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Venus May Have Been Habitable, Says NASA (sciencedaily.com)

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."

7 of 211 comments (clear)

  1. Cannot happen in earth, period. by Anonymous Coward · · 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."

    1. Re:Cannot happen in earth, period. by Cloud+K · · Score: 1, Insightful

      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!

    2. Re:Cannot happen in earth, period. by Sique · · Score: 3, Insightful
      You got some things quite messed up. The Earth is habitable because of the Greenhouse effect. Were the Earth just a black ball of Earth's diameter on Earth's orbit, it would have a surface temperature of 255 K, or slightly less than 0 F. So we can calculate, that the Greenhouse effect warms the Earth at least 35 K or 63 F. Measuring the actual radiation coming from the Earth gives results as if the Earth surface actually had only 228 K (about -50 F), mostly because the Earth's atmosphere reflects a large part of the Sun's radiation, and because on the other hand, it contains the Earth's radation, thus the Earth radiates less than the surface temperatures would suggest. Thus the Greenhouse effect is even larger.

      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!

      --
      .sig: Sique *sigh*
    3. Re:Cannot happen in earth, period. by Cloud+K · · Score: 1, Insightful

      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 - suggesting that everyone left aligned is a full-on raving rhetoric-spouting loon who posts on that blogging site with the pictures (I think I have an account, never got into it). #notalllefties, and all that. Yes, there are problems with that on this side too (comparing people to Hitler for being concerned about immigration numbers for example) but it seems our lot have been instantly dismissed as "regressive leftie SJW, go back to tumblr" for showing even the slightest hint of a liberal thought, so many times now that they've completely given up even trying. I'm actually surprised to see my comment at +3, and not -1.

      I think what I'm saying is that just because a particular subset of screeching lunatics gets all the attention right now (because it's more entertaining, I guess) it doesn't completely invalidate everything that has even the slightest liberal roots, or necessitate a return to how things were 100 years ago before we started saying that maybe people shouldn't be treated with elevated suspicion because they're black, or that actually there are a number of reasons why being more careful with the planet's resources and the amount of pollution we put out is actually quite a good thing for the world, etc.

  2. Awful summary by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    The summary sucks for plenty of reasons. The original NASA article 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.

  3. So much bad information by sjbe · · 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 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 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 in it's core whereas Venus does not. Simulations have shown that Venus' rotation is adequate 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.

  4. Re:Venus should be habitable higher up by Wycliffe · · Score: 3, Insightful

    in the clouds 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.