Venus May Have Been Habitable, Says NASA (sciencedaily.com) 211
EzInKy writes: Science Daily has an article speculating that Venus may have been habitable which is suggested by NASA climate modeling, which proposes that Venus may have had a shallow liquid-water ocean and habitable surface temperatures for up to two billion years of its early history. Talk about global climate change run amok. Venus may represent a near Earth example of what is in store for the future of our world if we don't make it a number one priority to address. Science Daily reports: "Venus today is a hellish world. It has a crushing carbon dioxide atmosphere 90 times as thick as Earth's. There is almost no water vapor. Temperatures reach 864 degrees Fahrenheit (462 degrees Celsius) at its surface. Scientists have long theorized that Venus formed out of ingredients similar to Earth's, but followed a different evolutionary path. Measurements by NASA's Pioneer mission to Venus in the 1980s first suggested Venus originally may have had an ocean. However, Venus is closer to the sun than Earth and receives far more sunlight. As a result, the planet's early ocean evaporated, water-vapor molecules were broken apart by ultraviolet radiation, and hydrogen escaped to space. With no water left on the surface, carbon dioxide built up in the atmosphere, leading to a so-called runaway greenhouse effect that created present conditions."
Venus should be habitable higher up (Score:5, Interesting)
in the clouds [wikipedia.org] where it's more Earth-like.
Re:Venus should be habitable higher up (Score:5, Funny)
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"the planet's early ocean evaporated, water-vapor molecules were broken apart by ultraviolet radiation, and hydrogen escaped to space. With no water left on the surface, carbon dioxide built up in the atmosphere, leading to a so-called runaway greenhouse effect that created present conditions."
Then, the real trouble started....
Re: Venus should be habitable higher up (Score:2)
The local weather app is just a wallpaper.
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Real space colonists know only cloudy clouds can cloud clouds. The latest reports from the Venus Communal Cloud Computing Continuity Cluster Clan only add further weight to the growing body of evidence that all attempts to cloud without clouds are doomed to failure. Unless you want to be left behind as the human race hurtles onward and outward into the cosmos, you'd best get clouding today. Clouds! -PCP
Clouds are for spherical cows! MOO say the spherical cloud cows!
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Damn you buzzword peddlers. On the internet isn't good enough anymore, everyone has to be in the cloud now!
Re:Venus should be habitable higher up (Score:4, Funny)
The Cloud-to-Butt extension for Chrome is really pulling its weight in this thread :-)
Re:Venus should be habitable higher up (Score:4, Insightful)
in the clouds [wikipedia.org] where it's more Earth-like.
The temperature and pressure is earthlike at a certain altitude but that's about it. The air is still unbreathable and full of sulphuric acid. Oh, and sulphuric acid isn't very friendly to most building materials either. If you think building in a salt water environment is highly corrosive, building in a sulphuric acid environment would be 10 times worse.
Re:Venus should be habitable higher up (Score:5, Interesting)
No, that's not "about it". The things that are earthlike include:
* Temperature
* Pressure
* Gravity
* Radiation shielding (compared to other destinations)
* Sunlight levels
* Atmospheric turbulence
The environment is amazingly earthlike, except for the chemistry. And concerning the chemistry....
The phrase "full of sulfuric acid" gives completely the wrong impression. The sulfuric acid mists in the cloud deck at reasonable heights (~54km., give or take a couple km) are on the order of half a dozen ppm. They're not much higher than the OSHA standards for breathing sulfuric acid mists during an 8 hour shift. Now, Venus's H2SO4 mists are a higher concentration than those on Earth, and there are also anhydrous acidic components. But comparisons to a bath in sulfuric acid are totally inappropriate. It's more like a bad smog or vog (in fact, it is a bad vog).
When you're talking about plastics (were you actually thinking that one would make a blimp's skin out of steel?), sulfuric acid is well tolerated by a large number, if not the majority of plastics. Organic solvents are much more concerning - I'd have much greater concerns for a blimp on Titan. Some fluoropolymers, like FEP and PTFE, are so chemical resistant that they're easier much defined by what does hurt them than what doesn't.
Realistic flight envelopes are not a single component. You generally will have an outer anti-corrosion layer (generally a fluoropolymer... the least fluorinated that provides the desired properties; ECTFE or PCTFE would be excellent), with one or more layers for permeation resistance and strength (generally biaxially-oriented when strength is of concern, like BoPET); for extra permeation resistance, something like EVOH or PVDC), optionally an inner layer (condensation control, anti-fouling, melt-through lamination, etc), optionally adhesive layers (such as EVA-based), and fiber reinforcement (vectran is popular for Venus proposals, although would be somewhat difficult for local production; on the opposite end of the spectrum, the easiest possibility for local production would be UHMWPE, but you'd need to ensure proper UV resistance and that the film components are compatible with the inevitable creep... though to be fair vectran also needs UV control) (there are countless fibers in-between with varying tensile, UV, chemical, creep, etc properties).
