At http://phys.org/print338201746.html … we have one of those schoolboy visions of Venus which is mostly hypothetical but written as reality. Venus is horrible! It sucks, we are told – but sucks what? It's as hot as an oven (actually, an awful lot hotter than an oven) and atmospheric pressure is 90 times that of the Earth. It rains sulphuric acid. It is a lethal place as far as humans are concerned – so no bus stops for spaceship tours on Venus. We won't be visiting the place in a hurry.
Venus has a dense and poisonous atmosphere – but why? Could it have had a better environment in the past? NASAs Pioneer spacecraft peeked beneath the thick clouds, we are told, and revealed there may once have been liquid water on the surface. There is an obsession with finding water on planets and moons and comets and asteroids – why? What caused the better environment to disappear (if it ever existed)? A heavy bout of solar radiation perhaps. It got so hot from greenhouse gases that water evaporated into the atmosphere and was subsequently lost in space – as the atmosphere streamed into the ether. It seems they are still sticking to their guns and the idea Venus is hot because of runaway greenhouse gases. The fact this idea was subsequently then transferred to the Earth as a bit of doom mongering, openly embraced by the CAGW acolytes, says it all really.
Facts have not percolated down to the Great Unwashed as yet. While atmospheric co2 has been rising steadily in recent years global temperatures have stubbornly resisted the temptation to get hotter – in the real world of course. In the models global temperatures are still climbing. Climate models are like 'fantasy football' – you play it on a computer screen, not on a football field. Which of course is what climate models are – computer projections of data with a dubious origin, wishful thinking if you like.
As a result of blind belief in the greenhouse gases ability to warm our world, lifted lock stock and barrel from theories on the heat of Venus way back in the 1960s and 1970s, scientists have positioned themselves in something of a corner. We live in a water world, dominated by the cycle of water and evaporation, run-off and clouds, and the fact that excess heat is blown away at the Poles – into space. The clinical and deliberate way of looking at Venusis avoided – and lip service is paid to consensus.