Is there anything that Hotcoldwetdry can’t mess up?
(Phys.org) Enrico Fermi, when asked about intelligent life on other planets, famously replied, “Where are they?” Any civilisation advanced enough to undertake interstellar travel would, he argued, in a brief period of cosmic time, populate its entire galaxy. Yet, we haven’t made any contact with such life. This has become the famous “Fermi Paradox”. (snip)
So why don’t we see advanced civilisations swarming across the universe? One problem may be climate change. It is not that advanced civilisations always destroy themselves by over-heating their biospheres (although that is a possibility). Instead, because stars become brighter as they age, most planets with an initially life-friendly climate will become uninhabitably hot long before intelligent life emerges. (snip)
However, the universe is immense and a few rare worlds will have had the necessary good fortune. It may just be that Earth is one of those lucky planets – a precious, fragile jewel in space. So, perhaps inevitably, climate change will remain a bane of the continued existence of life on such planets.
via Anthony Watts.
