The main downside to terraforming Earth is that it's currently our only viable home. If we do something stupid/wrong and break our atmosphere, that's game. If things go wrong on Mars, we get to go back to the drawing board and try again. So in a lot of ways, Mars could serve as sort of a "test case" for most terraforming options.
The main downside to terraforming Earth is that it's currently our only viable home. If we do something stupid/wrong and break our atmosphere, that's game. If things go wrong on Mars, we get to go back to the drawing board and try again. So in a lot of ways, Mars could serve as sort of a "test case" for most terraforming options.
That's very true, we're pretty bad at terraforming yet..