The President announced a “major breakthrough” on Climate Change yesterday. As far as I can see, it doesn’t actually do anything. And that’s fine, I guess (if it’s not too late already, nobody’s gonna actually do anything to make a difference before it is too late). I think we’re missing out on creating a lot of jobs in the Green Sector, but what the heck. I’ll be dead before it all gets too awful bad, I guess. And Syracuse might even become a seaside tourist resort if ocean levels rise enough. At least for a while. For a long-term idea of what’s in store for the Earth, you only have to look at or sister planet, Venus. Venus is about the same size and mass as the Earth, and was once thought to be a lot like our planet, with oceans and everything.

For whatever reason, though, CO₂ levels rose to a point of no return (about where we’re at right now), and a “runaway greenhouse effect” resulted in the planet growing warmer and warmer. Now, Venus’ atmosphere consists of about 97% carbon dioxide (and shiny clouds of sulfuric acid), with an average temperature of about 460 degrees Celsius (almost 865 degrees F, making it even hotter than the planet Mercury, even though Venus is twice as far from the Sun). The oceans have long since evaporated, and the water molecules dissociated into hydrogen (which was carried off into interplanetary space by the solar wind) and oxygen (which helped to make even more CO₂). The planet’s surface is basically desert and rocks. With no vegetation to absorb the carbon, the atmosphere is so dense that the surface pressure is 90 times higher than it is on earth (which would make walking around a little difficult – even if you didn’t mind the 800 degree temperatures).

I don’t know how long it’ll take for the oceans boil away (hell, we haven’t even finished melting the polar ice caps yet), but it sounds like a pretty miserable future, so I guess I’m glad I won’t be around to see it (other than for curiosity’s sake; I hate to miss the end of the movie). I feel bad for the kids and grandkids and their kids and grandkids though.

That’s all assuming we don’t manage to kill ourselves off some other way first (or get hit by a meteor or something).

Happy Holidays!