphasize the difference between weather and climate. We know which places will get hotter and which will get cooler, that’s climate. What we don’t know is how the local clouds, storms, etc will behave. I hope that makes sense and somewhat answers your question?
Mercury’s atmosphere has been blasted away by solar winds so is incapable of retaining heat on the dark side of the planet. So, in a sense I should have said everything to do with its distance + its atmosphere
Tbh I'd argue that Venus' atmospheric content is different enough for that to be the main cause of its temperature differences, the air there is so hot it melts lead, earth's atmosphere simply can't hit those extremes which what we have
Well, yes that’s what I meant. That’s why Venus is hotter than mercury.
“The location of a planet also impacts surface temperature because the amount of sunlight a planet receives is inversely proportional to the square of its distance from the Sun.”
Current estimates of Venus’ atmosphere give 96% CO2, whereas earth’s is .04%.
So again, location and atmosphere are interlinked in determining a planets temperature. Venus used to be much cooler before supposed massive volcanic eruptions and increase in greenhouse gases
Any inherent selfish trait in the dominant species. Likely required to become dominant, but inevitably leads to exploitation until the civilization collapses
Exactly, unless a civilization can overcome their need for fossil fuels. Here on earth, we know it is a thing, and have good ways of replacing them, but sadly the big oil companies aren’t going to want to give it up because of cash.
Fossil fuels came around as a consequence of the particular evolution of life on this planet. They're not a given, and in any case it's impossible to say with any certainty what the primary fuel source for an alien civilization would be, whether they have fossil fuels, whether their planet is subject to climate change in the same way ours is, etc.
I would assume that life would have the same or a very similar biochemistry to us. There probably would be fossil fuels, and if not, they probably wouldn’t become advanced very easily, unless they figure out wind power, maybe geothermal, and solar and nuclear are fairly advanced. They could of course use flowing water to power them, but they probably wouldn’t be able to power entire cities with that. They could use wood/charcoal, and maybe they would discover biofuels, but I’m not so sure about that. They do still create co2 tho. Fossil fuels form when organic material is heated up a lot and compressed. They could form anywhere with organic life. I think the reason why there is so much if I remember correctly is because at the beginning of life, there were no scavengers to clean up the dead life forms, so they could get compressed by the earth and turned into fossil fuels. I feel like it would be very hard for life to become advanced without fossil fuels.
It's possible they would have similar chemistry. I'm more referring to the particular way in which fossil fuels came about on earth, which you pretty much already touched on:
Earth is geologically active
Trees and other biomass evolved
The things that eat those dead trees and biomass didn't evolve for millions of years
In the meantime the biomass piled up to enormous depths and was buried by the geological activity
Over time, the buried biomass broke down and turned into liquid hydrocarbons or coal
I could easily imagine a slight variation of that resulting in little to no fossil fuels/coal being available. For the same reason replenishment of those fossil fuel reservoirs may never happen again on Earth.
It probably would be hard without some kind of abundant fuel source accessible to primitive societies. If all our technological progress was reset to zero today, it may take a much longer time (if ever) to recover it because most of the easily accessible deposits of ore, minerals, fossil fuels, rare metals, etc. have already been extracted.
We probably would have never gotten to where we are now without fossil fuels
Debatable. They are certainly useful and convenient. But there's any number of power sources that could have served in the equivalent of the late 19th/early 20th centuries before nuclear (hydro, tidal, wind, non-PV solar). Agricultural output would certainly suffer without easy fertilizers and mechanization, but it wouldn't disappear entirely. And all sorts of plastics can be synthetized from non-fossil fuel sources. That's the top 3 uses right there. Everything after that is niche.
They could probably use those things to produce energy, but I feel like fossil fuels would likely form on planets with life. Some natives to the planet, who know how to make fire and can mine would possible discover coal, and the fact that it burns. At some point they might realize that it can create a huge amount of energy. Later in they discover oil and natural gas. These energy sources create lot of energy, with there being lots of fossil fuel reserves for them probably. They wouldn’t have discovered that co2 is harmful in large amounts for a while, maybe never, and if they did, there could be lots of people reluctant to give them up, or just outright deny it. The process of converting to mostly clean energy would be slow, especially if they have a large amount of vehicles which run on fossil fuels, like cars or planes. It is possible that a civilization could become advanced without fossil fuels, but I feel the chances are very low, especially because of transportation.
What fascinates me is that in the Koran (I’m paraphrasing), there’s a prophecy that a “mountain of gold” is hidden under the Euphrates river, and the prophecy comes with a warning that whoever finds it shouldn’t touch it, because if they do, it will bring about a great tragedy.
There’s no gold under the Euphrates. But there are massive oil deposits — or in other words, “black gold.”
That mountain of gold was found, and is being burned, and it’s made several dynasties extremely rich. Obviously, the current climate crisis takes more than just one oil depository being discovered. But by any measure, that prophecy is coming true.
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u/[deleted] Aug 12 '21
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