Shout out to my fellow spectroscopists. LIBS is awesome. Like, check out the ChemCam. The ChemCam is a laser that shoots rocks on Mars to analyze their composition using LIBS.

As the story goes, Roger Wiens, one of the scientists on the team that made the ChemCam, had a bumper sticker that read “My other car shoots rocks on Mars.” A great teachnique - who wouldn’t want to own it?

“Why yes, I’d be happy to. I’m a professional tall person.”

The fear of feedback loops is reasonable, but may not be inevitable. The reason complex life exists on this planet, in part, is that the biosphere evolved to prevent runaway climate change. As the life forms grew more varied and complex, the tools for maintaining a viable atmosphere also increased. So the Precambrian extinctions are attributed to changes that extremely primitive life forms couldn’t adapt to. Once life moved onto land, and trees, grasses, and flowers evolved, the number of ways for life to adapt went way up.

It should say something that the most recent mass extinction event (I mean, before the anthropocene), was caused by a giant asteroid and a decade(s?)-long winter, rather than a change in solar luminosity or runaway GHG shift.

With the advent of humans, this planet now has tools available for GHG and solar radiation management (SRM) that were unthinkable by nature. SRM with sulfur dioxide and air capture of CO₂ allow for the rapid reshaping of the climate almost as fast as fossil fuel combustion. As a result, the tools to stabilize the climate are available and their use is inevitable. The longer we wait to use them, the worse the problem gets and the more people are harmed, but given the unheard-of capacities that we’ve developed to stave off runaway global warming, I do not believe that humanity will choose extinction over GHG management and SRM.

Most of these thoughts come from Gaian Bottleneck Theory, which you can read more about here. You may be right, but I’m hoping you are wrong (no offense).

Area of sky obscured by the milky way.