Venus' Stop/Start History Highlighted By Probe 69
An anonymous reader writes "Science Daily reports on scientific findings from the ESA's Venus Express probe. The device, which is even now orbiting Earth's sister planet, is feeding back data hinting at Venus' origins. Initially, the probe has found, the planet evolved far too quickly. As a result Venus' liquid oceans were boiled away. With those gone, the planet's development stalled and ceased. 'They may have started out looking very much the same,' said Professor Taylor, 'but increasingly we have evidence that Venus lost most of its water and Earth lost most of its atmospheric carbon dioxide ... The interesting thing is that the physics is the same in both cases. The great achievement of Venus Express is that it is putting the climatic behaviour of both planets into a common framework of understanding.'"
Re:global warming comparison in 3,2,1.... (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:global warming comparison in 3,2,1.... (Score:5, Insightful)
The real question isn't wether you like the "climate change" doomsayers or the words they use. The real question is if our activities are harming the environment to the extent that we should be worried about it, and, if so, what we can do to improve things. Launching ad hominems at the people who are pointing out a potential threat doesn't do anything to make the world a better place. What we need is more awareness and less bias. In the meantime, I will work on reducing the emissions I cause, not just to be on the safe side, but also because I think it is a fun challenge. I don't _know_ the truth, so I won't condemn you for driving an SUV or using incandescent light bulbs if you are so inclined, but I will be angry with you for insulting the people who are trying to warn you, especially if it turns out they were right.
Incidentally, I think that the effects of global warming are much more obvious in other aspects of the climate than in average temperature; for example, a barely noticeable increase of a few degrees in average temperature could bring about a much stronger increase in rain and storms. But that's just what I think, based on things I heard, so don't take my word for it. Do your own research...and not just to find publications that agree with you, but to actually find out the truth. I think you will find that the issue is much more complex than "only idiots believe in climate change" or "only idiots deny climate change".
Re:Names are important (Score:5, Insightful)
That concern still should be there, and frankly we are at a near peak in terms of how warm the Earth's environment is at the moment for a variety of reasons. A 10 degree rise in temperatures might even be healthier economically speaking than a 10 degree drop in temperatures across the globe. Certainly a return of mile deep glaciers in the middle of North America would not only damage productive farmland but also force mass migration of millions of people... and that would only be the beginning.
The climate does change, and changes have been noted in even historical times. Northern Africa was considered the breadbasket of the Roman Empire, yet today its productivity in terms of crop production barely feeds itself. Greenland was a major Viking colony with enough people to support a full Catholic dioceses (not just an ordinary parish), but everybody moved out due to crops dying and the local climate being too cold to support a European model of agriculture and community building. Some people of European decent have return to Greenland, but even today it doesn't support nearly so large of a population as it did in the 1200's. I could use other historical examples, but the point is that change happens, so deal with it. Survival of species depends on their ability to cope with changes to their environment, and some succeed and others fail. That is called evolution.
To those moderating, remember the rules (Score:2)
Allegations? (Score:2)
Truth that there was Global Cooling, then Global Warming, then Climate Change?
Truth that Climate Change is seen as a mechanism to funnel money from rich countries to poor ones? Didn't watch the Bali conference too closely, did you?
Yes, some people actually honestly disagree with the mantra and greed that fuels it.
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Insect eating bat dying in mass number? Global Warming.
Hurricanes increasing in power and frequence? Global Warming.
Hot summers? Global Warming.
Powerful winter blizzards? Global Warming.
Missing girl? Global Warming.
Price of gasoline rising? Global Warming.
Earthquakes in strange places? Global Warming.
Re
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Think about it. The
Re:global warming comparison in 3,2,1.... (Score:5, Informative)
It's called Global Climate Change because not everywhere will get warmer. Many places (Northern Europe) could get colder. Some places will get wetter, others dryer. The weather systems might get far more random in places as well.
However idiots who watched some oil funded programme on TV will now declare themselves experts on the subject and say it's bunkum. Right. Really. Your limited hours of funded popular science really make your opinion worth more than thousands of people who have spent years and decades working on this stuff?
