Global Warming

[ravensteve1961]

I am curious. Since you hate SUVs, if you had to frequently transport six passengers comfortably, and lots of large equipment and supplies (and sometimes tow a trailer) for long distances in heavy traffic, what would YOU drive?

This Car.

 

[The*Empress]

MARS HAS GLOBAL WARMING


NASA Science News home Global Warming on Mars
Artificial greenhouse gases that are bad news on Earth could provide the means to make Mars a more comfortable place for humans to live.

February 9, 2001 -- To say that Mars is a chilly place would be an understatement. The Red Planet's mean annual temperature is 55 degrees C below zero -- that's about the same as the temperature of Earth's south pole during winter.

If humans ever build communities on Mars, they might want to find a way to turn up the global thermostat. At a recent NASA-sponsored conference, "The Physics and Biology of Making Mars Habitable", scientists discussed ways that future colonists might make the frigid planet a little more comfortable.

One solution might be to pump enough greenhouse gases into the Martian atmosphere to create a runaway greenhouse effect. Here on Earth, the idea of a runaway greenhouse sets off alarm bells. But on Mars it could be a plus. Scientists at the conference speculated how it might be possible to warm Mars just enough to evaporate the planet's available carbon dioxide (CO2 trapped in ices and frost) into the atmosphere, where such gases could contribute to keeping the planet warm.

But there are two problems. First, even if all of Mars's available CO2 were coaxed into the atmosphere, it wouldn't necessarily warm the planet enough to make it a comfortable place for humans, because no one knows just how much CO2 is there. Second, the best way to get Mars to release its CO2 spontaneously is, well... to warm it up. It's a "Catch-22" situation!

Margarita Marinova, an undergraduate student at MIT, believes she has an answer to both problems: use artificially created perfluorocarbons (PFCs) to initiate the planetary warming process. Marinova has been studying the warming effects of PFCs, in collaboration with Chris McKay, a member of the NASA Astrobiology Institute at the Ames Research Center. McKay was one of the organizers of the terraforming conference where Marinova presented her research.

PFCs have several advantages. First, they are super-greenhouse gases. A little bit does a lot of warming. Second, PFCs have a very long lifetime. This causes serious problems on Earth, but their longevity would be a positive factor on Mars. Third, they do not have any negative effects on living organisms.

Finally, unlike their chemical cousins, chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs), PFCs don't deplete ozone. Ozone in Earth's atmosphere provides protection against ultraviolet (UV) radiation, which is harmful to life. On Mars, building up an ozone layer in the atmosphere would be an important goal of terraformers. "You don't want to destroy ozone," says Marinova, "because it's a UV protector."

Above: Sunlight is absorbed by a planet's surface, which then radiates warming infrared energy into the atmosphere. Greenhouse gases prevent that energy from escaping into space.

The sunlight that hits a planet's surface arrives primarily as visible and ultraviolet light. The planet absorbs this solar energy, and then re-radiates warming infrared energy back out into the atmosphere. Greenhouse gases in the atmosphere work as a global layer of insulation, trapping that infrared radiation and preventing it from escaping into space.

CO2 and water are good at trapping some of this infrared energy, but not all of it. On Earth, there's so much CO2 and water in the atmosphere that it doesn't matter if some infrared radiation escapes back into space.

But on Mars, terraformers will want to trap every bit of heat they can. A carefully chosen combination of PFCs could do the job quite handily.

"When we first start warming Mars," explains Marinova, "we'll want to cover the whole spectrum" of thermal infrared radiation. "Once CO2 is released, it will take over" part of the job, and PFCs will only need to be used to plug the gaps.

And how fast can Mars be heated up?

"That depends," says Marinova, "on how fast we make the gases." According to rough calculations, "if you had 100 factories, each having the energy of a nuclear reactor, working for 100 years, you could warm Mars six to eight degrees." At that rate, to increase the average Martian temperature to the melting point of water -- it's about minus 55 degrees Celsius now -- would take about eight centuries. Actually, it wouldn't take quite that long, Marinova points out, because her calculation doesn't include the feedback effect of the CO2 that would be released as Mars got steadily warmer. "Devising more efficient artificial super-greenhouse gases will also make it faster," Marinova adds.

