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More on the Mars Ice Cap
bfwebster writes "In a striking example of how a preliminary (but wrong!) scientific conclusion can persist for decades, Space.com has a story about how the south polar ice cap on Mars is mostly water, not mostly carbon dioxide (dry ice), as has been stated since the late 1960s. The new finding is based on analysis of Mars Observer readings that show that the souther polar ice cap is too warm at certain seasons to be dry ice. This finding has negative implications both for those claiming that liquid flow structures on Mars were caused by C02 instead of H20, as well as those who were hoping to use all that CO2 for terraforming."
What?
If we can't Terrorform Mars then....
The Terarrists HAVE WON!
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Someone is going to point out that terraforming is good, someone is going to say it is bad. Flames will be exchanged, and people will be modded down. Can you feel the LOVE that is /.?
--sig fault--
Why are they using this flimsy temerature evidence that the ice is water and not C02? It seems to me that they could use a spectrometer to determine its exact chemical composition...
When are these so called scientists & astronomers going to give up on this whole "planet called Mars" bit?
Scientists discover that the ice cap is cotton candy, not water. The "beer-foam" scientists are devastated. Life continues exactly as before.
Your paranoia is about as subtle as the alien probe in your neck.
"This finding has negative implications both for those claiming that liquid flow structures on Mars were caused by C02 instead of H20, as well as those who were hoping to use all that CO2 for terraforming." "
On the other hand, it has positive implications for those wanting to make slurpees.
Vincent J. Murphy
Spandex Justice
Terraforming Mars amounts to making "gods out of geeks," as one critic put it.
Shotgun not Atlas.
"Probably the toughest time in anyone's life is when you have to murder a loved one because they're the devil." -Philips
Terraforming by CO2 looks like it is no longer immediately feasible. However, since most of the minerals are below the surface anyway, it should be possible to create domed structures using the terrain of mars currently in existence to build habitats. Greenhouses could easily be built on the surface to produce food or grown underground by artificial light. Extracting water from the caps could be done and piped into colonies elsewhere. We hoped it would be easy to drop algae or some other organism on mars, release the CO2, and let nature take its course to heat up the planet. Now we just have to work a little harder. I'd still like to vacation on mars before I die, regardless of whether a spacesuit would be necessary.
As long as there is a Second Amendment, there will always be a First Amendment.
Now future Mars astronauts can start out their camps right; they can build a brewery to use that water!
Trolling is a art,
Water vapor holds in heat too. Just not as effectively as CO2.
It's pretty damn good mixed with Bourbon, too.
Maybe someone should explain to the scientists we have to worry about not having our probes CRASH ON LANDING before we can worry about actually terraforming a planet.
With no money grubbing coprorations ruining the oone layer, is it any wonder Mars' temperature has remained steady? Our time on this beautiful rock is almost up and we are hastening it by trying to war with our peaceful rock-neighbors instead of trying to help our environment. Disgustjng, really.
"...a false impression of Mars ice dates back to 1966, when the first spacecraft to visit the planet determined that its atmosphere was composed chiefly of carbon dioxide."
I think I missed that launch, wait a minute, which reality is this?
I'm guessing the north pole is dry ice still. that means if the planet warms a bit we get club soda. I'll drink to that.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
Isn't water as important to future development on mars as CO2?
I just wonder how on earth can one single space shuttle launch cost an average of 470 million dollars? (taken from the spacekids website). I do know a lot of people are involved but 470....
Its just crazy...or not, considering many of the companies supplying repair-parts and other stuff for the space shuttles do everything they can to stop NASA from buying/developing new and cheaper space shuttles.
Start the reactorrr!!
Sorry karma, I just couldn't resist.
Even for terraformers!
Why? Because this tells us something about the temperature of Mars over the year, and allows us to compare the temperatures at different latitudes on Mars with those on our own planet.
[New findings] show that the souther polar ice cap is too warm at certain seasons to be dry ice.
Dry ice's temperature is -78.5C, or -173.3F. In 1960, Russians monitored a temperature of -127F at their station at Vostok.
