Hyperventilating on Venus

Which of course begs the question: Has anyone looked at the overall atmospheric pressure change during this supposed unprecedented warming? No? Oh, well, that data is probably as incomplete as the temperature data anyway, so why let the climate scientologists manipulate that to fit their agenda. I’m sure one of them will model it soon enough and cry out “It’s worse than we thought!” Dolts.
Disclaimer: The above statement was not meant to offend any real scientologists out there. I’ll get around to offending them some other time and some other place.

Steve: I did a search and the 1st 20 to 30 sites, including NASA, stated that Venus’s temperature is due to the runaway greenhouse effect. Your analysis is very convincing. Then I found the following which comes to the same conclusion as you with a bit more analysis. I am convinced that you are correct and that the ‘consensus’ is wrong.
http://www.buzzle.com/articles/how-hot-is-venus.html

Thanks Steve, interesting post! And if correct and reasonalble, it baffles me that noone else has noted this before …
This simply cannot be! Other people must have hade similar thoughts and estimates.

Quick send this information to Lord Monckton

As far as i understood it would take two things to turn Earth into a seccond Venus, and that is enough time, and about twice the amount of energy from the Sun.
And this all to start building up the atmospheric pressure which needs a lot of time, more energy means more watervapour, more watervapour means higher pressure wich in result in an atmosphere wich is beter suited to hold an higher temperature. Once all the water in the ocean has been transformed into atmosphere the temperatures will be high enough to start the outgassing of rocks wich raises the temperature and pressure even further. Eventually Earth would look like Venus with a high pressure and CO2 rich atmosphere.
And that will eventually happen, in a few hundred million to a billion years from now when the sun is (a bit) brighter than it is now.
So a runaway greenhouse? Yes, but not caused by us puny humans and not tomorrow.

There is a terrestrial example of higher air temperatures resulting from greater depth / greater pressure – that of the occasional isolation and evaporation of the Mediterranean Sea:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Messinian_Salinity_Crisis
It would be interesting to know what the atmospheric temperature on Venus is at the height equivalent to one Earth atmospheric pressure.

That is one of the most interesting articles I have read on here in the 3 years I have been visiting….. Thanks… Just goes to show how we accept things if they are repeated enough. The trouble is that young people will only hear one argument and it, in time, becomes accepted wisdom. There is always the need to be sceptical.
By the way, on that point “climate deniers” have often been called “flat-eathers”. Most people believe that Columbus was thought to be mad to attempt the voyage west to India because he would “fall off the Earth”. My understanding is that this was a myth put about by Washinton Irvine in the 19th century. Columbus could not get funding because everyone knew the Earth was round. They knew its diameter. They knew you could not carry enough provisions for such a journey to India. Anyone who lives near the coast will see the hulls of ships disappear before the masts. Yet still we think that they thought the Earth was flat in 1490. Despite Erastothenes measuring the diameter in 200 BC to within 1% of today’s accepted value.

Talking of atmospheric pressure, co2 and temperature look at mars:
Carbon Dioxide (CO2): 95.32%
Temperature: + 1° F, ( -17.2° C) to -178° F (-107° C)
Atmospheric pressure: 6 to 10 millibars

Funny. My brother-in-law brought up Venus the other day. “Why is it so hot there if not because of all the CO2?” My response was, “Are you kidding me with this?”
“Group Think” just doesn’t adequately decribe it. I really simply cannot figure out how they get this stuff in their brain.

Curiousgeorge
What keeps the earth warm? The sun. Without the sun, the Earth and Venus would be close to absolute zero.
Now, why is it -40 degrees on top of Mt. Everest? They get lots of sunshine up there and it is the same latitude as Saudi Arabia.

If you really want to feel confused check out Nasif Nahle’s site: http://biocab.org/Induced_Emission.html. Professor Nahle seems to say that there is no “green house effect,” partly because none of the common models take thermodynamics into account properly. He argues, provided I follow his logic and mathematics correctly, that the thermal capacity of the atmosphere, being orders of magnitude less than the land and more importantly the oceans, cannot add any significant amount of heat to the climate. Instead, the land and ocean during the night damp atmospheric cooling by warming the air immediately above these important thermal masses. According to Nahle, the atmosphere’s primary climatic effect, mainly through convection, carries warmed air away from thermal masses warming it outward and upward to where it radiates away from the planet. This matches discussions on real greenhouse (transparent windows with plants inside) effects, which point out that a true green maintains a warmer environment than the surroundings by limiting convection. Energy loss through longwave radiation is not significant. Consequently the primary heat loss in a greenhouse is through conduction, and glass is a poor conductor.
Reading Nahle one might get the idea that any explanation of climate that admits to a “greenhouse effect” might be making assumptions that are contrary to the laws of thermodynamics. Not being a climatologist, physicist or engineer, I would really like to see this discussed.

CRS, Dr.P.H.
No doubt the Venusian clouds create a barrier to IR. But they are 30 km above the ground surface. Most wavelengths of IR have almost nothing blocking them in the lower 30 km of the atmosphere.

Infrared image of Venus:
http://www.thunderbolts.info/tpod/2005/arch05/051209electric-venus.htm

this is an interesting take, but what maintains the temperature?

Excellent post and some interesting links.
Looking forward to the EPA hearings; not one prominent UK politician has expressed any doubts re. AGW.
Nearly 44,000,000 hits ! The message must be getting through and a tipping point will come.

Zeke
There is a wealth of literature about catastrophic global warming. The weight of the literature is no more interesting than the weight of the duck in the Holy Grail.
And no, scientists should not be taking drugs.

Why does Venus have a much more dense atmosphere than Earth?

HankHenry
The Russians have landed spacecraft on Venus and there is no ocean. Just rock.

