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

Victory Begins at Home

[Doc Ruby]

Yes, after our resounding success in monkeying with the Earth's atmosphere (sometimes passed off as "human activity is too puny to affect the environment that much"), we're moving on to an entire other planet to destroy^Wimprove. In the same breath as we mention the local life we haven't yet found, we lie about enhancing it, when really we'll be destroying it. How stupid are we, really? Only the future knows.

Re:It won't work, and why bother anyway?

[Derling Whirvish]

I guess that's why permafrost in Siberia is melting; because the temperature is staying the same and there's no such thing as global warming.

Just to be nit-picky: without disputing that global warming is happening, there is a flaw in your reasoning. Melting permafrost in Siberia by itself is not proof of global warming -- it is proof of local warming in Siberia. To prove global warming you need multiple data points around the globe. Is the permafrost in Alaska melting? In Canada? In Greenland? In Norway? In European Russia? In Patagonia? In the South Georgia Islands? In the Antarctic Peninsula?