New Mars Forums

Hi Samy, everyone.
  Good point.  However, I am not sure that how to calculate this.  Let us say that there was no CO2 and we had nothing but the SF6.  The scale height (which is based on the gravity and temperature of the planet) would still be 11 km would it not?  (Doing some research here...)

OK, the formula for the scale height is:

H = kT / Mg

where:
k= gas constant = 8.314 j/ (mol K)
T = mean planetary surface temperature in kelvins.
M = mean molecular mass in dry air (kg/ mol)
g = acceleration due to gravity on surface in m/s^2.

(Note at heights above 100 km (basically a vacuum), molecular diffusion means that each gas species has its own scale height.)

All of these are constants (for Mars that is) except the molecular mass.  SF6 is about 3.3 times larger than for the CO2 atmosphere that Mars has.  So the scale height for SF6 would be 11km / 3.3 = 3.33 km.

The ~9 km height of the crater walls is: 9/3.33 or 2.73 times the scale height.  So at the top of the Hellas Crater, we would have 0.065 times the atmospheric pressure as on the ground.  (Assuming that the scale heights can be treated as independent partial pressures which is not true.)

(So if the pressure is 100% at the bottom it will be 6.5% at the top.)

Now on Mars, would things be better or worse than this?  Well the winds by the CO2 atmosphere can only make things worse.  Also, if you use SF6 to increase the temperature in Hellas Basin by 50 degrees C then that would increase the SF6's scale height by 1.23 times or to 4.1 km.  (165K / 115K = 1.23)  Finally the scale height is based on the average mass of the gases.  Basically the CO2 bouys up the SF6 more than if the SF6 was on its own, which makes sense.

So I don't think that your idea will work for the Hellas basin.

However, I don't think that we have explored all the possibilities here.  Let us say we drop several large asteroids in the Hellas Basin itself.  An asteroid with a velocity of 10 km/s and a 50 km diameter will make a crater ~500 km in size.  Figuring out the depth is complex.  I found a study that suggest that the depth to diameter ratio is a 0.3 exponent (but they also say that huge craters are shallower than you would expect).

Crater Depth to Diameter Ratios.

500 km to the 0.3 power is 6.45 km deep.  If we conservatively say that an impacter this big only makes a hole 3 km deep and then we drop 5 asteroids into the same hole it will be 15 km below the floor of Hellas Basin.

This will be so deep that much of the atmosphere of Mars will flow into it meaning that you would have no need of a pressure suit even with the current amount of atmosphere.  Your SF6 would have   (15 + 8) / 4.1 = 5.6 times the scale height. 

So if the SF6 is at 100% at the bottom of this hole, then the pressure at the top would be 0.36% at the top of the crater walls.  (Which is low enough that colonists might be able to replace losses.  A hole this deep will likely outgas a fair amount of volatiles.   if the local temperature (hot rocks) is above zero, you may end up with a sea down there and have to build house boats.

Since the CO2 buoys the SF6 up, you likely would want to make the hole deeper.  If it was 20 or 30 km deep, it would be better.  However a hole that deep would not need worry too much about winds.  The winds blowing around the outside of Hellas likely would not have any effect down inside the hole.

Our hole might be 500 km across at the top and say 100 km at the bottom.  This would greatly reduce the amount of greenhouse gases needed both speeding up the filling of the hole and reducing the cost to keep it topped up.

Interesting idea!  I had never considered using gravity to keep the greenhouse gases in a small area before.  I think that digging a deep hole may be a practical way to maximize any changes we wish to make to a volume of atmosphere and instantly get a local partial pressure where you would not need space suits.  In addition, digging that deep into the crust may expose any number of useful ores.

Very warm regards, Rick.

Hi everyone,
The next stage of terraforming needs to increase the nitrogen partial pressure.  In many ways, argon would be a suitable buffer gas and I certainly would not mind seeing more argon from comets and the like.  But nitrogen has one big advantage over argon, it needed by plants.

The second stage of engineering a minimum atmosphere is to increase the N2 level to 0.5 kPa.  This is high enough that nitrogen fixing bacteria (in the roots of some plants) can fix the nitrogen.  (This means that the N2 is broken up into a variety of nitride ions which plant and animal tissues can use.)