Above: Though still an undergraduate student, Margarita Marinova is advancing our understanding of how to make Mars habitable for humans. Pictured with her is Phobos, a teammate from the Haughton-Mars expedition to the Arctic. Image courtesy The Mars Society.

Human habitation of Mars is a long way off. NASA's current plan for exploring the Red Planet, which spans the next two decades, does not include even a pioneering human mission to Mars. By the time a permanent settlement is established there -- one that might begin the task of terraforming the planet -- technological advances may make it possible to warm its atmosphere far more efficiently than is possible using the techniques being studied today by scientists like Marinova.

http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2001/ast09feb_1.htm

 

[The*Empress]

Global warming on Mars – without SUVs!
Planet experiencing increased temperatures despite lack of humankind

Though not subject to pollutants of human habitation, Mars appears to be undergoing global warming, with new data suggesting the planet is possibly emerging from an ice age.

According to a report in Space.com, NASA's Mars Odyssey orbiter has spotted seasonal changes, such as the advance and retreat of polar ice, but it also is gathering information pointing to long-term trends.

Is NASA rover to blame for global warming on Mars?

William Feldman of the Los Alamos National Laboratory tells the site the current climate conditions, including too much frozen water at low-latitude regions, suggests something is out of equilibrium on Mars.

"One explanation could be that Mars is just coming out of an ice age," Feldman told Space.com. "In some low-latitude areas, the ice has already dissipated. In others, that process is slower and hasn't reached an equilibrium yet. Those areas are like the patches of snow you sometimes see persisting in protected spots long after the last snowfall of the winter."

According to the report, frozen water makes up as much as 10 percent of the top three feet of surface material in some regions close to the equator. Dust deposits may be covering and insulating the lingering ice, Feldman said.

Feldman is the scientist in charge of an Odyssey instrument that assesses water content indirectly through measurements of neutron emissions.

"Odyssey is giving us indications of recent global climate change on Mars," Jeffrey Plaut, project scientist for the mission at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, is quoted as saying.

According to the report, other data from Odyssey is helping scientists figure out what is going on climatologically on the planet. The orbiter has been surveying the planet for nearly a full Martian year.

http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=36049

 

[DeafSCUBA98]

i know... mars have global warming i had the link in 3rd page.. i know it might surprise many of you guys.. that's why science are clueless why global warming in mars, earth, and other planets.

 

[The*Empress]

I think it is mother nature that is doing all of this...
giving us bad weather...

in the Bible... why it rain 80 days and 80 nights, floods and Noah with
his big ark? They didn't have cars or pollution or anything back in those
days.

 

[DeafSCUBA98]

I think it is mother nature that is doing all of this...
giving us bad weather...

in the Bible... why it rain 80 days and 80 nights, floods and Noah with
his big ark? They didn't have cars or pollution or anything back in those
days.

its not 80 days and 80 nits its 40 days and 40 nights

 

[ravensteve1961]

Miss*Pinocchio doesnt read the bible, She reads this book.

 

[Raging Quiet]

I think it is mother nature that is doing all of this...
giving us bad weather...

in the Bible... why it rain 80 days and 80 nights, floods and Noah with
his big ark? They didn't have cars or pollution or anything back in those
days.

I don't want to start off another arguement here, but what the Bible says may not be true, you can't judge the global warming from the Bible.

 

[The*Empress]

but the professor told the class that it did happen...
cause it was also in the World History book....
but The tribe tell another story.... the Earth did flood, but it didn't kill
everybody... just the ones who were unlucky.

 

[Banjo]

but the professor told the class that it did happen...
cause it was also in the World History book....
but The tribe tell another story.... the Earth did flood, but it didn't kill
everybody... just the ones who were unlucky.

The stories in the bible are exaggerated, the bible features many, many true events, and more. However, people tend to exaggerate the stories. The Earth may had not been flooded at all, it may had been a LARGE part of the Earth that was flooded, not the whole world.

