from Bob Edwards, Harlow Labour Party member
It was back in the 1990s I first realised that global warming and climate change was not just a ‘passing phase’ in the history of the Earth. A space probe had been sent to Venus, to investigate it by landing on its surface, but it melted partly on its descent!
The internal temperature was over 450oC! it was hotter than Mercury. In space science, both Earth and Venus are in what is called the ‘Goldilocks’ Zone, not too cold and not too hot. But why was Venus so inhospitable, while Earth is wonderful?
“Less than one billion years ago, the climate dramatically changed due to a runaway greenhouse effect. It can be speculated that an intensive period of volcanism pumped enough carbon dioxide into the atmosphere to cause this great climate change event that evaporated the oceans and caused the end of the water cycle”. From The conversation.com.
So, the answer lay in global warming and massive changes in the atmosphere of Venus causing a greenhouse effect. A recent chemical analysis of the outer atmosphere shows traces of chemicals characteristic of life, not green monsters, but now extinct microbial life.
The danger for us is that Earth could be Venus Mark II, because of man-made changes to the atmosphere.