Now I've argued elsewhere that the high concentration of argon in the atmosphere suggests that Mars has NOT had massive impacts which have knocked off its atmosphere.  If it had, the argon would have been lost as well.  But the concentration of argon suggests that Mars originally had a dense atmosphere with a normal mix of gases (including a LOT of nitrogen) and gradually lost most of its air, leaving the argon behind.

Where has the N2 gone then?  It is unlikely to have lost it to escape to space.  With a gram molecular mass of 28, N2 is plenty heavy to stay on the planet.  I think it more likely that lightning in Mars atmosphere has turned the nitrogen into nitrates which react with the soil.  (This happens on Earth, but the nitrates are absorbed and used in the biosphere and then returned to the atmosphere.)  See:

The Biological Nitrogen Cycle

Given that there is likely to be nitrate deposits on Mars, (none have been found so far) how can these be released back into the air?

Well, some bacteria can bore into rocks and release the nitrogen.  However this is SLOW, requires a fairly healthy bacteria population and won't work on deeply buried nitride deposits.  If we didn't mind terraforming taking hundreds of thousands of years this might be enough.

Fogg suggests using thermonuclear bombs to shock the rocks into releasing nitrogen, CO2 and melting water.  (His H-Bombs are not fission bomb triggered so they would produce almost no radioactive fallout.)  I suspect that these methods will be used by Martians especially to get water to the surface quickly.

The last method is to drop comets or iceteroids on Mars.  (Iceteroid is a term invented by James Edward Oberg in his book New Earths.)  This has two advantages.  First they will bring more volatiles to Mars which is always welcome.  Second by dropping them on Nitrate beds, you can free the nitrogen in the rock as well as adding what ever nitrogen is in the comet itself.  Conservatively, (assuming a rich nitrate bed) the amount of N2 generated would be twice what the comet holds itself.

I keep meaning to do the research to allow me to write an article to show a magsail based iceteroid mission to bring ~500 meter sized iceteriods to Mars.  (Finding the numbers is slow, the calculations are straightforward).  Anyway, I feel that it is affordable to drop a fair number of iceteriods on Mars.  Let us assume that this is done.  What would our atmosphere look like?

Well, we may be able to find bodies that are 5 to 10% ammonia in the outer solar system.  These bodies will likely have a lot of water ice, some CO2, some CH4 and maybe 5% rock and soot like substances in them.

So if we assume that we increase the N2 partial pressure to 0.5 kPa (up from the current 0.0175 kPa) using 50% asteroids and 50% thermonuclear bombs then this will require a lot of iceteroids, which will ALSO bring other gases.

Zubrin and McKay suggested that 40 impacts of 2.6 km diameter 10% pure NH3 asteroids would double the amount of N2 in the Martian air by direct importation.  So adding guesses onto assumptions here we might have...

Typical Icteroid:
- Metals, rock, soils and salts.............08%
- H2O ice..........................................55%
- CH4 ice...........................................15%
- CO2 ice...........................................10%
- NH3 ice...........................................10%  (Note 2.5 times as much C as N looking at %)
- Everything else (CO, Ar, etc.)...........02%

Now we need to increase the current N2 pressure by about 28 times.  I am assuming that half of this comes by H-Bombs in deep rock deposits.  I am assuming that for every tonne of nitrogen brought by iceteroid an extra tonne of nitrates are volatilized by the impact.  So we would need to increase Mars' nitrogen level by 7 times via direct importation.  (This would be 240 impacts of the 2.6 km bodies described above.) 

So our atmosphere might now look like:

Composition:
- CO2.....55.0 mBar
- N2..........3.36 mBar
- Ar...........0.1 mBar ?
- O2..........0.012 mBar
- H2O........0.01 mBar (rising with increasing temperature.) ?

- Various trace gases ~0.001 mBar

- C2F6.....0.00003 mBar
- C3F8.....0.000125 mBar
- C4F10...0.00001 mBar
- SF6........0.000045 mBar
- NO2.......0.00001 mBar

Total: ~58.5 mBar.

