Look, if you want to refer to CO2 as carbon by "...it's atmosphere is mostly carbon", you cannot imply that carbon is the most abundant element, you then you have to recognize that oxygen is the most abundant element in the air since it is 2 atoms to 1 atom of carbon.
Vaporization of water is the best cooler of the surface by breaking the hydrogen bonds of water. The vapor is a good absorbent of IR and with other greenhouse gases transfer much energy to N2, O2, and A to cause a sufficient average kinetic energy of air at given altitude to have its temperature. The non-greenhouse gases hold the kinetic energy and temperature of the atmosphere because they radiate in microwave and radio wavelengths. They also hold most of the energy transfer by conduction from the warm surface. The greenhouse gases carry energy to higher atmospheric levels by convection where most of the energy not transmitted to non-greenhouse gases is radiated as heat energy more toward outer space.

mea culpa -- never mind the typo critics. Here it's the thought that counts.

To me this kind of "rah, rah, we can do it, therefore we should even if it means a huge government program" sentiment is statism.

It made some sense for us to go to the moon in the '60s, because people were justifiably afraid of the Soviets building a missile base there first and owning the earth (see Heinlein's The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress). But the Moon has been left alone since 1980 because it isn't economically justifiable to settle there. It would be like settling Antarctica, only more so -- possible, but very expensive.

Now I could see someone settling Antarctica if they first discovered a huge oil or gas deposit there, or some similar reason big enough to make it profitable. And there are equally good potential reasons why we might someday settle the moon. One reason would be to mine the material to ring earth with Solar Power Satellites, a scheme Keith Henson is still trying to get off the ground (but which would likely cost $2 or 3 billion before it got big enough to self-fund, and which no bank or rich person is ready to invest in yet).

But I don't see any good reason to go to Mars; neither the missile-base threat nor the potential economic benefit seems believable when it's that far away. And even if a mother-lode of oil were discovered there, transport cost would make it not worth exploiting any time soon. I expect that man will eventually settle Mars, but not for at least two centuries yet.

Let's let further space activities wait until it makes economic sense to do them. At which point government won't need to be involved at all.

Same here. I was expecting to maybe living to near my grandfathers 104 but have bad heart so looks like, unless things speed up, 2030 or so is to far in future.
Government didn't put men on the moon, businesses did using money extorted from the taxpayers to do so. You could look at it as a good thing that the extra money was not forced from the taxpayers to go to Mars, though now businesses are wealthy enough to have extra funds to mess around with fun stuff like planning on going to Mars but have to do taxpayer funded launches for the government for part of the needed money and get some grant money from taxpayers.

Well that settles that! =:^)
We have a long time to go. It took us this long just to realize we are all transgender in relation to the time of day..