NASA’s new climate model of ancient Venus shows a picture of a habitable world

The Washington Post ^ | August 12, 2016 | Ben Guarino

[fluorescence]

For a 2-billion-year-long span, ending about 715 million years ago, Venus was likely a much more pleasant spot that it is today. To observe Venus now is to witness a dry and toxic hellscape, where the planet heats up to a scorching 864 degrees Fahrenheit. A super-strong electric wind is believed to suck the smallest traces of water into space. With apologies to Ian Malcolm, life as we know it could not find a way.

But travel back in time a few billion years or so. Ancient Venus, according to a new computer model from NASA, would have been prime solar system real estate, to the point it may have been downright habitable.

That life would find Venus amenable hinges on two main factors. Venus would have needed much balmier temperatures, and it also would have needed a liquid ocean — which is a significant if, although elemental traces such as deuterium indicate water existed on Venus at one point. As Colin Wilson, an Oxford University planetary physicist, told Time in 2010, “everything points to there being large amounts of water in the past.”

Venusian temperatures, too, appear to have been far cooler when the solar system was younger. NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, in a report published Thursday in the journal Geophysical Research Letters, calculated that the average surface temperature 2.9 billion years ago was about 50 degrees Fahrenheit. Such temperature would have made Venus, surprisingly for a planet closer to the Sun, a bit chillier than Earth was at the time.

[Dutch Boy]

Is it funding time already?

[FatherofFive]

In my computer model of my 401k, I now have $2,681,249,879.32

[ecomcon]

lok and lold

[smokingfrog]

shocking

http://youtu.be/rKUcsz3TTdk

[ecomcon]

Agenda driven speculation by alien hunters who have government jobs.

[onedoug]

And this is based on what?

[Cruising Speed]

Venus may not have even been in the solar system 2.9 billion years ago....it could have just wandered in from outer space. Also, why does Venus spin backwards?

[achilles2000]

67 million miles from that bright burning thingy in the sky, and we are supposed to believe this? I guess climate really is just a function of “greenhouse gases”.

[Tallguy]

A bunch of NASA ‘scientists’ sit down in a room looking at the sparse data that they have on Venus. They cook up a ‘theory’ that Venus could once have been habitable. They’d with the few facts they have they spin a yarn as to how that might have been possible. Anybody see a problem with that? In high school chemistry it was called ‘fudging the results’ — and you got an automatic ‘F’ for it.

[tbw2]

Climate change is like Lysenokoism in the USSR - it is the politically mandated truth and if you want your academic job, you have to agree with it. Real world data showing little to no warming since 2000 is irrelevant.

Climate models versus climate reality
https://judithcurry.com/2015/12/17/climate-models-versus-climate-reality/

Climate Models and Climate Reality: A Closer Look at a Lukewarming World
http://www.cato.org/publications/working-paper/climate-models-climate-reality-closer-look-lukewarming-world

Or in many cases, they adjust the historical data to fit the models, because the political policies justified by “for the planet” are too important. After all, when you say “for the children”, the kids grow up and may disagree, but only the people who say they are trying to save the planet have a voice - and the excuse it is to save the world, so obey them.

NOAA Fiddles With Climate Data To Erase The 15-Year Global Warming ‘Hiatus’
http://dailycaller.com/2015/06/04/noaa-fiddles-with-climate-data-to-erase-the-15-year-global-warming-hiatus/#ixzz4Gwbd3aIC

German Professor: NASA Has Fiddled Climate Data On ‘Unbelievable’ Scale
http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2015/11/24/german-professor-nasa-fiddled-climate-data-unbelievable-scale/

95% of Climate Models Agree: The Observations Must be Wrong
http://www.drroyspencer.com/2014/02/95-of-climate-models-agree-the-observations-must-be-wrong/

[TomGuy]

Venus was likely a much more pleasant spot that it is today

Until a concensus of their scientists declared that global climate change was going to destroy their civilization, so they began creating massive balloons and other structures to block the Sun and save the planet from an over-abundance of carbon dioxide and killed off all of the farting animals.

[xp38]

:) ok thats even better

[tumblindice]

A Goddess on the mountain top
Was burning like a silver flame
The summit of beauty and love
And Venus was her name

[ModelBreaker]

I’m sure the climate models include 50’ long SUV’s and -10 degree air conditioners on Venus that messed up an otherwise perfect world. In fact, the models probably say Venus was ruled by the wisest Venusian ever, who just happened to be a Venusian incarnation of Vladimir Lenin. And SUV’s messed it up. Dang.

[onedoug]

Their science writer, Ben Guarino, spends his writing assignments just making stuff up.

[Verginius Rufus]

So C. S. Lewis was right about Venus in Perelandra, just off by 715 million years.