Beyond the basic skin you also need ballonets; most likely an additional phase-change envelope for altitude stability; catenary curtains and cables to distribute the weight to hanging structures; and in some cases, where objects need to be kept a minimum distance away from the envelope (such as propulsion), collapsible trusses. You also need mist collection for local propellant production (there are many different architectures, but they're all built around the fact that all of Venus's mists are highly hydrophilic and thus readily condense into water (through membranes or exposed) and onto hydrophilic surfaces. Lastly, if you use a ballute approach (for any combination of reentry, atmospheric deceleration, and/or initial inflation), you need a burble fence (which could potentially double as mist collection, depending on the architecture).
In cases where you might have exposed metal - such as propulsion motors (although even that isn't an inherent requirement) - there are a lot of alloys considered to be fine in Venus-conditions, and indeed which have been used on Venus probes in the past. An example includes Hastelloy C22. You may have noticed that here on Earth, metals in industry are frequently exposed to extremely corrosive chemical production environments for very long times. You design to your environment. A more
Re:Venus should be habitable higher up (Score:5, Interesting)
Actually, both water and oxygen are surprisingly simple... thanks to that sulfuric acid that often is used against the concept of Venus as a destination. Simple heating of sulfuric acid first yields any dissolved water (Venus's H2SO4 is 75-85% concentration). Further heating decomposes H2SO4 into H2O and SO3. Further heating still in the presence of a catalyst decomposition SO3 into O2 and SO2. As far as industrial processes go, it's on the "easy" end.
One issue is that D/H ratio. Over 1% of the hydrogen is deuterium. While it's known that people can survive at high deuterium levels, there is some controversy over whether prolongued exposure may cause other health effects; for example, one study suggests increase incidence of depression at levels far below that encountered on Venus. Unlike most isotopic differences, deuterium has significantly different properties than light hydrogen. Deuterated drugs, for example, can have lifespans in the body many times higher than their non-deuterated equivalents. Deuterated plastics are often far more transparent than non-deuterated ones. Contrariwise, mixtures of deuterated and non-deuterated plastics are often highly opaque because deuterium changes the melting point enough for the plastic to fractionalize into an anisotropic mixture of varying densities (and thus refractive indices).
On the other hand, at a value of nearly $1k per kilogram, deuterium is a potential export product, if one can get launch costs down enough. And there's a rather clever way to do isotopic separation on Venus. You have to store power; this is a given, until one advances to the point of being able to make use of wind differentials at different altitudes. Rather than batteries, you can get a better mass ratio from fuel cells (hydrogen-chlorine fuel cells being a better option than hydrogen-oxygen due to the reduced overpotential requirements at the chlorine end and generally more favorable reaction dynamics). Also, unlike most H2-O2 PEMs, H2-Cl2 fuel cells tend to be readily reversible. The key is that, by far, the best technique for isotopic enrichment (in terms of enrichment factors) is electrolysis. It's not widely used on Earth because of how much energy it takes. But if you need to perform electrolysis either way to store electricity, it's no extra cost. You can also gain an enrichment factor on the recombination side as well. The only cost you have to pay for enrichment in this manner is the wiring of your fuel cell stack in a cascade, as well as extra tankage other plumbing mass for each of the intermediary stages (I could dig up my calculations at one point, I've already worked out how many stages you'd need and how many fuel cell layers would need to go to each stage in order to achieve a given voltage and given isotopic concentration at each end). If I remember right, you get about 17% of the hydrogen mass in the fuel cell system out on the de-enriched end every day.
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As for collection, there's a number of different means. The key is that you have an aircraft that is, thanks to its propulsion system used to resist meridional drift (as well as natural turbulence) is plowing a sizable cross section through the mist. Which leads to a variety of possibilities.
1) Natural collection. Initially, the analysis of the VEGA data suggested that liquid was not condensing on the VEGA balloons. This has however been disputed in recent literature, with a reanalysis suggesting that i
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Nothing in engineering is "simple". But I would be glad to go into further engineering details with you if you'd like, all the way down to what facilities already present on Earth could be used to assemble craft of different sizes, what suppliers exist for the fabrics, packaging arrangements within common spacecraft fairings, in-transit protection, deployment....
Name a topic.
Settling on Venus is at least as realistic as settling on Mars. In many ways it's a lot simpler and more sustainable.
Still deadly (Score:3)
in the clouds where it's more Earth-like.
It's more "Earth-like" high up in the Venutian atmosphere in the same sense that being in the city of Chernobyl is safer than standing right in the reactor. Not exactly where you want to take your summer vacation either way.
