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Warming Up Mars With Greenhouse Gases
fembots writes "Scientists are thinking of using the same toxic stuff (Octafluoropropane) already blamed for global warming here to put some life back on Mars. It would take hundreds of years but eventually ice sheets would melt, grass would grow here, and temperatures would hit 50 degrees along the equator of the planet. Martian organisms might be revived too - if there are any."
No, that doesn't make sense either. Earth, which is half the distance from Sun and has thousands upon thousands of tons of water vapor in the atmosphere to cause a greenhouse effect can barely hit 50 degree Celsius at the equator (according to NASA the highest temperature ever recorded on Earth (discounting the craters of erupting volcanoes and such, obviously) is 136 Fahrenheit, which, according to Google, is 57.8 degree Celsius, and was measured at Al' Aziziyah, Libya in September of 1922), so there's no way Mars could possibly reach it.
Since this can't be Kelvin either (because that would be colder than it is now - cold enough to liquidate nitrogen, actually), the unit remains unknown.
Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.
Here is a better article on the subject:0 4115304.htm
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2005/02/0502
-Ariel
Octafluoropropane is not really all that toxic.
f 39cc852569af00702e6f/26e5bede95a1fefb85256ef50045e 0e4?OpenDocument&Highlight=0,76-19-7
According to the MSDS (Material Saftey Data Sheet), the only real toxicity to worry about is asphyxiation, no worse than nitrogen or argon gas.
Greenhouse gases != toxic (at least not implicity).
MSDS link
http://www.scottecatalog.com/msds.nsf/d118573c489
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
Octafluoropropane is NOT a toxic gas in the sense that it directly damages the health of people, animals, etc when breathed/ingested (its a class 2.2 hazard: non-toxic, non-flammable gas). Like most fluorocarbons (refrigerants, Halons etc.), it is a very inert gas which presents a hazard only in that it can displace oxygen and lead to asphyxiation. But a mixture of 20% O2 and 80% octafluoropropane would probably be quite breathable, although it might feel uncomfortably dense to breath (this mix being about 6 times denser than normal air).
The only real danger of these gases in the atmosphere is that they can breakdown under UV bombardment in the upper atmosphere and generate ozone-destroying chemicals (not a big issue on Mars as it lacks appreciable ozone in the first place). Also, high temperature combustion of fluorocarbons can produce some nasty byproducts, but the inertness of the chemicals makes this very hard to do.
Two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do.
The link you provide, among other things, says that forest area is not decreasing, which is a blatant lie popularised by master jester Bjørn Lomborg (who by the way has no knowledge of climatology nor statistics) in his "skeptical environmentalist". The lie is originated by the plotting of forest area as published by FAO since the end of WW2, without correcting for the fact that countries were continuously joining the FAO and that first estimates were not precise, and had no conventional definiton of "forest area". The myth is well debunked here.
The author is a CS professor, not a climatologist. His credibility is quite low on this issue. The fact that he disagrees with pretty much any climatologist on the planet is also a pointer.
Victims of 9/11: <3000. Traffic in the US: >30,000/y
The idea is to initiate a run-away greenhouse effect on Mars using a super-effective Greenhouse gas that is safe and easy to produce on Mars. 10-20*10^9 Kg of C2F8, a greenhouse gas 12,000 more effective than CO2, would seem to do the trick. Assuming that 10% of all sunlight reaching Mars could be trapped, Mars could be warmed enough to reach the triple point of CO2 within 100 years. This would release the CO2 (and hopefully water) frozen within the Martian Regolith into the atmosphere and possibly add enough atmosphere to allow for human exploration with only an oxygen mask a few yars later. At this point martian life, if it does exist, should flourish. If it does not we can start populating the planet with Earth species without nasty Mars life preservation debates.
This is not an easy process. Our CFCs, in the Martian atmosphere, would last for thousands of years, so VERY careful monitoring would be required in order to prevent us from terraforming a Venus.
Mars does not have a magnetosphere so our terraformed atmosphere would only have a life of about ten million years before evaporating.
I have notes of the ongoing Mars Society Conference here if you want more information on the current state of manned Mars exploration.
O2 will fly off to space in the course of a few hours. Mars is not massive enough to hold pure O2 in the atmosphere. The velocity of O2 molecules at Marsian temperature and pressure is greater than the escape velocity, so O2 will disappear almost instantly. There is no perspective and this has nothing to do with the Sun.
You can't handle the truth.
Happy now? Time to stop the denial then.