There is a bigger issues with Venus many wont be aware off, not that long ago scientists thought venus would be a similar temperature to earth. Then a young upstart geologist came along and suggested that Venus would actually be around 450 degrees due to geothermal venting. He was laughed away of course, daring to question concensus, but later on when they actually measured the temperature they found he was almost spot on! This caused a problem for the “experts” so they came up with a compromise, it was called the “green house effect”, rather than accept the geothermal heating scenario they invented a new one so no-one had to be wrong. They all accepted it and shut their mouths. Of course it never actually fitted, as Steve points out, plus the temperature day and night are constant and the poles and the equator the same. This does support geothermal heat, and the atmospheric mass also explains the high air temps better. I am sure no-one really understands Venus, we dont understand earth yet!
It merely demonstrates that the greenhouse effect when applied to other plants doesnt work, NASA recently found it didnt quite work for Mars either when they tried modelling its climate. Atmospheric pressure is the key and it determines global temperature, its very reliable for predicting weather and temperature change over height changes, we should be looking at changes in atmospheric pressure as well as the atmospheric composition of the atmosphere. Venus merely highlihts the frailty of the “greenhouse” holy cow. It was invented to explain an observation and fortunetly came within a few degrees of observation, but fails any kind of testing when applied to alternative atmospheres!

A lot of years (about 30) ago I took a thermodynamics class. In it we learned that when you increase temperature without increasing the volume, pressure increases. When you increase pressure without increasing the volume, temperature increases.
This is basic thermodynamics. If we want to make Venus more like Earth, we need to export to Venus some sun-loving, CO2 munching bacteria to turn CO2 into some solid carbon compound. This would eventually decrease the atmospheric pressure and thus reduce the temperature. In fact, if we really want to do geoengineering, Venus would be a good place to practice (until we get it right).

“What keeps the earth warm? The sun. Without the sun, the Earth and Venus would be close to absolute zero.”
Assume you mean surface temps here (both would remain internally hot for a long time without the sun). In the case of Venus it is quite likely that the surface temperature would be hot too, at least some of the time.
Venus’ atmosphere comes from volcanic outgassing, and Venus is a very different geological animal to Earth. It has no water so there are no tectonic plates. Instead of releasing heat gradually as does Earth, Venus is thought to occasionally “boil over”, where the whole surface completely melts. With the thick atmosphere, a high surface temperature would remain in the absence of solar heat.
In the outer solar system where the sun’s heat is minimal, the massively thick atmospheres of the giant planets are heated primarily from within and would remain almost intact if the sun was switched off.

Venus is extremely volcanic.

PJF
Heat flow from inside the earth is much smaller than the energy received from the sun.

Cam_S
The amount of solar energy entering Venus atmosphere is about the same as earth, because of the extra cloud cover. Venus reflects most of the sunshine it receives, which is why it sometimes appears so bright

Curiousgeorge says:
May 6, 2010 at 12:48 pm
That doesn’t compute. Let the cylinder stabilize at ambient. Then put it in a perfectly insulated container. It will not reheat due simply to pressure. It will stay at whatever temp it was when placed in the container.

He didn’t say that. He said that the heat in the cylinder would be taken away by the air surrounding it. The cylinder model of Venus is one where the cylinder is already in a perfect insulator when it is filled with case.
What happens when you let the gas out of that cylinder at a high rate? Bet it gets pretty cold, yeah? Same effect in reverse.

I don’t understand the physics but I do think this article is wrong, because Genus being warm because of a greenhouse effect is backed by physicists, not merely an urban legend.
So the question becomes, where is this article wrong? I don’t understand the physics to know how physicists propose the greenhouse effect works on Venus, but I can observe this:
-If Venus was that hot because of pressure, then surely Jupiter should be alight in comparison. Jupiter does generate heat, but far too little compared to how warmer Venus is and Jupiter generates it through contraction.
-Sunlight might not reach the surface, but if nevertheless passes through thick greenhouse gases before being absorbed in the atmosphere, there would still be a strong greenhouse effect.
-I am not aware that high pressure on the sea floor is proposed to generate heat.
Anyway those are my initial thoughts on where this article may be wrong.

This argument seems quite wrong to me. Pressure and temperature are independent variables — both can be high, both can be low, one can be high and the other low, etc. The temperature of a planet is determined by its energy balance: in the long run, solar energy absorbed must equal long-wave radiation going out. (I am aware that this is a substantial simplification, but it captures the main truth about terrestrial planets.)
Sunlight is almost twice as intense at the orbit of Venus, but because Venus is more than twice as reflective as the Earth (due to the clouds), it actually absorbs slightly less radiation per square meter. Yet the surface of Venus is hot — we know this by direct spacecraft measurement — so that surface must be radiating long-wave radiation upward like crazy — about 40 times the amount that Earth’s surface radiates. Yet the radiation to space at the top of the atmosphere is only 2% of this. As far as I can see, the ONLY way to explain this is that the atmosphere of Venus strongly absorbs IR. That’s the greenhouse effect, isn’t it?
How Venus got to be in such a state is another (and very interesting) question. But surely there can’t be much doubt that the present high surface temperature is due to a present very strong greenhouse effect?
Postscript: I am a physicist, and though my specialty is not atmospheric physics, I do know a thing or two about thermodynamics. I believe that anyone who is cautious and skeptical about AGW is obliged to be equally cautious and skeptical about stuff on the other side. The present argument doesn’t just cut it, in my view.

We grew up to COSMOS on TV.
Sagan was good at flights of the imagination, even then, Post Normal was trying to lure us with its Siren song.
Apart from the measurable facts of Venus, its atmospheric properties and temperature, and the known Laws of Thermodynamics, what do we have?
We have a puzzle, missing a lot of pieces, periodically assembled into a shape, that the public never gets to see scientists label a theory as….”We Think…x,y,z…”
Thats the bit that drives me crazy, the sudden shift in discussions in private where words like….”we assume, we currently think, the data currently shows, it appears…” transitioning to the printed word as….”Venus is a perfect example of run away green house effect.”
I blame the French school of Management, which excludes the function of uncertatiny in managers, it filtered into everything in the late 60’s and 70’s, and permeated the mindset of the western man. Now we must all be experts, all the time, if we are uncertain, we keep it to ourselves, because confidence is a component of competence, and we must always have an answer ready. Uncertainty, promotes a lack of confidence, low confidence impacts the bottom line. Cha-Ching $$$.
Add to that the Human tendancy to seek group approval, and we have the perfect mess of nodding and smiling, and concensus, and approval for policies sake.
You want to know why Venus is as it is? First ask how Holy has our confidence in the KNOWNS become, is it assailable? Shouldn’t it be?