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Would be an interesting theory to try to reverse. A rail gun orbiting Saturn, with appropriate ballistics calculations, could shoot ice at it. Be massively expensive, but it would be one hell of a neat terraforming operation.
And Russians landed on that thing, 10 times (Score:5, Interesting)
And transmitted images digitally from the surface, in 1975. Cold War was a gift to mankind, that pissing match was legendary.
Re: And Russians landed on that thing, 10 times (Score:4, Interesting)
Yes, it was about ideas, not about profit. Anyhow the MBAs and Wall Street speculants won the Cold War. After USSR dissolved billions upon billions were stollen from the ex-USSR in goods and sold to others. And don't get it wrong. If it was USA to go down, the same MBAs and Wall Street scumbags would have done the same. Thing is... There is no one left who can pay.
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So it was yet another "whoever wins - we lose" scenario?
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So it was yet another "whoever wins - we lose" scenario?
Just like every other war. Whether it is the cold war, an actual war, the war on drugs, or practically any other thing with the name war attached to it, the real losers is society and the huge opportunity costs. At least with the cold war space races there was some amount of knowledge gained. I could even argue with designing a missile or nuke that there is some knowledge gained but when you start exploding them at millions of dollars a pop, that's a million dollars worth of resources that literally just
Re: And Russians landed on that thing, 10 times (Score:4, Informative)
Thing is... There is no one left who can pay.
Sure there is . . . the soon to be extinct middle class in the US.
This is what bothers me when politicians promise everyone a winged unicorn . . . and that higher taxes on the rich will pay for it.
They lie like rugs. Rich folks don't pay taxes. They have enough money to afford top notch tax lawyers who will come up with some scheme to move any profits onto the Cayman Islands. And politicians are rich folks, and know this. Hillary Clinton can show up at a Wall Street meeting and just yawn a couple of times, and then go home with millions in her pockets. The Donald? Hell, he brags about how rich he is.
So, the rich aren't going to pay for any tax hikes. The poor don't have any money anyway. Guess who gets to pay the tab . . . ?
In the good old days, when this Kid really was a kid, things were simple. The Democrats were the party for the poor folks, and the Republicans were the party for the rich folks. Now the Democrats are the party for both rich folks and poor folks. It will be interesting to see whether the US middle class and the Republican party survive the next 20 years.
Re: And Russians landed on that thing, 10 times (Score:4, Informative)
Rich folks don't pay taxes.
Objectively false. In fact, they pay the vast majority of the income taxes. Overwhelmingly so.
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True, but they can afford to. Sucks that as you make more money you have to pay more taxes in western societies. It may not be the best system but in practical terms it generally works out better* than all other systems that have been tried and doesn't have any prerequisites (such as: assume everyone is perfect) for the systems that haven't. Oh, and as you make more money you're still making more money!
*in economic terms. The richest country in the history of humanity has a progressive tax. The top country
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They pay the majority of taxes in terms of total sum, true. However, on an individual level, the rich pay a much lower percent of their income to taxes than many other income levels.
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They pay the majority of taxes in terms of total sum, true. However, on an individual level, the rich pay a much lower percent of their income to taxes than many other income levels.
Nonsense.
The average tax rate for the bottom 50% by income: 3.13%
The average tax rate for the top 50% by income: 13.8%
The average tax rate for the top 25% by income: 15.8%
The average tax rate for the top 10% by income: 18.9%
The average tax rate for the top 5% by income: 20.9%
The average tax rate for the top 1% by income: 23.5%
Source: http://taxfoundation.org/artic... [taxfoundation.org]
Notice a trend there? If you look at the top 0.1%, the trend is slightly broken; their average tax rate is 22.8%, slightly lower th
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Yes, it was about ideas, not about profit.
You're half right. It was about ideas about profit and about where prosperity comes from. The Soviets thought prosperity would come from a ruthless socialist structure, from an involved-in-everything centrally commanded economy and government-run society. Such prosperity as they experienced, which was spotty at best, only came through the deaths of millions and the constant military-powered raping of surrounding countries. So, yeah - it was "about ideas" but not in the way you're implying. It wasn't some f
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There are clouds in the background, but the pictures focus primarily on the surface of the planet [space.com].
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Indeed. It amazes me how much the surface reminds me of many parts of Iceland, where I live. Chemically, Iceland is the closest place on Earth to at least Venus's lowland plains (which appear to be an extreme form of MORB, highly weathered... which is actually rather neat from a minerological perspective)
"May have been"?? You stupid sexistic nerd &#@ (Score:2)
Oh.. it's about the PLANET (scowl)
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It works also for most feminists. Might have been agreeable once, turned into something fully toxic and no sane man will ever go there willingly.