Note that about 2 mBar of carbon are added via direct importation.  What ever the form, most of it will end up as CO2 in a few years.  All those impacts are almost certainly drive some CO2 out of clays and permafrost clathrates even if carbinate beds (if any exist) are not targeted.  Further, we will get temperary warming during the impact years which will speed CO2 being outgassed by the clays.  So I've bumped the CO2 level by 5 rather than by 2. 

If we assume 3 of these 2.6 km iceteroid impacts per year, this phase would be take 80 years to complete. If one per year, it would take 240 years.

Also note that many megatonnes of water would be added to the planet.  I've not added it to the atmospheric level as it would frost out.  I have added a smidge to the percentage of H2O in the air as after adding all these gases, we would have a warmer atmosphere and it would be able to hold more water.

The effort to finish the second level of atmosphere engineering is significantly greater than the first.  It will be hard to increase the nitrogen level quickly.  However, once this is done, we can use nitrogen fixing plants to enrich the soils of Mars.  Great fields of clover would be great steadily adding to the soil's quality and to the partial pressure of O2 in the air.

However, before we can get clover and other higher plants we have to do two things.  We must reduce the UV level.  And we have to increase the oxygen partial pressure.  (Higher plants need O2, mostly for their roots.  In an O2 depleted environment they smother.) 

These problems will be discussed in the third essay in this series.

By the way, many of these numbers our very rough.  I'll fine them up, time allowing, as I learn more.  If you have references that suggest that any of them are wrong, please let me know and I will correct this post.

EDIT: The third and last post in this series of essays is at: STAGE THREE: ADDING OXYGEN.

Warm regards, Rick.

Hi SpaceNut, everyone.

So this is an indication that the Methane found in Mars' atmosphere is NOT created this way.  If it is, then we should see H2S in the atmosphere as well and we do not. 

This suggests that life, volcanic outgassing, earthquakes or comet impact are the different ways that it could get there.

Thanks for the interesting post!  Warm regards, Rick

I think that we will likely want to have a soletta reflecting heat to both poles.  Simply, the poles are where we really need some heat where as greenhouse gases are make things warmest where the sun is.  As the Martian atmosphere thickens it will be better at moving heat around.

  Dr. Zubrin estimates that a mirror 125 km in diameter would be by itself enough to increase the temperature at the south pole 5 degrees.  The mass of this is about that of a super tanker and their is plenty of aluminum on Luna.  If we build it in Earth orbit it will be cheap to move it to Mars, it can act as a solar sail.

  However, I think that we will want more than just a 5 degree increase in temperature.  Since the Case for Mars has been written, it is clear that there is not as much frozen CO2 in the polar caps as hoped.  (They are almost entirely water ice.)  This means that if they sublime, they won't give as much pressure and warming as hoped.  The warmer the better since the higher the temperature, the more CO2 will be released by the soil and clathrates.  Also, the warmer it is the faster the new warmer temperature will work its way into the soil.

  Let us say that we wish to have a 5 degree warming in addition to the mirrors.

  Zubrin and McKay suggests that for +5 degrees we will need a partial pressure of 0.012 micro bars of PFC's.  This will require 260 tonnes per hour to be created for 20 years (with a cost of 1,310 MWe (Mega Watts electric) to refine the ores and produce these gases.  This would require several thousand workers (mostly miners) and a dedicated power plant but is certainly doable if we have native industry.

  Each gas has some wavelengths of heat that it absorbs best and others were the heat can escape easily.  Having a mix of gases means that the weaknesses in one can be covered by others.  So we will certainly want a variety of these gases.

  What would be a suitable mix of gases?  See this article:

New data on Greenhouse Gases.

In Marinova, McKay's & Hashimoto article they suggest that 0.2 Pascals are needed of their mix.  This is 0.00,000,2 Pascals or 2 micro Bars.  However, they are assuming that their is NO mirror, and that with 2 microbars enough heat will percolate down to the pole to start a run away green house event.

In the new study Marinova, et all, suggest that to produce the 2 micro bars it will require the production of 25,700 times the Earths yearly production to reach this value.  (Since the break down of these gases is so low their is no reason that this amount could be spread over a period of time.  They suggest 50 years.)  However, assuming that McKay and Zubrin's numbers are correct, you would reduce the amount of greenhouse gases needed by about 17 times if you put up a soletta as well.

