An Earth w/o magnetosphere, w/o moon is simply a much larger Mars.
Give or take a thousand years, and we're either toast and/or we're
becoming Mars like.

We're deep into achieving our point of no return, of the ongoing GW
thawing process of losing our surface ice caps, while all of that
nifty Mars sequestered ice isn't going anywhere without a good enough
moon for keeping that planetology core and of a surface of interactive
tidal forced environment(s) alive and kicking, as is very much the
case for mother Earth.

Pat Flannery:
"Subject: Very wet Mars?"
As in thirty-plus feet deep water over its entire surface if melted?
http://www.spaceflightnow.com/news/n0703/15marsice/

Mars polar aquafur/aquifer ice is certainly worth our knowing about,
as it represents the grim remainder of what obviously used to be a
geothermally active and only somewhat atmospheric protected planet
before having lost it's essential magnetosphere.

Even if we're talking 1% Earth wet, Mars is missing most of its salt.
All the water upon Earth and within it's wet atmosphere might
represent as much as 9,000'(2.743 km) as covering a smooth orb. Thus
30+'(9.15 m) in depth of covering such a wussy little orb as Mars is
hardly worth a good spit. At that near vacuum, what would the rate of
evaporation be? Would there be any salty remainders?

Perhaps Mars was a mostly a swamp and/or of some other geothermally
forced muck like fresh water planet, whereas otherwise the necessary
quantity of Mars salt simply doesn't seem to coexist, as though it had
been nearly entirely missed upon getting its fair share of salt to
begin with, or perhaps as having subsequently been strip-mined or
somehow otherwise having its salt extracted.

Is there yet an unknown atmospheric process of having extracted salt
from such a cold and dry environment? (I don't think so)

If whatever deposited such massive amounts of rock salt and ocean
volumes of salty water upon Earth (roughly 1.5e19 kg of Na) should
have happened at roughly the same time for the benefit of Mars, as
then perhaps our Mars probes should have been operating fairly deep
within the remainders of such Mars salt, of having at least 1.5e17 kg
of whatever Na to deal with.

Have those salty types of minerals and percentage or PPM worth of
whatever's Martian rock salt been established from those robotic
samples taken and processed thus far?

Is salt too complicated of an element as to detect, much less
quantify?

Are there per chance any signs of Martian diatoms to behold?

Other than going by way of various observational derived speculations,
as to our having interpreted upon what sort of looks as though it's of
a Mars salt like substance, it seems as though our very own reactive
moon with its argon and sodium atmosphere has offered more solids of
salt to behold than Mars. What gives?

As I've said before, there's little argument from myself that Mars
once upon a geothermally forced time had surface water, and that it
still does have a wee bit of local or deposited salt, though as of
thus far it's simply not indicating as having near enough (Na) volume
or bulk as to hardly matter, especially if such salt(s) had been once
upon a time made wet enough as for sustaining other significant life
(meaning intelligent, as to being of something more worthy than mere
microbes and/or diatom like spores).

If Mars once offered as little as 1% the surface volumes of water as
Earth, whereas such there should have been those remainders of its
global salt (say at least 1% of our 1.5e19 kg = 1.5e17 kg), and
thereby even that scant 1% worth of our terrestrial salt is what
actually represents quite a great deal of salt to have kept hidden on
Mars.

What I'm otherwise driving at, is simply pondering the research based
notions, that Mars is much older than Earth, and that Earth is much
older than Venus, and that our somewhat recent moon (as having arrived
since the last ice age) that's so much bigger and nearby than most
seems a whole lot more salty than Mars, almost as though this solar
system was assembled over a great period of time, as we've been
dragged along by the likes of the Sirius star/solar system, and of
likely having received a few items from its vast Oort cloud of icy
moons and planet sized debris.

At least our somewhat salty moon, as being so massive and nearby, is
what's more than making up for the ongoing loss of Earth's core energy
that's supposedly somewhere in the range of shedding 78 mw/m2, whereas
our moon's gravity of tidal forced influence has been so much so
helping that it has become by far our primary GW consideration like
none other. Obviously adding our global dimming soot into the ongoing
GW demise of our frail environment that's also losing its portective
magnetosphere at the daunting rate of -.05%/year isn't exactly
helping, at least not any more so than our artificial methods of
having been evaporating water that's only adding to our atmospheric
cache of having to hold said water vapor, which currently ranges
anywhere from 13e12 tonnes to as much as 150e12 tonnes, depending
entirely upon whichever hocus-pocus or conditional physics driven
science you'd care to take to the bank.

It's as though we don't hardly know of or much less appreciate our
very own Earth, yet having spent countless billions upon billions,
while having essentially invested decades of our very best talents and
resources upon going after whatever's further away than Venus seems
almost sadistic, if not insane.
-
Brad Guth