OT but might be something for another post.
If you are using the Yahoo browser you’ll probably have seen the latest from the “we’re all going to die” MSM hysteria.
“Now the bad news: The ozone layer has also thinned over the North Pole. This thinning is predicted to continue for the next 15 years due to weather-related phenomena that scientists still cannot fully explain, according to the same UN report. And, repairing the ozone hole over the South Pole will take longer than previously expected, and won’t finish until between 2060 and 2075. Scientists now understand that the size of the ozone hole varies dramatically from year to year, which complicates attempts to accurately predict the hole’s future size.
Interestingly, recent studies have shown that the size of the ozone hole affects the global temperature. Closing the ozone hole actually speeds up the melting of the polar ice caps, according to a 2009 study from Scientific Committee on Antarctic Research.
So even though environmentally friendly laws have successfully reversed the trend of ozone depletion, the lingering effects of aerosol use, and the link between the ozone hole and global warming, virtually ensure that this problem will persist until the end of the century.”
Thus endith today’s reading according to ….. ah hell, there just so many!!!!

Onion
The ocean is made of water, which is a liquid. Unlike gases, liquids are not very compressible, so they do not heat much under pressure.

tommy
Temperatures on Venus are same on the day side and the night side, so at this point in Venus history the rotation speed is probably not a big factor.

geronimo
Excellent point about Mars.

Sagan said that marijuana helped him write some of his books.
The trouble of Marijuana (Pot) is that cannabinoid chemicals resemble almost exactly that of the female hormone (estrogen).
These results indicate that there are some metabolic interactions between cannabinoid and steroid metabolism and that the constituents showing estrogen-like activity exist in marijuana
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15588936
So GWRs. sneak out from the closet!

I was confused where the heat from pressure came from, this helped:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adiabatic_process

Venus is not volcanic like the Earth or Io is volcanic.
Something about this pressure = temp explanation does not fit correctly, with all due respect.
Clearly the energy reaching Venus is going into something, except for that which is reflected.
But the heat content of the atmosphere, at the massive levels on Venus, means it is much higher, no?

ShrNfr
Good point about pressure broadening of spectral lines.
One more reason why pressure is the problem, not atmospheric composition – and why the Venus analogy doesn’t work on earth.

Wait! Has anybody seen if there on Venus cows live?….you know, all that cow farting can provoke such an elevated temperature. Gotto send some texan cowboys up there!
EPA should issue a ban on all venusian gases!. Big business ahead for Cap&Trade.

I’m not buying it, did you read any scientific literature at all?
Bullock, Mark A.; Grinspoon, David H. (March 2001). “The Recent Evolution of Climate on Venus”. Icarus 150 (1): 19–37. doi:10.1006/icar.2000.6570.
Check for more:
http://plutoportal.net/~bullock/
http://plutoportal.net/~bullock/Homedocs/SciAm99.pdf
BTW The CO2 spectrum is completely saturated in the infrared at 90 atm.
http://members.casema.nl/errenwijlens/co2/lambertvenus.gif

Even the greenhouse effect based on “common knowledge” for our earth is fundamentally misunderstood.
Imagine a atmosphere completely without any greenhouse gas and clouds.
That atmosphere would still be heated and cooled by our sun.
Heated by energy from the surface of the earth. Cooled by? Yes the same surface.
You can heat the entire atmosphere column from the bottom but not cool it from the bottom. It is a fluid where cooler air is denser. A cooling from the bottom is not efficient and THAT cause a greenhouse effect. The atmosphere will have a higher temperature than average surface temperature. Of course with consideration for the lapse rate in height.
If You then add greenhouse gases in this inert atmosphere is the cooling of the atmosphere enhanced…..

@stevengoddard
Despite your explanations involving non-ideal gases, I still don’t find the pressure argument convincing. Apart from that the debunking of the runaway greenhouse effect is very good.
If I compress a set volume of air in a bicycle pump I can feel it get warmer. This is essentially the conversion of the molecular kinetic energy into sensible heat as a result of the decrease in entropy of the system. But as others have commented above, that heat dissipates out of the system quite rapidly. In order for this to be the mechanism of heating the Venusian atmosphere, there needs to be a constant cycling of (high level) low pressure gas down to the (lower level) high pressure atmosphere. The corollary to this thermal release in downward moving gas is that there needs to be upward moving gas to maintain the cycle.
This upward moving gas will expand as it rises, drawing the necessary energy from the surrounding gas and cooling it. I’m not sure that this has been demonstrated and, to be fair, you haven’t claimed any of this – it’s just implied by the physics I’ve assumed to be going on.
What you seem to be discussing in some your responses is the specific heat capacity of the gases which will increase with pressure. However, this relates to the themal capacity of the gas, not the thermogenic ability of the gas which is what is implied by your responses.
I like most of what you’re postulating, but maybe you can discuss the temperature question so more. I don’t think the analogy of a tall mountain stacks up. Pressure is a component in the thermal capacity of air at altitude but I’m struggling to see it as a thermogenic component.

I have two questions. Not being a scientist, I am well aware that my two questions might be silly, but I’d really like to know the answers.
1. Why, if CO2 keeps certain wavelengths of radiative heat inside our atmosphere (creating a positive feedback) does it not also keep an equal amount from coming into the atmosphere in the first place (creating a negative feedback like clouds)?
2. It is my understanding that CO2 only traps radiation within a narrow spectrum of radiation. While measurements of the total heat coming into the atmosphere from the sun are measured in total watts per meter squared, does the composition of that radiation vary? If the amount of radiation that can be trapped by CO2 varies as much as the solar dynamics vary (active sun, passive sun, solar wind, cooling stars, etc.), do the models track for that in making their calculations for heat trapping by CO2 and the rest of the variations in global temperature?

