Do you have a link to this Reddit thread? It would be interesting to see the discussion and what conclusions they come to.
http://www.reddit.com/r/Futurology/comments/25qh7i/interstellar_a_christopher_nolan_film_depicting/
http://www.reddit.com/r/movies/comm...er_for_chistopher_nolans_interstellar/chjoyjh
The predictions for global warming by the end of this century are seriously grim, especially if humanity continues to ignore making serious efforts to mitigate the damage.
Oh, I competely agree. I'm kind of disappointed that Hollywood did not catch into this yet -- climate change predictions are a goldmine for LoTR-scale epics. For example, I'd like to watch one about the inhabitants of rapidly desertifying Italy escaping from disease and famine and trying to cross Alps. However, all tunnels have already been blown up to curtail immigration from the Appenine Penninsula, so they must go through the mountains, where they are being hunted by UAVs. Could be as good as
Hunger Games, and the premise would make more sense.
But, having read
some literature on global warming impacts, I must say that there is absolutely no consensus that the planet will be so messed up that we will have to leave it. There are only two pathways for this to happen, and these are:
- [ame="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clathrate_gun_hypothesis"]methane clathrates defreeze[/ame] and cause runaway warming producing Venus
- a nuclear war breaks out over the remaining resources
Everything else is bad, but it's not planet-destroying bad, basically, it never gets worse than
Mad Max. Once you realize that, for a state-level actor, there are much better ways to spend your money than interstellar trips. In order of severity of the AGW impacts:
- Develop GMO crops suitable for new climate.
- Develop closed-system farming techniques. Hydroponic farming needs only sunlight and water, both of these are going to be always available.
- Attempt geoengineering by seeding ocean with iron and/or injecting SO2 into the atmosphere. Cost calculations on both options come up surprisingly cheap (below $1B), the main reason people are opposed to these solutions is that they can only be tried once, and they may work incorrectly. But if the situation is so bad that you don't have much to lose...
- If the breakup of civilization is imminent, build up a stock of weapons, basic machinery, greenhouses (see above), etc., and head for an easily-defended mountain valley (higher altitude means that the land will be suitable for farming even in case of large warming). Wait 100-200 years for the situation to stabilize, then go back down and establish an empire.
So, the only situations when interstellar trip would make sense would be if there was some
unobtainium which could be used to magically fix things.
Besides, there is another problem with just "colonize another planet" premise. First, the suitable planet would have to have an oxygen-rich atmosphere, which means that it would have to have native life... which opens a whole can of worms (literally). Second, unless you have a stargate next to a railway station on Earth, your colonists are going to be severely limited in what they can bring along, which would make the transfer of civilization largely impossible. Therefore, they would be trading living in Medieval conditions on post-apocalyptic Earth for living in Neolithic conditions on New-Earth.