Posted on 04/30/2007 7:57:26 AM PDT by Maelstorm
In fifty or a hundred years, we will know whether taking today's climate models to make political decisions restricting freedoms were right; -- but if they are wrong, by then it may be too late to restore our liberties.
Mars has a much thinner atmosphere because it is smaller and has less gravity as well. I wonder if terraforming Mars would be feasible given the lack of a magnetic field to deflect the solar wind.
Will the Ice Age Return?
The world is cooling — helped by man
Some scientists are convinced that the world’s climate is getting colder every year, threatening a return to the conditions of the last ice age, which reached its peak about 18,000 years ago.
[...]
From 1890 to 1940 worldwide temperatures rose about 0.18F every 10 years. Some animals extended their ranges northward, the sea was less frozen than before, and icebergs from Greenland did not penetrate as far south.
Since 1940 temperature has been dropping. According to a survey by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the average ground readings for the northern hemisphere have, in the years from 1945 to 1968, fallen by one-half degree F. In the United States, east of the Continenal Divide, temperatures in the last decade averaged one to four degrees cooler than in the past 30 years.
-—page 69. Strange Stories, Amazing Facts
Published 1976, The Readers Digest Association
Library of Congress Catalog Card No. 76-2966
[The notion that cooling is being helped by man appears only in the subtitle of the article. Nothing in the article suggests how man might be accomplishing planetary cooling.]
The Holocrust? Is that an episode of Itchy and Scratchy?
What does life have to do with evaporation and rainfall?
Plants pull moisture out of the soil and put it in the atmosphere.
The cooling trend during the middle of the 20th Century was caused by high levels of particulate emissions (smoke) from factories and powerplants. Now that we’ve “cleaned up” the emissions, there is no counterbalance to the greenhouse gasses, and the warming accelerates.
What is the warming situation at Gliese 581?
We need a “Global Alarmist” superhero much like “Captain Obvious” to post with every “the sky is falling” article as they seem to be increasing in frequency during the latest media push on global warming.
What did in Mars and Venus....were Ford SUVs....which are the worst C02 types out there. If these dudes had stayed with Chevy or Honda...things would have been alot different.
“What is the warming situation at Gliese 581?”
Dunno...but the whole planet is a red light district...
The atmosphere of a planet is aways being lost into space as atoms in the upper atmosphere are excited by sunlight or some other form of energy and drift away. The stronger the gravity that a planet has, the harder it is for the atoms to gain enough energy to escape.
If a planet has low gravity, as is the case with Mars, and the atmosphere is not renewed by volcanic activity or some other means, then eventually, the atmosphere will diminish. Even if we terraformed Mars and gave it a heftier atmosphere, it would lose it unless we continually renewed its atmosphere.
TM
“The atmosphere of a planet is aways being lost into space as atoms in the upper atmosphere are excited by sunlight or some other form of energy and drift away. The stronger the gravity that a planet has, the harder it is for the atoms to gain enough energy to escape.
If a planet has low gravity, as is the case with Mars, and the atmosphere is not renewed by volcanic activity or some other means, then eventually, the atmosphere will diminish. Even if we terraformed Mars and gave it a heftier atmosphere, it would lose it unless we continually renewed its atmosphere.”
Yeah...that’s what I figured...oh, well...
Catastrophe?
On worlds like Venus and Mars?
OH PLEASE.
Why stop there? Titan and Europa too!
Jeez man. They are extreme worlds because that is their natural state. It is not a “catastrophe” that Mars is Mars.
That was the theory of Global cooling.
Guess those Venusians and Martians didnt buy enough carbon offset credits. Bet they wish they had had their own Gorical!
You are right that it isn’t directly testable and we don’t know for sure how they started out. All information we have is based on inferences. I think the best thing to come out of this is how complex the climate and how little we really understand the full dynamics of it.
The point though of the article is that we need to look at Venus and Mars and get hysterical and even if the models aren’t good “if they are right” the climate is going to be shot in 50 years. Just long enough so we can waste billions of dollars trying to fix it. And anyway who wants beaches in Greenland? Such a horrible thing to have longer growing seasons and bigger crop yields and how messed up the dessert ecosystem of the Sahara if it reverted back to the lush climate it had several thousand years ago. I think real global warming would be a very good thing politically. It would totally dilute the large coastal liberal city populations much like New Orleans. (Just wait till the left starts talking about that one)
I think Titan would be a great place to get enough hydrocarbons to keep planet Earth fueled for a million years. ;-)
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