 

[Banjo]

but the professor told the class that it did happen...
cause it was also in the World History book....
but The tribe tell another story.... the Earth did flood, but it didn't kill
everybody... just the ones who were unlucky.

The professor may had said it, but it doesn't mean it is a fact.

 

[The*Empress]

Well I don't wanna believe the Scientists who blame weather on pollution.
They don't have any fact.

 

[Banjo]

Well I don't wanna believe the Scientists who blame weather on pollution.
They don't have any fact.

Um, have you ever heard of Acid Rain?

The truth is, the pollution does have an impact on the environment including the weather. Like it or not, we do cause a lot of problems to the poor Earth. Our poo-poo go into the lakes, do you know that?

That's why they have a lot of water treatments to "reduce" the dangers of drinking from the water that people's pee-pee and poo-poo go into. I don't drink from the tap water. Also not to mention the toxic wastes that a lot of factories dump into the water... illegally and get away with it.

Ugh.

 

[The*Empress]

but our poo poo and pee pee will go down in the lake or river anyway...
if we poo poo and pee pee in our backyard, the rain will bring the poo poo and pee pee down in the drainage anyway. why birds poo poo and pee pee on our houses and cars... but never poo poo and pee pee on the street?
how come we have to scoop up dogs' poo poo from our backyard and get rid of cats' litter box, why can't we just leave it on the grass for the fruit flies to eat it or lay eggs. And it is also good for grass anyway.

Yeah why we have to buy manure from the store, when we can use
our own poops.

But anyway... we always have hurricane, earthquake, thunderstorm, rain, tornado, tsunami, and volcano... that is mother nature... nothing worse.

 

[Banjo]

but our poo poo and pee pee will go down in the lake or river anyway... if we poo poo and pee pee in our backyard

But do you know how dangerous it is to have them in the lakes? Especially when they combine with the toxic wastes that are dumped illegally!

Ugh.

Are you aware that you can turn a large amount of human wastes into a power plant because of the gas that are produced from them?

the rain will bring the poo poo and pee pee down in the drainage anyway.

Um... so do the toilets. Still, people lead these wastes to the lakes on PURPOSE! That's what I'm saying.

why birds poo poo and pee pee on our houses and cars... but never poo poo and pee pee on the street?

Um, no. They will relieve themselves on ANYTHING including your head.

how come we have to scoop up dogs' poo poo from our backyard and get rid of cats' litter box, why can't we just leave it on the grass for the fruit flies to eat it or lay eggs. And it is also good for grass anyway.

Because their shit aren't good for the grass. Plus they smell.

Yeah why we have to buy manure from the store, when we can use
our own poops.

Our shit would kill the grass because of the crap we eat. All cows eat are grass, water, sometimes hot soups in wintertimes. Their shit are cleaner, and are good for the grass and gardens.

But anyway... we always have hurricane, earthquake, thunderstorm, rain, tornado, tsunami, and volcano... that is mother nature... nothing worse.

Tsunamis doesn't happen very often, but when they do... it ain't pretty. You would rather have a hurricane than a tsunami.

 

[Reba]

.... the Earth did flood, but it didn't kill
everybody... just the ones who were unlucky.

The Flood killed everyone except those on the ark. Those people were on the ark because they believed God.

 

[Reba]

... I don't drink from the tap water. ..

What water do you drink?

 

[Banjo]

What water do you drink?

Ah, I see what you're trying to do there. Trying to get me with a trick question, eh?

Well, I don't drink directly from the tap.

Reverse Osmosis water at the moment, but I've been hearing that purified water isn't safe and that Ionized water is the safest water to drink...

Oh well. People always have to find something wrong with everything. I absolutely won't drink tap water due to the high amount of chemicals, bacteria, and all that crap.

 

[Reba]

Ah, I see what you're trying to do there. Trying to get me with a trick question, eh?

No, I was curious which water you consider safe to drink. If you don't drink tap water you must drink something, so I was wondering what kind you think is clean.

Reverse Osmosis water at the moment, but I've been hearing that purified water isn't safe and that Ionized water is the safest water to drink...

Do you use a filter on your tap, or do you buy it in bottles?

 

[Vance]

Reba: curious, what water do you drink?