In any case I think we will want a soletta.  Mars is cold and even if we get liquid water on the surface, it will evaporate and migrate to the poles.  We will have a true desert on the equator and the areas most hospitable to life.  If we have a large mirror warming the south pole all winter, then that snow and ice is much more likely to melt (or at least flow as a glacier) and eventually return to the equatorial areas where the humans and their plants are.

As for how much CO2 will be released if we warm the planet 10 to 20 degrees, this is hard to tell.  The numbers in the case for Mars are too optimistic I think.  (Or rather I think the numbers are realistic but it will take much longer than McKay and Zubrin thought for that much gas to leak into the atmosphere.)

When Zubrin wrote "The Case For Mars" it was thought that Mars had much less water than we do now, and that the South Polar Cap was mostly CO2.  We now know that it is mostly water ice. 

So when the runaway greenhouse event occurs, we will certainly get enough CO2 to reach 14 or 15 mBars with in months (this is how much its normal pressure varies).  It will likely increase more over the next decade or two but I have not been able to find good numbers on how much.  After that, there may be a long slow rise.

The greenhouse gases will gain a 30% effectiveness boost when they are in CO2 rather than Ar.  And all this gas itself is a greenhouse gas.  So it is likely that the temperatures at the poles will increase by 20 C or more.  This might be high enough to reach the temperature of desorption (the temperature where much of the CO2 will outgas from clay soils).  If not, we will need a northern polar soletta or a few more years of greenhouse gases.

Assuming that the CO2 starts coming out of the clays, the temperature will slowly rise as the pressure increases.  However, this higher temperature will have to work its way down into the soils which is a slow process.  You will get a rapid increase of 10 to 20 mBar in the first decade and it will slowly drop off as the wave of thawing moves more and more slowly.

Another location for CO2 is in ice.  CO2 saturated water will form clathrates where the ice has CO2 in its crystal structure.  Clathrates have lower melting temperatures than ice so they will break up sooner than normal ice.  However, Mars would still be 40C or so below freezing so freeing up the CO2 in the clathrates will be a very slow process.  To speed it up we could darken Mars' poles with black dust, drop a few small asteroids on it or just be very patient.

Anyway, my feeling is that the pressure of Mars will pop up to ~50 mBars partial pressure of CO2 and then slow, (tho continuing to rise for centuries as more CO2 leaks out of the ices and crevasses.)

So eventually we have gotten to my estimate of the composition of a first stage Martian Atmosphere some 20 to 50 years after significant production of PFC's and the addition of a large soletta over the South Pole:

Composition:
- CO2.....50 mBar
- N2..........0.12 mBar
- Ar...........0.095 mBar
- O2..........0.012 mBar
- H2O.......0.0025 mBar (rising with increasing temperature.)

- Various trace gases ~0.001 mBar

- C2F6.....0.00003 mBar
- C3F8.....0.000125 mBar
- C4F10...0.00001 mBar
- SF6........0.000045 mBar
- NO2.......0.00001 mBar

Total: 50.23 mBar.

I've not been able to find if the human skin can take 50 mBar of pressure with out a pressure suit.  However, it CAN take it with a suit that 'hugs you close' e.g. a spandex like material reinforced with Teflon fibers and the like.  In another 50 to 100 years, the pressure would like rise to around 100 mBar and you could walk around in shirt sleeves and gas mask.

I've had to guess more than I like in this post.  I'll correct and update these numbers as I find more information.  But I think it likely that even with very conservative assumptions, Mars will have a high enough pressure for humans with gas masks within 100 years after the South Pole subliming away the CO2.

Warm regards, Rick

OK, if I understand what you are suggesting you are saying that the impacts will vaporize the bullet and some area of the impact zone.  All this gas comes from the volatiles released.  Is that a fair summary of your idea?

Warm regards, Rick.

The two species: Salvia hispanica and Salvia columbarae might make
important food sources for a Mars colony.