Re:"May have been"?? You stupid sexistic nerd & (Score:2)
Cannot happen in earth, period. (Score:3, Insightful)
Leftist global warming myths again run amok but the facts are as follows:
"However, Venus is closer to the sun than Earth and receives far more sunlight. As a result, the planet's early ocean evaporated, water-vapor molecules were broken apart by ultraviolet radiation, and hydrogen escaped to space. With no water left on the surface, carbon dioxide built up in the atmosphere, leading to a so-called runaway greenhouse effect that created present conditions."
Err, yes it can and will (Score:3)
The sun is slowly heating up. Regardless of what we do as a species, in a few billion years the sun will get too hot for any of the current negative feedback mechanisms in earths climate to offset and the oceans will start to evaporate away.
That said, I'm not too worried about a runaway greenhouse happening due to man made climate change. If a 6 mile wide asteroid 65 million years ago that set most of the terrestrial plant matter on fire couldn't manage it I doubt we will. What we will do however is make it
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How the hell did this get marked as insightful? It's well known that the sun will gradually get hotter and brighter over the next few billion years. The increased solar output will eventually burn the Earth to crisp [universetoday.com]. Then the sun will expand and become a red giant, engulfing the planet in it's outer layers.
Earth becoming Venus-like not only can happen, it absolutely will happen. We have about a billion years, tops, before earth is uninhabitable by life as we know it. The only question is how much we'll
Re:Cannot happen in earth, period. (Score:4, Informative)
On the other hand climate change likely had a large part in the biggest mass extinction's in earth's history [eurekalert.org]. Do you really think we should be playing Russian Roulette with the Earth's climate? Not to mention a) causing millions of deaths from pollution every year, b) funnelling money in to unstable middle eastern regimes and c) using up a resource at an increasing rate that we know is finite and will run out in the future [youtube.com].
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3 or 4 years ago everyone would've been saying this... but now we're in this era where "leftist" is unanimously used as an insult and the US is about to elect President Trump, all progress is going out of the window. Thanks Gamergate!
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"...now we're in this era where "leftist" is unanimously used as an insult and the US is about to elect President Trump, all progress is going out of the window...."
If the left started supporting scientific progress once again, they wouldn't be marginalized. Engineering creates jobs.
Science (Score:2)
... but now we're in this era where "leftist" is unanimously used as an insult and ...
"leftist" should be a unanimous insult considering how...
If the left started supporting scientific progress once again, ,,,
Sigh. Science is not be "left" or "right." The science is the science. Facts shouldn't be adapted to your ideologies; your ideologies should deal with whatever the facts are, not work at denying them.
The facts don't 'support' a left or right ideology: they just are what they are.
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I'll give you an example. Our newfound ability to make specific changes to the genome of an organism, rather than blindly firing the hybridization shotgun and hoping for better results next time, gives us a whole new technique for growing better food and treating human disease. Why are today's leftists reflexively against it? They were 't in the time of Franklin Roosevelt.
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The answer to your question is: today's leftists are against it for the same reason today's rightists are, which is to say some are, some aren't, and trying to turn it into a polarized tribal pissing contest is daft.
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"Leftist" is an insult because leftists are now clearly seen as attempting to destroy the concept of personal liberty that is the hallmark of the United States.
This will shortly be proven by the left's bastions of tolerance modding this post to oblivion.
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One of the things I agree with "the left" on is their point about prejudging and generalising huge groups of people and treating them all like caricatures of the worst examples they can possibly think of. Obviously they usually talk about not assuming that all 4 billion or so people of Islamic faith are itching to commit mass murder (at which they get the internet equivalent of being spat at (aka called an SJW) and accused of sympathising with terrorists), but it also applies to things like this - suggesti
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Well, I suppose if you consider equal treatment and opportunities for all races and genders to be regressive, for example (yes, I know some extreme types just want to replace patriarchy with matriarchy instead of aiming for fairness and balance, but see my other comment), then it can be seen as a subjective term. I've always seen increasing justice as a positive development for mankind, and am not yet used to the idea that it's a bad thing.
I've heard Hilary is just as bad. There is however a world outside
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A change in a climate will invariably lead to extinction of species. Always has, always will. And it's usually the apex population that suffers the most. But something always survives. Earth has faced a lot of very difficult times in its existence and sometimes more than 95% of the species died out. But behold, life is still there.
Earth has survived a lot of catastrophes. I'm confident it can survive homo sapiens too.
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the concern isn't that life survives.
the concern is that that something, that life that does survive, includes humanity.
preferably with as little suffering, starvation, and conflict as possible.
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Oh. Well, this is unlikely.
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it's usually the apex population that suffers the most
Yes well see its the fact the 'we' are the apex population that concerns me. I am not sold on the whole man made climate change argument. I think its a complex system we don't understand. Which really bothers me about 'the science is in crowd' we need to be researching and documenting every effect/side effect/feed back mechanism we can to try and understand this. There exists a good possibility there are drivers such as solar maximums and run away effect that may already have been triggered that are big
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Whether it's man made or not, does it matter? I'm pretty sure the dinosaurs didn't cause their extinction climate shift, did it save them?
