Earth: The Biography

So the National Geographic Channel has a program airing now called Earth: The Biography.  The host is Dr. Ian Stewart who has a cool Scottish Brogue and an interesting way of presenting material.  The cinematography is, at times, spectacular.

So why am I blogging about it?

The program was funded by the BBC.  And it preaches the Religion of Warmenism.  This is the danger of government-funded education and government-funded science.  Special interest groups rule, and the truth is abandoned.

One point that struck me in this program is the description of CO2 gas as the primary (if not only) determinant of temperature on the surface of a planet.   Dr. Stewart discussed Mars.  He said it was extremely cold, partially due to the fact that it’s a little farther from the sun and mostly because it doesn’t have enough CO2 in its atmosphere to retain enough heat.

I did a little math, based on atmospheric data from Wikipedia on Mars and Earth.  The key facts are below.

Mars has an average atmospheric pressure at the surface of 600 Pa, which is 95% CO2.  Earth has an average atmospheric pressure at sea level of 101,300 Pa, which is 0.038% CO2.

Mars  600 * .95 = 570 Pa CO2

Earth  101,300 * 0.00038 = 38.5 Pa CO2

Mars does not just have more CO2 in its atmosphere.  It has 15 times as much as Earth!

So whatever reasons there may be for Mars’ cooler temperature, lack of CO2 is not among them.  In fact, this is a pretty damning bit of evidence (assuming I did not make a mistake–I am not an expert in climate or atmosphere).

Only with the magic of government funding can serious errors perpetuate indefinitely.  When people have a choice whether or not to pay for something, truth has to win out eventually.