From: maury_markowitz@hotmail.com   
      
   mark.foskey@gmail.com wrote:   
   >>Was the Moon in a close Earth orbit essential in preventing a runaway   
   >>greenhouse effect like we see on Venus. The Earth was much more   
   >>volcanically active in it's youth and would have put out much more CO2   
   >>and other greenhouse gases. Did the Moon siphon off much of the Earth's   
   >>atmosphere in earlier times.   
      
      As we learn more the answer increasingly seems to be that the earth   
   was "unstable" before life became so dominant. Prior to this there were   
   a number of complete freeze-overs where the entire planet was covered in   
   ice. It is believed C02 built up from volcanoes, causing rnaway   
   greenhouse and melting the ice. The CO2 would then be react chemically   
   with the now-open oceans, scrubing it back out.   
      
   > lot of science speculation that Niven used in his stories came from   
   > Tommy Gold, an iconoclastic astronomer who was part of the steady state   
   > universe crowd (with Fred Hoyle) and also is known for having gotten in   
   > a row with NASA during Apollo.   
      
      No, pretty good actually. Gold was the guy that got onto TV by   
   claiming the moon probes would sink in the miles-thick dust on the moon.   
   OF COURSE it's miles thick, its been there practically forever and   
   there's no mechanism to solidify it back into rock like there is here.   
      
      So they built the landers and tested. Nope, no problem. But Gold   
   wouldn't stop even when confronted by direct counterexample. The TV   
   robots eventually gave up listening to him -- something that no longer   
   happens unfortunately.   
      
      He still turns up, unnamed, in various creationist books. Why?   
   Because the lack of thick dust on the moon means it can't be very old,   
   right?   
      
   Maury   
      
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