From what Venus was like billions of years ago, to how that could turn into a greenhouse
planet, join us as we explore whether Earth could turn into the next Venus.
You all know the words "Global Warming", and over the last year or two especially there's
been a lot of pushing to either get active to stop it, or to admonish it and say that
it's "not real".
Sadly, Global Warming is very real, and it's a very real threat to our planet, and if we
don't do things to try and save the planet, it's very possible that we might end up like
a certain other planet in our solar system.
Mainly...Venus.
If you don't know, Venus is a very hot planet, in fact it's 864 degrees Fahrenheit on average.
Which if you didn't know is enough to melt lead and cause problems for other materials
as well.
At present, that we know of, there is no life on Venus due to both its atmosphere (which
is made up of mostly Carbon Dioxide) and its temperatures.
So you might be wondering, "How can we end up like Venus when we clearly have a much
different type of planet than it?"
Well that's the thing, scientists believe that once upon a time, the planet Venus was
a lot like the Earth...until something caused it to change for the worse.
How and why are they saying this?
Well, Venus has been under study for quite some time due to its extreme temperatures
and atmosphere, not to mention it's our "twin" planet.
So, scientists have been using simulation technology to try and determine what Venus
was like BEFORE it was the heat-blasting planet it is now.
And they state that between 2-3 billion years ago...it may have been very much like Earth.
With temperatures that weren't the in the hundreds of degrees, and maybe even having
its own ocean.
“Many of the same tools we use to model climate change on Earth can be adapted to
study climates on other planets, both past and present,” said Michael Way, a researcher
at GISS and the paper’s lead author.
“These results show ancient Venus may have been a very different place than it is today.”
Now to be clear, the simulations don't say that Venus was an EXACT match to Earth, as
Venus as a whole has many different things than Earth.
For example, its rotation, Earth rotates on its axis every 24 hours.
Venus does it in the course of 117 days.
Also, the simulations state that "ancient Venus" was more land-heavy than Earth, and
that its oceans were relatively shallow.
Not that this would've dissuaded potential life on the planet, but rather it would've
been slightly different conditions than Earth in its early days.
So, IF this is all true, and IF Venus was very much like Earth in the early billions
of its lifetime...what happened?
Well, this is where conflicting theories come to pass.
Because for the longest time, it was believed that because Venus was closer to the sun,
and thus was more exposed to its sunlight, that it was the cause of Venus turning into
what we have now.
But according to GISS, that's not exactly what happened:
“In the GISS model’s simulation, Venus’ slow spin exposes its dayside to the sun for
almost two months at a time,” co-author and fellow GISS scientist Anthony Del Genio
said.
“This warms the surface and produces rain that creates a thick layer of clouds, which
acts like an umbrella to shield the surface from much of the solar heating.
The result is mean climate temperatures that are actually a few degrees cooler than Earth’s
today.”
This meant that the sunlight likely WASN'T the main reason that Venus is now a Greenhouse
Effect planet.
So what was it?
What made Venus the burning hot planet that it is right now?
Well, according to many, including the Europlanet Society, they think that a massive "global
event" caused the planet to get much, much hotter:
"It is possible that the near-global resurfacing event is responsible for its transformation
from an Earth-like climate to the hellish hot-house we see today."
But what was that event?
What could've turned Venus from a habitable planet in every sense of the word...to one
that honestly just...wasn't?
Sadly, we don't know the answer, and that horrifies many people because that means we
can't exactly prepare for what may happen if we don't know what happened to our neighbor.
However, we can generalize the action and/or event itself.
Because at some point in its lifetime, Venus went from doing a balanced absorption and
releasing of heat, not unlike what we have here on Earth, to an imbalance.
One where heat was absorbed to a great extent than it was being released.
"Basically, Venus was in a state of heat stroke — the planet was in a warming state and
it couldn't cool down," said Tyler Robinson, an astrobiologist at the University of Washington.
Again, how exactly this happened, we don't know, but it is easy to plot how that "heat
stroke" affected the planet and turned it into what we have now.
First off, the increased heat would have slowly but surely evaporated the oceans.
And while it's true that evaporation is part of the water cycle, there is such a thing
as evaporating it too much.
Because if it's hot enough, it won't stay in the atmosphere, it'll leak out into space,
and thus break the cycle.
Which is what scientists suspect.
Furthermore, the increased heat would have allowed more Carbon Dioxide to fill up the
atmosphere, and as we're learning here on Earth right now, the more Carbon Dioxide in
the air, the hotter it gets on the planet.
At present, Venus' atmosphere is 90 times thicker than Earth's, and much of that thickness
is due to the Carbon Dioxide, and that's why it's 800+ degrees Fahrenheit on the surface.
Oh, and the atmosphere also has clouds of Sulfuric Acid which quite literally makes
acid rain, so that's not nice either.
And if you're think that this kind of "rapid change" is very unlikely in a planet, you're
honestly wrong.
Because this happened more than likely to another planet next to Earth: Mars.
Certain findings and simulations point to Mars also having an ocean, or many oceans,
once upon a time.
As well as possibly having greenery on the planet in some form.
But unlike Venus, Mars got a thinner atmosphere, one that has a literal hole that appears every
two years and blasts whatever water is on the planet into space.
Add that to the bombardment of space radiation and other factors (that an atmosphere usually
protects planets from) and you get a cold barren wasteland that you have now on Mars.
So right there you have two planets that underwent massive changes to their climate in likely
not too long of a period of time in the cosmic context.
Which brings us to...can Earth be like Venus if we're not careful with Global Warming?