In defense of HankHenry’s reference to an “ocean”, I believe he was talking about an ocean of CO2, not of water; and he made the interesting point that since the pressure and temperature at Venus’s surface exceed the critical pressure and temperature of CO2, it is just as valid to call it liquid as gas.

HankHenry,
The density of the atmosphere of Venus is 65. kg/m3 which is about one fifteenth that of water.
http://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/planetary/factsheet/venusfact.html

“Even worse, if earth’s atmosphere had almost no water (like Venus) temperatures would be much colder – like the Arctic. ”
And if earth’s atmosphere had no CO2, we would indeed be in that very state, since the earth would be a ball of ice.
In the case of Venus, if one presumes that Venus is a terrestrial planet and not a very small star, there is no other explanation for the surface temperature than the greenhouse effect, since greenhouse gases are the only gases capable of trapping heat. And naturally a very dense greenhouse atmosphere traps more heat than a very thin greenhouse atmosphere.

@Zeke
Mentioning Carl Sagans cannabis use is not a cheap shot or ad hom attack of any sort. It’s just simply stating facts according to Sagans biographer and others who knew him.
Biographer: Sagan Smoked Marijuana

In the essay, Sagan said marijuana inspired some of his intellectual work.
“I can remember one occasion, taking a shower with my wife while high, in which I had an idea on the origins and invalidities of racism in terms of gaussian distribution curves,” wrote the former Cornell University professor. “I wrote the curves in soap on the shower wall, and went to write the idea down.
Sagan also wrote that pot enhanced his experience of food, particularly potatoes, music and sex.
Grinspoon, Sagan’s closest friend for 30 years, said Sagan’s marijuana use is evidence against the notion that marijuana makes people less ambitious.
“He was certainly highly motivated to work, to contribute,” said Grinspoon, a psychiatry professor at Harvard University.
Grinspoon is an advocate of decriminalizing marijuana.
Ann Druyan, Sagan’s former wife, is a director of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws. The nonprofit group promotes legalization of marijuana.

Many people, like myself, treat a variety of medical conditions, like glaucoma, with cannabis. Check out a list of well known people that have/do use cannabis here at Very Important Potheads. Note that Al Gore is on the list. Actually the current and previous US presidents are on the list. Clinton should be listed but he’s in denial although Hillary makes the cut. The “founding fathers” of the USA were big time hemp farmers and pretty much stoners too.

“Make the most of the Indian hemp seed, and sow it everywhere!” -George Washington

The following values are from the NASA fact sheets as referenced from Steve Goddard’s link to “Composition of Venus Atmosphere”. This may help to explain the high pressure of Venus.
The comparison of the masses of the atmospheres:
Venus= ~4.8X10^20kg
Earth= 5.1X10^18kg
Mars= ~2.5X10^16kg
The comparison of the surface pressure of the atmoshperes:
Venus=92 bars
Earth=1.014 bars or 1014 mb
Mars=0.0087 to 0.0040 bars depending on season or 8.7 to 4.0 mb.

Just a thought, but wouldn’t the atmosphere around Venus, thick clouds and all, act like a very good insulator and keep the temp very stable? What little leakage occurred would be made up by the 30% not reflected.

To those trying to make a comparison to Jupiter and asking why it’s not hot.
Who is saying htat it’s not hot. the upper atmospher may be cool, but deeper in, where the pressure is higher, it is extremely warm and toasty.

How did Venus get such a dense atmosphere? It heated up over time to the point where all of it’s Carbon, Oxygen and Sulfur volatilized. No magnetic field means it lost it’s Hydrogen early on.
Why didn’t Earth do that?
It has life which aids in sequestering the elements that would lead to a denser atmosphere. a magnetic field which keeps the Solar wind from blowing away the lighter elements, and vulcanism to keep it regenerated.
Mars froze out because it has no magnetic field and no vulcanism.
The question is: Why does Venus still have vulcanism?

I also disagree that the comparison of the oft stated
“each doubling of CO2 concentration would increase temperatures by 2-3 degrees” as applied to earth is comparable to what one would expect on Venus. Volume must be as important as concentration. I am not familiar with the volume of Venus’ atmosphere as compared to Earth’s, but I think you’ve established that the atmosphere is thicker.
If you consider a model in which one atmosphere is wrapped in a second atmosphere, where the concentration of CO2 in each is allowed to vary, there is no mixing between the 2 atmospheres, and solar radiation can penetrate both atmospheres, then by simply using the concentration approach, your total temperature increase would be double that of the single atmosphere model as you applied in your analysis. However, combine those 2 atmospehres together, and via the concentration approach, you halve your temperature affect.
For comparisons on earth, we know the size of our atmosphere, but you can’t go applying earth concentration approximations to places with different sizes of atmosphere.
(For the record, I am a geologist who does not believe in significant AGW, but did get my phd at Lamont Doherty Earth Observatory, which does tow the party line in favor of AGW)

For those using the filling of a gas cylinder example and the consequent cooling due to conduction/convection to the surrounding atmosphere:
Where does the heat from compression go when the entire planet is, effectively, the ‘cylinder’? Everywhere is at the same temperature, hence cooling cannot occur.

Steve-
Interesting article. But I wonder why the pressure is so high. Is the atmosphere of Venus so much thicker than that of Earth? My calculus is a bit weak, but I think that there would have to be a much thicker atmosphere than 30-40 km (and is that from surface to the edge of space?). I believe that the size of Venus is about the same as that of Earth, so the force of gravity should be comparable.
Furthermore…..if the temperature of Venus (presumably in the atmosphere near the surface) is 485°C, and the atmosphere is nearly all CO2, and less energy is absorbed from the sun than on Earth, why does the atmosphere not just radiate away its energy to space?
I don’t see the logic of high pressure = high temperature. It could be thus following an adiabatic compression, but if the heat could escape (as by radiation), the temperature would drop, the same as happens on Earth as heat is lost from compressed gas in a cylinder (for example). It is impossible to insulate the gas perfectly.
Comments / explanation welcome!! An inquiring mind wants to know.
IanM

Jim Barker
The amount of radiative energy leaving Venus is (nearly) identical to the amount it receives.