The average temperature in Miami in Summer is +26C. The average temperature at the South Pole in its Summer is -3C. This is a factor of 8.666 recurring.
So.. let's say that the average temperature at the Martian South Pole in its Summer is around -60C, which is quite realistic, given that water is there.
Multiply by -8.666 and you get.. 15C. A bit colder than Miami, but perfectly livable, and the right temperature for humans.
Of course, there are some flaws in this theory but I'm quietly optimistic.
mogorific carpentry experiments
The parent is not flamebait. Click on the damn link. Slashdotters got fucked over by the editors.
"A language that doesn't affect the way you think about programming, is not worth knowing" - Alan Perlis
Okay, we know now that most of the ice cap is actually water. So....
What does that mean? Will that mean a new space initiative aimed at a manned trip to Mars? More satellites hovering over the red planet?
I guess what I'm asking: will we actually do anything productive with the news of water on Mars? If not, are we simply wasting hundreds of millions on Mars, when many other projects exist for NASA?
The Political Programmer
Well, I hope the atmosphere (what little there is) is still CO2, then. I hope they weren't wrong about that. That seems unlikely, though. I worry only because just five minutes ago I left a seminar about mars exploration and how probes with nuclear reactor generators would dissapate heat faster in CO2 than in most other gaseous surroundings.
a damn probe down there?
Please forgive me if I'm wrong, but isn't water(drinkable?) on Mars a good thing for those that want a colony? Hell, it could cool help operate a nuclear power plant and mixed with ethynol help colonist morale. Those opposed to this idea can mix methynol with the power planet's old cooling water(the stuff that's been in the inner loop for years.) Or is the camp that believes the caps are CO2(middle school science teachers) to the point of sabatauge!? Better call the probe a "welcoming guesture to aliens" and it'll get through.
BTW Mr. Watson, I did get question #3 right on the "planets quiz." I lied about my dog chewing the DB25 connector off my serial printer, so we can call it even.
You can't judge a book by the way it wears its hair.
However, IIRC much of the carbon dioxide on Mars is probably in the regolith rather than on the polar cap. It's just a lot harder to get to. It still might be possible to terraform Mars, but the job seems to be harder than first thought.
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo
--Andy Finkel (J. Klass?)
I think that highest problem with Mars' terraforming is not of "biochemical" nature but astrophysical. Mars doesn't have a huge satelite like Earth (relatively speaking, of course - Moon is one sixth of Earth's mass) to regulate its rotation. As a consequence Mars doesn't really have stable seasons (well, Earth doesn't seem to have them either, but for a completely different reason :)) and I believe that this is a huge impediment in any kind of a terraforming effort
The Raven
..we find out the real story and send a probe to Mars/Europa/Whereever else to settle this indecisiveness. It's not that hard.
Can't believe a theory explaining that some zones of Mars have an average temperature of 15C has been moded +5 Interesting :P ;-)
It should be +5 funny, and the moderators who modded this up should go fast to the nearest library and borrow a good book on our solar system
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have fake celebrity environmentalists shipped over there so they can use their mercedes benz suvs to gradually warm the planet. Gwyneth Paltrow drives a big German car and Striesand loves those limos.
There's plenty of water, so ... when the Martians attack Earth, it's because they want our C02, right?
-kgj
Clearly we should extend the "War on Terror" to the planet Mars - they keep shooting down our probes. Time to implement a "No Orbit" zone around the Communist Red Planet Menace!
I mean, really, think about it - their moons (Phobos and Deimos) - those are clearly suspicious names. (translate them for more info)
Is there anybody on /. who is actually OPPOSED to the idea of terraforming another planet? In the article it says some folks are going on about making our own place more livable, yadda yadda yadda, but I don't really see why anybody would be opposed to the idea of expanding humanity's reach. Please don't mod me flamebait, I'm really interested in knowing why anybody would think it's a bad thing...
just put about 1500 coal buring power plants on the surface and in 50 years it will be a tropical island.