Chia
Golden Chia

These plants are rich in Omega 3 fatty acids, grow in dry climates and
contain anti-oxidants.  The seeds can be eaten or the leaves can be used
like sprouts in cooking.  They are a good source of water soluble dietary
fiber.

Warm regards, Rick

I had a thought.  Let us say that you get a  Carbonaceous Chondrite (CC) asteroid to build a soletta with.  A CC asteroid is the most common sort and has plenty of clay minerals for aluminum and carbon and hydrogen for plastic. 

Assuming the soletta has a mass of 200,000 tonnes (estimate from Case for Mars) then a 1 km radius asteroid should have enough aluminum to build this with a healthy amount left over.  The CC that is left could be dropped on the south pole to multiply about 19 fold the effectiveness of the heat being beamed onto white ice.

The area of the south polar cap is roughly 500,000 km^2.  From my calculations before we need 2.2 kg of dust per square meter.  So we will need 5E11 kg or 5E8 tonnes. 

Each cubic meter of CC is 2200kg so we will need 2.3E8 cubic meters.  This is a block about 615 meters on a side.  This is about ~1/40 the volume of our initial rock.

So if we assume that the Martians build their own soletta, (rather than flying it from Earth on the solar wind), then they should have enough left over from a 1 km rock to dust the polar cap.  This will have a huge impact on how quickly the south pole heats up.  Waste not, want not.

Warm regards, Rick.

Mr Kalbfus,
  Have you even bothered reading my posts?

  My argument was clearly, that it is impossible to remove that much CO2.  Given that this is impossible, I am not much worried about glaciers scrapping Canada into Arizona.

  An Earth that warmed up over 12,000 years might not be such a bad thing.  Human society will have time to adapt.  But as I've clearly stated in a variety of posts:

1) I think that the human caused extinction event will have terrible consequences leading to wide spread human misery, famine and war.

2) I think that global warming will make the current situation worse.  If sufficiently sudden and severe, it can cause its own set of famines, disease and wars.

3) I think that the economic upheavals caused by the above will make it impossible (or at least far more difficult than it is now) to fund Mars colonization.

  Since NONE of these are addressed by your "move to higher elevation" platitudes, just what is your post trying to accomplish? 

  May I gently suggest that in a rational debate, you answer the arguments as presented instead of wasting the forum's time with straw man arguments.

  Rick

Hi Phil, everyone.
  Thanks for the kind words Phil, and welcome.  I read a couple years ago the report in Scientific American about John Martin's experiment (of dropping iron dissolved in sulfuric acid in the antarctic waters to stimulate plankton growth.  It is a real effect but I think that it can have, at best, a small effect on the CO2 levels.  However, I'm afraid that my explanation will be fairly involved so please stick with me.

  First, about 20 years ago I read an early article in Scientific American about the Carbon on the Earth.  The author said that there were X numbers of tonnes in the air, Y tonnes in the biosphere and Z tonnes in the ground.  These numbers were so huge that they were almost meaningless.

  So he said, "let us call all the carbon in the biosphere (living and dead) as one life unit."  He showed that 500 years ago there was 1 life unit in the biosphere, ~100 life units in the air (as carbon dioxide) and millions of billions of life units of carbon in the ground. 

  Since then the burning of fossil fuels has pumped about an extra 100 life units of carbon into the air, (doubling the CO2 concentration).

  At the time I was going to university and I saw posters from the Marijuana party saying "plant weed, reverse global warming".  I have a lot of sympathy for their cause (pot is certainly a less dangerous drug than alcohol) but I mocked them.  They would have to plant 100 Earth's biospheres worth of hemp to bring CO2 levels back down below what they were pre-industrial revolution. 

  The biosphere can NEVER absorb that much carbon.   The fact that humanity has been cutting down forests which lock up carbon for hundreds of years in the hard wood is insignificant compared to these numbers.

  The article pointed out that what we might wait for the carbon to be buried back into the Earth.  So how does this happen?

1) Vast shallow seas (caused by continental flooding) have massive number of ferns buried as in the Carboniferous period.  (Not happening now.)

