Climate Models Wipe out Life in Trappist-1 Solar System!!!

Guest post by David Middleton

They must have used the RCP 8.5 Death Star…

Trappist1

The announcement of the Trappist-1 system in February, with seven rocky planets orbiting an ultracool dwarf star, sent ripples of excitement through astrobiologists everywhere.

At least three of the planets looked like they were within the star’s “habitable zone” – the region in which water will remain liquid. On that level, at least, the trio seemed like very good candidates for hosting life.

Now, however, 3D climate modelling is dampening expectations, suggesting that at most only one of Trappist-1’s satellites could support life.

The modelling has been completed by Eric Wolf from the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics at the University of Colorado, Boulder. In doing so, he made the assumption that the seven planets are – or had once been – ocean-covered, with atmospheres comprising nitrogen, carbon-dioxide and water vapour. Orbital and geophysical properties were derived or deduced from collected data.

When Wolf ran the numbers, the results were rather depressing.

“Model results indicate that the inner three planets presently reside interior to the inner edge of the traditional liquid water habitable zone,” he writes in a paper lodged on pre-print site arxiv.

“Thus if water ever existed on the inner planets, they would have undergone a runaway greenhouse and lost their water to space, leaving them dry today.”

The outer three planets, he adds, “fall beyond the maximum CO2 greenhouse outer edge of the habitable zone” and will have entered a lifeless snowball state.

Thus, only the middle planet remains a candidate for hosting life. It could maintain “at least some habitable surface”, Wolf notes, depending on the atmospheric nitrogen levels. If the planet is, in fact, covered in ocean, then “near present day Earth surface temperatures can be maintained”.

[…]

Cosmos

Don’t get me wrong, I find the entire field of exoplanetary science and the Kepler mission to be really cool.  The application of a remote sensing method to detect and even describe likely planetary bodies in other solar systems is just about the coolest science on this planet… But, are they really “discovering” exoplanets?  It seems to me that this would be analogous to oil companies booking reserves on the basis of high-quality seismic hydrocarbon indicators, without ever drilling them.

Clearly, there are a series of anomalies in the Trappist-1 system which could very well be planets in the habitable zone… But, isn’t this an case of jumping the gun?

NEWS & TECHNOLOGY 1 March 2017

How we’re already seeking life on TRAPPIST-1’s rocky planets

By Leah Crane and Joshua Sokol

WE ARE already taking the first steps toward learning if there could be life on TRAPPIST-1’s newly discovered planets – and what that life might look like.

Last week, a team led by Michaël Gillon at Belgium’s University of Liege announced that TRAPPIST-1, a small, faint star some 40 light years away, has four more rocky planets to join the three we already knew about.

All are less than 20 per cent bigger than Earth, and all orbit well within the distance at which Mercury circles our sun. Despite this closeness, the planets may be candidates to search for life. That’s because TRAPPIST-1 is much smaller and dimmer than the sun, so three of the planets may be cool enough to host liquid water on the surface, putting them in the habitable zone (see diagram).
[…]

Without even actually seeing the Trappist-1 system, it appears that the exoplanetary scientists discovered extraterrestrial life capable of a rudimentary form of space travel, only to have that life wiped out by climate models… Cue the guy from the Hindenburg broadcast…

As usual, any and all sarcasm was purely intentional.

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Chimp
March 21, 2017 3:11 pm

Since some scientists imagine that microbes could have hitched rides on impact ejecta from Mars to Earth, similar space travel among those closely-packed planets seems plausible.

Chimp
Reply to  Chimp
March 21, 2017 3:11 pm

Actually nanobes.

Bryan A
Reply to  Chimp
March 21, 2017 8:18 pm

I think there is likely zero chance for life of any kind to be found there.
Why???
The star is a white dwarf. So at some point in its life it was more like the sun. It must have gone through the red giant phase of it’s evolution earlier. ALL of the planets currently reside inside what would be the orbital zone of Mercury. Being that close to their host star, the planets would have been scorched by the stellar envelope during the red giant phase.
It is highly likely that all of the atmospheres and planetary water sources of all seven planets were removed during the red giant phase

Chimp
Reply to  Chimp
March 21, 2017 8:34 pm

Bryan,

It’s not a white dwarf. It’s a red dwarf.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stellar_classification#Class_M

Jeff Alberts
Reply to  Chimp
March 21, 2017 10:04 pm

Rimmer the Climate Modeller

Bryan A
Reply to  Chimp
March 21, 2017 10:30 pm

Thanks for the info Chimp. I was looking at the WIKI page and misread “Ultra cool dwarf” as “Ultra cool white dwarf” I should have delved deeper into the article. The M class didn’t even register, I guess multitasking isn’t a strong suit

Reply to  Chimp
March 22, 2017 3:54 am

“I think there is likely zero chance for life of any kind to be found there.
Why???”