I am the Alpha and the Omega-3
Greenhouses could easily be built on the surface
for sufficiently large values of easy
There are places where the networks are not touching,and there are places where they are-Boeing's Lori Gunter
dude! pass that martian doobie!
snooooogans!
Ok,
Here is why Terraforming is good. It turns an otherwise dead planet into a living one. Think beyond us mere humans, and thing of life as a whole and what it has done since its beginnings billions of years ago - life expands to fill every available niche. Life has expanded and become the massive and complex biosphere that it is today. Life has also experienced numerous near total extinction on numerous occasions. Life has now finally gained the capability of leaving its womb planet and expanding outwards to other worlds.
Of course we are talking about life expanding onto other worlds as long as there is no pre-existing life, especially complex life there already. As long as Terraforming meets those ethical requirments I have yet to hear a single reason not to terraform. After all we are only talking about the perpetuation of life itself. I almost would be bold enough to say, "that if you are against terraforming, then you are basically against life itself".
Planet P Blog
www.enthea.org
Ok, instead of CO2 atmosphere, and CO2 poles, we have CO2 atmosphere and H2O poles. Plants, CO2 in the atmosphere, water, and sunlight. What good would CO2 in the poles do besides an easy source of greenhouse gases to warm up the planet. Lets just ship all the yuppie assholes and their SUVs over there, that'll heat the planet up real quick. Better yet, if we want to get people to Mars, just tell GWB theres either; a)oil there, or b)Saddams secret weapons cache.
"Sic Semper Tyrannosaurus Rex."
The fact of the matter is that terraforming will take centuries longer than it will take humans to exponentially evolve the technology to not even need a biologically-hospitipal waste-of-matter gravity-well to live on. We'll almost certainly be tearing planets apart for their raw material instead of building human zoos on their surface.
Yeah... I know, talking about the accelerating rate of technological change and about "whacko" trans/posthumanism isn't as sexy as talk'n about terraforming or about meat-popsicles flying around in cool spaceships... so sue me.
--
Power to the Peaceful
Does Mars have an ionosphere protecting it from solar radiation? I was taught in school that that is one of the reasons Earth can sustain life, because most of the radiation from the sun is stopped from hitting the surface by the magnetic field of the Earth. If Mars does not have a sufficient ionosphere, is there any hope? can buildings keep their occupants safe from the radiation?
Wouldn't it be feasible to simply dig onto the crust of Mars and provoking volcanoes? Volcanoes would both heat the surface of the planet and bring gases into the atmosphere. Yeah, we would have to dig for years, but I guess not milleniums :)
-- The first dotcom failure: command.com
News Headline : "Bush declares war on EARTH!"
:
Washington DC. In a major foreign policy statement today President Bush declared war on
the entire world population. When asked what justified this sudden policy change Mr Bush replied
"This is just an extenshun of our war on Terra. I have also directed Herr Ridge to do a thora
backround check on all Nasa staff as there are rumas the place is crawln with many in favor of all Terra forms."
"When I took ova this heah Country, I had no ideah
how deep the roots of Terra had penustriated owa Gubment."
In a related story, DICK Cheney is now aboard "Oil Force Two". Government spokesmen have stated he will be moved to a secured and undisclosed location somewhere on the Moon to ensure continuity of the chain of command.
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Last I heard, water causes a much stronger greenhouse effect than CO2.
So the fact that the ice caps consist of water rather than solid CO2 means nothing but GOOD!
Not only do we have something even more useful for trapping heat (if we could melt it), but we have something that Earth-based life requires quite a lot of to survive.
Strange, some of the conclusions people come to when the find that a pet project needs a slight tweak.
IMO, I see it as a much bigger problem that Mars lacks a strong, relatively-stable magnetic field. If we hope one day to live there, we don't *need* to bother making its atmosphere human-friendly, because we'd need to live a few hundred feet underground anyway to survive the constant bombardment of the surface by "hard" radiation.
