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."

Comments

From Margarita Marinova herself

[pauljlucas]

I had the same question, so I e-mailed her. Here's my question:

So even if you add more of an atmosphere to Mars, what would prevent it from leaking off into space just like it's already done to get Mars into the state it's in now? Due to Mars' lack of a magnetic field, the solar wind would just strip away the atmosphere.

Within minutes, I got a reply from her:

Hi Paul,

you're right, even if we thicken Mars' atmosphere, it will eventually disappear again. The lack of magnetic field is probably not the biggest problem (it's likely to have been more of a problem in the past when the solar wind was likely stronger), but you would definitely have the formation of Carbonates in the newly formed lakes and rivers that would take sequester the CO2.

The important point here though is timescales. If people really wanted to do it, terraforming (at least the first stages) could definitely be accomplished in about 100 years. That's a reasonable timescale in the life of humans. The disappearance of the Mars atmosphere, on the other hand, would take *at least* millions, and probably tens of millions, of years. That timescale is much longer than human experience and therefore I would argue is not that important. We are going to be so different in a million years, with such totally different capabilities and needs, that the fact that Mars will then again become inhabitable I think is unimportant.

Margarita.