Roy Spencer: Can Space.com teach us anything useful about climate?

In a word – no. As usual the massive atmospheric pressure at the surface of Venus is ignored.
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I saw a Space.com article today entitled, Can Venus teach us to take climate change seriously?

While Space.com writers should know quite a bit about the other planets, the article was a fount of misinformation and gross exaggeration, says Dr Roy Spencer.

The obvious purpose of the article was scare us into taking increasing carbon dioxide levels seriously, following on the Fourth National Climate Assessment (NC4) report (which I’m still trying to digest).

After repeating the NC4 claim that “10 percent of the U.S. economy could evaporate by 2100” due to climate change, the Venusian silliness begins:

…a nearby world has an even hotter climate problem than ours, and scientists say we could learn some valuable lessons from it. That world is Venus, Earth’s “evil twin,” which was once nice enough until something went wrong and the atmosphere began trapping a little too much heat.

First of all, it is extremely speculative to claim that the climate of Venus “was once nice enough“. Then to further claim, “something went wrong and the atmosphere began trapping a little too much heat.” This makes it sound like Venus was just another hospitable planet until it reached some tipping point and a runaway greenhouse effect ensued.

This kind of prose might be good for science fiction, but it does a disservice to the facts.

Continued here.