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So you agree with me then? We need to be prepared for the fact climate is changing and plan to take some positive action to address it rather than passive ones like just cutting emissions?
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That would ensure, or at least enable, the survival of homo sapiens. I am not sure that this is a good idea.
Science doesn't require your belief (Score:2)
I am not sold on the whole man made climate change argument.
So you are saying you don't believe in science then. Fair enough. At least we understand where you are coming from.
If you have actual evidence rather than vague doubts that man is not substantially responsible for recent climate changes by all means bring it forth. Because so far the evidence seem to pretty clearly point the finger directly at us.
I think its a complex system we don't understand.
It IS a complex system AND we understand quite a bit about it. While there is much more to learn there are many things we are actually quite confident about.
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I don't believe in science either. Science is no friggin' religion for crying out loud. If you believe in science, you're doing it wrong. There is no reason to believe, if it's science there is a well founded reason for whatever statement is being made, explain your reasoning. Science is about understanding, not believing.
No excuse (Score:2)
A change in a climate will invariably lead to extinction of species. Always has, always will.
That's not an excuse to induce climate change when it can be avoided. It's also not an excuse to do nothing about it once we recognize the problem.
But something always survives.
No, SO FAR something has always survived. It's entirely possible for the climate to change sufficiently for nothing to survive.
Earth has faced a lot of very difficult times in its existence and sometimes more than 95% of the species died out. But behold, life is still there.
Maybe you are a nihilist but personally I'd prefer to not rush human extinction along nor that of other species if it can be avoided.
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Personally, I'd prefer survival to extinction, too, but I've done what I can. I've talked, I've presented findings, I've shown statistics and I've tried to educate. Apparently the amount of people willing to walk into extinction is large enough that we continue our way there. I'm unable to stop that. Why should I waste more resources on trying?
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I'd guess so, last I heard is that he's pretty gassy, I'd guess that isn't so well liked.
Re:Cannot happen in earth, period. (Score:4, Insightful)
But the actual size of the Greenhouse effect is very dependent on the chemical composition of the Earth's atmosphere, as different gases have different properties in reflecting or absorbing thermal radiation. A slight change in the chemical composition will change the size of the Greenhouse effect, but as the Greenhouse effect is very large (more than 60 K or 108 F), even small changes in the strength of the Greenhouse effect will yield strong variation in the surface temperature of the Earth. This is part of what is called climate change. Another part is the changed weather patterns coming from different energy levels in the atmosphere caused by different absorbtion grades for thermal radiation, changed cloud patterns which will change the reflective properties of Earth's atmosphere and many more.
Yes, a much higher level of Greenhouse effects would probably melt the ice in Antarctica. But the molten ice will be added to the oceans as water, and their levels will rise and flood all coastal regions of the Earth. Sadly 90% of the population of the Earth lives in or close to the coastal regions, which means that most regions inhabited today will be lost to the ocean if Antarctica's ice shield melts. Yes we might get inhabitable additonal land, but only because at the same time, we lose much more land somewhere else, which causes huge migration movements, as people have to move to new places with their old places being flooded. All the infrastructure will have to be adapted to the new population distribution, all the industries have to move, all the traffic infrastructure, utilities, administration, even country borders. And because of the sheer amount of migration, most people will become migrants, and other people in whose land they migrate, will be angry and fear the loss of their lifestyle, their culture and even their property and life. And more politicans will rise who demand desparate measures against all those migration, and people will get armed and shoot on sight to defend themselves against the unruly migrators. Yeah! Civil war!
Summary does not match the article. (Score:3, Informative)
Nowhere in the article does it suggest that Earth could suffer a Venus-like runaway greenhouse effect. And indeed the vast majority of climate scientists do not believe that is possible on earth, even if we burn everything. We can make the planet unable to support a large human population, but we probably can't trigger a thermal runaway.
Awful summary (Score:5, Insightful)
The summary sucks for plenty of reasons. The original NASA article [nasa.gov] isn't loaded up with alarmist bullshit. Earth will eventually become as hot as Venus and there will be a runaway greenhouse effect. However, that's extremely unlikely to be due to human activities. The Earth has been significantly warmer in prehistoric times and didn't undergo a runaway greenhouse effect. Carbon dioxide levels have been much higher, but it didn't cause the oceans to evaporate away, either. Humans are likely to eradicate themselves from the planet long before they can make that occur. It will happen as the sun becomes brighter and expands, which will eventually cause the Earth to heat irreversibly and evaporate the oceans. It damages the credibility of climate scientists to attribute ridiculous claims to them, especially when they said nothing of the sort.