Cause you didnt read more and comment less

Bill Marsh
Editor
Reply to  Chimp
March 22, 2017 4:18 am

From the wiki page (please forgive citing Wiki) an ultracool dwarf can be “M-dwarf late-type stars, at the threshold of L4 dwarf stars. They form a heterogeneous group which includes stars of very low mass and brown dwarfs.” Harvard-Smithsonian Astrophysics (much more comfortable with this reference) describes a “late-M dwarf” as “M and L dwarfs are red”.

Bryan A
Reply to  Chimp
March 22, 2017 9:50 am

So now I think there is a 0.001% chance of life being there and a zero% chance of us finding it within 50 lifetimes

Bryan A
Reply to  Chimp
March 22, 2017 12:30 pm

Probably more like 0.0000000000001 unless Mosher is there then reset back to absolute zero

Chimp
Reply to  Chimp
March 23, 2017 10:07 am

Bryan,

You weren’t far off, because Wolf, the climate modeler, points out that, to get to its current ultracool red dwarf state, TRAPPIST-1 must have gone through a super-luminous phase before its main sequence.

That would mean for as long as a billion years, TRAPPIST-1e was subjected to intense stellar radiation, and could have “lost up to ~7 Earth oceans of water.”

You’ll love this part of the article linked below:

“Wolf does, however, note that this is merely the first in many climate models that the planets will be tested against.

“It would be unfair to be harsh on NASA for the original estimate. Wolf says the estimates of “equilibrium temperatures below ~400 K” does suggest “Goldilocks” temperatures, but that equilibrium is a “rudimentary” measure, not a climate model.”

https://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/03/23/trappist1_planetsclimate_model_suggests_no_life/

Chimp
Reply to  Chimp
March 23, 2017 10:17 am

But it’s possible that the planets formed farther out from the star when it was young and throwing radiation tantrums, then migrated inward, in which case planet 1e might still harbor life. Odds are however long, IMO.

ferdberple
Reply to  Chimp
March 21, 2017 7:07 pm

unless they know the surface pressure on the planet they cannot know the surface temperature. regardless of GHG content, any convecting atmosphere will develop a lapse rate, that cools the upper atmosphere and warms the lower atmosphere. otherwise, the atmosphere will be isothermal.

on earth, the surface warming due convection and the lapse rate is:

5km = center of mass of convecting atmosphere
6.5C/km = lapse rate due to gravity (KE/PE) and condensation of water

5km X 6.5C\km = 32.5 C

note: climate science mistakenly believes that this 33C of warming is due to GHG. In point of fact, since only KE is included in temperature, by converting between KE and PE, convection changes the vertical temperature of the atmosphere and thus the surface. On Venus, with a surface pressure of 90 atmospheres, the surface warming due to convection is much greater. On Mars, with a much lower surface pressure,m the surface warming due to convection is much less.

Reply to  ferdberple
March 21, 2017 9:32 pm

The 33 degree C of warming above what would be the temperature without an atmosphere requires greenhouse gases. For that matter, an atmosphere without greenhouse gases resists convection – greenhouse gases cooling the top of the troposphere and warming the surface and bottom of the troposphere is the main cause of the convection. Also, without greenhouse gases, the surface would have the same temperature (4th root of mean T^4 being the same on average) as if there was no atmosphere at all. Also without greenhouse gases, all localized convection would be confined to very low altitudes (meaning a tropopause close to the surface) and be forced by wind (which would be light) generated by planetary-scale (although very thin) convection cells.

