Interesting Article "Imagine Earth without people"

[RobertSeattle]

http://www.newscientist.com/channel/life/mg19225731.100

Imagine Earth without people
12 October 2006
Bob Holmes

Humans are undoubtedly the most dominant species the Earth has ever known. In just a few thousand years we have swallowed up more than a third of the planet's land for our cities, farmland and pastures. By some estimates, we now commandeer 40 per cent of all its productivity. And we're leaving quite a mess behind: ploughed-up prairies, razed forests, drained aquifers, nuclear waste, chemical pollution, invasive species, mass extinctions and now the looming spectre of climate change. If they could, the other species we share Earth with would surely vote us off the planet.

Now just suppose they got their wish. Imagine that all the people on Earth - all 6.5 billion of us and counting - could be spirited away tomorrow, transported to a re-education camp in a far-off galaxy. (Let's not invoke the mother of all plagues to wipe us out, if only to avoid complications from all the corpses). Left once more to its own devices, Nature would begin to reclaim the planet, as fields and pastures reverted to prairies and forest, the air and water cleansed themselves of pollutants, and roads and cities crumbled back to dust.

(More at link)

Jpeg at TreeHugger.com

[CrispyQ]

1. Fascinating!!

Have read about half the article. Absolutely fascinating! Will read the rest later.

k&r

[RobertSeattle]

3. I love this kind of stuff too

But I think most our geosynchronous satellites would still be in order so an alien civilization that finds earth in 200,000 years would know a technological civilization was here prior to January 20, 2001. :evilgrin:

[htuttle]

4. I don't think so

Don't their orbits naturally decay? I think many of them have a small amount of onboard fuel to boost themselves up now and then. When that's finally gone, I think they eventually crash to Earth.

I might be wrong about that, and there's obviously an altitude above which that doesn't happen, but I think most communications satellites would be gone, in any case.

[Dead_Parrot]

6. Indeed...

Geosync orbits are very unnatural, and without maintenance the satellites will go flying off in all directions - most will end up either burning up in the atmosphere or making a small crater on the moon.

Although I think SOHO - short of a deliberate de-orbit or a close pass by a comet - would stay at L₁ forever: Might make an interesting find in a million years...:)

[bananas]

12. SOHO and WMAP are at unstable lagrangian points

But if we put a space station at L5 ...

[hunter]

7. Geosynchronous satellites will be around a long time.

They tend to drift away from earth, not back. Onboard fuel is used to keep them at one place in the sky as it appears from earth. Left on their own without corrections they tend to wobble about a bit as they are tugged in various directions by the moon, sun, etc. (It would be a pain to adjust your T.V. dish to account for that if this sort of station keeping wasn't done. It's not a big effect, so you don't need much fuel.

Hopefully the last bit of fuel is used to kick the satellite a little further out when it is obsolete.



http://www.orbitaldebris.jsc.nasa.gov/index.html

[htuttle]

11. On the other hand, the stuff we left on the Moon and Mars...

...might exist there a long, long, long time, barring a particularly unlucky meteor strike.

:shrug:

[Poppyseedman]

2. Interesting concept

May Bob Holmes lead to way. I volunteer to be last

[dipsydoodle]

5. Makes you wonder

if we're not the first time round and maybe others preceeded us only to fizzle out as we may do.

[hunter]

8. The article is still a little anthropocentric...

The jpeg at treehugger.com is cool, but the little tag about nuclear waste at the end is oddly out of place. The accident at Chernobyl demonstrates quite clearly that human beings are far more toxic than any sort of nuclear waste. A breeding colony of humans can destroy a planet's ecology while the very worst sort of nuclear accident is only a local nuisance, especially if you belong to a species with any normal sort of population dynamics.

Apparently blowing up a nuclear power plant is a very quick way to create a nature preserve.

[YankeyMCC]

9. This looks like an interesting read however,

I don't think it's a great idea to think about nature as something separate from us. We are part of nature. Yes, we're in a unique position and therefore have perhaps unique responsibilities and hopefully the capability to met those responsibilities in a positive way but still we are part of the system.

Excuse me if I'm talking out of turn, I can't read the article right now but I will.

[Odin2005]

10. Very sobering article.

I wonder how long it would take for the great urban centers to retun to a wild state. I've always though that one we get the technology to settle interstellar space we should leave Earth and let it revert back to nature.

[tritsofme]

13. I saw a program on the Discovery Channel that mirrored this article

It was done from the perspective of a satellite that was sent back to Earth by the humans that had deserted the planet.

It showed the Earth's progression from thousands of years from now, to several million.

They showed the changes in the planet's ecology and made guesses about the evolution and extiction of species.

A very interesting program, I would reccomend watching it if you ever see it.