Before we answer that, be sure to like the video and subscribe to the channel!
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Now before we get into this, you might think, "Why are we talking about Earth turning into
Venus and not Mars?"
Well that's because Mars had a problem that right now isn't likely on Earth.
Not to mention, if the atmosphere were to suddenly get a hole in it, we'd all die more
than likely depending on its size and how long it remained.
Right now, the more immediate issue is Global Warming, which we should be very concerned
about.
In fact, many people are studying Venus because they realize that where we are right now in
terms of studying Global Warming isn't enough to predict what will happen to Earth in the
grand scale: "[Venus is] a laboratory for understanding
climate physics and climate change on an Earth-like planet," one scientist said.
"You can't learn everything you need to know about climate change on Earth by only studying
Earth."
That's not to say we can't learn anything, and in fact, what we have learned should be
more than enough to prove how in danger we are if we're not careful.
If you look at the Carbon Dioxide emissions of our planet in the last several hundred
years, you'll notice that a major spike started happening in the late 1800's and early 1900's.
What happened around that time?
The birth of the internal combustion engine, and the beginning of the use of fossil fuels
to power machines.
These are the things that release Carbon Dioxide, Carbon Monoxide, and more into the atmosphere.
Now to be clear, there are natural things in our world that put that into the atmosphere,
including ourselves via our breathing.
But those levels are very low and you could even say that they're part of the "natural
balance" of the world, whereas the carbon emissions of vehicles are now.
Even not kept in check, they will heat up the planet, and in fact, they already are.
The natural temperature of the world has already gone up many degrees over the last hundred
years or so.
But despite what you might think, it's not uniform.
"What does that mean?"
It means that certain areas are getting warmer faster than others, and unfortunately for
us, one of those regions is the Arctic, which is why you've likely been hearing about how
the polar ice caps have been melting, raising the water levels of the planet.
Even the late Stephen Hawking was worried about what would happen if we don't change
our ways in regards to Global Warming: "We are close to the tipping point, where
global warming becomes irreversible.
Trump's action could push the Earth over the brink, to become like Venus, with a temperature
of 250 degrees [Celsius], and raining sulfuric acid," he said to BBC once in an interview.
And if you recall, Hawking was one of the most brilliant people on the planet, so if
he said we're in trouble?
We need to take it seriously.
But do we have a serious chance of becoming like Venus?
It's honestly hard to say, and not for the reasons you're thinking.
First and foremost, as we noted earlier, when it was "habitable" the planet Venus didn't
have as deep of oceans as Earth did, and it had much more land masses.
So even IF the planet Earth did get hotter by a much larger factor, it would take a VERY
long time to get to where all the bodies of water in the world evaporated.
It's not impossible, but it is unlikely at the present time.
Speaking of the oceans, because of Global Warming, the oceans are rising, and if Global
Warming continues to melt the ice caps, we'll have even less land to worry about...
"Earth hasn't experienced CO2 levels this high in hundreds of millions of years, and
the resulting sea-level change is likely hundreds of feet, so, say 'so long' to all your favorite
coastal cities," notes one scientist on the matter.
So by that token, if the world was to be flooded, we wouldn't turn into Venus, we'd be Waterworld
minus Kevin Costner, and thus, any fear of becoming Venus would be literally drowned
out in the worst way possible.
The other problem here is the thickness of our atmosphere.
Venus' is 90 times thicker than ours if you recall, and it has a clear imbalance of Carbon
Dioxide.
Right now, the Earth's atmosphere has about .04% Carbon Dioxide within it, and thus would
take hundreds of millions of years more than likely to get to the levels like Venus.
And a whole heap of other catastrophes could happen before that point.
So is that it?
Should we stop worrying about Global Warming and focus on other things?
Not even close.
Like we noted, just because Global Warming isn't turning us into Venus doesn't mean that
it's not hurting our planet.
The weather patterns of the world are being thrown out of whack, the ice caps are melting
and causing the oceans to rise and consume the land, we are in danger.
It's just that we're not in danger of being like Venus at the present time.
But then again, if you think about what we've learned about Venus, the planet didn't expect
to be what it is right now.
It was at one point in time very habitable, and then SOMETHING caused it to burn hot,
evaporate the water, and became an inferno of a planet for lack of a better word.
SOMETHING caused that, and that SOMETHING could happen on Earth if we're not careful,
and for all we know, Global Warming could intentionally or unintentionally lead to that
event happening here.
If we're being honest, there is a lot of conflicting information about Global Warming, and there
are just as many people who rally against it as there are people proclaiming it to be
real.
It can get really confusing, and it makes it hard to decide where to fall on the issue.
But here's the truth, we ARE affecting the planet, and not in the good way.
Between tearing down trees (which hurts our oxygen supply and ecosystem balance), pouring
out more and more fossil fuels that fills up our atmosphere with negative gas and more,
we're changing the world.
Some of it is for ourselves, and we need certain things to live, but we also need to be respectful
to the planet that we live on right now.
It's impossible to know where humanity and the Earth will be in about 100 years, but
if we're not careful, we may not be Venus, but the Earth will be a place we may not recognize,
and that's more than enough reason to fight to save the planet, even if it's in your own
little way.
Thanks for watching everyone!
What did you think of this look at Global Warming and whether we'll turn into Venus
if we don't try and stop it?
Do you think that Venus was like Earth once upon a time?
Do you think that people are overreacting about the Global Warming issue?
Let me know in the comments below, be sure to subscribe, and I'll see you next time on
the channel!