Mike McMillan
Reply to  ferdberple
March 21, 2017 10:45 pm

Lapse rates do not require greenhouse gasses. They work by entirely different principles.
Greenhouse gasses raise temperature by slowing radiative cooling. The lapse rate warms by shuffling any heat in the atmosphere downward through transfer of kinetic energy when molecules bump into each other, no radiation involved. No convection needed unless temperatures stray off the lapse rate, then only enough to restore the profile.

sludge
Reply to  ferdberple
March 22, 2017 12:11 am

“on earth, the surface warming due convection and the lapse rate is”

Wait…what?

Are you saying that air that absorbs heat from the surface, then cools down and sinks, warm the surface?
Hos about a boiling pot of water, do you think that the water that heats up at the bortom and rise to the surface, also heats the bottom of the pot?

Greg
Reply to  ferdberple
March 22, 2017 2:23 am

The whole thing is a farce, They can not even get this planet’s climate modelled correctly with the massive amount of data available on it and they have virtually NO information on exo-planets in Trappist-1. Periodic ripples in intensity of the light coming from that star. It’s like archaeologists speculations when they find odd looking stone and spin a whole civilisation around, with essential spicy bits about “fertility symbols” and human sacrifices.

This yet more hubris from climate modellers who refuse to accept they are a waste of time and money and thing they can bolster the credibility of spurious climate predictions by pretending that they can now model how exo-planets behave.

Leonard Weinstein
Reply to  ferdberple
March 22, 2017 4:37 am

ferd, the presence of an atmosphere results in a temperature gradient just due to the exchange of potential energy with kinetic energy of the gas due to gravity. However, this lapse rate determines the change in temperature with altitude (a gradient), not the absolute magnitude of the temperature. The absolute magnitude is found from the absorbed solar radiation balance with outgoing radiation, but the average location in the atmosphere where outgoing radiation to space occurs sets the location in the atmosphere where the magnitude of the temperature derived from absorbed solar radiation is determined. The larger the amount of greenhouse gases, the higher is the altitude for average location of radiation to space, and thus the higher surface temperature.

higley7
Reply to  ferdberple
March 22, 2017 5:02 am

ferdberple, you are exactly right. It is the atmospheric pressure that determines the lower atmospheric pressure and not the gas composition. We need to keep correcting them when they insist that Venus is a runaway greenhouse situation.

““Thus if water ever existed on the inner planets, they would have undergone a runaway greenhouse and lost their water to space, leaving them dry today.””

Since there is no such thing as a runaway greenhouse effect, which is a climate alarmist junk-science creation, it is nice to know that these planets have the making for originating photosynthesis.

We the life there evolves far enough, maybe they can sue the climate modelers for misrepresenting them to a whole other planet’s population. Libel.

Reply to  ferdberple
March 22, 2017 6:19 am

Glad to see that the gravitational cause of atmospheric “lapse rate” in the absence of any quantitative equations explaining it in terms of Hansen’s GHG claims is becoming more common . I would just say , I don’t think convection is necessary . It will only occur if a significant amount of radiant energy reaches the planetary surface to be thermalized there .

Donald , I have never seen anything but the most amateurish , crude and confused “explanations” of the “33c” GHG meme . Simply just the bald assertion you make in your first sentence .

It is essentially a spectral filtering argument based on the crudest of computations the purveyors of which appear not to even understand the generalization of the computation to arbitrary spectra . The notion fails by an order of magnitude for any possible spectra when applied to Venus’s surface temperature 2.25 times that of a gray body in orbit next to it .

poitsplace
Reply to  ferdberple
March 22, 2017 6:46 am

Bob, I think you’re forgetting that even with a thick, cloudy atmosphere, the planet usually needs to get rid of heat. That’s the reason Venus is so hot. The temperature at the ground isn’t magically concentrated solar energy from our sun…its heat from the core of the planet.

And on a side note related to the runaway greenhouse effect. The atmosphere of venus has about 50X the mass of earth’s atmosphere/oceans combined. So venus is not so much “runaway” as “never run down”. There’s likely always been “too much” of an atmosphere.

Chimp
Reply to  ferdberple
March 22, 2017 12:48 pm

Poit,

Here are mass estimates for Venus’ atmosphere and Earth’s atmosphere and oceans:

Mass of V atmsp: 4.8 × 10^20 kg
Mass of E atmsp: 5.3 × 10^18 kg
Mass of E ocean: 1.4 × 10^21 kg

Thus, Earth’s oceans alone are almost three times as massive as Venus’ atmosphere, which is indeed a lot more massive than Earth’s.

poitsplace
Reply to  ferdberple
March 22, 2017 4:08 pm

Doh, apparently I suck at noticing the units.