Now, any study like this depends on the validity of the model and the assumptions made in its configuration. The manuscript was recently accepted to JGR, but hasn't yet gone through a copy editor. I'm not about to pay Wiley for an article that's still in preparation. Unfortunately, I can't comment on the validity of the model without reading the paper. That's said, the abstract says nothing about human activities causing this on Earth. Please leave alarmist bullshit out of stories. The submitter and the editor who posted it should be ashamed.
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Glad you said this because I was otherwise not going to bother reading the story. The first sentence of the summary had me intrigued about a potentially new scientific discovery, but the second made me think that the story was probably just bait to make me read yet another global warming parable.
"Once upon a time there was a nice planet called Venus. Billions of years ago Venus may have been similar to the Earth in some respects, having oceans, etc.. However, its closeness to the sun and slow rotation ca
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
To add some numbers (be they what they may) and some citations... We have about 1.1 Billion years until the Sun expands enough to evaporate the oceans. Odds are life would end prior to that processes completion as running up to that would likely be rather unpleasant.
That said given that Humans have only be around for 60,0000 years, and civilization for about 8,000 years... looking at developments, population growth, the odds of any of us lasting that long is probably remote.
Evidence? (Score:2)
Is there any evidence to indicate that the surface temps were ever below the boiling point? If not, then the claim of oceans evaporating, um, evaporates, and the H2O was always in gas form.
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"If you can't prove your theory, then my theory must be true even though I have no proof either!"
Yeah, that's not how science works.
Unless you have evidence that proves that the surface temperatures weren't ever below the boiling point of water, the question of whether Venus had oceans remains open for debate.
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It remains open to debate until we have direct evidence one way or the other. We cannot even resolve this question with Mars with eyes and instruments on the ground and looking down through clear, thin, atmosphere. On Venus we have a bit less than three hours of total ground based lander observations, taken from three landers that survived an average of maybe 50 minutes or so each. Broken, dying landers, looking through 500 C, 90+ atmosphere, acid laced atmosphere while the heat penetrated them to where
Climate change bullshit (Score:2)
Venus may represent a near Earth example of what is in store for the future of our world if we don't make it a number one priority to address.
No.
At least not unless we are talking billions of years and plans to address it include things like drastically changing the orbit of the earth.
Global warming may be bad for humanity but our planet and life itself will do just fine.
Uh (Score:2)
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Habitable temperature range != habitable planet. While nerds at NASA may be constantly arguing about the air conditioner thermostat setting, there are other quite important factors necessary to sustain life. Like oxygen in the atmosphere (there is none) and the lack of poisonous, corrosive chemicals like sulfuric acid
Oxygen? Where do you think the oxygen in Earth's atmosphere came from? Hint - it wasn't from geological processes. Better hint: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Yeah, sure. Or, maybe not... (Score:2, Troll)
NASA scientists need to learn the difference between evidence and simulation. There is almost no evidence to support this hypothesis -- the best that one can say for the simulation is that it shows that the hypothesis isn't overtly incompatible with the little evidence that there is. People need to read Jaynes' lovely book on the logic of science and Bayesian analysis so that they can quit confusing model consistency with model correctness. As it is, it is as if one has the hypothesis that there was a se
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Over time Venus climate changed which gave rise to the current one. It's an interesting study. The implications for Earth have to do with the consequences of heat build up over-time. Earth's oceans could evaporate over time if heat builds up to such levels.
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Well, yes, or maybe not.
Did you get the bit about "insufficient evidence to even speculate out loud" in a public forum? Because building a model that shows that it could have been so is not, actually, evidence, and -- as I tried to point out, "Mr. Zippy" -- even if the model built doesn't CONTRADICT any of the limited collection of factual evidence we have on Venus, that at best raises the model hypothesis by only a paltry amount relative to models that AREN'T EVEN consistent with that evidence, and doesn'
If the oceans evaporated... (Score:2)
...because Venus is closer to the sun, then how the hell did they form in the first place? This story is BS.
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You write it up, you just invented it.
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Making money off climate change? How's this for making money - fossil fuel companies receive $14.5 billion in government subsidies every single day (IMF figure). Gee, I wonder who has more financial interest in pushing the climate change debate in a certain direction...
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That's over 5 trillion a year, a third of the US GDP, which is about 15 trillion. Global GDP is 75 trillion. That makes US GDP about 20% of global GDP, which would mean that the US is providing 1 trillion a year in subsidies, or 7% of GDP in fossil fuel subsidies.
I wonder how that figure is calculated and what counts as "subsidy".
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I'm even more cynical. Who actually benefits from the global warming panic? Oh, wait, snap! Energy companies, all of which are "fossil fuel" companies simply because we cannot produce the energy we need to sustain civilization without using fossil fuels this decade, and probably won't be able to for the next two or three decades if not forever (where if fusion really does come home, deuterium is still a "fossil fuel", it's just been "fossilized" for a bit longer than coal). How do they benefit?
