# Moving Venus or Mars **URL:** \ **Category:** Cecil's Columns/Staff Reports\ **Created:** [June 8, 2009, 12:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/moving-venus-or-mars/499056 "2009-06-08T00:35:25Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 12\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![constanze](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/f9ae1b/32.png) [@constanze](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/constanze)\ **Post date:** [June 10, 2009, 9:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/moving-venus-or-mars/499056/21 "2009-06-10T21:54:21Z")
> [@RedSwinglineOne](#): > > Ok. > > Iowa produces 6.6 billion lbs of red meat=22lbs per person. > [Average American eats 63lbs of red meat a year.](http://www.usatoday.com/money/economy/2008-11-14-3913750537_x.htm) > > Iowa produces 13.9 billion eggs=46 eggs/person. > Average American consumes 230-250 eggs per year. > > Iowa produces 274 million lbs of turkey=.91 lbs per person. > Average American consumes 17.5 lbs turkey per year. Well to be fair he/she did say that > [@kknott](#): > > This stat is based upon the requirements to readily live, not the requirements to feast unlimitledly to one’s delight So we shouldn’T look at current consumption figures, but only at necessary requirement of calories per person per year from milk and eggs and meat. For example, the average american meat consumption is too high both for the planet and for the health of the person. I have another problem: kknott, you only mention grain, eggs, milk and meat (despite meat and milk mean cattle, which is waste of energy that could be put to better use growing crops directly; unless it’s grassland that’s only suited for grazing - but that means extensive, not intensive, use and can’t be scaled up), but no veggies! Where do you get the veggies and fruits so important for a healthy diet? > [@](#): > > You can also help me to understand why if Iowa only produces 6% of the total US food production, and this is enough for the entire US, (or world) where is the other 94% of US food production going? Playing devils advocate for a minute, kknott said > [@kknott](#): > > Moreover, the government buys huge quantities of surplus and either destroys it or gives it away. Parts of grain are used to feed cattle, which is a waste, other parts are used to make ethanol, some grain is used for making beer instead of eating it directly … so if you want to feed the US from Iowa by meeting only the necessary needs and not feasting excessivly, that would change. ---
**Author:** ![constanze](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/f9ae1b/32.png) [@constanze](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/constanze)\ **Post date:** [June 10, 2009, 10:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/moving-venus-or-mars/499056/22 "2009-06-10T22:03:57Z")
> [@kknott](#): > > Mount St. Helens erupted more CFC’s in her last eruption than all of humanity has since the Industrial Revolution. Even if I assume for your benefit that you meant to say CO2 instead of CFC in the above sentence, it’s still completly wrong. Volcanoes have erupted all the time. St. Helens was smaller than Krakatoa, and certainly smaller than the eruption/explosion of Mount [Tambora,](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mount_Tambora) yet none of the measurements match the exponential, never seen before sudden rise in global temp., the total amount of CO2 in the atmosphere, the sudden change of CO2 in the atmosphere. We can go back with ice core samples tens of thousands of years, and measure the distribution of gases in the atmosphere, and though the CO2 levels did fluctuate in the past - partly because of ice ages and warm periods - **they never were as high as now, nor did they rise as sudden as now.** No matter how many volcanoes erupted - and there were active periods before. Many scientists think that the amount of sulfur and other particles in the air after an active period of many volcano eruptions at the same time, and the subsequent cooling, might have been one of several factors in what started an ice age. But I’ve never heard a respectable scientist (as opposed to a simple AGW-denier) connect volcanoes to CO2 levels. ---
**Author:** ![wevets](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/e9a140/32.png) [@wevets](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wevets)\ **Post date:** [June 10, 2009, 11:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/moving-venus-or-mars/499056/23 "2009-06-10T23:10:12Z")
> [@kknott](#): > > Mount St. Helens erupted more CFC’s in her last eruption than all of humanity has since the Industrial Revolution. This idea that we are greehousing our planet to death is just ridiculous. The total amount of CO[sub]2[/sub] released by volcanoes is less than 1% of that released by humans in an average year. > [@Hawaiian Volcano Observatory of the USGS](#): > > Our studies show that globally, volcanoes on land and under the sea release a total of about 200 million tonnes of CO2 annually. > > This seems like a huge amount of CO2, but a visit to the U.S. Department of Energy’s Carbon Dioxide Information Analysis Center (CDIAC) website ([http://cdiac.ornl.gov/](http://cdiac.ornl.gov/)) helps anyone armed with a handheld calculator