SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
Ed Mazza writes that Republican presidential hopeful Rick Santorum says he loves Pope Francis, but he wants the pontiff to stop talking about climate change and "leave science to the scientists." Santorum's comments come as the Pope, who holds a degree as a chemical technician and worked as a chemist before turning to the priesthood, has become increasingly vocal about climate change. "The church has gotten it wrong a few times on science, and I think that we probably are better off leaving science to the scientists," says Santorum, "and focusing on what we're really good at, which is theology and morality, When we get involved with political and controversial scientific theories, I think the church is not as forceful and credible."
But Santorum's not a scientist either so using Santorum's own logic why is Santorum more qualified than the Pope to discuss climate change? "I guess the question would be, if he shouldn't talk about it, should you?" asked Chris Wallace of Fox News. "Politicians, whether we like it or not, people in government have to make decision with regard to public policy that affect American workers," answered Santorum, adding that while "the pope can talk about whatever he wants to talk about," he questions the Pope's use of his moral authority to combat the issue of climate change.. Santorum — a devout Catholic — disagrees with the Pope's stance that climate change is man-made and has often called climate science "political science," arguing that a scientific consensus on climate change underscores this point. "All of this certainty, which is what bothers me about the debate, the idea that science is settled," says Santorum. "Any time you hear a scientist say science is settled, that's political science, not real science."
Original Submission
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 10 2015, @05:07PM
I think this depends upon input energy from the sun, and mass of the atmosphere. The reason is that if you take the Magellan data [1] (It doesn't really matter which probe you use because Venus has an extremely stable and uniform atmosphere [2]) and apply the 1976 US standard atmosphere [3] you can get very close to the Venus pressure-temperature profile (and most of the deviation that is there is probably locally due to the clouds).
You can even use earth surface temperature/pressure (t0 and p0) and simply multiply by the ratio expected for the two planets with no atmosphere at all [4]: 1.176
So the three possible explanations I can think of are that
1) this is coincidental
2) there is no greenhouse effect as claimed in that link
3) there is an equilibrium state being maintained (eg if CO2 increases the heat held by the atmosphere the Venus system has compensated by increasing albedo with that worldwide layer of clouds)
In the latter case (my preferred explanation) sustained higher/lower temperatures in the past must be due to alterations in atmosphere thickness or output of the sun.
[1] http://pds-atmospheres.nmsu.edu/PDS/data/mg_2401/data/mgn_abs.dat [nmsu.edu]
[2] https://soylentnews.org/comments.pl?sid=7856&cid=194350 [soylentnews.org]
[3] https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B2UKsBO-ZMVgQV83S2loaGs4dnc/edit?pli=1 [google.com]
[4] http://theendofthemystery.blogspot.com/2010/11/venus-no-greenhouse-effect.html [blogspot.com]