Anyone who has ever read a science fiction novel or played a sci-fi video game has probably heard of terraforming. The word literally means "earth shaping," and is used to describe the ecological alteration of another planet to make it habitable for humans. So far the millennial time scale and prohibitive cost of terraforming have prevented science fiction from becoming science fact.

Global warming may be a scourge on Earth, but injecting greenhouse gases into the atmosphere of Mars might be just the thing to turn the barren planet into a living and breathing world that could support future human colonies, NASA researchers said.

Scientists at NASA's Ames Research Center in Mountain View, Calif., propose using fluorine-based gases, elements of which already exist on the Martian surface, to start the warming process.

Indeed, what we have learned about greenhouse gases from our own climate change predicament has encouraged a team of NASA scientists to study compounds with high greenhouse potentials (much higher than CO₂ or CH₄, the two main GHGs of concern here on Earth) for their possible use in terraforming Mars. When released into the Martian thin atmosphere, these gases would warm Mars enough to melt its polar ice caps, releasing massive amounts of trapped CO₂ which would thicken the atmosphere and warm the planet further.

A year or two ago I would have suggested that such a claim was sensationalism, or just the musings of scientists with their heads in the clouds and no grasp on the practicalities of public policy. Then again, I would have said the same thing about simply putting an astronaut on Mars, an endeavor which President Bush has already thrown his support behind (though only verbally so far, and no amount of verbiage will lift a rocket off the ground).

I have no doubt that the greater body of environmentalists will decry a plan like this as "humans trying to destroy another planet." I make no such claim. I'll even admit that my first thought when I saw the article was "cool!", but I expect that any fan of Frank Herbert would have thought the same. My considered reaction though, is one that I would classify as rather conservative, at least from an economic perspective. It's nothing more than a question: Before we invest billions in researching climate change on Mars, shouldn't we be willing to invest at least a fraction of that in learning more about it here on Earth?