Mars with Oceans ...
Posted on 12/22/2006 11:53:58 AM PST by aculeus
"2. 'Eccentric Orbital Rhythms' makes a really catchy name for a rock band..."
I think you're confusing them with the 'Electric Light Orchestra' or 'Orchestral Maneuvers in the Dark' (aka OMD, which made some VERY pretty music in the 80's.)
But you're right. What goes around comes around and we haven't had an elegantly named band in a few decades now, LOL!
Only guessing 'cause my track record over millions of years has yet to be established. ;-)
I'm rather partial to "Frankly Scarlet."
I got'cha covered, pal. I'm certified to be older than dirt.
Now that's cute! :)
Husband was listening to a band called "Hinder" the other night,. Being German, I pronounced it "Hine-Der" versus "Hin-Der." LOL!
Stupid marketing IMHO, but they got a luagh out of me. ;)
TCM aired Taxi Driver recently. In the publicity it was mentioned that DeNiro ad-libbed the famous line. A great film.
Methane is the largest component of natural gas, a large percent of our energy resources. As CH4, it doesn't really decompose into anything.
(You do need large quantities of concentrated gas to make use of it though: Diffuse little bits mixed in amidst tons of muck isn't practical to even gather, much less transport and try to use.)
Only problem I see with orbit eccentricities is that they are long-period, very slow transitions: How can you explain a sudden (few hundred year) drop in temperature when the period of change of the earth's orbit (precession for example) is a few hundred thousand years with only a very small total change in sunlight.
Something else caused global climate change in the past.
We can't address today's (possible) global climate change UNTIL we can figure out WHY it changed in the past.
(Having said that, can we recover the gasses from those entrapped methane sources naturally present in the Superdome after a chili and beer cookoff Louisiana style?)
Let's have the truth. No more political agendas. If the media would just report the facts I would make up my mind without their help. When they "report" in such as way as to try to convince me of something, I don't believe them.
Very perceptive. In truth, we can examine orbital eccentricities, Solar variations, and possibly even Galactic rotations as predictable variants, but there are also unpredictable factors which can affect global climate.
Very widely spread forest fires, vulcanism, and even uncharacterized animal or plant climax populations could have had randomizing factors at critical times in Earth's wobble-dance.
Climatological profiles and computer models can not take advatage of these possibilities, so not every excursion is explicable. Sometimes things just happen, like meteoric impacts.
There are some other things we might wonder about concerning earth's orbit. If it changes eccentricity does that affect the length of the year? What is the length of the Great Year? We see estimates from 12,000 to 26,000 years, but do we actually know based on our relatively short set of observations? Can we calculate these things accurately enough based on measurements made in the past couple centuries?
.. really great thread , I hope it goes on for hundreds of posts
( although I know a Grozny O'Donnell thread would race past one like this in mere minutes , *sigh* )
Also, doesn't the axis of the Earth tilt from somewhere between 20 degrees and 25 degrees or so? At maximum tilt, 25 degrees, the climate is more temperate. At minimum tilt, or about 20, the climate cools down dramatically.
Interesting that we are about midrange now at 23, and headed downward.
ALL THE MODELS I have seen about climate shows we are due for a mini if not maxi ice age.
Drilling rig with a nuclear power plant on top - pump steam down into the deposit thru one pipe, methane comes up out another.
Something tells me, Robert, that our friend Patton didn't read the whole question you asked.
As for mining methane hydrates, I puzzled about why a nuclear reactor -- then I realized it's two birds with one stone. The reactor coolant water gets injected into the lithosphere, and clean methane can be collected for refrigeration and exported use.
Or maybe not, I just toss out ideas, the PE's get to impliment them.
(That's why I am a scientist. LOL)
bump
Mars with oceans? How are you going to do that?
Oh, you just had to ask, didn't you?
All right. I'll be brief. (Hah!)
I want to build an electromagnetic launch facility in Antarctica, where ice-shrouded ships will be launched into orbit, perhaps with enough momentum to continue to Mars.
Two advantages accrue to this scheme: One can launch ice-only shipments to desert areas of Earth as an irrigation technique.
And secondly, this procedure does not require any rocket fuel. With nuclear engines, the ice can become a fuel in orbit, being heated into steam to act as a regular rocket.
The overall goal is to terraform Earth and Mars, providing at least double or triple the living space we have now, and feeding everyone.
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