back to article How alien civilizations deal with climate is a measure of how smart they are. Just sayin'...

A team of scientists has proposed a new classification system that grades how advanced alien civilizations are by examining how an exoplanet uses energy. No concrete evidence of advanced life has been found beyond Earth, but that doesn't stop scientists entertaining the idea of extraterrestrial societies. The new system is a …

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  1. Chris Tierney

    Wrong tense used here.

    We used to be a Class V planet now were just a Class IV who is merrily on our way to becoming a Class II skipping a whole Class III bit. Sound about right?

  2. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    What next, we tell them what gender they are as well?

    FFS, you cannot convince everyone on this planet that we are all doomed unless we give all our money to the "green economy" so why try to enforce the same propaganda on any civilizations that may exist Out There?

    Any intelligent life will look the Earth, look at the number of us who seem to believe that paying people like Al Gore or Adam Frank horrendous amounts of money to tell a mixture of lies, half-lies and half-truths(*) and decide we really are not worth bothering with...

    (*)mathematical models that do not match reality, "scientific proof" that consists of shouting down any heretical non-Believers, proof from artic ice cores that show climate has changed more in the last couple of hundred years than the previous few thousand (but which they mysteriously forget to mention also proves that the Earth has had very wide swings between hot and cold long before mankind ever appeared)... I could go on but since most pro-AGW "campaigners" seem to rely on "BECAUSE WE SAY SO!!" to support their quasi-religious beliefs I won't bother...

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: What next, we tell them what gender they are as well?

      "but which they mysteriously forget to mention also proves that the Earth has had very wide swings between hot and cold long before mankind ever appeared"

      But that can be ascribed to a younger, more seismically-active world. How about a silver bullet? Conclusive proof of wild temperature swings AFTER mankind appeared but BEFORE major civilizations appeared, meaning man would have to have been the world's worse polluting nomads?

  3. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Re. aliens

    Actually it looks like FTL is possible but dropping out near a planet does massive damage comparable to a gamma ray burst.

    On the flip side if aliens ever do invade then we will see them coming, from light years off.

    They'd probably drop out around 100 AU away behind Jupiter wrt Earth while we are on the opposite side of the Sun so combined mass somewhat shields us.

  4. rbb

    I suggest that they also should consider biological models for civilizations. For example, yeast in a vat with some sugar and hops would be a class 1 civilization model. It consumes all of the resources in the vat and eventually dies in its own excrement.

    Perhaps a class 2 model would be lichen, which provide a space for algae to live and both the lichen and algae live off of each other.

    Disclamer here, I am not a biologist, I just like consuming yeast excrement and can appreciate the beauty that is life.

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