Mars: Been There, Done That – Doing it Again?

On July 16, scientists at Brown University availed themselves of instrumentation aboard the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter to report that the southern part of Mars was once bathed in water and capable of sustaining biological life.
According to one, Mars was, "a benign, water-rich environment for a long period of time."

The discovery isn’t entirely new. Viking orbiters in 1975 and 1980 confirmed that the planet’s northern pole was covered in what many observers believed was water ice, which tended to melt in summer and reform in Martian winter.

This water, occurring about 3.8 billion years ago, existed at a time when the planet’s climate was more temperate. Since water boils at 100 degrees Celsius (or 212 degrees Fahrenheit), temperate likely means temperatures ranging from 100-120 on the Fahrenheit scale – the range in which most life occurs. Temperatures on Mars currently range from 80 degrees to -194 degrees.

Where is that water now? Theory suggests the planet’s once-thick atmosphere thinned, causing the water to evaporate into space. Climatologists speculate, with varying degrees of certainty, that this thinning was caused by Mars’s lesser gravity and a lack of plate tectonics. All that remains on Mars today is a thin atmosphere of about 95 percent carbon dioxide. Venus’s atmosphere is similarly carbon dioxide-based, but much thicker.

Reading this, I thought again about the contentions of global warming supporters (or UFO proponents, doomsday prophets and conspiracy theorists) who suggest that Mars was once an inhabited planet, and that this occupation – by humanoids or possibly humans themselves – rendered the planet sterile.

Theories as to the cause of this sterility abound and include some form of natural-resource exploitation, overpopulation, or even nuclear warfare. Those who subscribe to this theory cite the Cydonian face on Mars, a footprint on Mars (evidently a fake), and a question posted on Yahoo which asks: "Do you think Cidonia on Mars was once a place of intellegent life?" Which leads this writer to ask the same question about Earth.

These people also point out that Earth appears to be on the same path to destruction and I have to admit that their stance has some validity. If carbon dioxide buildup in the atmosphere is the primary cause of global warming, and if human – through their burning of fossil fuels – are the prime contributors of those emissions, then humans may be the prima facie cause of Earth’s potential and eventual transformation to a Martian landscape. As any honest scientist will tell you, we just don’t know enough to know.


On the other hand, there have been a number of times in the past when Earth has had very high levels of carbon dioxide, one of which (the Permian Event, 251 million years ago) triggered the largest mass extinction in Earth’s history. That was followed by the Triassic, which had very hot, dry summers, intensely cold winters and an increase in solar radiation that led to species emergence and adaptation. The Permian trigger was either glaciation at the poles, causing severe climate fluctuations or volcanic activity.

The Earth also went through a prolonged phase of extremely high temperatures during the Eocene, in which even the poles were ice-free. However, there has always been some doubt about the temperatures of the tropics during this period. Most paleo-climate records show that the tropics had mean annual temperatures of 82 to 87 degrees, which is not much warmer than today.

More recent data, however, suggests that ocean temperatures could have soared as high as 109 degrees Fahrenheit. If ocean-surface temperatures during the Eocene were at this higher end, then continental temperatures would have been at least 50 degrees higher. According to climate modeller Matthew Huber of Purdue University, this would have killed off any plants. Huber also notes that, when it comes to global warming, we can’t rely on the oceans to keep the earth cool forever. As heat sinks, even oceans have a maximum capacity beyond which cascade failures occur.

We will probably never know if Mars was colonized and destroyed by humans (or humanoids); four billion years is a long time to preserve a record of occupation, even for plastic. We do know that it is presently undergoing its own sort of global warming. We also know that Earth is the only habitable planet in the solar system, so looking elsewhere for a home while we proceed to trash our current one doesn’t make much sense, especially if you believe little gray men are supervising. Why would they allow us to move to another residence, knowing how badly we have treated the first?

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