Now, for a personal oddball idea, one of the science projects from the ex-Columbia inspired me. Insects need only a small fraction of the oxygen of mammals, far less water, and can survive even a hard vaccuum and fairly high levels of background radiation. The experiment with "ants in space", as covered on Slashdot a couple weeks ago, led me to wonder, why don't we just ship a few dozen different insect colonies to Mars and let *them* terraform it? Ants apparently do much better in lower gravity, they "farm" aphids and fungus (of which some strains could conceivably survive on the chemical-energy-bearing soil on mars, thus providing food for the ants), they clean their own microenvironment... Perfect for what we need. Let the little guys build up Mars' biosphere for a few decades, then other introduced organisms would have a much better chance for survival.
This means that the idea of a manned space trip to mars is just as silly as is was before. Nobody is really serious at spending 200 billion dollars on a geology experiment.
I just read that article referenced in this posting, from 2001 about how liquid CO2 & / slurry of CO2 snow and such caused the gullies. Do the steps listed in that article sound viable? Ok, the pores in the gravel and rock are filled with frozen CO2, and covered over by more CO2. They they claim that the CO2 in the pores heats and because of pressure, will not sublime directly to a gas as is usually the case and would almost certainly be the case on mars since the air pressure is so low due to low gravity, but that heat that is causing the CO2 in the gravel rock pores to melt and become liquid in the first place , which I presume is coming from light from the SUN, would certainly seem to me to have already melted the CO2 layers on the ground which would have sublimed into a gas long before any significant heat had reached these gravel pores to cause the CO2 in the gravel to change phase. I don't have the numbers on the insulative factors of frozen CO2 on hand, but it seems to me that it would have well nigh all have sublimed given external heating from the surface -down- from the SUN long before significant heat could be reaching trapped CO2 beneath the surface, that in fact would not be trapped at all and would just sublime itself. Unless, are they suggesting the heating was coming from underneath, due to internal heat of mars core? That seems unlikely because that isn't going to vary with the seasons, so they must have meant heat from the SUN, and therefore I'm quite confused as to how they think this was going to work. It seems rather farfetched to me. Like an explanation for gullies that -has to involve CO2 because they -know- the polar caps are frozen CO2.
--- I am not a NASA planetologist so the above may be flawed.
I thought the Russians sent a probe to Mars too.
Vostock 2 or something?
So in this case, in Soviet Russia, Mars probes YOU.
or something..
Mars also contains CO2 in its soil. This is in two forms: (1) CO2 directly adsorbed onto the (porous) rocks and dirt, and (2) CO2 in ice form mixed into the soil, possibly mixed with water ice as well.
Read here to learn more.
The extent of these soil deposits is almost completely unknown and difficult to estimate. Nevertheless, if the surface temperature were raised then some portion of this trapped CO2 would outgas. (This would be akin to obtaining liquid/vapor water by heating a section of Siberian permafrost.) Because CO2 is such a good greenhouse gas, there might therefore exist a temperature threshold beyond which the outgassing of CO2 and subsequent greenhouse heating would push the planet into a self-sustaining "hot" mode.
Or it may be the case that too much of the CO2 on Mars has either been lost to space, or is chemically locked up in carbonate rocks. This is a numerical question that won't get answered until we have the ability to bore into the surface and measure the free CO2 content.
I'm personally doubtful of these "heat it up and it will automatically fix itself" scenarios. If Mars did sustain a liquid water ocean at some point (an amazingly we still don't know the answer to that for sure), then something dramatic must have happened to make it shift into the cold, dry climate that exists today. My likeliest candidate would be the cooling and freezing of the planet's core, and the subsequent cessation of volcanic activity. Without volcanos, CO2 gets locked up in carbonate rocks and it never cycles back into gaseous CO2. The same thing could happen to the Earth someday, but fortunately the Sun will have long since gone supergiant and vaporized us in our tracks.
I dunno, God sounds pretty geeky to me. And what's wrong with that anyway?
The object of the game should be this:
Send autonomous construction robots to Mars.
Use the native materials to build enourmous castles.
Pressurize the castles for humans.
Terraforming would take too long to be any use.