2) Coral and shell fish gradually take calcium and other trace elements and using CO2 turn it into shells, largely made up of Calcium Carbonate.  This builds up over millions of years and eventually is crushed into rock forming limestone.  Even tho we are losing coral reefs (to pollution and warming waters) this can be expected to continue, tho likely at a reduced rate.  However it takes millions of years to form vast amounts of limestone.

3) Acidic bogs can absorb CO2 by forming peat in a period of thousands of years.  However we have drained the majority of the bogs on Earth as they are in prime agricultural zones.  Further, a few peat bogs are small potatoes compared to hundreds of years of burning concentrated hydrocarbons.

4) Dying life forms sediments on the ocean floor.  Eventually the motion of the plates buries these and takes the carbon out of the biosphere and down into the mantle.  This takes millions of years.

  The author's point is that what we burn in 20 years will take geologically significant amounts of time (hundreds of thousands or millions of years) to cycle back into the rock formations of the Earth.  It does not matter how long it takes to take the CO2 and put it into the biosphere.  Because sooner or later 99.99999% of that carbon goes from the biosphere back into the air.  The Biosphere is saturated.

  He also pointed out that in all the past ages when CO2 levels were high, we had warm climates.

 
  My second point is from an essay by Issac Asimov where he was asking why are the center of the oceans largely deserts, barren of life.  He pointed out that life grows exponentially until it uses up its first critical resource.  So in the center of the oceans, there is plenty of light, plenty of water, plenty of CO2.  So life grows explosively until it runs out of something.  This is usually phosphorous or nitrate ions.  John Martin knew this which is why he chose to sail his ship to Antarctic waters rather than doing the experiment off the east coast of the USA.  In the North Atlantic, there was much higher levels of iron in the water and it would be harder (perhaps impossible) to detect any change.  But by sailing down to Antarctica, he knew that there were plenty of phosphates, nitrates, etc. from ocean upwellings and the effectiveness of his experiment would be multiplied.

The first time his experiment barely worked, so he had to sail to the Antarctic Ocean again, this time using dissolved iron.  (The sulfur also was a useful trace element.)  His experiment clearly worked.

  However, if we seed the oceans with iron, the various trace elements will be used up, there will be a bloom of life, and then phosphorous, zinc, selenium, potassium, nitrates, cobalt or some other trace element will run out and the bloom will stop.  And you will have a lot of iron left.

  What happens to the plankton?  They grow, absorb CO2 and release O2.  Eventually they die, go to the bottom of the ocean.  And rot.

  It is very hard to get oxygen down to the bottom of the ocean.  This happens very slowly as the water circulates.  A surprising fraction of the benthic oxygen comes from the North Atlantic conveyor belt.  (The gulf stream moves water north in to stormy cold areas.  Cold water can absorb significantly more O2 and sinks, flows south and aerates the ocean floors.)

  It looks like one key climate tipping point is the turning on and off of this ocean conveyor.

  If O2 does not get down to the dead material it will still rot, but it will be oxidized with anaerobic bacteria and produce hydrogen sulfide.  Trust me, we do NOT want vast areas of the ocean floor producing huge quantities of H2S, it will kill whole marine ecosystems.  At least.

Worst Case Global Warming - Hydrogen Sulfide Ecologies

 
  The third problem is that this iron will sink or diffuse into deeper waters.  Once it goes below the volume that light will cause photosynthesis it is wasted until ocean currents bring it back up again.  A tiny amount of trace elements are needed for life.  But they have to be in the right place at the right time.  If you need (for example) 200 years of fossil fuels to be removed from our atmosphere right now (because we are getting strong chaotic shifts in climate with vast inertia) then you have to have a lot of ships pumping trace elements into the oceans all over.  Those ships will burn a lot of diesel fuel while they try to keep the top 30 meters of the ocean filled with iron and other trace elements.

  I could go on but those are the main elements:

1) You can't just use iron.  Phosphorous, potassium, zinc, selenium, etc. etc. all must be in sufficient amounts for life to grow.  The amount of phosphorous and nitrates needed, in particular, will be huge.  Let us say this emergency measure is implemented in 2050 when the CO2 level is expected to have doubled.  Remember, we are trying to draw down 300 biospheres of worth of carbon (assuming we want preindustrial levels) at emergency speed.  (This assumes that one super tanker worth of solid iron is enough to do that, which I am not sure is accurate.)

