Vacationing on Venus Basic Geology Series Part 1
Guest post by Steven Goddard
Magellan radar imaged Venus – NASA Image
In some ways, Venus is similar to earth. It is about the same size as the earth, has a nickel-iron core, and has volcanic activity due to radioactive heating in the interior. But that is where the similarities end. Venus has some serious problems as a vacation spot – mainly that it is extremely hot and the atmosphere is a thick cloud of sulfuric acid, CO2 and other unpleasant chemicals.
So how did Venus get to be like that, and why is the earth different?
- Venus is closer to the sun, which makes it hotter and prevents formation of oceans due to excessive evaporation.
- Venus suffered a traumatic collision in it’s early days, which causes it to rotate very slowly and parallel to the ecliptic. This makes for long afternoons (thousands of hours long) which get extremely hot.
- Because of 1 and 2, Venus was never able to sequester CO2 in limestones like the earth.
For the last few billion years, volcanoes on earth have been spewing out the greenhouse gases H2O, CO2 and CH4, as well as, H2SO4, SO2, H2S, HCl and Cl2. If not for the oceans and limestone sequestration, we would have a very thick, hot acidic atmosphere like Venus which could not support life. Fortunately, temperatures and other conditions on earth were just right to allow huge volumes of CO2 to move into the oceans and precipitate carbonate rock layers, where the CO2 became sequestered. This makes earth the pleasant place which we all enjoy.
Wikipedia image – carbonate rocks in Italy, uplifted miles above sea level.
One of the oft stated concerns by the IPCC and others is excess CO2 from cement production, which involves heating carbonate rocks and has the side effect of returning CO2 to the atmosphere. Dr. Hansen and others have also suggested that periods of rapid warming in the past have been due to limestone formations being subducted into hot volcanic regions and losing their CO2 to the atmosphere.
But make no mistake, without the CO2 sequestered in limestone and other carbonate rocks, earth would be hot, toxic and probably unlivable – like Venus.
Some more detailed discussion here and here .
Part 2 will be a discussion of how fossil fuels fit into the picture.
Discover more from Watts Up With That?
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
Please be carefull to NOTE that Venus has some PERCENTAGE of CO2 (like 50%?)
in it’s Atmosphere. The palentologists have pretty much agreed we’ve ALWAYS had an O2/N2 atmosphere with perhaps a HIGHER O2 concentration in the
dinosaur eras.
CO2 is an “unpleasant chemical”?
The steel industry has also been a great consumer of limestone but a good bit of that carbon remains sequestered in the steel though much is lost through conversion to CO2 in the process. Same with coke production from coal.
Entire mountains of limestone were gutted in Pennsylvania. Many in the IT and other industries might be aware of an “offsite storage” company for important records called Iron Mountain. There is a single old limestone mine with about 150 acres of space employing nearly 3000 people inside that mountain. There are several others that were used as Cold War bunkers.
Subduction of limestone could, indeed, create pulses of CO2 as could things such as a volcano erupting through an oil or coal field. Saudi Arabia and Syria both have large volcanoes that have erupted in recent geological time that are not far from existing huge oil fields. A volcanic eruption through a major oil field (possibly a field not even discovered yet) or the subduction of one, could result in the release of more CO2 in one event than we might release through human activity over a period of decades.
8th Feb 2009, At Bondi Austraila, competitors in this year’s Classic Ocean Swim experienced the opposite problem after the water temperature plunged three degrees to just 16.2C overnight on Saturday.
Up to 40 people were treated for symptoms of hypothermia with officials at a loss to explain the unusually cold water.
I guess thats weather.
http://www.news.com.au/dailytelegraph/story/0,22049,25025997-5001021,00.html
I think that when pondering Venus as a holiday destination there are a few other things worth thinking about.
First there is the atmospheric pressure at ground level. 90 bar is quite a load to bear. Then there are the 300 mph winds which whip about; caused in part by the slow rotation of the planet. Add to this the sulphuric acid clouds which, while they reflect most of the sun’s energy thus ensuring that the amount of sunlight at ground level is approximately the same as on earth, also keep much of what energy does get through in the atmosphere rarther than allowing it to dissipate into space.
Still there may be some decent vacation spots. There is a layer in the atmosphere where the pressure is 1 bar and the temperature is pretty earthlike.
But overall, I prefer Spain for my holidays.
As i understant it, venus also lacks a magnetic field to shield the planet from solar winds and the like… which id imagine would also have a big effect on the climate of that planet… i think im missing the point? What is the point?