Hopefully, at one point, we will be able to do this, but by the time we are capable of doing such, I'm almost CERTAIN we'll have a better technology than using the icecaps anyway!
One suggestion has been to make absolutely certain the planet contains no life (which is doubtful it does) and then nuke the entire planet in strategic places causing a nuclear winter and possibly even creating a magnetic atmosphere that will hold in more gases and atmospheric components. To spread algae in a blanket over the planet and other life to evolve and create "semi-artificial" biospheres is probably a good technique.
BUT, again, while it's nice to speculate about terraforming, remember we are at LEAST 15 years away from a manned mission and probably over a century away from a colony, then two centuries from having the ability to take on something like this, and by then, we will most likely be able to snap our fingers and terraform the planet.
Yell & scream & rant & rave... it's no use... you need a shaaaave ~ Bugs Bunny
I have a serious question.
The people in this forum who deny the 'Greenhouse Effect' (and whenever there's an article about the environment, there are plenty saying things like "We don't have enough data..." or "It's a bit arrogant to think that man can have an effect on the environment..." or "It's bad science...") how come they don't they come out and blast the science of terraforming a planet like Mars?
Next thing you know they'll be telling me the moon isn't made of cheese...
what's that? hmmmm...
well, crap.
I don't believe in 'Mars'.
We don't have enough data. .
It's a bit arrogant to think that man can say with any authority that other planets exist.
It's bad science.
I mean, really. Nobody can prove it to me! I have a perfectly logical explanation for all of the so-called, 'Data'.
--Seriously, I keep thinking I ought to make a website where I 'debunk' standard beliefs just to demonstrate how retarded skeptics actually are. "Oh, you had another so-called, 'Dream' did you. . ? And what proof can you offer us?"
-Fantastic Lad --La La La, I can't hear you!
I don't know how others feel about this, but I for one am GLAD they finally put a cap on Martian Ice... Too much of it would cause all sorts of iceo-economic fluctuations that we just can't deal with right now.
"Your superior intellect is no match for our puny weapons!"
Funny how much scientists think they know about Mars. There are probably beings running around all over Mars invisible to our limited spectrum. They probably don't want us to see them cause they know we will want any resources we find for the good old US of A.
Leave it to a woman ($$$$$SexyGal) to post the best sex links.
so he can make a huge beowolf cluster out of them
And the hint of monoliths all along. .
They are quietly, steadily warming the public so that all the fragile little human brains won't "Pop" when the aliens tap you on the shoulder one day and say,
"Stick 'em up!"
-Fantastic Lad --"Pathetic Hoo-Mahn!"
Terraforming mars would be a big waste of resources. Instead I think we should break up the gravity wells and spin all of the matter in the solar system up into a nice dyson sphere.
Why Mars - not much atmosphere or solar radiation?
Just for the challenge?
I think a more practical alternative to Mars is Venus. Plenty of solar radiation, atmosphere (lots) and closer to Earth than Mars.
Ok - so the atmosphere is hot, high pressured and toxic. Isn't that what bio-tech should be for? Breed some bugs (make it sound easy don't I?) to do the dirty work (turn the noxious stuff into solids so it drops from the atmosphere), land and conquer.
Major problem is that Venus may well be geologically active in a major way (cooling core could be causing slabs of crust to drop - 50km*50km type size dropping ~1km down - this is a possible explanation for some of the possible recent resurfacing events on the Venusian crust).
Venus is easier once you tame the atmosphere, you can make an atmosphere on Mars but it will still bleed off as the rock is too small. So if you take 1000 years to make Mars work, in ten times that long you will have to have Plan B for the atmosphere working.
The Singularity is closer than you think
Quant
We've certainly kicked the shit out of this place.
Since water vapor is something like a hundred times more efficient than CO2 as a greenhouse gas, this is actually good news for the terraforming of mars.
Not as the article suggests - bad for terraforming
Martian atmosphere is about 95.3% carbon dioxide... now I'm no geenUUS, but how would increasing the percentage of CO2 help... oh wait for a second I thought CO2 meant carbon dioxide. Stupid me... heh. Thankyou for Shopping at McDonalds. Eeek Eeek. Ugh. Happy Valentines day. I'm gonna go huff some CARBON DIOXIDE.
