Science Under The Influence

Mars has 95% CO2 and is very cold.

Venus has 95% CO2 and is very hot.

The partial pressure of CO2 on Mars is 14X higher than on Earth.

The surface of Mars receives more solar insolation than the surface of Venus.

It must be the CO2 making Venus hot.

© Carl Sagan and James Hansen

About Tony Heller

Just having fun
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5 Responses to Science Under The Influence

  1. Partial pressure has nothing to do with it. From “Fundamentals of Statistical and Thermal Physics” (Reif, 1965), Section 8.10, pp. 319 and 321:

    p. 319: “Suppose …[a mixture of] gases which can be considered ideal and that they are contained in a container of volume V at an absolute temperature T. …”

    p. 321: “…the mean pressure that would be exerted by the i-th gas if it occupied the given volume V by itself…. is called the ‘partial pressure of the i-th gas’.”

    So, a few points to be made. 1) The gases in the atmosphere are not contained in a constant volume V and are not at a constant temperature T. 2) Partial pressure obviously is used as a measure of the AMOUNT of a given gas (you have also used the above “Mars CO2 is 14x Earth CO2” argument by referring to the amount of CO2 as the “density of CO2”). But the greenhouse theory does not refer to the absolute amount of CO2 in the atmosphere, it refers to the CONCENTRATION of CO2 in the atmosphere–the fraction of the atmosphere that is CO2 (the volume fraction, typically, as in “400 parts per million by volume”). The simplest way I know to understand this, physically, is to note that we are talking about the ability of the CO2 to warm the whole atmosphere, not just warm itself, so you can’t get by by talking about the amount of CO2, you have to deal with its concentration in the whole atmosphere.

    96% is 2400 times Earth’s .04% CO2, not 14. Or, as commonly discussed, it is 11+ doublings of Earth’s atmospheric concentration of CO2. (The sources I have learned from have given Venus’s atmospheric CO2 fraction as 96.5%, which is about 11.4 doublings of Earth’s–I used this to calculate the CO2 “climate sensitivity”, in degrees/doubling of CO2, in “CO2 Climate Sensitivity Vs. Reality”).
    Mars is cold primarily because it has very little atmosphere, Venus is very hot primarily because it has very much atmosphere, and Earth’s temperature is just right because it has just the right amount of atmosphere (with a hat-tip to “The Three Bears”, obviously). That’s why there can be neither runaway global warming OR cooling (as in “ice ages”–yes, that theory is obviously wrong, too, but I won’t go into that here): Earth’s temperature is STABILIZED by its atmosphere, and we do not live on the razor’s edge due to wrongheaded “radiative forcings” that climate scientists have fantasized into existence (yes, THAT theory is ALSO wrong, also obviously, as my “Venus: No Greenhouse Effect” article should have taught everyone 3 years ago).

  2. NikFromManhattan says:

    Oh, Harry. Carl Sagan’s bizarre brain cancer was exactly because my old best friend of 30 years arrived too late in Carl’s laboratory at Cornell to finally competently seal his Mars dust high vacuum apparatus that was for decades leaking ozone and only Allah knows what else, every day. Mike finally made real (red!) dust, too. But Carl died, and Mike has no Ph.D., not even a masters degree, as the gatekeepers refused to even return his calls, as he tried to make the best of it. One time a bit of mercury alloyed away the sheen if some careerist’s wedding ring and they nearly expelled poor Mike that time, too.

    “Thou goest beyond them: but the higher thou dost mount, the smaller thou seemest to the eye of envy. But he that hath wings is most hated.” – Friedrich Nietzsche (Thus Spake Zarathrusta, 1891)

    As I pointed out but was deleted/banned on Phys.org, Jim’s new office is now located in an off campus interdiscplinary religious building.

  3. NikFromManhattan says:

    Steve, you have banned your only rational commenter again, leaving crazy Harry as the face of skepticism here. Who the Hell is paying you to trash the rest of us?! Cut the NAZI photos, you clodhopping fanatic!

  4. Laz M says:

    Harry, your discovery is absolutely brilliant. (Discovery, not theory!) …and is sadly close to the same level as Newton’s discovery of the law of universal gravitation and Michael Faraday’s discovery of the interrelationships between electricity and magnetism.

    I say ‘sadly’ because this is a discovery that should have been made MANY years before you had the opportunity to do so. This is not a criticism nor meant in disrespect towards you, but it is both of those things directed to the countless “climate scientists” that promulgate false claims, data, and dogma about how the atmosFEAR allegedly works.

  5. ClimateTards believe that if Co2 which is 4/100 of 1 % of all gases by weight, rises to say a whopping 6/100 then the 6/100 must be equal to 95% concentration of Co2 on Venus, ergo = hell. For the record Venus is red hot because it has not cooled, and cannot therefore be ‘billions’ or trillions of years – whatever number the Evolutards pick.

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