and a high school chemistry text put the volcanic CO2 tally into perspective. Because while 200 million tonnes of CO2 is large, the global fossil fuel CO2 emissions for 2003 tipped the scales at 26.8 billion tonnes. Thus, not only does volcanic CO2 not dwarf that of human activity, it actually comprises less than 1 percent of that value. Site: [Hawaiian Volcano Observatory](http://hvo.wr.usgs.gov/volcanowatch/2007/07_02_15.html) Not only is the average annual release of volcanic CO[sub]2[/sub] much smaller than the human release of CO[sub]2[/sub], but even major eruptions tend to coincide with a net **decrease** in atmospheric CO[sub]2[/sub]. > [@Keeling](#): > > The inferred anomalous oceanic sink of 0.6 Gt C immediately after the Pinatubo eruption (Fig. 3_d_), although weak and soon cancelled by a weak source in 1993, in consistent with this explanation. The biosphere, however, unlike other recent El Niño events, was also a sink as noted above. > > Cooling produced by volcanic aerosols from the eruption might explain this unusual biospheric sink, especially if the sink preceding it in 1989 and 1990 was mainly a recovery from a biospheric source during the El Niño event that began in 1987. The magnitude of the post-1991 cooling trend, shown in Fig. 2_b_, although less precipitous than the fall in the CO[sub]2[/sub] anomaly, was greatest during the northern summer months (see dashed portion of curve in Fig. 2_b_). Source: [Interannual extremes in the rate of rise of atmospheric carbon dioxide since 1980](http://tazman.princeton.edu/13c/keeling95a.pdf) in Nature v. 375, pg 666. (Link is to a PDF) A couple important things to note are that the Pinatubo eruption in 1991 was about 10 times as large as Mt. Saint Helens ’ 1980 eruption in terms of ejecta volume. CO[sub]2[/sub] concentrations drop noticeably shortly after the 1991 eruptions, and it’s possible the soot, ash, and particulate release from Pinatubo encouraged lower temperatures that, in general, were good for removal of CO[sub]2[/sub] from the atmosphere by natural means. Fig. 2 in the linked paper shows CO[sub]2[/sub] concentration anomalies dropping from about 1.0 in 1991 when Pinatubo erupted to -0.6 or -0.7 by 1994. A little searching did not reveal any estimates for the amount of CO[sub]2[/sub] released by the Mt. Saint Helens eruption, but the above figures put its significance in doubt. I’m also assuming **kknott** means CO[sub]2[/sub] rather than CFCs. Volcanoes do emit CFCs, apparently, but CFCs are short-lived in the atmosphere and mostly volcanoes emit the extremely short-lived HCl and HF rather than CFCs: > [@Robert Parson](#): > > Long reply: This is one of the most persistent myths in this > area. As is so often the case, there is a seed of truth at the > root of the myth. Volcanic gases are rich in Hydrogen Chloride, HCl. > As we have discussed, this gas is very soluble in water and is > removed from the troposphere on a time scale of 1-7 days, so we can > dismiss quietly simmering volcanoes as a stratospheric source, just > as we can neglect sea salt and other natural sources of HCl. (In fact > tropospheric HCl from volcanoes is neglible compared to HCl from > sea salt.) However, we cannot use this argument to dismiss MAJOR > volcanic eruptions, which can in principle inject HCl directly into > the middle stratosphere. > … > Before 1982, there were no direct measurements of the amount of HCl > that an explosive eruption put into the stratosphere. There were, > however, estimates of the _total_ chlorine production from an > eruption, based upon such geophysical techniques as analysis of > glass inclusions trapped in volcanic rocks. [Cadle] [Johnston] > [Sigurdsson] [Symonds et al.] There was much debate > about how much of the emitted chlorine reached the stratosphere; > estimates ranged from \< 0.03 Mt/year [Cadle] to 0.1-1.0 Mt/year > [Symonds et al.]. During the 1980’s emissions of CFC’s and related > compounds contributed ~1 Mt of chlorine per year to the > atmosphere. [Prather et al.] This results in an annual flux of \>0.3 > Mt/yr of chlorine into the stratosphere. The _highest_ estimates > of volcanic emissions - upper limits calculated by assuming that > _all_ of the HCl from a major eruption reached and stayed in the > stratosphere - were thus of the same order of magnitude as human > sources. (There is no support whatsoever for the claim that a > _single_ recent eruption produced ~500 times as much chlorine as a > year’s worth of CFC production. This wildly inaccurate number appears > to have originated as an editorial mistake in a scientific encyclopedia.) Source: [23 Volcanoes put more chlorine into the stratosphere than CFC's.](http://stason.org/TULARC/science-engineering/ozone-depletion-stratospheric-chlorine/23-Volcanoes-put-more-chlorine-into-the-stratosphere-than-CF.html) In the OP’s favor, “to death” is clearly hyperbole, and not serious. The problem is that it becomes more difficult to live on an Earth with a substantially different climate, not that it would drive humans or the planet to extinction. Individuals would die as a result, not the species. ---