Jupiter has a temperature hotter than Earth’s … with no CO2, just H and He … and a high pressure.
http://www.ilovemycarbondioxide.com/pdf/Rethinking_the_greenhouse_effect.pdf

One should note that at the altitude at which Venus’s atmospheric pressure is equal to Earth’s atmospheric pressure at sea level that the temperatures are the same. This is despite the fact that the air on Venus is 96% CO2.

I really HATE that graph of the incoming and outgoing radiation from globalwarming art. It tends to make people think that the amount of incoming and outgoing temps are equivalent. If you actually scaled that correctly you would see that the solar IR is a very significant fraction, of the outgoing thermal radiation during the day.
The left hand scale of spectral intensity does not accurately represent what is going on.

Even more significant about water is the phase change.
Do the calculations- you will find that in a volume of atmosphere containing 1% water vapor and 500ppm CO2, the heat transported from surface to space by the water is 50,000 times more than the CO2 can do. If it gets Cirrus, multiply times 5+.
Earth is a has a heat pump and the atmopheric profile is one of a refrigerant.
Water vapor is the lightest gas of the major constituents of the air and it rises inexorably, carrying the heat of vaporization with it.
Anybody can understand that improving the heat capacity of the working gas of a heat pump just makes it do a better job – it reduces the rate of flow required to maintain equilibrium.
When a cloud comes over, you have shade. CO2 does nothing.
When a cloud parks over the tomatoes at night, you have no frost. CO2 does nothing.
The only thing CO2 does is present a straw man that draws all the attention while they dilate your colon for cap & tax.
You have to stop debating this and run these people off. They’ve already learned that ‘no’ means yes because it’s all talk and no consequences. Look how Mann was defended by those who will bear his babies.
We are still losing and will continue to lose until this topic no longer gets top billing and removal of the mystics is finally understood to be the ONLY thing that matters.

If Venus is hot because of the atmospheric pressure, Jupiter, Saturn, Neptune, and Uranu should be warmer shouldn’t they??
Venus is hot because it is either younger than the consensus claims, or had a relatively recent catastrophic impact.
They have found that Mercury has more atmosphere and is hotter than it should be based on their consensus science also. I don’t think atmospheric pressure enters into it there either.

How did such poor science come to be common knowledge??
Ask our Venus probe modeler and physicist, who is in charge of GISS and thinks coal trains are the same as Holocaust Trains in the Third Reich, James Hansen!!!
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

“…Venus is hot because it was recently formed.”
Despite my earlier linking to a Velikovsky fan page, I don’t think the science shows he was correct. It would be more accurate to say that Venus is hot because its *surface* was recently formed (in geological timescales). Surface cratering (or lack thereof)indicates a very young surface. Due to the lack of tectonic activity (which allows gradual heat loss on Earth) the planet is believed to have been entirely molten within the last five hundred million years.

Yes, To compare the surface temperature of Venus to the Surface temperature of Jupiter you would have to go down about 57000km (trough Jupiter’s “Atmosphere” to reach the mostly solid/liquid surface at which point the temperature is as high as 24000K. A good deal warmer than Venus and a bit more pressure too.

Core size of Venus would have a great deal to do with magnetic field and speed of rotation. No core like the moon is no more rotation. Small core on a big planet would slow faster with the frictional load.

Ian L. McQueen says:
May 6, 2010 at 3:00 pm
Steve-
Interesting article. But I wonder why the pressure is so high.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * *
I also wondered why the pressure is so high. I found that the mass of the atmosphere of Venus is larger than that of the Earth by a factor of 100. Venus has about ~4.8X10^20kg whereas the Earth has about 5.1X10^18kg. The compression of the gas would be higher with more mass and gravitational attraction, thus the higher pressure. Similarly, the atmosphere of Earth has more mass than the Mars by a factor of 100. Again Earth has about 5.1X10^18kg whereas Mars has about ~2.5X10^16kg. With less compression on Mars, its pressure would be less than the Earth’s pressure.
Warren

Chad Woodburn says:
May 6, 2010 at 2:12 pm
I have two questions. Not being a scientist, I am well aware that my two questions might be silly, but I’d really like to know the answers.
1. Why, if CO2 keeps certain wavelengths of radiative heat inside our atmosphere (creating a positive feedback) does it not also keep an equal amount from coming into the atmosphere in the first place (creating a negative feedback like clouds)?
2. It is my understanding that CO2 only traps radiation within a narrow spectrum of radiation. While measurements of the total heat coming into the atmosphere from the sun are measured in total watts per meter squared, does the composition of that radiation vary? If the amount of radiation that can be trapped by CO2 varies as much as the solar dynamics vary (active sun, passive sun, solar wind, cooling stars, etc.), do the models track for that in making their calculations for heat trapping by CO2 and the rest of the variations in global temperature?
________________________________________________________________________
Take a look at the graph in the post. The red curve is the incoming solar radiation and the blue curve is the energy bouncing off the earth’s surface as transmitted by the atmosphere. The purple, blue and black lines are the radiation transmitted from the earth into space; they are calculated using a blackbox assumption based on temperature. The 3 lines represent 3 different temperatures from 210–310 K (–63 to +37 °C) due to the variation of the surface and atmospheric temperature over the earth. The blue area is what escapes into space. Next look at the gray curves. The third one down is CO2. The absorption bands are not in the solar energy curve area except for one. Also note by looking at the top curve that ALL the energy bouncing off the earth’s surface has already been absorbed in the CO2 absorption bands. (that is the logrithmic thingy Steve is talking about) There is a bit of room left at 2um but that is in the sun’s part of the spectra. Adding CO2 is not going to do a darn thing.
One look at that graph convinced me (a chemist) this was nothing but a political money making scheme. If the CO2 already in the atmosphere has already absorbed all the radiation adding more CO2 just isn’t going to matter much. There is a convoluted explanation about one molecule re-radiating and the additional molecules absorbing the same energy a second and third time. However think about it. The actual curve shows the energy is not getting transmitted from the atmosphere at those wavelengths at all. How can more CO2 effect that blue curve???
It is not quite as simple as that. Here is one explanation http://www.udel.edu/Geography/DeLiberty/Geog474/geog474_energy_interact.html
And the other side of the debate: http://landshape.org/dokuwiki/doku.php?id=introduction
Hope that helps.