Al Gore compared Venus to earth in his January 28 testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yY4g49Bdm_0
But make no mistake, without the CO2 sequestered in limestone and other carbonate rocks, earth would be hot, toxic and probably unlivable
A huge part of the issue on Venus is not that there is so much CO2, it is that there is so much atmosphere, of any type. With something like 100x the density and naturally much more thickness to a given pressure level, + being so much closer to the sun, it should be no surprise that it gets warm and stays warm. Our planet, fortunately, has a much thinner atmosphere. Mars is thinner still, so it has huge temperature swings since there is so little buffer (and it’s nominally colder due to distance to the sun).
Inaccurate there Mr Hugo, the early Earth’s atmosphere was largely H2O, H2, CO, C02, N2, virtually devoid of O2 until 3 Billion years ago, when photosynthesis kicked off.
For 10s of millions of years after that, levels grew only slowly, as the high Iron content in the oceans reacted with the O2 to produce the Iron Ore deposits we mine today.
Venus lacks plate tectonics, due to a stronger, thicker lithosphere than Earth’s,probably due to the lack of water on that planet.
Venus’s Atmsophere.
Major components (by volume)
96.5% carbon dioxide (CO2)
3.5% nitrogen (N2)
Minor components (parts per million)
150 sulfur dioxide (SO2)
70 argon (Ar)
20 water vapor (H2O)
17 carbon monoxide (CO)
12 helium (He)
7 neon (Ne)
http://www.daviddarling.info/encyclopedia/V/Venusatmos.html
During Earth’s Carboniferous Era, evidence suggests O2 levels as high as 35%.
This article is rather… err… random??
I highly doubt that a little more CO2 would create an earth that “would be hot, toxic and probably unlivable”, more like an overgrown jungle on land and oceanic plankton blooms?!
Carbonate platforms are very plentiful, extensive and often thousands of feet thick. The proportion of these carbon reservoirs being returned to the atmosphere by the cement and steel industries is miniscule.
Venus CO2 percentage is 95%. But, the key point is that Venus atmosphere is 93 times the volume of Earths.
So, if you took the the daytime temp of Venus @ur momisugly 867F and divided it by the relative density (93) you get 9.3C, so I guess you need some water vapor. It’s W/m2 is 1.911, so surface temp @ur momisugly Earth Atmosphere is 17.77C or 64F. Not a bad place to live, if you are a plant.
Get out the atmopheric pump, we have a lot of cargo to ship to Mars.
Now get busy, you mangy dogs.
I find CO2 to be very pleasant :P… particularly when the bubbles in a cool Schweppes fizz and tickle the sinuses!
Whoops, I meant 9.3F, and 17.77 F, so I must have shoved poor Venus into an Ice Age.
Oh, never mind, we’re going to fix up Venus & Mars and start terraforming.
In a thousand years, we’ll all have a new vacation spot.
This sentence made me stop and think for a moment:
“Venus suffered a traumatic collision in it’s [sic] early days…”
As I recall, Venus has the least orbital eccentricity, at < 0.01. I also don’t recall reading anywhere that Venus ever suffered a “traumatic collision” other than in Velikovsky’s writings.
Is this guy for real, or have I missed some updates in solar system history?
What is going on here, Anthony?
Alex calls the article RANDOM, I say TOTALLY UNSUBSTANTIATED.
I see no comment from you.
Where, exactly, have they attached the crocodile clips?
CO2 is an INSIGNIFICANT factor in determining planetary atmospheric temperature. You know this.
Alex (13:15:49) :
This article is rather… err… random??
I highly doubt that a little more CO2 would create an earth that “would be hot, toxic and probably unlivable”,
Venus has 300,000 times as much CO2 in its atmosphere than the Earth. Hardly ‘a little more’…
Dittos to what Adam G. wrote.
In the Carboniferous the atmospheric concentration of CO2 was 4,000 ppm or more, 10 to 15 times what it is today. Far from unlivable, the planet was lush with life, so much so that organic carbon was also sequestered in coal beds (hence the name of the Period).
300 million years later, in the Eocene, CO2 was only 1,000 ppm due to carbonate deposition as noted in the post, but temps were 5 to 15 deg C warmer than now. Was that a problem for Creation? Heck no, Life was the most diverse and productive ever in the history of Earth.
Temps have been falling ever since, despite the higher-than-now CO2 levels of the Tertiary, due to plate tectonics and the drift of Antarctica over the S. Pole. Mass extinctions have resulted as the planet plunged into the Ice Ages.
Bring back the Eocene!!!
Thanks to Adam Gallon for that breakdown of Venus atmosphere.
I do have some thoughts; perhaps someone can enlighen us.
Why do people specify atmospheric components in terms of volumatric percentages.
It would seem to me that since the discovery of molecules and atoms, it would be more definitive to specify the percentage of the total molecules for each species; or do we just assume that each molecular component of an atmosphere behaves as if it were a perfect gas; in which case presumably 22.4 liters of any component at 760 mm of Hg pressure would be one mole of any species present ??
