Posted on 09/21/2007 11:30:35 AM PDT by kathsua
climate change ping.
It’s the water! I’m off to buy some dirt offsets...
LOL!
Good one!
Now we know why all the enviro-whackos are water (and soap) aversive................
Ping!
CO2 is, techincally, a greenhouse gas. But all gases are. All gases hold SOME sort of heat. CO2 holds more than Nitrogen or Oxygen, but nowhere near what other gases do.
One of the ways I discovered this was reading about the hypothetical, but technically feasible, idea of terraforming Mars into a livable planet. CO2 was discussed as needed to warm the atmosphere. The amount that would be needed even to raise Mars’ temperature 3 degrees is a thousandfold what Earth has seen as an increase in the last 300 years. Therefore, can CO2 really be the whole reason Earth has warmed up?
Mars would be warmer if CO2 could heat a planet.
Its atmosphere is 95% CO2.
Its atmosphere is 95% CO2.
Except that Mars's atmosphere is 6-10 millibars VS 1015 Millibars for Earth. That's 1/100th roughly. You can't really compare the two and draw any valid conclusions.
?
A valid theory should result in correct predictions for each set of values of the variables. So, a valid theory should work on Earth and on Mars. If it doesn't, you don't have a valid theory. The laws of science don't change between planets.
Einstein's hypothesis is that all directions in space are physically equivalent. It is not necessary now to go beyond this, but we might speculate that the laws of physics and chemistry (and biology if any) would be the same on other planets even though the conditions be so different that our present laws would need extension.
Thank you.
So your contention is that a gas at 10 millibars pressure behaves the same in relation to radient heat as a gas at 1000 millibars, all other things remaining equal?
I guess if you want to promote one theory for Earth and one for Mars, you will be talking to a very select group of scientists, perhaps some alchemists from the Mideast.
I never suggested any such thing, you're putting up a straw man. You're the one who seems to be equating a 10 millibar atmosphere with a 1000 Millibar atmosphere. They don't behave at all in a similar fashion.
Perhaps you should understand something. I don't for a second think CO2, human caused or not is causing global warming. It's all cyclical, it's based on solar output and orbital mechanics. I'm trying to drive the point home that the atmospheres on the two planets can't be used to test or predict much of anything. They aren't similar at all.
The atmosphere of Venus is mostly CO2 as well. It is also roughly 93 times more dense.
Two planets, Mars and Venus, one is real hot, the other real cold. Both are primarily CO2 atmospheres. One is roughly 9300 times more dense and on average, 800 degrees hotter. Now, which do you think is more important? CO2 content or pressure? Do you think that warming is linearly graphed from low pressure to high pressure or would it be more likely to be logarithmic?
93 times more dense than the atmosphere of the Earth, 9300 times the density of Mars.
The density of the gas has an effect on it’s insulating properties. Why do you think mountains are colder than sea level? Because the air is thinner and holds less heat.
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