Comment:
I cannot let this glib reference to the supposed Venusian ‘greenhouse effect’ pass without comment. The very high surface temperature of Venus of 750°K or 900°F is usually explained by the ‘greenhouse effect’ of a thick atmosphere of carbon dioxide, or even the ‘runaway greenhouse effect,’ first suggested by Fred Hoyle in 1955 and worked out in detail in the late 1960s by Ingersoll and Pollack of Caltech. Such explanations assume that both Venus and Earth have had largely parallel development (so-called twins) and that therefore something went seriously wrong with the atmospheric evolution on Venus. However, there is not a shred of evidence for the ‘twin planets’ theory.
As for the greenhouse effect, it is a desperate model clutched at by theorists who have no alternative ideas. Yet the astronomer Firsoff noted: “Earth's seas are not boiling hot, despite the total greenhouse effect of water and average sunlight stronger than at the ground level of Venus. Nor is it at all clear how such a condition could have become established.”
Venus receives 1.9 times more solar radiation than Earth but its clouds reflect about 80% of that sunlight, so that Venus actually absorbs less solar energy than the Earth. Solar radiation measured at the surface is 10-20W/m2 (compare this with 340W/m2 at the Earth's surface in the tropics). Even with the maximum greenhouse effect, the effective surface temperature of Venus should be low enough to freeze water. What is being asked of the ‘runaway greenhouse effect’ is equivalent to expecting a well-insulated oven to reach a temperature sufficient to melt lead by having only the pilot light switched on!
The humorous but sadly apt inversion, ‘I’ll see it when I believe it,’ seems to apply to the interpretation of results relayed to Earth from all four Pioneer lander probes as their radiometers began to give anomalous results as they descended through the atmosphere.
“Taken at face value, the anomalies suggest that parts of the atmosphere are transmitting about twice the energy upwards that is available from solar radiation at the same level.” [Pioneer Venus, NASA Report SP-461, p. 127].
Despite the obvious interpretation that the laws of thermodynamics are not being violated and that, put simply, Venus is intrinsically damned hot and still cooling, the investigators are able to blandly state in the same paragraph:
“In spite of these difficulties in interpreting some of the observations, the greenhouse effect, coupled with global dynamics, is now well established as the basic explanation of the high surface temperature.”
This is merely consensus ignorance, not science.
http://www.holoscience.com/news.php?article=jej1t3c2