Tom Halla
March 21, 2017 3:19 pm

That close in, there might be tidal lock and very slow rotation periods. How that would affect climate I don’t know.

Chimp
Reply to  Tom Halla
March 21, 2017 3:23 pm

There is definitely tidal lock.

The climatic effects would depend upon atmospheric circulation, if any. The dark side might not be too frigid for life if “air” from the light side regularly passed over it.

Chimp
Reply to  Chimp
March 21, 2017 3:34 pm

This study found tidal lock probable for all seven, with resonance for at least six:

http://www.eso.org/public/archives/releases/sciencepapers/eso1706/eso1706a.pdf

If they have atmospheres, winds would be high, due to temperature difference between sides.

Life would be challenging that close even to a dim little star, due to UV irradiation and flares.

Bill Illis
Reply to  Chimp
March 21, 2017 5:24 pm

Tidal lock means the ocean boils away on the Sun-facing side (until solar energy falls to lower level – say 400 W/m2 – now the goldilocks zone is actually farther out than assumed). Less than that and the oceans boil away and you have a big thick atmosphere and it gets even hotter and every volatile in the crust also gets boiled away and the atmosphere becomes even thicker again.

This is what happened to Venus regardless of what the climate scientists like to pretend. Venus’ slow rotation rate means the oceans never made it past the first sunrise and sunset of the first day (or at least, the oceans boiled away whenever the rotation became slow enough – there are two explanations for the slow rotation, an impactor hit Venus just like the one that hit Earth in the moon creation event or resonance with the Sun’s gravity slowed it down).

Greg
Reply to  Chimp
March 22, 2017 2:28 am

with its axis of ration at 177 degrees to the orbital plane ( ie it’s spinning the wrong way ) I would have thought that impact was the more likely option.

Chimp
Reply to  Chimp
March 22, 2017 9:58 am

Bill,

The star is so cool that some of the outer planets could have liquid water on their surfaces. Can’t yet know for sure one way or the other.

March 21, 2017 3:28 pm

Trying to understand the necessary conditions for life from a known sample of N = 1?
The Drake equation is not science.

It’s a fund-raising scheme.

So let people guess whatever they want to raise their funds. It doesn’t just need to raise funds to fund science, after all.
It can fund Climatology instead.

Chimp
Reply to  M Courtney
March 21, 2017 3:35 pm

Assuming an atmosphere and its composition is only a little farther out there than the assumptions made in GCMs for earth.

Assume an atmosphere…

Chimp
Reply to  Chimp
March 21, 2017 4:20 pm

David,

The planets aren’t assumptions, but observations.

Chimp
Reply to  Chimp
March 21, 2017 5:39 pm

David,

There is a number of techniques for finding exoplanets. Among these is direct imaging:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Methods_of_detecting_exoplanets#Direct_imaging

Granted, the majority of those confirmed have been by other techniques.

Stephen Richards
Reply to  Chimp
March 22, 2017 2:18 am

They are assumptions. They can see nothing of the planets at all. They claim a lot because ………Funding

Greg
Reply to  Chimp
March 22, 2017 2:32 am

Yes. Funding for more climate modelling which they are trying boost the credibility of by pretending that they can use it work out how exo-planets works, despite the fact that they don’t even understand how this one works.

Greg
Reply to  Chimp
March 22, 2017 2:33 am

They have the added advantage with this game that it will be centuries before their spurious claims can be shown for what they are.

Reply to  M Courtney
March 21, 2017 4:28 pm

The Drake equation is not science.

Agreed. Also it is possible that some of the properties that make Earth capable of hosting life at this time might have originated in an accidental impact with another planet early on. If this is true, then only certain planets with a particular collision history might host life and that could be a very reduced subsample.

Earth might not be your typical rocky planet.

Steve Ta
Reply to  Javier
March 22, 2017 5:03 am

Our moon is exceptional as well – there have been theories of life that depended on tidal mixing of ocean and atmosphere.

jorgekafkazar
Reply to  M Courtney
March 21, 2017 5:05 pm

The Drake “Equation” is neither science nor math. It’s more properly referred to as the Drake Cocktail Napkin Doodle.

