Sunday, March 2, 2008

Save Us, Mark Udall

This month's Astronomy magazine examines the greenhouse gas atmosphere on Venus. It has some really amazing statistics.

Venus and Earth formed very close together and should have had about the same mix of greenhouse gases, including water. Earth's ocean sequestered the CO2 and the oceans on Venus should have done the same. The article starts out with an exhortation that we should follow the water.

It turns out that Venus rotates on its axis so slowly that it has no magnetic field to protect its atmosphere from having its water molecules torn apart and lost to space.

Earth will never have that problem, right? Wrong! It turns out that the interaction of the Moon with Earth will eventually cause the Earth to rotate on its axis once in 43 days. Holy climate change, Batman!

It would seem to us that Mark Udall could better spend his time and our money trying to change the gravitational interaction of the Earth with the Moon than on all of these silly solar and wind projects.

OK, we admit it. The Earth and Moon aren't expected to be tidally interlocked for two billion years. The more immediate problem is that within 500 million years, the Sun will be so hot due to using its nuclear fuel that it will boil the oceans away. Holy climate change, Batman! That's the problem that Mark Udall should work on first.

FYI, we aren't making this stuff up, but we are having a lot of fun at Mark Udall's expense. We wish he weren't having so much fun at our $ expense.

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