I saw a Space.com article today entitled, Can Venus teach us to take climate change seriously?
While Space.com writers should know quite a bit about the other planets, the article was a fount of misinformation and gross exaggeration.
The obvious purpose of the article was to scare us into taking increasing carbon dioxide levels seriously, following on the Fourth National Climate Assessment(NC4) report (which I’m still trying to digest).
After repeating the NC4 claim that “10 percent of the U.S. economy could evaporate by 2100” due to climate change, the Venusian silliness begins:
…a nearby world has an even hotter climate problem than ours, and scientists say we could learn some valuable lessons from it. That world is Venus, Earth’s “evil twin,” which was once nice enough until something went wrong and the atmosphere began trapping a little too much heat.
First of all, it is extremely speculative to claim that the climate of Venus “was once nice enough“.
Then to further claim, “something went wrong and the atmosphere began trapping a little too much heat.”
This makes it sound like Venus was just another hospitable planet until it reached some tipping point and a runaway greenhouse effect ensued.
This kind of prose might be good for science fiction, but it does a disservice to the facts.
While it is true that the surface of Venus has a temperature of around 860 deg. F., the fact is that Venus has over 220,000 times as much CO2 as Earth’s atmosphere!
By way of comparison, since the Industrial Revolution started, it is widely believed we are now approaching 1.5 times as much atmospheric CO2 as we had hundreds of years ago.
220,000x versus 1.5x. Do you see the grotesqueness of comparing Venus to Earth?
If we used distances to make the comparison, and 1.5x was 1.5 inches, then 220,000x would be 2.3 miles!
Imagine that the water level in the ocean increased by 0.5 inches, and people were trying to scare you about what might happen if it goes up another half an inch in the next 50 years by comparing it to 2.3 miles of water depth.
To make matters worse, the article then builds upon this Venus-is-so-much-like-Earth theme with the supposed reason why Venus is hotter than the Earth:
Much of the appeal of Venus comes from the fact that despite its horrifying modern appearance, it’s actually really similar to Earth. “Picture a planet that’s just like Earth but it’s a little hotter because it’s a little closer to the sun and that would be Venus,” David Grinspoon, a planetary scientist and astrobiologist at the Planetary Science Institute, told Space.com.
Wrong again, Dr. Planetary Scientist.
Because Venus is perpetually cloud-covered, it actually absorbs less sunlight than the Earth, even though it is closer to the sun.
Were it not for its extreme greenhouse effect, its surface temperature would actually average colder than the Earth.
Using Venus to scare people about increasing CO2 levels on Earth is nothing new.
But I’m surprised that a reputable website like Space.com would stoop to such a level of pseudo-science to support reductions in greenhouse gas emissions.
Read more at Dr. Roy’s Blog
Now the so called “climate scientists” have gone off-world to scare us? Next they will swear humans migrated from Venus to Earth because they ruined the Venusian environment burning fossil fuel….
It is very alarming how many people have abandoned science to become political activists. Note that the Fourth National Climate Assessment and the Venus article were specifically timed in an attempt to influence COP 24. Genuine science does not do this.
I can’t find it but an article on this web pointed out that temperature is all about pressure. If you go up high enough in Venus so that the pressure is the same as Earth’s, the temperature is also the same.
There you go again Roy .. stating the impossible!
No Roy, a cooler object cannot make a hotter object hotter still. Stick to reading satellite data .. you know nothing about the laws of thermodynamics!
Intensity of light varies inversely with the square of the distance from the source. So, sunlight is approximately twice as intense on Venus.
I saw something on the Weather Channel this morning that I consider alarming. Katharine Hayhoe suggests teaching climate change through online gaming. Apparently, Fortnite is her preferred portal into mesmerized minds.
“Picture a planet that’s just like Earth but it’s a little hotter because it’s a little closer to the sun…”
Wait a minute. A “little” closer to the sun. I have to look this up and call BS on this one. It is a lot closer.
Earth: 92.96 million miles
Venus: 67.24 million miles.
That is 25.72 million miles. That is more than a little.
Now, a million miles out in space is not that far. But to say that Venus is 1/3 closer to the sun, and that is just a little bit.
yikes.
Roy Spencer still believes you can create energy from nothing. He believes that a cooler object can heat a warmer one, despite betting his azz handed to him repeatedly on the subject. I don’t see how he is qualified to interpret data from the Aqua satellite for the UAH temperature series. He is a complete idiot when it comes to the Law of Thermodynamics.
They also fail to mention that the rotation of Venus is a lot slower. 5,832 hours to be exact, That means the planet absorbs more of the sun at any one time.
And FYI, a radiative greenhouse effect couldn’t exist on Venus even if it did exist at all (which it doesn’t .. not in this universe). Direct sunlight does not reach the “surface” of the planet. The “surface” is not heated by the sun at all. It is purely heated by the continuous volcanism and enormous pressure from the mass of the atmosphere and gravity. Sunlight is only able to create heat by impacting the particulate matter in the atmosphere (which there is a tremendous amount of, that is one reason why it is the brightest object in our sky, reflecting most of the sunlight it receives). Although you never hear any of these so-called “scientists” pointing that out. Conveniently left out of the discussion.
I’m convinced, sadly, there is no end to this lunacy.