D. J. Hawkins
Reply to  jorgekafkazar
March 22, 2017 10:02 am

There is nothing wrong with the Drake Equation as a concept. It’s when you start to fill in (guess) the numbers that you get into trouble. Current exoplanet searches are helping to narrow down a couple of the parameters, but it’s a long, long, way to go.

Ben of Houston
Reply to  M Courtney
March 21, 2017 6:30 pm

I have to agree. The assumptions are staggeringly terracentric. IF they have the same composition as our planetary system and IF they have liquid water they might have life similar to our own. How can we possibly know that they don’t have life completely alien to our own conception? The simplest proven possibility are Microbes deep in the crust fueled by internal volcanic activity. That exists on our own planet, and aren’t even considered as a possibility in this.

I’m reminded of early science fiction believing that all aliens would resemble humans.

D. J. Hawkins
Reply to  Ben of Houston
March 24, 2017 12:40 pm

You do realize that the purpose of the Drake Equation was specifically an exercise in trying to figure out how many civilizations “like us” there might be? It’s supposed to be terracentric.

March 21, 2017 3:29 pm

So they use climate models that don’t work on earth to project to planets that we know close to zero about. Then they have the hide to call it science.

Rhoda Klapp
March 21, 2017 3:34 pm

This is a failure of imagination. You can’t write the rules for life on a planet of which you know nothing.

NW sage
Reply to  Rhoda Klapp
March 21, 2017 4:59 pm

Of course you can – these scientists are…..Gods!

more ch
Reply to  Rhoda Klapp
March 21, 2017 5:06 pm

On the contrary, its an excess of it, imagination is all you have when you know nothing!

Rhoda R
Reply to  Rhoda Klapp
March 21, 2017 6:01 pm

Disagree. It is the triumph of imagination…it is a failure of science.

Zeke
March 21, 2017 3:51 pm

“The outer three planets, he adds, “fall beyond the maximum CO2 greenhouse outer edge of the habitable zone” and will have entered a lifeless snowball state.”

It’s sure a good thing that dynamos spontaneously generate themselves inside of nearly every celestial orb, no matter what its composition.

Steve from Rockwood
March 21, 2017 3:51 pm

They can’t even model the planet they live on, but planets 34 light years away are no problem?

Bill Marsh
Editor
Reply to  Steve from Rockwood
March 22, 2017 4:23 am

and planets that no one has actually seen with atmospheres that may or may not exist

commieBob
March 21, 2017 3:51 pm

Thus if water ever existed on the inner planets, they would have undergone a runaway greenhouse and lost their water to space, leaving them dry today.

Ah, yes, that explains why Venus is a dry arid waste and Mars is a lush tropical paradise.

I still hold out hope for life on moons of Jupiter and Saturn. link

donb
Reply to  commieBob
March 21, 2017 5:16 pm

Venus’ atmosphere is not hot enough for water to directly be lost to space. The upper Venus atmosphere is much cooler than the surface. Venus lost its atmosphere because it has no magnetic field to protect it from solar wind. UV ionized the water molecule and the hydrogen escaped, leaving behind oxygen to react with surface rocks. Same would have occurred on Earth without our magnetic field.

Rhoda R
Reply to  donb
March 21, 2017 6:03 pm

So maybe a pertinent question would be whether any of these planets have a magnetic field or not. If they were/are tidally locked could they even develop a magnetic field?

Bill Marsh
Editor
Reply to  donb
March 22, 2017 4:26 am

“Venus lost its atmosphere”. I think you meant Venus lost it’s water (if it ever had any)? Venus has a rather thick atmosphere, just not one we’d like to breathe.

Ron Williams
March 21, 2017 3:52 pm

Good Grief! I saw the original news reports a few weeks when the discovery was announced and thought that was pretty cool how Kepler can make these discoveries at such a distance. The science is generally there, either through measuring the periodic dimming light of the star, or being able to measure the barrycentric wobble of the mother star by the planets’ orbits tugging gravitationaly on the star.

But then I saw some science articles similar to the ones in the essay, apparently identifying atmospheric composition on the different planets and other such rubbish. I really started thinking that maybe there is just too many graduate students having to publish or perish. If this is what Academia has come to with things like climate change funding for research facilities, then we are in heap load of trouble.

