THE CASE AGAINST FOSSIL FUELS IS VENUS

Posted by: chaamjamal on: December 3, 2021

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THIS POST IS A RESPONSE TO THE CALL FOR CLIMATE ACTION AGAINST FOSSIL FUELS WITH VENUS PRESENTED AS EVIDENCE THAT FOSSIL FUEL EMISSIONS MUST BE ELIMINATED TO SAVE THE PLANET EARTH. LINK TO SOURCE: https://www.vox.com/science-and-health/22807575/venus-hot-hellscape-climate-change-earth

PART-1: WHAT THE SOURCE ARTICLE SAYS

“Hellscape” is the most appropriate word to describe the surface of Venus, the second planet from the sun. At 900 degrees Fahrenheit, it’s the hottest planet in the solar system, thanks to an atmosphere that’s almost entirely made up of carbon dioxide. Clouds made of highly corrosive sulfuric acid are draped over a volcanic landscape of razor-sharp lava flows. Most crushingly, the pressure on the surface of Venus is about 92 times the pressure you’d feel at sea level on Earth. “It’s really almost entertainingly, comically horrible, like some sort of cosmic deity had a really, really grumpy day and just went ‘Nope, I’m gonna ruin this planet,’” Robin George Andrews, a science journalist and volcanologist, says. Andrews compares it to being in a pressure cooker a mile underwater. “If you stood on the surface, you would be pancaked and you would melt,” he says. Your eyes would explode due to the pressure — “which would be gross,” he adds. Yet as Andrews relays in his new book, Super Volcanoes: What They Reveal about Earth and the Worlds Beyond, some scientists suspect Venus was once much like Earth, with a liquid water ocean like the ones that support life on our planet. For Andrews, the question of what happened to ruin Venus is captivating and even existential. “Venus and Earth are planetary siblings,” he says. “They were made at the same time and made of the same stuff, yet Venus is apocalyptic and awful in every possible way. Earth is a paradise. So why do we have a paradise next to a paradise lost?” Scientists know something on Venus triggered truly catastrophic levels of climate change, causing surface temperatures to shoot up hundreds of degrees. But they don’t know exactly what. I spoke to Andrews for an episode of Unexplainable, Vox’s science podcast about unanswered questions, about what could have triggered Venus’s apocalypse and why we should care about it. Our conversation has been edited for length and clarity. The podcast episode also features a discussion with Sara Seager, an MIT planetary scientist and an expert on exoplanets, or planets outside our solar system, who raises the tantalizing question: What if, despite the cataclysm, something is still alive on Venus? The origins of Venus could tell us a lot about our place in the universe.

PART-2: WHAT THE FATHER OF CLIMATE CHANGE SAYS

MORE ON THE VENUS ANALOGY BY NASA CLIMATE SCIENTIST JAMES HANSEN, THE FATHER OF CLIMATE CHANGE. LINK: https://tambonthongchai.com/2021/08/08/climate-wisdom-from-the-father-of-climate-change/

WHAT DO I KNOW THAT WOULD CAUSE ME, A RETICENT MID-WESTERN SCIENTIST, TO GET MYSELF ARRESTED IN FRONT OF THE WHITE HOUSE? AND WHAT WOULD YOU DO IF YOU KNEW WHAT I KNOW. LET’S START WITH HOW I GOT TO THIS POINT. I WAS LUCKY TO GROW UP AT A TIME WHEN IT WAS NOT DIFFICULT FOR THE CHILD OF A TENANT FARMER TO MAKE HIS WAY TO TH STATE UNIVERSITY AND I WAS REALLY LUCKY TO GO TO THE UNIVERSITY OF IOWA WHERE I COULD STUDY UNDER PROFESSOR JAMES VAN ALLEN WHO BUILT INSTRUMENTS FOR THE FIRST AMERICAN SATELLITE. PROFESOR VAN ALLEN TOLD ME ABOUT OBSERVATIONS OF VENUS. THAT THERE WAS INTENSE MICROWAVE RADIATION. DID IT MEAN THAT VENUS HAD AN IONOSPHERE? OR WAS VENUS EXREMELY HOT? THE RIGHT ANSWER, CONFIRME BY THE SOVIET VENERA SPACECRAFT, WAS THAT VENUS WAS VERY HOT, 900F, AND IT WAS KEPT HOT BY A THICK CARBON DIOXIDE ATMOSPHERE. I WAS FORTUNATE TO JOIN NASA WHERE I SUCCESSFULLY PROPOSED AN EXPERIMENT TO FLY TO VENUS. OUR INSTRUMENTS TOOK THIS IMAGE OF THE VEIL OF VENUS WHICH TURNED OUT TO BE A SMOG OF SULFURIC ACID.

