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Horror! Venus and the Greenhouse Effect in popular science
| As has been recently very obvious, NASA has a particular role in pushing the theory of carbon-dioxide caused climate change. James Hansen is one of the theory's loudest advocates, and is an old-school NASA scientist active in this era... |
As it says in the June 1982 issue of Popular Science:
| Could Venus happen here? | ||
| Venus once had as much water as Earth. It lost the equivalent of Earth's oceans in the process of becoming a runaway greenhouse... at the surface the light level is equivalent to the darkest, cloudiest day on Earth... The sky is peach colored... The Venus findings may have broad implications for the Earth" | ||
| With its atmosphere consisting of 96% carbon dioxide - a gas that efficiently traps heat - Venus's temperatures rose. This began the greenhouse effect, long a theory and apparently now proved at Venus... large amounts of water boiled into the atmosphere ... | ||
| Could it happen here? The scenario is complex but seems to fit observations. It brought dire warnings from a number of scientists, including Dr Pollack and Dr Don Huntingten, about Earth's own future. The amount of carbon dioxide we're putting into Earth's atmosophere today is the most dangerous of all human activities," Huntingten said. | ||
But the science is... rubbish.
Firstly, carbon dioxide only blocks a small percentage of the infra-red spectrum. That is why almost all (90%) of the real 'greenhouse effect' on Earth is due to water vapour.
What - why is Venus so hot then! Because it is nearer the sun. This is such an obvious fact that one wonders why even a Popular Scientist could be confused.
The NASA site now gives the temperature of the planet's surface as about 870 degrees F (465 degrees C), higher than that of any other planet and hotter than most ovens. Mercury, from the same soource, is considered to reach 840 degrees F (450 degrees C) which is slightly less, despite the planet being much nearer the sun. Mercurty has almost no atmosphere, hence not greenhouse.
However, if we assume the general principle, that being nearer the heat source makes your planet warm up, it is incomceivable that Venus, even with a nice neutral atmosphere like out pre-fossil fuel burning one was, would be less than say 300 degrees centigrade?
And how much water would be left at those temperatures under the peach coloured skies...
| Swamp Man? | ||
| In 1918, chemist Svante Arrhenius, deciding that Venus' cloud cover was necessarily water, decreed in The Destinies of the Stars that "A very great part of the surface of Venus is no doubt covered with swamps" and compared Venus' humidity to the tropical rain forests of the Congo. Venus thus became, until the early 1960s, a place for science fiction writers to place all manner of unusual life forms, from quasi-dinosaurs to intelligent carnivorous plants. Comparisons often referred to Earth in the Carboniferous period. | ||
The Venus myth however is alive and well at NASA and other nexts of Climate Changers...
| Old story? Not at all! The Guardian ClimateGate ‘Debate’ held at the RIBA London on 14 July, organized by the Guardian newspaper and chaired by his green holiness, George Monbiot, included this gem: |
| “You only have to look at Mars, Earth and Venus. Mars has least CO2 1 and is coldest and Venus has most and is hottest”. |
| - Prof Bob Watson (Chief scientific adviser to the UK's Department of Farming) |
- 1actually, the atmosphere of Mars is 95% CO2!