Well, let
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If we double the price of coal (or coal burning plants) and we sell at the same commission-permitted margin, we make twice the real income!
Actually yes, how about we do double the price of coal and other fossil fuels and see how much the % of energy generated from solar and wind changes?
But then there is the pesky problem of the fact that we have a lot of coal, enough to fuel the US for what, a few centuries at least? Hard to create the illusion of scarcity in that kind of marketplace.
The world coal association claims "There are an estimated 892 billion tonnes of proven coal reserves worldwide. This means that there is enough coal to last us around 110 years at current rates of production".
Notice that important stipulation at the bottom there? at current rates of production? Do you know what happens to that when you add a modest year on yea [youtube.com]
Re:Two more problems with Venus (Score:5, Informative)
I'm sorry but Venus is not tidally locked to the Earth. Or the sun. More info [wikipedia.org]. The orbit is "normal" (it has to be or it would fall into the sun, or leave the solar system) but the rotation is both very slow, and in the opposite direction to all the other planets in the solar system.
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Re:Two more problems with Venus (Score:5, Interesting)
Venus is *ALMOST* tidally locked with the sun. Its rotation is slightly retrograde. The problem remains: It needs to rotate faster to even out solar heating.
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Not true. The lighting on the surface of Venus during daytime is "gloomy", somewhat like being in a dust storm in the evening. But it absolutely is present during the day (and not at night). I even read one paper that showed that you could actually have solar-powered surface probes. You have to be very careful in your panel selection to find one that will generate anything under those temperatures and light conditions, but you can produce a trickle, for low-power scientific equipment.
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Basically, picture dimly lighting your house with halogen lights (for a rough approximation of the visible spectrum curve)... that's basically what things would look like on the surface of Venus. With a relatively short (although not extremely short) visibility range (I don't remember the number off the top of my head, I want to say a few hundred meters).
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The surface temperature varies little from day to night, and cloudtop day/night temperature differences are fairly earthlike. A thick atmosphere does a good job of transferring heat.
Rotation could be to blame for a lot of Venus's problems, however. It could explain Venus's lack of anything more than an induced magnetic field. Which of course leaves it vulnerable to erosion by the solar wind.
Interetingly enough, if you were to eject most of Venus's atmosphere at a couple dozen km/s (if I'm remembering t
Venus rotation- locked to Earth (Score:3)
I'm sorry but Venus is not tidally locked to the Earth. .
You wouldn't think so, but, strangely, Venus very nearly is rotationally locked to the Earth: It presents the same face to the Earth on each closest approach.
(583.92-day interval between conjunctions to Earth ("synodic period") = 5.001444 Venusian solar days.
But this can't be a tidal effect, however: the tidal effects are way too low to have any possible effect on Venus' rotation. Best guess is that it is simply a coincidence.
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You're talking about orbital resonance, which does exist, but the Venus-Earth coincidence is not one of them. There is a really good section from Wikipedia [wikipedia.org] on the topic. Read down to at least the section "Coincidental 'near' ratios of mean motion".
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Venus is close to, but not exactly in, an orbital resonance with Earth, but no, I'm not talking about orbital resonance (nor was that what the original poster was talking about.)
Venus is -- very possibly by coincidence-- in a rotational lock with Earth.
If you're looking for a Wikipedia reference, try this one instead: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
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But also Earth has shellfish which turn carbon dioxide into limestone. Venus does not.
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...the fuck?
Ok, I have to ask 'cause I'm running short on Flat-Earth bozos to laugh at, where did you get the "Venus tide-locked between Sun and Earth" bit from?
So much bad information (Score:5, Insightful)
Wow you crammed a ton of incorrect information into a single post. Are you trolling or just too stupid to look things up?
On Earth it appears that the oceans put enough water into the crust as to make plate tectonics possible (the water lubricates fault lines. If Venus ever had plate tectonics, it probably stopped when the water evaporated.
Water is not and never has been a requirement [wikipedia.org] for a planet to have plate tectonics.
And then there is the fact that Venus is tide-locked between the Sun and Earth (always has the save face toward Earth when the two planets are closest together)
Not only is Venus not tide-locked to earth, it doesn't even rotate in the same direction as earth. Venus has retrograde rotation (rotates clockwise when viewed from north pole) and it has the slowest rotation of any planet at 243 earth days for one rotation. It would be impossible for a plant to be tidal locked [wikipedia.org] to another planet. Tidal locking happens in objects that orbit each other. Venus obviously does not orbit Earth.
Earth's magnetic field exists partly because of its rotation, and that magnetic field helps protect its atmosphere. Venus hasn't got the necessary rotation rate.