Of course cleaning up emissions will do more than potentially slow down this global climate change (arguably man's effect is one of accelerating change, which may result in more momentum and thus higher highs ultimately), it will make the air nicer to breathe, day in, day out. This is a far better benefit. If it wasn't for this, I'd rather the money was spent on dealing with the inevitable, rather than delaying it.
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So watching a two hour documentary produced by Al Gore is any better than somebody watching propaganda from some other source?
There are a number of problems with global warming/disastrous climate change in
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The year 1998 was a statistical anomaly based off the strong El Nino currents that year. When looking at the temperature trends surrounding 1998, there is a nice best fit line to go through them. 1998 is quite far above that best fit line for the rest of the years. Thus the statement 'temps haven't risen in the last 10 years' is numerically true (1998 was hotter than th
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But the problem I have with that explanation is that it was counted as proof of the problem in 1998 when the Kyoto accords was being signed into existance. It has also being used to validate global warming in the 2000's when the US was catching shit for not signing onto global warming. Al Gores nobel prize winning inconvenient truth uses it to show how bad we have screwed up our planet. Now, we are being told that it is meaningless because it lead to something that doe
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Haven't you heard, global warming stopped. Now it is called climate change to keep the funding going.
I notice that your whole argument is predicated on the notion that the temperature (meaning the global average, year on year) has not risen.
But temps haven't risen in the last 10 years or so from what what I have been told.
from what what I have been told. Have temperatures risen, or haven't they?
Seems like a fairly critical point - yet it also seems like you are being deliberately vague about your sources.
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Actually, from my understanding, the entire decade, or past ten years, is where my point rests. This last ten years have not been as warm as the ten previous years and it is expected to be even less with the effects of LA Nina.
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I notice that your whole argument is predicated on the notion that the temperature (meaning the global average, year on year) has not risen.
Actually, from my understanding, the entire decade, or past ten years, is where my point rests. This last ten years have not been as warm as the ten previous years and it is expected to be even less with the effects of LA Nina.
Well, no - because you are asserting that the observed global warming and the reasons given for it is actually a conspiracy. To do so, you will need to counter the evidence given for those reasons AND provide an alternate explanation for the warming trend, covering the period over which that trend has been observed. You cannot arbitrarily pick a period within that timeframe (eg a second, a month, a decade) on the basis that by ignoring the bulk of the data, a single data point matches whatever spurious con
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the tired old unfunny joke (Score:1)
I Am the Cheese: Taking one for the team since 2008.
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Spinning iron core (Score:5, Interesting)
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Yeah, right. (Score:5, Insightful)
First, we do not even understand Earth's climate very well yet. And we live there. Duh.
Second, the two planets are at vastly disparate distances from the sun. Extrapolation from one to the other -- even today -- could be dangerous to one's career.
Add the fact that we know that they are geologically and chemically different. And there are more points I could make if I wanted to take the time.
You end up with one hell of a lot less real "comparison" or "similarity" than this implies. Even if all the assumptions about Venus were correct (extremely unlikely), we haven't even figured out how our own planet works yet, so I don't see how anyone could pretend to be predicting how climates have / had changed over the last couple of thousand years on Venus. I will stop short of calling this complete bullshit, but to say that I am skeptical is an understatement.
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My sig says it all (Score:2)
Re:Yeah, right. (Score:5, Insightful)
Actually, it is hogwash, but only because of the wildly silly implication that they ever weren't in a common framework of understanding. The laws of physics are the same there are they are here. The same chemicals in the same conditions don't magically behave differently because it's a different planet.
Re:Yeah, right. (Score:5, Interesting)
That was my first though, as well.
However, there is a qualification to make. Namely, it depends on the scope of the framework. If you make the scope large enough, _everything_ falls within it, but it will also make the framewore insanely complex and difficult to work with.
In practice, we use simplifications. And this is where the scope of the framework becomes important. Because the simplifications, while technically wrong, can still give useful results. For example, simply adding velocities works well, as long as the velocities are much smaller than the speed of light. Hydrogen is not always gaseous, but good results can be gotten under most circumstances by assuming that it is. Or even by assuming that it is an ideal gas. And so on. So, depending on the specific assumptions you make, your framework may be more or less widely applicable.