2) All of these trace elements (and not so trace elements such as the nitrates, potassium and phosphorous) must be kept in the top layer of the water long enough for all of them to be used up.

3) If we dump 300 biospheres of carbon on the ocean floor it won't matter or not if global warming has cut off the deep ocean conveyor or not.  There won't be enough O2 down there to rot it with aerobic bacteria so we will get 300 biospheres of H2S erupting from the oceans and damn near sterilizing the planet.  (The hydrogen sulfide ecology will survive of course.)

  Which brings me to a final observation.  Let us say that I am completely off.  That really one supertanker full of solid iron (or a fleet of them filled with iron dissolved in sulfuric acid) can bring on an ice age.

  If this fix is so quick and easy, why do not those minimizing global warming hire a fleet of super tankers to seed the oceans and draw down the CO2 level to, say, 1910 levels?  They could likely do it for a couple million dollars which is a tiny fraction of the hundreds of millions of dollars that Exxon gives to psychologists, producing climate science papers which minimize global warming.  See the following link showing how just Exxon pays for the 'think tanks' which produce endless 'studies' saying the Global Warming Crisis is false.  Strangely the media gives these studies equal time as those by real scientists. 

Exxon Secrets
(In particular take a look at the "Map Exxon's Network" link.)

  Rather than spending hundreds of millions of dollars on lobbying and lying, why not just fix the problem for a tiny fraction of that cost?

  Or if I'm right and it will take a huge investment in energy and matter to use this method.  Who will pay for it?  I mean, lots of people seem bent on saying that very modest conservation measures to slow CO2 production will cost too much.  Why should China (say) pay to solve this problem?  Perhaps you put your faith in politicians and international agreements?

  I'm very sorry that this post is gone on so long.  I hope I've answered your question.

  Warm regards, Rick.

Hi Everyone,
  This thread is intended for a detailed discussion of what would be a minimally useful change to Mars.  My hope is that as people find more data we can refine this estimate. 

  *** IF YOU ARE UP ON THE STANDARD TERRAFORMING IDEAS YOU CAN SKIP DOWN TO THE BAR OF ASTERISKS ***
  For newcomers: it has been thought that if we can warm the poles of Mars by 4 degrees C that all the solid carbon dioxide will sublime.  Being a greenhouse gas this will warm the planet.  Eventually more carbon dioxide will start coming out of clay minerals in the soil (which when cold can hold 8% CO2).  Some ice can have CO2 in its crystal structure.  (These are called clathrates.)  Mars likely has a huge amount of CO2 clathrate and if a significant amount of this melts even more CO2 will join the atmosphere.  Mars could end up with a 'permanent' (millions of years) warmer, higher pressure atmosphere.

  Mars seems to have two stable climates.  When its atmosphere is thick it is much warmer (tho still below freezing).  However, usually Mars is in the current cold, thin atmosphere climate.  Large volcanic eruptions are believed to in the past have lead to MEGAOUTFLO events (Mars Environmental Glacial Atmospheric OUTburst FLood Oscillations).  During these periods the planet is warmer, there may have been frozen seas or lakes and a lot of snow and frost was deposited in the southern regions of the planet.  (Mars likely never has had rain but it may have once had snow.  Currently it just gets frost.)

  The hope is that with relatively small changes to the planet, we can kick it over to the warmer higher pressure phase of its climate.

  This can be done by using solar mirrors to warm the poles (especially the south pole), adding super greenhouse gases (especially perfluorocarbons) to the atmosphere and dropping comets or icy asteroids (iceteroids) on the planet to release atmospheric gases.  There are other ideas to accomplish these goals but these ones do not require any new science, just engineering.

  *****************************************************************************

  Creating a Martian atmosphere that is breathable is very difficult. However there are 3 intermediate steps which would be useful.

1) Evaporate the polar CO2 ice and release enough CO2 in the soil / clathrates to allow humans to move about with out pressure suits.  This much pressure will also give very significant radiation protection against solar flares and cosmic rays.