Could the pressure be an effect of the heat rather than the heat being caused by the temperature?
With regards to Jupiter, wikipedia says: ” The amount of heat produced inside the planet is nearly equal to the total solar radiation it receives.[26] This additional heat radiation is generated by the Kelvin-Helmholtz mechanism through adiabatic contraction. This process results in the planet shrinking by about 2 cm each year.[27] When it was first formed, Jupiter was much hotter and was about twice its current diameter”
There’s no mention of pressure itself generating heat, only absorbed solar radiation and heat generated through the planet shrinking.

The temperature profile on Venus stays very close to the adiabatic lapse rate of CO2, which has nothing to do with IR radiation, just the coefficient of specific heat and constant pressure. In Carl Sagan’s 1967 paper on the surface temperature of Venus, prior to any measurments of it, he got it right to within 50C or so just based on the cloud top temperature and the depth of the atmosphere. He also showed that the surface temperature would be hotter if the atmosphere was nitrogen instead of CO2, due to the differing coefficient of specific heat at constant pressure.

re- kuhnkat says:
May 6, 2010 at 3:32 pm
“If Venus is hot because of the atmospheric pressure, Jupiter, Saturn, Neptune, and Uranu should be warmer shouldn’t they??”
Jupiter is blazin’ hot. Some info on Jupiter-
top of atmosphere is at -145 C
50 km thick layer of clouds, followed by 21000 km of H2, He, transitioning to liquid, followed by 40,000 km of metallic liquid H2, followed by possible solid rocky core (surface).
Surface pressure of several million atmospheres.
Surface temperature estimated at 24,000 – 30,000 C. Nowhere near the Gorian crustal Earth temperature of a few million degrees (C, F, K, R, take your pick), but still pretty hot.
Adiabatic lapse rate of Jovian atmosphere is about 2 C/km.
Earth is 6 – 10 C/km.
Venus is 10 C/km.
Mars is 4.5 C/km.
Steve Goddard is simply repeating the standard lapse rate calculation, given for adiabatic case as Gamma=g/Cp, where g is gravitational constant and Cp is the specific heat of the atmosphere.
If you want a runaway Greenhouse here on Earth, you need to somehow boost the atmospheric pressure by a factor of 20 or more. Good luck with that.
Its simply stunning that Venusian expert Hansen continues to spout runaway Greenhouse drivel due to anthro emissions as being remotely possible here on Earth.

See Soden and Held.
http://www.gfdl.noaa.gov/bibliography/related_files/annrev00.pdf

One of the things overlooked is that Venus has an opaque atmosphere. That means that energy can only be radiated from the very edge of the atmosphere, unlike Earth, where a photon can fire out from just about anywhere from the surface upwards. That makes the effective surface area of Earth (and Mars) very large, and the effective surface area of Venus very small in comparison.
Combine this with the increased albedo of Venus – recognising that the whiter a surface, the less it radiates – and you can see that Venus probably has a hard time dumping heat, especially in comparison to Earth and Mars.
A little bit of geothermal energy probably goes a long way there – I’m not surprised the surface periodically melts.

@ kramer says:
May 6, 2010 at 2:46 pm
I think the 3rd poster (Curiousgeorge ) has a good point.
Well, thanks; but the point was merely to get people thinking a bit. I know full well that Venus does not behave as a cylinder does. It has sources of energy, including tidal effects, possibly some internal radiation, etc. as well as solar heating & volcanism that effectively keep those gas molecules moving and therefore keep the energy level up. And that’s really what we’re talking about here – energy.
It’s theorized that Titan has liquid water under it’s miles of ice due to heating from the tidal effects of Jupiter, so Solar tidal effects may not be an insignificant factor on Venus, especially given it’s slow rotation.

You might want to make a calculation of “radiation transmitted by the atmosphere” on Venus (as shown above for Earth); You will be surprised by what you see. There is essentially as much water (absolute) on Venus as on earth (yes it is a smaller fraction of the atmosphere, but the atmosphere is ~100 times more massive); in addition, the much higher pressures broaden the IR transitions (both for water and CO2) producing a very thick greenhouse. The presence of sulfur dioxide and sulfuric acid add additional opacity.

phlogiston says:
May 6, 2010 at 3:35 pm
The distance from the Sun has to do how much energy reaches a planet.
What happens from there is the subject.
Magnetic field vs how much early Solar Wind scouring has taken place. Mass counts as radioactive material decay can internally heat a planet. Have a look at the density of and mass of the inner planets.

Savante says:
“There is essentially as much water (absolute) on Venus as on earth”
Are you sure about this…..i take it this isnt counting H2SO4 as water… can you cite a source please?

OT:
I was watching UK Channel Four’s Alternative Election Night programme and they brought on trendy, all-over-telly-at-the-moment, Prof. Brian Cox and asked him what we SHOULD be worried about. He had a list of five things and as I was expecting the obligatory CAGW, probably as No.1 “threat”, I frankly zoned out a bit, but shockingly, amongst super volcanoes, plagues and asteroids, I don’t think there was a single mention of global warming. Even when he came to his No 1, human stupidity, I didn’t hear anything about AGW.
Did my ears deceive me? Anyone else catch this? Doesn’t he realise that even the fact of not mentioning AGW will cause him to be banished to the wilderness – or is he a closet sceptic?
Surely if he was any kind of believer, AGW would be in his top 5 threats to humanity?
I know it sounds like a minor point but, given the non-stop gushing about AGW on British TV this was genuinely a surprise.