But back to Venus, and its 96.5% of CO2 by volume. Notice that its cloud blanket is not CO2 but apparently sulphuric acid.
It seems clear to me that the principle difference between Venus and Earth; other than all those mentioned, is that venus has virtually no water; and evidently almost none at all in either the liquid or solid phases; whereas Earth has ocenas containind oodles of water, and an atmopshere that contains water in all three phases.
It is the presence of atmospheric water in all three phases; buffered by a humungous store of liquid water in the oceans, that totally governs earth’s mean temperature. Water in the vapor phase in the atmosphere produces the vast majority of the positive feedback warming of planet earth; and in the liquid and solid phases as clouds; it provides the major component of earth’s albedo; and then by absorbing both incoming solar energy, both in the vapor phase, and in precipitable clouds; produces a balancing negative feedback cooling effect. The amount of and type of cloud cover sets the equilibrium temperature range of planet earth.
Nobody ever observed surface warming when clouds pass in front of the sun; and the optics of the situation, is high school science. The cloud blocks (some) incoming solar radiation from a near point source (0.5 deg divergence); casting a dark cool shadow, while the reduced outgoing thermal radiation from that cooled shadow zone, is a diffuse radiation that is at least Lambertian (cosine of angle) or more likely nearly isotropic due to emitting surface roughness. So the same cloud can intercept only a fraction of the outgoing thermal radiation from the shadow zone.
So the lack of ocean water is the root of Venus problem; and there is no possible mechanism by which earth could switch to a Venus condition; well no mechanism that odes no first evaporate entirely, earth’s oceans, (which in itself would drop the surface temperatures dramatically.
George
As a science history hobbyist this is fascinating.
There is a fringe astronomy theory that includes electricity called Plasma Cosmology. According to this theory, Venus is the recipient of a large flux of electricity from the Sun and it is this that is driving the temperature.
http://www.holoscience.com/news.php?article=9aqt6cz5
The barred spiral features at Venus’ poles are characteristic of incident Birkeland currents, and it is these also that hyper-rotate the atmosphere to 7 days. Apparently all the spacecraft that have landed on Venus and measured the temperature report a smooth increase down to the surface.
You can take or leave this interpretation but in terms of the science history it is very interesting. Back in 1951 a bestseller came out called ‘Worlds in Collision’. by a guy called Velikovsy. that had the planets careering around the solar system in recent times. He used a version of PC to engineer the orbits to get it to work. Needless to say this had the astronomers spluttering in their tea. The appropriate response should have been to ignore it and it would have gone away. Instead they took him on and he replied with a series of predictions – one of which was the high temp of Venus. As the space age dawned, one by one these predictions proved right – something ‘had to be done!’.
The 1974 AAAS had a fringe event to deal with this, with Carl Sagan brought in, and it was here that the runaway greenhouse effect was first brought to bear. I assume it is also why panic sets in amongst the astro-community should the CO2RGE prove not to be the case.
If anyone has an earlier example it would be interesting to hear.
Venus’ atmosphere is 95% CO2 while earth’s is only .054% CO2 by weight. So the concentration of CO2 in Venus’ atmosphere is 1700 times as much as earth. But Venus’ atmosphere is also much denser than earth’s. Our atmospheric pressure is 14.7 pounds per square inch. Think of that as meaning the weight of our atmosphere resting on every square inch of surface is 14.7 pounds. On Venus its 90 times that much, or about 1300 pounds per square inch. When you take both of those factors into account, Venus has over 150,000 times as much CO2 above every square inch of surface as earth does. Even if we doubled or tripled or quadrupled the amount of CO2 in our atmosphere it would be no where near that of Venus.
Sorry, but i don’t buy this story.
If it was true, then in the early age of earth, life could’nt apeared, too much CO2 then too much heat.
In fact, on Earth we had probably 100% CO2 with 30 bars pressure. And we had almost immediatly life. The clue is elsewhere.
Sorry for my english, I am french. Nobody’s perfect.
At greater than about 5,000 PPM (0.5%) CO2 starts having serious health impacts. Cave explorers have to deal with this phenomenon.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_dioxide
Venus has greater than 900,000PPM CO2.
The point of this article is to provide a basis for discussing geology and the carbon cycle moving forward.
According to Alex Alemi and David Stevenson of the California Institute of Technology, their recent study of models of the early solar system shows that it is very likely that, billions of years ago, Venus had at least one moon, created by a huge impact event.[41][42] About 10 million years later, according to Alemi and Stevenson, another impact reversed the planet’s spin direction. The reversed spin direction caused the Venusian moon to gradually spiral inward[43] until it collided and merged with Venus.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venus
Of course CO2 affects the atmosphere’s temperature. Without any CO2 in the atmosphere, it would be extremely cold here.