Strangeway goes on to hypothesise about 'neutral' atom loss form the atmosphere may be one explanation:
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This neutral loss might help explain why Mars is dry, but it can't explain why Venus is also without water. The escape velocity on Venus and Earth is too high for neutral loss to be significant.
"Venus is trickier," says Strangeway. Something must have been different in the past to explain why Venus has 100,000 times less water than Earth.
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He concludes with:
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For Mars, the upcoming Maven mission from NASA will study ion and neutral losses and test whether these rates change during disturbances in solar activity and the solar wind.
If Strangeway had to guess, he would say the data will show that the difference between magnetized and non-magnetized planets will be slight. But he doesn't have any alternative mechanism for guarding our planet's water supply.
"We have to go back to square one," he says.
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Re-examine the geological evidence of liquid water on Mars, I say.
In my opinion, in the case of Mars, perhaps the erosion there was primarily caused by ablation/sublimation of CO2 and H2O ices, and Mars never had any liquid water to begin with .. that's going back to square one !
So far, we seem to skip through the quantum leap from observing formations on Mars, to immediately concluding that because they look like those we've seen on Earth, they must have been caused by the same process - ie: liquid water erosion. Hence large volumes of liquid water must have been present in Mars' past. Then we go pursuing the catastrophy theories centred around where did it all go ?
(IMHO, of course - but based on observation and reading).
Cheers