Earth has a dynamo [wikipedia.org] in it's core whereas Venus does not. Simulations have shown that Venus' rotation is adequate [wikipedia.org] to produce a dynamo but Venus doesn't have one because it has insufficient convection in the core. Venus does have a (comparatively) small induced magnetic field but it is too small to provide meaningful protection from solar wind.
I once speculated about a way to make Venus habitable.
Since you clearly have no idea what you are talking about I suggest you cease doing that until you learn considerably more than you are demonstrating.
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Why did you just defend that point by linking to an article that states, and I quote, "Earth may be a borderline case, owing its tectonic activity to abundant water [68] (silica and water form a deep eutectic.)"?
Re: Venus's magnetic field: to be fair, 1) our current understanding of dynamo t
Correcting corrections (Score:2)
Wow you crammed a ton of incorrect information into a single post. Are you trolling or just too stupid to look things up?
The same question could be asked of you. You just "corrected" two fact that were not incorrect.
On Earth it appears that the oceans put enough water into the crust as to make plate tectonics possible (the water lubricates fault lines. If Venus ever had plate tectonics, it probably stopped when the water evaporated.
Water is not and never has been a requirement [wikipedia.org] for a planet to have plate tectonics.
This is not known. Hydration is driven into rocks by subduction, and water content does decrease the viscosity of magma. So it is a plausible, although unproven, hypothesis that water is needed for plate tectonics.
And then there is the fact that Venus is tide-locked between the Sun and Earth (always has the save face toward Earth when the two planets are closest together)
Not only is Venus not tide-locked to earth, it doesn't even rotate in the same direction as earth.
Nevertheless, Venus does has the same face toward Earth when the two planets are closest together. This is not likely to be due to tidal effects, but the quoted statement that Venus always has the same
Facts (Score:2)
The same question could be asked of you. You just "corrected" two fact that were not incorrect.
Disagree. See below.
This is not known. Hydration is driven into rocks by subduction, and water content does decrease the viscosity of magma. So it is a plausible, although unproven, hypothesis that water is needed for plate tectonics.
Your going to tell me I'm wrong by telling me about ideas that you admit are "pausible although unproven" as if they were facts? Curious argument you have there. Water undoubtedly has some effect on the system but the evidence that water is a required factor for plate tectonics to occur is as you say unproven. It's equally plausible that it has little effect on the system. It certainly is not the major driver as that has to be other forces, particularly liquid magma, convection curr
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You just described a planet that is tide-locked to the Sun ONLY. Pretty much by definition, when we're closest to Venus, it's directly between us and the Sun, and so we'll be looking at the dark side of Venus, which will always be the same, since it's tidelocked to the Sun.
Clueless (Score:3)
Pretty much by definition, when we're closest to Venus, it's directly between us and the Sun, and so we'll be looking at the dark side of Venus, which will always be the same, since it's tidelocked to the Sun.
1) Venus is NOT tide locked to the sun.
2) The orbits of Venus and the Earth do not take the same period so we aren't stuck looking at it from one position.
3) Combining 1 and 2, even when we are closest to Venus we don't see the same side every time even when closest
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Terraforming Venus was shown back in the old Cosmos series. We humans made it rain or some such thing. Hurray! We are on our way to making another home!
The rains fell on Venus and out of the rocks emerged some sort of worm-like life form, which was promptly killed off by our helpful rain. The point the show was trying to make was that we don't understand all the consequences of doing things like that.
My additional point is that we humans don't OWN the Solar System, or even the Earth. We have no autom
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"My additional point is that we humans don't OWN the Solar System, or even the Earth. We have no automatic right to do anything as we please. Sure, nothing is standing in our way but that does not give us right to do whatever the hell we want, terraforming Mars or Venus or plonking down bases all over the place."
Sure we do. We have the same right as all life. To spread as far as we can. What you are saying is like saying that pre native americans had no right to cross the land bridge to north america. Or th
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If you poured water on the sun it would only make it hotter.
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I think you'll find that the Venus atmosphere has closer to 100x the total mass of Earth's atmosphere, consistent with it being close to the same size and having a surface pressure around 90 atmospheres. Otherwise, play on through, I generally agree with your post. It isn't about the greenhouse effect on Venus, it is about the dry (very dry!) adiabatic lapse rate from the surface to the top of an atmosphere close to 100x as dense as Earth's and maybe six times deeper (roughly 60 km out to where its pressu
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no, only 300 million years or so due to expansion of the Sun, at which point the Earth's surface will be too hot for life. Global warming is inevitable. The article's summary above is ignorant alarmist nonsense, we won't and can't make a Venus by burning fossil fuel.
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Mars' loss of water is not comparable to Venus's. A primary indicator of water loss is the deterium-hydrogen ratio. Mars's is 5-7 times that of Earth. Venus's is 150-250 times that of Earth's.
I stopped reading the rest of your post when I hit the words "politically correct physicists".