Sorry, but it's not terraforming if you ain't forming on Terra. "Marsforming" maybe?
Just like there's only one "Solar System". OURS. Why? Because the sun's freakin' name is SOL.
-- Give him Head? Be a Beacon? :P)
(If you can't figure out how to E-Mail me, Don't.
I figure about 100,000 asteroids and comets moved to
correctly strike mars would give it the needed mass to retain and atmosphere and move it to a closer orbit. Thats not impossible. And better than terraforming. Venus could probably be done even easier since you just need to create a nuclear winter style event. And maybe alter its orbit.
I read some Sci-Fi book that had 50 planets in Earth style orbits about a star. I don't know how many you could move into earth orbit but I bet we could get 10 or so..
I was called Mars Polar Lander. It's now probably a cinder by the polar cap, due to a landing problem.
It was a sad loss, because it was such an intesting area of the planet to search. There probably won't be another opportunity for a polar lander for a while, but rest assured that planetary scientists would like to fly one.
It's worth noting that H20 is an excellent greenhouse gas. (More effective than C02, in fact.)
42.
Well look at it this way, we have a good place to get our ice for our beer when global warming heats up the Earth.
HypeLog.com If it's hype it's on Hypelog. Movies, TV, Music, SciFi,
I guess we'll just have to make our green-house effect the old fashioned way. Can we send Texas to Mars?
Manipulate the moderator system! Mod someone as "overrated" today.
If you compare the images from Bonneville Salt Flats with that of the polar caps from Mars, who is to say that this is water? Could it be that this is a dried up salt water ocean from long ago?
Just curious, and enjoy.
It's just the normal noises in here.
Transform Mars back to the living enviornment it once was. Send all the poor people and middle class there.
... Called earth
and notice how its desolate with polar ice
caps made of CO'2 oh sorry Water. Teraform it,
move all the poor people there.
... hang on.. I just lost myself.
:D fun times ahead to careless drivers
Or
Transform Mars back to the living enviornment it once was. Packup and move there to shed the materialistic commericalization of the Earth. Forget about our original intentions then start poluting the enviornment again with the industrial revolution of 3900. Find this planet , (discover)
OR
Move back , wait move there and shed the
commericalism and materialist greed of Mars.
Sending texas would make Mars "new texas"...I'm pretty sure NOBODY would want to go there then, and I'm all for USEFUL colonization of Mars. Send texas to someplace cold and distant like the quasi-planent Pluto!
Notice the lack of caps on texas? Also notice the lack of respect for all things texas as well?
I tried to think of a good sig, and this wasn't it.
SLASHDOT 3030:
BREAKING NEWS!!!
Mutant ants of Mars have succeeded from the United Nations of Planets. King Gregory Bushel states,"A swift hand must smite thee." They hold our vast supply of toliet water, which is used for the coffee makers that power our vast war fleet of Space Shuttles. Back in the later 1970's it was concluded that the space shuttle design was superior to any other type of space craft. High durablitity at the small fractional cost of a few million to maintain.
J/K
We don't need CO2 as much as we need Nitrogen in the atmoshpere and in the ground. Well anywho we need Oxygen, Nitrogen, and Carbon Di-Oxide all together (as well as inert gasses but they're miniscule). In order to get a viable ecosystem of any kind of proportions we need all 3.
I tried to think of a good sig, and this wasn't it.
837750 Negra Modelo Drive, Apartment 933
New Houston, New Texas 5F88C,
Planet Mars, U.S.A.