PART-3: CRITICAL COMMENTARY

ITEM#1: THE TWO PLANETS ARE NOT COMPARABLE SUCH THAT CLIMATE CONDITIONS ON EARTH CAN BE UNDERSTOOD NOT FROM CONDITIONS ON EARTH BUT FROM CONDITIONS IN VENUS. FIRST AND FOREMOST, THE TWO ATMOSPHERES ARE NOT COMPARABLE BECAUSE THE VENUS ATMOSPHERE IS PRETTY MUCH 100% CO2 AND IS 100 TIMES MORE DENSE THAN THE ATMOSPHERE ON EARTH WHEREAS THE EARTH’S ATMOSPHERE IS MOSTLY NITROGEN WITH SOME OXYGEN AND MINUTE PORTIONS OF CARBON DIOXIDE MEASURED IN PARTS PER MILLION. ALSO THE EARTH IS MOSTLY OCEAN WITH SMALL PARTS OF IT COVERED BY LAND WHEREAS VENUS HAS NO OCEAN. AND BESIDES THERE IS A LARGE DIFFERENCE IN SPIN RATE. THE NEED TO COMPARE THESE VERY DIFFERENT PLANETS AS A WAY OF PRESENTING A CASE AGAINST THE COMBUSTION OF FOSSIL FUELS ON EARTH HAS NO RATIONAL INTERPRETATION EXCEPT FOR THE DESPERATION OF CLIMATE SCIENCE IN THE ABSENCE OF EVIDENCE FOR THEIR ACTIVISM AGAINST FOSSIL FUELS.

ITEM#2: THE OBSESSION OF CLIMATE SCIENCE WITH ATMOSPHERIC CO2 AS THE ONLY POSSIBLE DRIVER OF INTERGLACIAL GLOBAL WARMING CYCLES REQUIRES THAT THEY MUST PROVIDE A CARBON DIOXIDE ARGUMENT FOR THE PRIOR FOUR GLOBAL WARMING CYCLES OF THE HOLOCENE AS WELL AS THE HORRIFIC GLOBAL WARMING CYCLES OF THE EEMIAN ONE OF WHICH HAD CAUSED THE WEST ANTARCTIC ICE SHEET {WAIS} TO DISINTEGRATE. CLIMATE SCIENCE NOT ONLY ACKLNOWLEDGES THAT EVENT IN THE EEMIAN BUT HAS USED IT AS A BASIS FOR REPEATED FAILED FORECASTS OF A SIMILAR DISINTEGRATION OF THE WAIS IN THE HOLOCENE. {FOOTNOTE: GLOBAL WARMING WITHOUT FOSSIL FUELS CAUSED A DISINTEGRATION OF THE WAIS BUT GLOBAL WARMING WITH FOSSIL FUELS FAILED TO REPEAT THAT PERFORMANCE}.

NO SUCH ARGUMENT HAS BEEN PRESENTED BY CLIMATE SCIENCE AND NO CO2 THEORY HAS BEEN PROPOSED TO EXPLAIN THE MANY WARMING AND COOLING CYCLES AT 100 TO 1000 YEAR TIME SCALES THAT ARE FOUND IN BOTH OF THESE TWO INTERGLACIALS. EVEN IN THE CURRENT WARMING CYCLE OF THE HOLOCENE THAT HAPPENS TO COME AFTER THE INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION, CLIMATE SCIENCE CLAIMS THAT THE OBSERVED RISE IN ATMOSPHERIC CO2 IS CAUSED BY FOSSIL FUEL EMISSIONS AND IT IS THIS RISE THAT CAUSES WARMING. HOWEVER, NO EVIDENCE IS PROVIDED FOR THE ASSUMED RESPONSIVENESS OF ATMOSPHERIC COMPOSITION TO FOSSIL FUEL EMISSIONS AND THE ESSENTIAL CLIMATE SENSITIVITY PARAMETER NEEDED TO RELATE WARMING TO RISING ATMOSPHERIC CO2 CONTAINS LARGE UNCERTAINTIES AS EXPLAINED IN A RELATED POST ON THIS SITE: LINK: https://tambonthongchai.com/2021/05/18/climate-science-vs-statistics/

CONCLUSION

THE DESPERATION VENUS ARGUMENT FOR HUMAN CAUSE OF GLOBAL WARMING ON EARTH IS BEST UNDERSTOOD IN TERMS OF THE FAILURE OF CLIMATE SCIENCE TO PRESENT EMPIRICAL EVIDENCE FOR THE THEORY THAT FOSSIL FUEL EMISSIONS CAUSE ATMOSPHERIC CO2 TO RISE AND RISING ATMOSPHERIC CO2 IN TURN CAUSES GLOBAL WARMING AND THEREFORE THE CURRENT WARMING CYCLE OF THE HOLOCENE MUST BE UNDERSTOOD AS HUMAN CAUSED AND IT CAN THEREFORE BE HUMAN CONTROLLED. WE SHOW IN RELATED POSTS ON THIS SITE THAT THIS ARGUMENT HAS NO EMPIRICAL VALIDITY.