[tom_mellior]

> we can't manage to stop climate change on Earth, but we're going to somehow terraform a planet?

The fact that we caused climate change shows that we can terraform this planet. We could also do the reverse if we all stopped burning fossil fuels right now, but we are generally unwilling to do so.

If Mars were covered in easily accessible hydrocarbons and had an atmosphere with sufficient oxygen, we could terraform it the same way by sending over a lit match. But those preconditions are not present.

[heavyset_go]

Climate change is the result of literally all human production ever. How do you propose we reproduce the last several hundred years of industry and development, cumulatively, on another planet?

[tom_mellior]

I don't propose anything. Like I said, the preconditions aren't there.

If Mars were almost exactly like Earth before the Industrial Revolution, only a bit cooler, we could make it exactly like Earth in a few hundred years by mining/drilling for fossil fuels and burning them in big piles.

[Aeronwen]

It doesn't matter. CO2 is literally the one thing Mars doesn't need us to add to the atmosphere. With that problem solved, we just need to add the other 99.95% of the atmosphere it lacks.