Just wait until we have the whole friggen universe populated. Then, people's addresses will look like:
9938 Negra Modelo Drive,
City of the Second Moon,
New Africa
Planet Nubecula 998-BJ2-98881-5,
Holmberg IX Galaxy UGC 5336,
God's Universe
We'll be using IPv83 by that time, with 16384-bit addresses. Your internet address will be something like: 881.89579827897.90213409.2394823480932840923840928 490283490829048.176.1489728728.1984278192749082374 .9042308.20582095240783017582756982458723894.20957 24867982.12398637854.1846364.148.43276.12489.24098 729856293764.249872983:9283479823239874892374:2348 7432897492874.982377923647923.2348723.32846329.283 47382 (note: address truncated), or more simply, http://www.rice_burners_suck.2ndmoon.newafrica.nub ecula.holmberg.ugc5336.universe.com.us.
Then we'll worry about the "space stuff". Quite frankly I don't think he'd mind beind subjected to all sorts of mind-altering devices; mass spectrometers, carbon dating and 17 hours in the spew-o-matic ride at the county fair should be enough!
I tried to think of a good sig, and this wasn't it.
It's not the "Red Mars Trilogy" it's the Mars Quadrogy.
I tried to think of a good sig, and this wasn't it.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
CFC's really aren't all that good at producing a greenhouse effect, are they? It's my understanding that their major ability is to convert Ozone (O3) into diatomic Oxygen (O2), which is bad for our UV-shielding Ozone layer, but doesn't contibute to the warming of the atmosphere. If I have it wrong, let me know.
"All animals are created equal, but some animals are more equal than others." - George Orwell
I commend your linguistic acrobatics.
If Jesus wants me it knows where to find me.
There's vegetation and structures on mars and the moon:
http://www.lunaranomalies.com/
http://www.ente
This is serious, pass it on to your friends, family, and congress people. The time has come for some of us to know.
Yes but I got too much karma on the first post.
:
Thus I needed to balance it out.
What better way than a post critical of the "Fatherland"?
Even a joking post was sure to go down in karma hell......
Thus balance is restored to my karma.
Remember the path to slashdot enlightenment
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This is beginning to be a bit off topic, so I won't spend too much time here.
I can't speak for all of the anti-Greenhouse Effect folks, but the biggest problem that I have with it is that the whole debate is too politically charged, with scientists doing research with pre-conceived results, questionable sponsors, and a focusing too narrowly one just one or two root causes to the problem. Don't blast me here, because I've spent too much time with real researchers fighting for grants, tenure, publication, conference presentations, and all of the other acedemic BS that almost makes a mockery of science. Despite all of that, there are people who are genuine in their desire to do scientific research, but a real question has to be asked if they are getting lost in the background noise of simple charlitains who are trying to find a way to get a quick buck...by faking science or simply being lazy because they don't care.
I also say that Mars is a good example of what is going to be required to prove the "Greenhouse Effect" on a planetary scale, because it will prove on a planetary scale what kinds of activity is going to be required in order to actually affect the environment. If it is going to be so difficult, then it will be hard on the Earth. The opposite is also going to be true.
In other words, terraforming Mars would be the real final proof that massive industrial activity really has an effect on the whole planet. And if we succeed at warming up Mars by 10-20 degrees, it will be a useful alternative to Earth if we really are screwing it up permanently.
Forgive the nitpick, but the Mars Observer wasn't involved in this. It was a combination of data from Mars Odyssey and Mars Global Surveyor. Observer isn't even mentioned in the article...gotta proof-read those submissions, folks. :-)
Contact was lost with Observer shortly before it was to enter orbit around Mars.
See JPL/NASA for more information on the 2001 Mars Odyssey and Mars Global Surveyor
A marriage is always made up of two people who are prepared to swear that only the other one snores.
What is this folly? Do the chemistry and the physics. CO2 behaves the same on Alpha-Centauri as it does on the moon.
MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.
The triple-point (temperature and pressure at which it exists as gas, liquid, and solid simultaneously) of carbon dioxide is 216.55 deg K, 517,000 Pa. So apparently its state depends greatly on where it is. Alpha-Centauri, for example, would destroy carbon dioxide by ionizing it.
"I'm so moist I'm sticking to the leather." -Kermit the Frog on The Late Late Show
In a shocking press conference President Bush urges Congress to give him full and immediate military powers to deal with the imminent threat from Mars.