Steve,
Thanks and that would mean that while CO2 on Venus is a fifteenth the density of water, air on earth (at 1.2 kg/m3) is only about one *fiftieth* the density of CO2 on Venus. I wonder if you’d call movement of something that heavy – a wind or a current. I also wonder what convective processes would be like on Venus.

http://www.ilovemycarbondioxide.com/pdf/Rethinking_the_greenhouse_effect.pdf

I had to explain this to a few people while working with turbos, so let me try to throw some plain English explanations into the mix.
When you compress ambient air with a turbocharger, it gets hot. Really hot. Most people simply use the logic that the turbo is hot (driven by exhaust gas), therefore it heats the air. This isn’t even remotely close, since the air isn’t in contact with the blades nearly long enough to heat it much. What is happening is that all of the energy that was already in the air is now packed into a smaller space, thus there is more energy in the same space, thus it is warmer.
And by warmer, I mean really warmer, hundreds of degrees. This is why turbo cars use an intercooler, a mini radiator that lets the compressed air radiate much of that heat before it gets into the engine.
The post above about compressing air into a bottle heating it but then later it’s cool? The simple reason is that the energy has radiated away. If you compress air into a thermally isolated chamber it will remain warmer (don’t try a Thermos, they can’t take much pressure… voice of experience).
As we all know, the atmosphere of Earth holds only a tiny fraction of the energy that the oceans do. The exact same is true of the Venusian atmosphere: it is under a higher pressure and therefore CAN hold more energy. So it does. And it gets that energy from the local star. Who knows how long it has taken to reach its current equilibrium? Are there Venusian Climatologists right now worried about 10K temperature variations over the last century?
Ironically, we use the stereotype of Mars being red, angry, male, and Venus being gentle, mellow, female. In actuality Mars is cold, barren, dull, and Venus is hot, roiling, active.

Earth’s atmosphere has 1,000 times the concentration of water as Venus. Venus has only 90 times as much atmosphere. That means that earth has 10 times as much water stored in the atmosphere as Venus, plus a massive buffer of excess water in the oceans.

“It’s theorized that Titan has liquid water under it’s miles of ice due to heating from the tidal effects of Jupiter…”
I doubt there are any such theories. Titan orbits Saturn.
Interestingly, Titan has a surface atmospheric pressure 60% greater than Earth’s and the temperature is minus 178C. Other Saturnian moons with no atmosphere at all have average temperatures only about ten degrees colder. Without a heat source (internal or external), atmospheric pressure contributes little in and of itself.

I guess the high pressure at the bottom of the Ocean explains why it is so hot down there…

Hi Steven
If the atmosphere were to behave as an ideal gas the pressure cannot determine the long-term temperature. The atmospheric pressure at the planet surface would be determined by the total weight of the atmosphere divided by the total area of the planet. If the atmosphere is losing more heat by radiation than it receives from all sources (the sun plus any flow from a hot interior) then the atmosphere will cool. As it cools it will contract so that its volume decreases. The high pressure does not determine the temperature. Temperature decreases with altitude in the troposphere of a planetary atmosphere because heat is being radiated more from a higher level so a negative temperature gradient is established. I rather fear that your article will give the CAGW alarmists an avenue to attack us.
Kind regards, DougB

Here is the part that still confuses me. Looking at the Radiation Transmitted by the Atmosphere chart. At the Wavelenghs that CO2 absorbs radiation, no radiation escapes the earth. How does adding more CO2 decrease the outgoing radiation more that it does.
It is like an assembly like with multicolored M&M going down it. If one person is removing red M&Ms. Lots of red M&Ms get through. With each added person, fewer get through. At some point, the odds of a red M&M getting through is very small.
Is there any measured data that says some of the radiation in CO2 absorbing wavelengths are actually getting through? If not, how can increasing CO2 levels capture more outgoing radiation?

Bill Illis @5:22
“Generally, I think pressure and, in effect, the work being done by gravity, has not been taken into account in global warming theory and someone needs to put it back in.”
Right on. I am so sick of seeing all these discussions that focus on only one variable, like radiation.
Those folks who keep saying that AGW is “proven” with basic physics need to explain some anomalies, and it is my experience that they are reluctant to do that. For example, please provide a K&T-style “radiation equilibrium diagram” for Fiji! I guess Neoscience allows folks to totally ignore empirical evidence.

Stephen Goldstein says:
May 6, 2010 at 1:18 pm
“…Say I connect a SUBA diver’s air tank to a compressor and “fill” the tank with compressed air. I ask how come the tank is warm and you reply “because it has an extremely high pressure.” Okay, but I come back in an hour, the gauge still reads 3000psi but the tank is no longer warm. How come? The gas is still at an extremely high pressure…”
Because the cylinder won’t be at 3000psi when you come back. The ideal gas law still applies: PV=nRT. You haven’t changed V (entire cylinder). You haven’t changed n (amount of stuff, i.e. moles). You haven’t changed R (material properties of the stuff). You have changed T (lower) and so you have changed P. Having filled SCUBA tanks at my dad’s shop lo’ the many years ago I can attest to this. Tanks were filled in a bath of water to draw the heat of compression off as quickly as possible and were only considered full when they measured 3000psi (or 2400 depending on whether they were aluminum or steel) and were only moderately warm to the touch. If we hadn’t done that we would have had some pissed off customers who didn’t get the full amount of air they’d paid for.
Having said that I’m in the camp that the application of the ideal gas law doesn’t explain Venus. Take away the sun or perhaps its own vulcanism and Venus would have to cool through radiation to the local background, i.e. ~4K, and the pressure of its atmosphere would not maintain its temperature indefinitely, nor would the pressure or volume remain constant.

No, no, no!!! I’m not talking about a lure spinner. I am taking about the rod. A baitcasting rod has a trigger on it (a place for parts of your hand so you can use other parts to slow down the line as you land that fat worm just where you want it). A spinning rod doesn’t have this thorn like feature under the rod. But most baitcasting rods are made for bass fishing (a fat heavy fish) and are usually made for 8+ pound test weight (think log size girthy rod, not twig size skinny rod). I want an ultralight baitcasting rod (twig size skinny and flexible) with the trigger and I want it to be short (less than 7 ft), not the usual length for such a rod. I want to use 4 to 8 lb test. Any baitcasting rod I have found is too long and too telephone pole stiff for trout.
See???? I am hyperventilating again!!!!! Come on you guys!! You’re GUYS! You should know this stuff!!!!