This is what happened in earnest about the time Al Gore made his ‘An Inconvenient Truth’ about CO2 now being the new driver of global warming and climate change. While maybe the aliens won’t be invading anytime soon, it is a wake up call on how quickly science can slide into the gutter and ultimately be disservice to science by allowing such poor oversight on how academic scientific research is actually done through funding. Perhaps it is time to identify which institutions are promoting the claptrap and limit their funding so as only the best hypothesis are elaborated on.

Chimp
Reply to  David Middleton
March 21, 2017 4:24 pm

The planets have been observed. Kepler has discovered 2331 confirmed exoplanets and K2 another 147.

https://www.nasa.gov/kepler/discoveries

Details such as atmospheric composition however have rarely been observed or existence of an atmosphere at all confirmed.

Ron Williams
Reply to  David Middleton
March 21, 2017 5:21 pm

The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), to be launched in October/18 will be located near the Earth–Sun L2 point a million miles out. It may be a real game changer for actual planet viewing with a mirror at 7.9 M compared to Hubble’s 2.4 M mirror. Then just maybe we will get some real atmosphere data. What an exciting time it is to be alive in the science era…climate bs notwithstanding.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Webb_Space_Telescope

Germinio
Reply to  David Middleton
March 21, 2017 8:00 pm

All of which raises an interesting philosophical question which is what counts as a direct observation? Is looking through a microscope a direct observation? What about an electron microscope? Or an atomic force microscope? Similarly when Galileo first used a telescope he had to persuade people that what they were seeing was real and a “direct observation”.

Also does it matter whether or not it is a direct or indirect observation?

Chimp
Reply to  David Middleton
March 21, 2017 8:31 pm

Exoplanet TRAPPIST 1e was found by using the transit method, in which the dimming effect that a planet causes as it crosses in front of its star is measured.

The exoplanet system TRAPPIST-1 is named for The Transiting Planets and Planetesimals Small Telescope (TRAPPIST) in Chile. In May 2016, researchers using TRAPPIST announced they had discovered three planets in the system. Assisted by several ground-based telescopes, including the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope, the Spitzer Space Telescope, an infrared instrument that trails Earth as it orbits the sun (like Kepler), confirmed the existence of two of these planets and discovered five additional ones, increasing the number of known planets in the system to seven.

Geronimo
Reply to  David Middleton
March 21, 2017 10:22 pm

What is the difference between visual and electromagnetic detection? Light is an
electromagnetic wave? What about an IR camera? Is that direct or indirect?

Zeke
March 21, 2017 3:57 pm

“…microbes might be migrating between several of them.”

Microbe space travel would provide plenty of opportunity for exposure to damaging radiation which could cause arriving microbes to have beneficial mutation. That is a real two-fer to help the timeline and support the over all paradigm. Unless it kills them or causes them to die. That would be a real set back for the timeline and the paradigm.

Zeke
March 21, 2017 4:12 pm

correction: “Unless it [seriously] kills them or causes them to [become irradiated, mutated, fried and then] die.

Owen in GA
March 21, 2017 4:40 pm

I love how they had to put CO2 as the main driver of these exoplanet temperatures.

Wouldn’t a tidal locked planet have a hot side where water would evaporate and a cold side where water would freeze, with a band of twilight that stayed very much liquid? The next requirement would be a strong magnetosphere to prevent the atmosphere from being blown away by any solar wind. Who really knows what interactions would come from this cool dwarf star’s emissions and an atmosphere of a planet?

Chimp
Reply to  Owen in GA
March 21, 2017 4:51 pm

Answer:

No one can know. Yet.

Given seven planets around a cool star, the inner ones might be as you describe, with maybe two outer ones with liquid water even on the hot side and the outermost one with ice. But all we can do now is speculate. That is, model assumptions.

AndyG55
Reply to  Owen in GA
March 21, 2017 10:04 pm

“I love how they had to put CO2 as the main driver of these exoplanet temperatures”

What I want to know is how anthropogenic CO2 got onto those planets ! 😉

We know that is the only type of CO2 that causes global warting/climate-chang/disrumption, pants dying, smaller annuals, etc etc etc etc

Greg
Reply to  AndyG55
March 22, 2017 2:45 am

“What I want to know is how anthropogenic CO2 got onto those planets ! ;-)”

They just “assumed” it , that is why it is anthropogenic CO2. Pretty much the way they ASSUME CO2 causes the majority of warming and then create models based on tweaking dozens of other poorly constrained parameters to support that assumption.

