NASA has a Sudden Interest in Venus

NASA has a Sudden Interest in Venus

  18 Jul 2021   , ,

Could the secrets to finding solutions for global climate change be found on another planet? NASA and the Biden administration seem to think so.

According to recent reporting by The Hill, the Biden administration may be seeking an “out of this world” solution for the global climate crisis.

Recently, NASA Administrator Bill Nelson announced that the space agency will send not one but two robotic probes to Venus under the Discovery program. The probes are DAVINCI+ and VERITAS. The two probes, which are due to be launched by the end of the 2020s, will be the first dedicated NASA missions to the second planet from the sun in decades. Why Venus and why now? The answer is all about climate change.

NASA scientists have concluded that for the first 2 billion years of its existence, Venus was remarkably like Earth, with oceans and perhaps life of some sort. However, a runaway greenhouse effect occurred that eventually created the planet that Venus is today.

While the scientific community holds to a growing consensus that current climate change on Earth is driven by human action, mainly by carbon dioxide emitted by power plants and automobiles, natural processes can also cause the phenomenon. The sun’s output and changes in the Earth’s axial tilt can affect climate. How much climate change is caused by human activity and how much is caused by natural processes will inform the Biden and future administration’s public policy responses to the phenomenon.

Since, as far as we know, there has not been an industrialized civilization on Venus, the planet provides an excellent model of how climate change can occur entirely due to natural processes. Hence, NASA is sending two robotic probes that will delve into the mechanisms that changed Venus from an Earth-like world to the uninhabitable mess that it is today. According to NASA, the probes will “measure the composition of Venus’ atmosphere to understand how it formed and evolved, as well as determine whether the planet ever had an ocean.” They have also been designed to “map Venus’ surface to determine the planet’s geologic history and understand why it developed so differently from Earth.”

This may sound like a waste of money and a “pie in the sky” solution. However, Climate scientists, like all scientists, are hungry for more data. Venus provides another opportunity to understand what causes climate change besides studying the process on Earth. With more data at hand, public policy decision makers will be better able to enact laws and regulations that will moderate climate change on Earth without tanking the economy.

9 thoughts on “NASA has a Sudden Interest in Venus

  1. If we find that there is a high concentration of CO2 on Venus that caused hot climate, it will finally *PROVE* that the minuscule amounts that even our worst-polluting countries pump into the air dwarfs compared to what nature spews out regularly.

  2. When I googled Venus the following info was available free.
    1. The atmosphere is 97 percent CO2.
    2. Pressure at the surface is equal to that found in earths oceans at depth of 3000 ft.
    3. There is very little H2O. Any water produced by volcanic action would evaporate, and having a molecular weight of 14 compared to CO2s 44, it would be lost to outer space. It could never have survived for very long.
    4. The temp. of Venus is now stable, which means that the daily input of solar energy is lost to outer space.
    5. The amazing thing is that the atmosphere of Venus has a temp. which does not change.

    6. I hope the scientists at NASA can figure that out without spending billions to confirm what we already know.

    1. The goal of this endeavor is to spend billions of dollars. That is the only thing we will learn, and it is something we already know.

  3. WE do not need biden nor NASA to determine climate change on earth-
    STOP BURNING DOWN OUR FORESTS EVERY YEAR–the trees that we lose are more than enough to offset any
    so called -CLIMATE CHANGE—
    IF WE HAD STARTED ABOUT 50 YEARS AGO AND BUILT A PIPELINE ACROSS AMERICA —
    EVERY YEAR THERE ARE FLOODS IN THE EASTERN UNITED STATES THAT IF PUMPED TO THE WEST COAST COULD EASILY
    have offset the droughts and fires –
    WAKE UP AMERICA-TREES CAN PREVENT CLIMATE CHANGE –THEY “EAT” CO2 AND REPLENISH O2-
    and are a way more sensible answer than anything the dems can come up with-

  4. BIDEN IS SPENDING MONEY FASTER TAN THE PRESSES CAN PRINT IT
    INFLATION WILL EASILY BE COMPETENIG WITH THE HORRORS OF THE 1970’s –
    MOVE OVER VENEZUELA-Biden and the democrats will soon show you how to
    RUIN A NATION ALMOST OVERNIGHT

  5. Waste of time and money. These people should be focusing on earth. There’s ALOT more hear that needs addressed than blowing hot air into space. Science gripes my a.s. They just don’t get it. THE words ( SAVE THE PLANET) are as useful as wings on a frog’s a.s.

  6. Gotta ask why is there a political solution to phony “scientific” problem? Any human that thinks they can control climate is delusional. The sun is in charge of climate not man.

Comments are closed.