Timothy Birdnow

Et tu, Space.com?

Yes, the usually reasonable website has climbed aboard the "renewable" fired crazy train, making the argument that Venus is a model of what can happen to Earth if we let atmospheric carbon dioxide rise. It's a monumentally silly article. Read it here.

Venus, dear children, is not the Earth and never was.

Here are a few dimwitted tidbits from supposed "scientists" who really ought to know better:

"That world is Venus, Earth's "evil twin," which was once nice enough — until something went wrong and the atmosphere began trapping a little too much heat. Scientists aren't positive precisely how events played out, but the runaway greenhouse effect that resulted is beyond debate: Venus now clocks in at a staggering 880 degrees Fahrenheit (471 degrees Celsius)." End excerpt.

A "nice enough" place? Huh?

Venus had a surface temperature of around 220* F. before her atmosphere expanded. That is just barely below the boiling point of water. The sun brightened and this surface temperature increased, boiling all of the water away, leaving Venus dry as a bone and even less attractive. And with the disappearance of all that water (and at first it would have gone into the atmosphere, a powerful greenhouse gas) Venus warmed even more.

Without water and with a thin crust courtesy of Venus's slow rotation (and it's retrograde, too) the planet did not form discrete plates as on Earth. The end result is a very thin crust, and Venus shows signs of having been very volcanically active in the past (and likely in the present). The end result is major outgassing of carbon dioxide. The Venusian atmosphere is 96% co2, like cold Mars. But unlike Mars (whose atmosphere is largely frozen in the ice caps and in permafrost) Venus is dense, at 90 bars, or ninety times as dense as Earth's sea level average.

This is not just a "runaway greenhouse effect" but also involves planetary geology and solar activity. And the sheer volume of the atmosphere traps heat. Here is a good explanation:

"The atmosphere is 96.5% CO2 and with virtually no water (very different from Earth).

The surface pressure is about 90 times higher than on Earth. At this pressure, CO2 is highly absorbing both at 15 microns and near 5 microns = 5000nm. With a surface temperature of about 730K, by Wien's law the emission peak is close to 5000 nm."

End excerpt.

At this level heat can only escape from the dense cloud cover at temperatures as high as Venus is at present. The atmosphere is 96.5% CO2 and with virtually no water (very different from Earth).Venus can only remain in thermodynamic equilibrium at temperatures that would melt lead.

Dr. Roy Spencer schools these "planetary scientists" in their own field. He says:

"While it is true that the surface of Venus has a temperature around 860 deg. F., the fact is that Venus has over 220,000 times as much CO2 as Earth’s atmosphere!

By way of comparison, since the Industrial Revolution started, it is widely believed we are now approaching 1.5 times as much atmospheric CO2 as we had hundreds of years ago.

220,000x versus 1.5x. Do you see the grotesqueness of comparing Venus to Earth?

If we used distances to make the comparison, and 1.5x was 1.5 inches, then 220,000x would be 2.3 miles! Imagine that the water level in the ocean increased by 0.5 inches, and people were trying to scare you about what might happen if it goes up another half an inch in the next 50 years by comparing it to 2.3 miles of water depth."

End excerpt.

In fact Venus is hot because it is, well, hot. The greenhouse effect is only a part of the problems with the Planet of Love.

The Space.com article continues:

"Much of the appeal of Venus comes from the fact that despite its horrifying modern appearance, it's actually really similar to Earth. "Picture a planet that's just like Earth but it's a little hotter because it's a little closer to the sun — and that would be Venus," David Grinspoon, a planetary scientist and astrobiologist at the Planetary Science Institute, told Space.com."

End excerpt.

El wrongo!

David Grinspoon really should look to get into a new line of work. He looks at the similarities between Earth and Venus and ignores the huge differences.