March 21, 2017 4:47 pm

The Hindenburg, hydrogen burns fast…who knew?

NW sage
Reply to  pyeatte
March 21, 2017 5:01 pm

Just as fast as Oxygen could get to it!

NW sage
March 21, 2017 5:06 pm

Everyone is so obsessed with “discovering” the first extraterrestrial life that they are willing to postulate any and all hypothesis to ‘prove’ that life exists, or if it doesn’t exist that it might exist, or, if it might have existed it could have (or will soon). Way too much ego showing here trying to be ‘first’.

Reply to  NW sage
March 22, 2017 4:23 am

err no.
Its about developing the tools to focus the search for intelligent life.

Example. They learn where not to look…. like dont look for intelligent life in NW sage’s house

catweazle666
Reply to  Steven Mosher
March 24, 2017 10:41 am

“like dont look for intelligent life in NW sage’s house”

Or anywhere even marginally related to Mosher and his colleagues.

donb
March 21, 2017 5:10 pm

I believe that planet e (the favored one) has a density considerably less than Earth’s. This suggests either no metallic core (thus no magnetic field, leaving the atmosphere subject to stripping by solar wind), and/or a very high proportion of water. Takes more than just temperature and water to support life.

Chimp
Reply to  donb
March 21, 2017 5:15 pm

TRAPPIST-1e is an Earth-sized exoplanet, meaning it has a mass and radius close to that of Earth. It has an equilibrium temperature of 251.3 K (−22 °C; −7 °F), which is close to Earth’s equilibrium temperature. It has a radius of around 0.92 R⊕ and a mass of 0.62 M⊕. These values allow to estimate the standard gravity to be 7.22 m/s2 (74% of Earth value). It also has a similar density to Earth.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TRAPPIST-1e

Robert B
Reply to  Chimp
March 21, 2017 5:43 pm

I guess I need to read up on these observations but how the hell do you get density with mass 0.62 (± 0.58) 7 times more than the star and a radius 8 times more than the star so how do you get it to within 5%?

Butch
Reply to  Chimp
March 21, 2017 6:30 pm

..WRONG, size does not matter, mass and composition matter ( and distance from the local star) ..an inner metallic core is necessary for a magnetic field, which is necessary for life to survive.. IMHO

Chimp
Reply to  Chimp
March 21, 2017 7:45 pm

Robert,

The star is about 84 times more massive than Jupiter. The planet e is some 62% as massive as Earth.

Chimp
Reply to  Chimp
March 21, 2017 7:46 pm

Butch,

We can’t be sure that a strong magnetic field is necessary for life, which can live in a planetary crust as well as on its surface, where a magnetic field does help shield it.

scarletmacaw
Reply to  Chimp
March 21, 2017 8:02 pm

How do they get the mass?

Chimp
Reply to  Chimp
March 21, 2017 8:37 pm

Scarlet,

Because the star and its planets were discovered through the transit method, we have mass and radius information for all of them.

Reply to  Chimp
March 22, 2017 2:14 am

My bad. Hard to see the different subscripts in the Wikipedia link.
There still is the problem of the error in the mass or did I miss something? Its quite large and how do you get to measure such a dark object at that distance to within 5% but not mass? I would have thought that the latter was easier.

March 21, 2017 5:18 pm

WUWT Readers, a bit off topic, but I just completed an article titled “Did Cosmic Rays End the CA Drought?” It is just a theory, but I was hoping to get some feedback.
Climate “Science” on Trial; Did Cosmic Rays End the CA Drought?
https://co2islife.wordpress.com/2017/03/22/climate-science-on-trial-did-cosmic-rays-end-the-ca-drought/comment image?w=1134

Scarface
Reply to  co2islife
March 22, 2017 2:03 am

From your own post, and therein the link to http://spaceweather.com/

“Cosmic rays can seed clouds, trigger lightning, and penetrate commercial airplanes.”

Wow, Svensmark is getting mainstream! The times they are a-changin’!
Your President Trump needs to see this indeed.