**Author:** ![RedSwinglineOne](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/a9adbd/32.png) [@RedSwinglineOne](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RedSwinglineOne)\ **Post date:** [June 10, 2009, 11:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/moving-venus-or-mars/499056/24 "2009-06-10T23:10:47Z")
> [@constanze](#): > > Well to be fair he/she did say that > … > > Playing devils advocate for a minute, kknott said… True, but I was directly addressing the fact that when **kknott** was asked for a cite that Iowa could produce enough food for the entire world(or country), he/she provided a link of Iowa’s **current** output, and said > [@kknott](#): > > Take the eggs, the yield of meat, the milk, and the total bushels of grain, and then divide by 300,000,000. You will easily see that \*\*Iowa currently produces \*\*enough to feed all of America. bolding mine Well, I did (the math), and it doesn’t (currently produce enough). It would be an interesting discussion to see how much food could be produced if we only farmed and ate in the most efficient way possible, but I don’t think that was the point kknott was making. If it was, the cite provided does not make that point. ---
**Author:** ![kknott](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/ad7895/32.png) [@kknott](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kknott)\ **Post date:** [June 11, 2009, 2:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/moving-venus-or-mars/499056/25 "2009-06-11T02:06:06Z")
> [@razncain](#): > > It takes a tremendous amount of land just for cattle to graze. Even if the plan could isolate the cattle to just pens, much like we raise a great deal of the poultry in commercial operations, it doesn’t seem like that would remotely be enough. It would still take huge amounts of land, to grow the food for the cattle to eat; let alone for all of the other crops that humans were needing as well. > > This is also not as strong of a claim in the OP where you were stating Iowa could feed the entire world. > > I know of some religious groups that downplay just how much destruction man has done to the planet, and overpopulation, global warming isn’t anything to worry about, and that only God can destroy the planet. I hope you don’t belong to such a group. You might find this cite interesting, informative, and enlightening: [http://omsriram.com/GlobalWarming.htm](http://omsriram.com/GlobalWarming.htm) ---
**Author:** ![Una\_Persson](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/una_persson/32/346_2.png) [@Una\_Persson](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Una_Persson)\ **Post date:** [June 11, 2009, 4:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/moving-venus-or-mars/499056/26 "2009-06-11T16:44:36Z")
I figure this thread is as good as any to post this related article: [The BBC reports on research showing chances Mars may hit the Earth at some point.](http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/8093005.stm) ---
**Author:** ![constanze](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/f9ae1b/32.png) [@constanze](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/constanze)\ **Post date:** [June 11, 2009, 4:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/moving-venus-or-mars/499056/27 "2009-06-11T16:48:56Z")
> [@kknott](#): > > You might find this cite interesting, informative, and enlightening: [http://omsriram.com/GlobalWarming.htm](http://omsriram.com/GlobalWarming.htm) I don’t believe AGW deniers. There are a bunch of old threads about AGW and the Climate Catastrophe. ---
**Author:** ![John\_W.Kennedy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_w.kennedy/32/1031_2.png) [@John\_W.Kennedy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_W.Kennedy)\ **Post date:** [June 11, 2009, 6:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/moving-venus-or-mars/499056/28 "2009-06-11T18:40:05Z")
> [@constanze](#): > > I don’t believe AGW deniers. There are a bunch of old threads about AGW and the Climate Catastrophe. Actually, although the site in question is indeed religious in nature, the page itself is not religious, and does not deny AGW; it merely attributes it to CFC destruction of the ozone layer, rather than to CO[sub]2[/sub] and other greenhouse effects. I haven’t the data to argue with it, but I am very inclined to doubt any amateur who declares that the professionals are _obviously_ wrong. ---
**Author:** ![wevets](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/e9a140/32.png) [@wevets](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wevets)\ **Post date:** [June 11, 2009, 9:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/moving-venus-or-mars/499056/29 "2009-06-11T21:21:21Z")
> [@John\_W.Kennedy](#): > > I haven’t the data to argue with it, but I am very inclined to doubt any amateur who declares that the professionals are _obviously_ wrong. And you would be right to do so. The “data” included in the link **kknott** provided is pretty obviously doctored. If you look at Figure 1 in the link it shows the “2007 actual temperature” as no warmer than the 1980s or 1970s. In fact, using data from the NCDC, 2007 is warmer than any year from 1970 until 1998: year: temperature anomaly: 1970 0.0322 1971 -0.0645 1972 0.0177 1973 0.1428 1974 -0.1048 1975 -0.0320 1976 -0.1108 1977 0.1281 1978 0.0502 1979 0.1405 1980 0.1885 1981 0.2292 1982 0.1132 1983 0.2714 1984 0.0796 1985 0.0624 1986 0.1491 1987 0.2866 1988 0.2886 1989 0.2088 1990 0.3701 1991 0.3240 1992 0.1898 1993 0.2226 1994 0.2817 1995 0.3991 1996 0.2587 1997 0.4629 1998 0.5775 1999 0.3970 2000 0.3671 2001 0.4952 2002 0.5591 2003 0.5583 2004 0.5352 2005 0.6061 2006 0.5563 2007 0.5480 2008 0.4871 The added religious stuff on the page that “paper” is attached to is pretty funny. Really, who writes a “paper” in the scientific format, but doesn’t realize that anyone who sees it will know that it’s not an actual peer-reviewed paper? ---