Earth rotates in 34 hours and 57 minutes. Venus rotates in 243.025 days, longer than her year which is 224.7 days. And Venus rotates in a clockwise direction, so the Sun rises in the West and sets in the East (if you could see the Sun from Venus, which you couldn't - at least from the surface although if you were floating in the upper atmosphere you could.) That slow rotation had a major impact on Venus; it is a part of why the Venusian crust is so thin (the planet didn't stratiate as did Earth) and is likely (in my opinion) part of the reason Venus has such a dense atmosphere. There is much debate on why Venus spins in such a strange fashion. Some argue it was hit by a big something or other. That may well be. Furthermore, there is a theory that Mercury was a moon of Venus, or even part of the planet itself that was knocked off when it collided with - something. It could be; certainly we have found numerous "super Earths" in other solar systems but Earth is the biggest terrestrial planet here. Why? One theory holds that Jupiter and Saturn moved inward after first being created and then instead of staying close to the Sun (a "hot Jupiter" like so many discovered around other stars) they moved back out. Perhaps matter from this collided with Venus? At any rate, something sure did a number on her.

And this lack of a moon is another matter. There is an old theory that the Moon is critical to the Earth because it stripped a lot of atmosphere away via tidal action. We have a planetary sized body over our heads here.

And what of the Earth's magnetic field? Venus, with her slow rotation and internal structure, has none. The Earth's magnetic field also played a role in stripping away some of our atmosphere. Here is a primer on the theory:

"Initially, scientists believed Earth's magnetic environment to be filled purely with particles of solar origin. However, as early as the 1990s it was predicted that Earth's atmosphere was leaking out into the plasmasphere – something that has since turned out to be true.

Observations have shown sporadic, powerful columns of plasma, dubbed plumes, growing within the plasmasphere, travelling outwards to the edge of the magnetosphere and interacting with solar wind plasma entering the magnetosphere.

More recent studies have unambiguously confirmed another source – Earth's atmosphere is constantly leaking!"

[...]

"More recent studies have unambiguously confirmed another source – Earth's atmosphere is constantly leaking! Alongside the aforementioned plumes, a steady, continuous flow of material (comprising oxygen, hydrogen, and helium ions) leaves our planet's plasmasphere from the polar regions, replenishing the plasma within the magnetosphere. Cluster found proof of this wind, and has quantified its strength for both overall (reported in a paper published in 2013) and for hydrogen ions in particular (reported in 2009).

Overall, about 1 kg of material is escaping our atmosphere every second, amounting to almost 90 tonnes per day. Singling out just cold ions (light hydrogen ions, which require less energy to escape and thus possess a lower energy in the magnetosphere), the escape mass totals thousands of tonnes per year."

End excerpt.

And Venus is 30% closer to the Sun than is the Earth. And her axial tilt is just 3* as opposed to Earth's 23* tilt. And, due to excessive volcanism, the atmosphere is full of sulfuric acid, which rains down on the melted landscape.

Venus like Earth? Venus is less like Earth than Paris, France is like the Kerguelen Islands. Sure, they both lie near the 49th parallel (one north and one south) but one is a cold, uninhabited wasteland and the other the City of Lights. And that is a difference just on Earth. Venus is far less like our own planet.

It's a pity; Venus would make a nice new home if it could be cooled and watered and the atmosphere thinned, but how do you remove so massive a funeral shroud as the Venusian atmosphere? How do you cool a planet down over 750 degrees? How can you possibly bring enough water?

As I tire of pointing out, Mars is also a world with high amounts of carbon dioxide in her atmosphere, but Mars is bitterly cold, far colder than Antarctica. If co2 were such a powerful greenhouse gas, why isn't Mars Earthlike? Yes, her atmosphere is thin, but it is thin because it is frozen and whenever it warms up it thickens and kicks up dust which blots out the sunlight, driving temperatures back down. Mars has been in a permanent state of stasis, a classic example of a negative climate feedback. The Global Warming gang wants us to believe all feedbacks are positive.

Not so.

Of course, this whole article is designed to buttress the recent idiot climate assessment report put out by guys like former Treasury Secretary Hank "you have to suspend capitalism to save it" Paulson. This is little more than politics masquerading as science.

Posted by: Timothy Birdnow at 11:30 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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