What is interesting about a common framework that correctly predicts events on both Earth and Venus is that it tests cases that may not have been tested before. Some conditions may be so common on Earth that the behavior they elicit is taken for granted by Earth-based scientists. On Venus, these circumstances may not be present. This will test our theories under circumstances we may never have thought of. This, in turn, may lead to better understanding.
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I have had that happen a number of times with several different things I've studied and the results didn't quite go with what I though was originally going to happen. Or when I've read papers and studies about topics that have brought new understanding... often deeper understanding... to a scientific disci
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My problem with most global warming advocates is that they take a single parameter, CO2 production by anthroprogenic sources and turn that into the dominating variable where there are a great many other things to describe that causes the effects.
And the problem I have with climate change skeptics is that they try to delay/deny/confuse and otherwise downplay the issue of man-made CO2, (and by extension: real action) by (correctly) pointing to the fact that there are other factors, both natural and anthropogenic, involved in climate change. Unfortunately, this observation is often used as a distraction technique designed to downplay and obfuscate our CO2 problem.
There are a great many uneducated people on both sides of climate change. When folks
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The laws of physics are the same there are they are here. The same chemicals in the same conditions don't magically behave differently because it's a different planet.
Individual chemicals, no. But entire systems can be night and day from each other. As others have pointed out here, we don't even have the first clue as to how Earth's environment works, what with self-regulating feedback systems and all.
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Very little understanding of Venus exists; full understanding wasn't even on the table. Your assertion that we shouldn't deride the "findings" because the findings are just a "theory" show why there are so many people who subscribe to the religion of Scientism without understanding the underlying tenets of science.
The "theory" catchall is always trotted ou
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So many of the statements about Venus (and Mars for that matter as well) have been inaccurate; at times it seems deliberately or recklessly so.
SO much of what NASA has done has been awful and has led people away from science; things like colorizing shots of Mars to make the climate of planet look more red and hostle than it is for instance.
The American people were sold a bill of goods when it was "given" NASA....We did not get what we were supposed to get, and w
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Theories should not try to predict more than their foundations would support. That is what this article is apparently trying to do, and I was just pointing it out.
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No lunar and weaker solar tides... (Score:3, Insightful)
Inverse Square Law (Score:2)
This doubled energy input probably is a really huge factor to the whole problem.
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Could the Earth have become just like Venus if it weren't for the development of life? What has been the impact of living systems upon this environment as well? Certainly epochs of high CO2 levels in the Earths past resulted in periods like the Carboniferous era when most of the coal deposits were laid down. Could li
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Mod Up, please! (Score:2)
Women are from venus (Score:5, Funny)
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The lesson is once your budget is overspent the only fix is to borrow more, spend more, and get bigger nukes or our planet is doomed.... DOOOMED!!
Global Warming is dead, now it is Global Boiling? (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Global Warming is dead, now it is Global Boilin (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Global Warming is dead, now it is Global Boilin (Score:2)
Re:Global Warming is dead, now it is Global Boilin (Score:2)
evolve (Score:1, Insightful)
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Besides, is geo-planetary change really "evolution?"
What went wrong. (Score:2)
I blame the Solar-System economy, Free-Trade agreements and open borders. If only the planets were farther apart or someone had built a fence... (Ya, I'm talking to you Mars.)
Too Quickly for Whom? (Score:5, Funny)
Well, from a Venusian's perspective, the Earth evolved far too much. Leaving all those tepid sticky areas out beyond the Sun's cleansing rays has left the Earth to rot, infested with all kinds of vermin. Some of which just dirty the place up even more, and then get nosy, ogling the neighbors and insulting their tidy nearby neighborhoods.
That review of Venus was clearly written by an Earthling real estate agent.
Why does Venus rotate retrograde? (Score:4, Informative)
Most likely same reason Earth has a Moon (Score:3, Informative)
Stalled development (Score:1)
Benefits of the space program (Score:1)
ESA very stingy with public data (Score:2)