**Author:** ![wevets](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/e9a140/32.png) [@wevets](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wevets)\ **Post date:** [June 11, 2009, 9:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/moving-venus-or-mars/499056/30 "2009-06-11T21:56:23Z")
I should also correct a mistake I made in an earlier post: > [@wevets](#): > > Volcanoes do emit CFCs, apparently, but CFCs are short-lived in the atmosphere and mostly volcanoes emit the extremely short-lived HCl and HF rather than CFCs: This should read: Volcanoes do emit **halogenated compounds** , apparently, but **they** are short-lived in the atmosphere and mostly volcanoes emit the extremely short-lived HCl and HF rather than CFCs: I don’t actually know that volcanoes emit any measureable CFCs. ---
**Author:** ![constanze](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/f9ae1b/32.png) [@constanze](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/constanze)\ **Post date:** [June 12, 2009, 7:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/moving-venus-or-mars/499056/31 "2009-06-12T19:18:26Z")
> [@John\_W.Kennedy](#): > > Actually, although the site in question is indeed religious in nature, the page itself is not religious, and does not deny AGW; it merely attributes it to CFC destruction of the ozone layer, rather than to CO[sub]2[/sub] and other greenhouse effects. I haven’t the data to argue with it, but I am very inclined to doubt any amateur who declares that the professionals are _obviously_ wrong. I didn’t read the site the page is attached to. But when the essay starts out with one guy proposing a theory against the IPCC, which consists of many many scientists, experts in many different fields, using data from different areas to come to their conclusions, and using x times more peer-review than normal (precisly because their data and conclusions are used by policy makers and govt., and will be subject to x times more scrutiny and discussion and dissection then the normal peer-reviewed paper) - then I get very very very very sceptical. However, after the first few paragraphs, the author states that the temp. between 2000 and 2007 didn’t rise as predicted by the models of the IPCC, but dropped, and includes an altered graph. So yes, this site denies AGW. To me, AGW deniers fall into two general categories: people who have a minimal understanding of the many science fields involved, but who decide they know better than the experts (let’s call it arrogant ignorance), and those who simply deny AGW because they don’t want to change their lifestyle (let’s call it lazy willful stupidity). Added are of course the sites and “experts” (PR people and similar) paid for by industry afraid of the short-term cost of adapting to a better energy and different life-style, who provide the false data the deniers feed on and regurgitate, without listenting to real evidence. By the way, wevets, thanks for providing correct data, and your information on volcanoes is interesting. ---
**Author:** ![EdwardLost](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/bbe5ce/32.png) [@EdwardLost](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/EdwardLost)\ **Post date:** [June 13, 2009, 9:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/moving-venus-or-mars/499056/32 "2009-06-13T21:07:04Z")
About the earlier discussion on how many people the earth could support, maybe we should ask: How many people SHOULD the earth support? Let’s say we have a world government dedicated to maximizing the human population. First we’d move everyone off the arable land, but close by to minimize transportation costs. Forests are not very productive so we’d remove them for farmland. Meat is not efficient food so we would only graze animals on land unsuitable for farming. We’d grow only the most productive food crops and the bare minimum of fiber crops needed for clothing etc. Industry would mostly be geared toward food production - producing fertilizer, irrigation, storage and transportation systems, etc. We’d shelter people in the most efficient way possible - maybe huge dorms, maybe underground. If we did everything right the earth could support many times the current population. It would be two or three more centuries before we finally did hit the limit. Bringing in Venus and Mars would give us another couple of generations of growth. Barring a totalitarian world government, there will never be as many people as there could be. Humanity is an ecology; people are indepentant agents working for their own benefit and comfort, cooperating sometimes, competing other times. We are not going to spontaniously organize for maximum food production. There will always be waste, under production, pockets of wealth and over consumption, and lots of starvation. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/moving-venus-or-mars/499056.md?page=1)