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Flame » in reply to Give Me A Scientific Reason That Increasing A Greenhouse Gas Won't Warm a Planet's Atmosphere

re: Give Me A Scientific Reason That Increasing A Greenhouse Gas Won't Warm a Planet's Atmosphere

"Venus is hotter than Mercury due to CO2, and Mars is on average as warm as the Moon despite getting half the solar radiation due to CO2. How CO2 traps heat can be measured in the lab. The idea that global warming is politically inspired rather than scientifically is hogwash pure and simple."

Venus is hotter in terms of average temperature than Mercury simply because Mercury lacks an atmosphere.
And Mercury's average temperature would warmer if it had a 24 hour day. If you are comparing hottest surface temperature, Mercury has slightly higher hottest surface temperature than compared to Venus.
If Mercury had 1 atm of nitrogen it would be closer to Venus in terms of average temperature, give Mercury 90 atm of nitrogen and it would as hot or perhaps much hotter than Venus.

Far as as "Mars is on average as warm as the Moon despite getting half the solar radiation due to CO2."

If Mars had no atmosphere it wouldn't have much of a warmer average temperature.
And suppose Mars had 14 days of night- do you think the nights might get a bit more colder? And how much warmer would it get with 14 days of sunlight?

You can actually know the answer because during summer in the polar region Mars does get long days- and during the winter long nites. And if not for Mars'
CO2 freezing [thereby warming] it's poles would get even colder than they do.
But I don't know what mean by "Mars is on average as warm as the Moon". If you simply average 100 and 400 K you get 250 K which is -23 C.

Earth has about 200 times more atmosphere mass than
Mars.
Earth only has about 385 ppm CO2
Mars has about 950,000 ppm CO2
Mars has about 24 trillion tonnes of CO2
Or about 10 times more CO2 than Earth and
Mars is a smaller Planet.

If you doubled Earth's CO2 levels, then doubled them again, and doubled them again you have about as much CO2 on Earth as Mars.

Fun Facts:

Earth's atmosphere mass is 5.1 x 10^18 kg
Mars' mass of atmosphere: ~2.5 x 10^16 kg

Mars atmosphere: Water (H2O) - 210 ppm
Mars Average temperature: ~210 K (-63 C)
Mars: Black-body temperature (K) 210.1
Diurnal temperature range: 184 K to 242 K (-89 to -31 C) (Viking 1 Lander site)

http://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/planetary/factsheet/marsfact.html

Moon:
Black-body temperature (K) 274.5
Diurnal temperature range: >100 K to <400 K
http://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/planetary/factsheet/moonfact.html

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