In his second episode of his series “Stephen Hawking’s Favorite Places,” Hawking predicted that Earth will one day look like Venus. That is, if we don’t cut out greenhouses gases.
“Venus is like Earth in so many ways,” Hawking said. “She’s almost the same size as Earth, a touch closer to the sun. She has an atmosphere.” Hawking takes his viewers on a trip to Venus using CGI.
He finds that the pressure on Venus is around 90 times Earth’s, which, as he said, is “enough to crush a submarine.”
And, again: Hawking thinks this will happen to Earth.
A NASA report from 2002 dictates how the scientists think a planet like Venus could have gone from having water like Earth some 4.5 billion years ago to become a “900-degree inferno.” They called it the “runaway greenhouse effect,” which occurs when a planet “absorbs more energy from the sun than it can radiate back to space.” The loop continues until the oceans evaporate.
In the report, it states that an area on Earth, the western Pacific “warm pool” northeast of Australia, already exhibits this.
But not everyone believes in climate change—including the current President.
This very expensive GLOBAL WARMING bullshit has got to stop. Our planet is freezing, record low temps,and our GW scientists are stuck in ice
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 2, 2014
So we have gone from “global warming” to “climate change” to ” Climate CRISIS” a hoax by any other name is still a HOAX!
— #LOVEROFTHETRUTH (@TRUTHLOVERTOO) January 10, 2018
With the extreme weather the world has experienced over thousands of years its apparently getting worse according to experts. I guess the next Glaciers are on there way. Global warming,Biggest Hoax of the century. pic.twitter.com/uqPeYYuyzI
— John D Doe USA? (@ARsRcool) January 8, 2018
Hawking offered a solution, though, to those skeptics.
“Next time you meet a climate denier, tell them to take a trip to Venus,” Hawking said. “I will pay the fare.”
And evidence of this global climate change is here.
The Sahara Desert is currently undergoing its second snowfall in a little over a year. A powdery blanket covered the Sahara January 7, and it was already melted by the afternoon.
It snowed for the first time in 40 years in the Sahara. So beautiful, snow and sand. pic.twitter.com/2t3Ja3b3qI
— michael zylstra (@Zeddie101) January 9, 2018
In the past, Hawking warned that human beings may have less than two years left on Earth, and, by the looks of the recent weather, he most definitely could be right.
“It will be difficult enough to avoid disaster in the next hundred years, let alone the next thousand or million,” he said. “Our only chance of long-term survival is not to remain inward-looking on planet Earth, but to spread out into space.”
(Image: REUTERS/Toby Melville)