Nick:
““No such place exists, but if it did – it would be extremely hot, like Venus.”
No, it wouldn’t, not without a greenhouse effect. A surface at 700K emits about 12,000 W/m2. Incoming sunlight, averaged over surface area, on Venus is about 400 W/m2. If the atmosphere is transparent to thermal IR, that 12,000 W/m2 would just go out to space and sunlight couldn’t possibly balance it. The surface would cool. …”
Nick, I’m still waiting for an “equilibrium radiation balance diagram” for Fiji (K&T play around with an “average,” which means absolutely nothing when radiation varies as T^4–it means nothing for a real “spot” on Earth).
Now, in that comfortable clime of Fiji, there is adequate radiation JUST from the water to “explain” the air temperature year-around. The damn Sun just keeps heating the water up each day. The “backradiation” is not needed, and, indeed, if it were employed in the diagram, it would make the temperatures so high that the Fiji People would be fried. The GHG effect is an apparition, methinks. Can you explain this anomaly?
I await your diagram.

Smokey
There is essentially no difference in surface temperature between the day and night sides of Venus.

Misconception Number 1: That CO2 forcing is logarithmic at very high concentrations.
Reality: At very low concentrations CO2 forcing is linear. It becomes logarithmic when saturation of the central absorption line is reached, and increased forcing depends on the wings of the lines (and pressure broadening). However, as concentrations continue to increase, minor absorption lines become sufficiently important in comparison to the wings of the major lines that the increased absorption of CO2 is mostly dependent on the minor lines, and the forcing of CO2 increases linearly with concentration again.
Misconception 2: Lack of Energy Balance thinking.
Two examples have been presented: 1: Titan, despite high pressures, is very cold. A similar thought experiment would be what would happen to Venus if we turned the Sun off – I hope the obvious answer would be that Venus’ temperature would quickly drop to whatever could be supported by internal tectonic/volcanic heating (which wouldn’t be much).
2: Venus with a totally transparent atmosphere: the surface would radiate directly to space. As Nick Stokes pointed out, in such a case, in equilibrium the radiation out from the surface CANNOT be larger than the radiation the surface receives (plus any internal heating): therefore, it doesn’t matter how many atmospheres of the perfectly transparent gas there are, the surface temperature will be solely determined by that radiation.
A simple example of GHG forcing experienced in daily life: humid nights compared to dry nights: humid nights are warm, dry nights are cold. This has nothing to do with temperature, and a lot to do with outgoing radiation and GHG absorption (in this case, water vapor). (it is even more obvious with clouds, but clouds are sufficiently different from a gas that it isn’t as clean a comparison).
-Dave

Stevengoddard,
Thanks for your stimulating article!
With an Average temperature: 737 K (464 C) it has left me decadaly incredulous that it could be as a sole consequence of a greenhouse effect. However, I think it has to be part of the story from the following considerations:
1) A Soviet probe (s?) reported surprising brightness in visible light at the surface, including good quality photos. (Although there was some argument that they could not be genuine photos because of pronounced shadows around the rocks)
2) Regardless of the source of the energy, at 737K there would be significantly greater radiation from the surface compared with Earth, (as a consequence of T to the fourth power; moving towards near infrared in the Planck curve)
3) The CO2 at ~90 bars is not alone in high absorption capability. The PPMV of H2O at 20 is low percentage wise, but when amplified by 90 bars, that becomes significant.
4) Although ~40% of sunlight is near infrared, this appears to be absorbed high in the atmosphere, above around 60Km, as evidenced by diurnal variations; see below. This would have the effect of reducing the T gradient between the surface and the mid or upper atmosphere, which would slow heat escape a little. (See links below in item 9)
Other stuff:
5) If there is an internal heat source within Venus, (like on Earth), with such a high surface T and maybe an insulation effect of very dense high specific heat CO2, the rapid fall-off of underground temperature towards the surface as seen on Earth would be less pronounced. (also no H20 oceans with evaporative cooling)
6) One of the Soviet probes was reported to have picked-up unusual methane, part way through descent, that was suggested to have been a volcano plume.
7) Although currently reported as dormant, there is agreement on past volcanic activity
8) Khiel and Trenberth/IPCC have claimed that the greatest heat loss from the surface on Earth is from evapo-transpiration, which cannot occur on Venus.
9) This study shows that the temperature in the atmosphere is a nice comfortable 20C at 54 Km. Here’s something interesting and more recent from ESA.
10) There is even less known about Venus than there is of Earth, and I guess the dynamics in the atmosphere are largely speculative.

Shucks, I guess no “radiation cartoons” for Fiji are forthcoming. It seems that the cartoons only work for “average” conditions?” What is really disconcerting is the silence on this subject. Can someone please put me in my place? LOL.

you don’t think it may have something to do with the fact that there are two phase transitions within Earths day/night temperature cycle?
Pump heat into the Earth during the day and you convert water from liquid to gas, and increase the air pressure. At night the gaseous water is converted into liquid water, dropping pressure.

Goddard: If you are gonna make this kind of post, I think you owe me an answer for my comment at : May 6, 2010 at 3:58 pm:
Just what is your take on the “greenhouse effect?”

I have been waiting for the appropriate time to post this NASA link. You have to read to near the end for the AGW propaganda. There is a slight change from the last time I looked at this (a week or so ago.) One of the byline authors name has been removed, probably the source of the moonbattery. It was for someone at that Arctic Ice Institute thingy of NASAs ( can’t remember the exact name). What she was doing writing up a piece about Venus is anyone’s guess. The NASA editors must have thought it looked suspicious, so removed her name.
http://www.nasa.gov/topics/solarsystem/features/magellan20100408.html