2) Add enough nitrogen that plants that can fix nitrogen from the atmosphere can survive.

3) Add enough oxygen so that a ozone layer forms.  This would cut down UV radiation and perhaps slow the loss of hydrogen from the top of the atmosphere by preventing photo-disassociation of water.

  In the posts below I will give what I believe to be the smallest, easiest changes that would fulfill the goals above.

  Where I have questions, I will highlight them.  My hope is that if many eyes keep a lookout for this data we might be able to fine up these estimates.  If you discover some data, please give references to where you find it!

  If anyone else has ideas to cheaply improve the suggested mix below, don't hesitate to speak up.

  Warm regards, Rick.

The other thing you would need would be circulation (presumably by convection).

Basically the salt would dissolve making ions.  Let us say that you make an nuclear furnace at the bottom of some area.  The heat would cause convection circulation cells.  As the ions flow, the orbit of the asteroid would carry the cell thru the suns magnetic field.  This would induce a current flow. 

When you have a current it will generate a magnetic field.  This is called the dynamo effect (but you need a tiny amount of current to get it started).

So what is happening is the energy from your reactor is moving a lot of salty water in a big circle.  This generates a magnetic field as it moves thru the sun's field.

However, if you have a nuclear reactor, it would likely be more efficient to put bands or superconductor around the equator and run current that way.  The magnetic field that you get would be more direct than going the salty water route.

Warm regards, Rick.

Hello Mr Kalbfus.
  You state several opinions as fact, which I strongly disagree with.  First of all, reasonable ecological protection is not equivalent to "lower productivity levels and making ourselves smaller".  The Green political movement is very strong in Europe and their economy is growing faster than the USA's.  Just look at the relative movements of the value of the US dollar and the Euro in the last few years for one thing.

  Furthermore, the sloppy eco standards in the USA is costing the US real money.  Your cars produce such high pollution levels that they can not be sold in most places in Europe.  They pollute so much they can't be sold in China!  Higher standards would improve your balance of trade.

  You say that the Great Extinction is happening because we are Earth rather than in space.  Riiiiight....  You could have hundreds or tens of thousands of people in space and people will still be breeding.  It is habitat destruction which is the key cause to this increasing rate of loss of species.  Global warming will cause drought, climate shifts, etc.  This will put further stress on weakened and fragmented ecosystems.

  You seem eager to put the blame on lots of unpleasant things on "hippies, environmentalists, liberals and their left wing agenda".  This is a nice little fiction but, perhaps, if it is all their fault that we are not in space, you would care to discuss the history of US conservative politician's, aggressive space programs, in the last 35 years?

Because of my support for nuclear power I've been called an "anti-environmentalist", but trying to slow global warming sounds like a fine idea to me.  I wrote a post discussing the hypothesis about H2S ecologies caused the Earth's largest mass extinction.  Perhaps you would like to go to this thread and comment?
Hydrogen Sulfide Ecologies.

Don't you think it is just a little, tiny bit of a stretch to associate the environmental movement with forced sterilizations in China?  I mean, you obviously wish to lump as many unpleasant associations on to your targets as you can.  But it seems to me that the Canadian and European environmental movements have managed to not sterilize too many people.  Perhaps you could give a link to American environmental groups that have sterilized people?

I personally, would put the blame of this Chinese policy on their government.  Perhaps you think the Chinese government is controlled by a pack of environmentalists?  Then you would have evidence of strict environmental policies and powerful laws on ecological conservation in China to share with us?

  I pride myself in providing accurate information.  I including references.  I work hard at providing links and information to things of value to the people of this forum.  Did you read the links that I made in my previous posts?  We could make large progress in space and in the environment for a tiny fraction of what the world spends on the military, so it is obvious that the human race can afford to do this.

  I am well aware that I am far more worried about species death (including our own) and environmental destruction than most people.  However, I find the quality of your post to be near insulting, especially considering the importance I give to these subjects.

  It seems that any hint of reason has left what I thought was a rational debate.  This will likely be my last post on this thread unless things improve rapidly.  I am really quite pissed at the shoddy logic you expect the people in this forum to swallow.  It is shameful.  Shameful.

Rick