It’s time for a second slogan: NASA!
Never Anthropophobic Science Again!

Reply to  Scarface
March 22, 2017 3:44 am

Thanks a million for the comment, and please share with others.

Reply to  co2islife
March 22, 2017 6:30 am

I thought it was water .

Reply to  Bob Armstrong
March 22, 2017 6:32 am

LOL, yes, technically it was the water, but did the cosmic rays trigger the water? Thanks for the comment.

Sceptical lefty
March 21, 2017 5:21 pm

Mark Twain made some pertinent observations on the the capacity of scientists to speculate endlessly on the basis of very little evidence. Since his time the situation appears to have worsened.

Will Nelson
Reply to  Sceptical lefty
March 21, 2017 7:20 pm

But Twain, in classic form, might make the updated observation, “It appears the capacity of scientists is now greatly improved”.

Sceptical lefty
Reply to  Will Nelson
March 22, 2017 12:13 am

Good point. On reflection, I can see Twain saying just that.

Severian
March 21, 2017 5:26 pm

If the climate modelers say there’s no life, they planets are probably teeming with it given their track record for Earth.

Robert B
March 21, 2017 5:45 pm

All this importance placed on science education and its just so the next generation respond to “some scientists think” without any further thought. Its so wrong.

March 21, 2017 5:54 pm

Well, this is all interesting speculation. True classic science: Theory, experimental hypothesis therefrom derived, confirming/disconfitming experiments, rinse and repeat. This stuff, not so much. Computer models are NEVER observational experiments

Curious George
Reply to  ristvan
March 21, 2017 6:22 pm

They may modeling the hell.

Reply to  ristvan
March 22, 2017 4:20 am

They clearly make a falsifiable prediction about the possibility of water on the three inner planets.
go there and disprove the prediction.
we wont wait.

Butch
March 21, 2017 6:12 pm

“Thus if water ever existed on the inner planets, they would have undergone a runaway greenhouse and lost their water to space, leaving them dry today.”

Allow me to quote a great American Genera……” N.U.T.S ! ”
comment image

Butch
Reply to  Butch
March 21, 2017 6:14 pm

General Anthony McAuliffe in Bastogne….

Butch
Reply to  Butch
March 21, 2017 6:54 pm

…I hate when people find better quotes than my quotes !! Just kidding…love it !! Cheers… ! ( great movie too !! )

Butch
Reply to  Butch
March 21, 2017 6:56 pm

…President Trump reminds me of …dare I say it….Patton ! Both seem to have Titanium Balls !!

TRM
March 21, 2017 6:27 pm

The folks down under haven’t lost their sense of humour yet. LMAO

Jer0me
Reply to  David Middleton
March 22, 2017 12:07 am

Yup!

Aussie humour is legendary, and one of the main reasons I decided to live here. Never regretted that decision!

Robert B
Reply to  TRM
March 22, 2017 1:55 pm

Not actually funny because it brushes over the waste – the problems of government owned meant extremely underworked and overpaid employees. The market is hardly free. Coal would be king and renewables would just be hydro if it really were free.

March 21, 2017 6:58 pm

There appears to be a technical problem with the title. There is only one “Solar System”, namely our planetary system whose central star has the Latin name “Sol” (in English – Sun), hence our planetary system is known as the solar system. What you are describing is a yet-to-be-named planetary system.

From Wikipedia:

A planetary system is a set of gravitationally bound non-stellar objects in orbit around a star or star system. … The Sun together with its planetary system, which includes Earth, is known as the Solar System.

Reply to  Dennis Kuzara
March 21, 2017 7:10 pm

Actually it does have a name: the Trappist-1 System, although it does not slide off the tongue quite as easily as “Solar System”.

Jer0me
Reply to  Dennis Kuzara
March 22, 2017 12:16 am

David,

My theory on the excellence of trappist beers is that the trappist monks dothings, instead of talking about them. This results in better things being done, and with more concentration.

garymount
March 21, 2017 7:34 pm

I’d be interested in what their 2D and 4D climate models show. 😉

March 21, 2017 7:58 pm

Question: How many solar systems are in our galaxy?
Answer: Who knows?

Question: How many Solar systems are in our galaxy?
Answer: One

As you pointed out, it is capitalized in the title.