An excerpt:
Climate change is a much, much bigger issue than the public, politicians, and even the most alarmed environmentalists realize. Global warming extends to Mars, where the polar ice cap is shrinking, where deep gullies in the landscape are now laid bare, and where the climate is the warmest it has been in decades or centuries.If you're interested in the global warming debate, I highly recommend that you read all ten parts of the series (available at the link above).
"One explanation could be that Mars is just coming out of an ice age," NASA scientist William Feldman speculated after the agency's Mars Odyssey completed its first Martian year of data collection. "In some low-latitude areas, the ice has already dissipated." With each passing year more and more evidence arises of the dramatic changes occurring on the only planet on the solar system, apart from Earth, to give up its climate secrets.
NASA's findings in space come as no surprise to Dr. Habibullo Abdussamatov at Saint Petersburg's Pulkovo Astronomical Observatory. Pulkovo -- at the pinnacle of Russia's space-oriented scientific establishment -- is one of the world's best equipped observatories and has been since its founding in 1839. Heading Pulkovo's space research laboratory is Dr. Abdussamatov, one of the world's chief critics of the theory that man-made carbon dioxide emissions create a greenhouse effect, leading to global warming.
"Mars has global warming, but without a greenhouse and without the participation of Martians," he told me. "These parallel global warmings -- observed simultaneously on Mars and on Earth -- can only be a straightline consequence of the effect of the one same factor: a long-time change in solar irradiance."
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8 comments:
Martian ice cap shrinkage -- only data since about 2000, no way to assess long term trend. Easily could just be response to sunspot cycle.
Solar irradiance increase -- data on this are only over two sunspot cycles, upward trend has been very small not believed large enough to affect climate yet, no way to know if it represents long term increase or just intercycle variation
Coincidence? Odds are 50-50 that two planets with variable climat will be showing temperature trend in same direction at same time even if is no causal connection
Thank you for your comment.
Do you think that the Earth experienced many significant warming and cooling cycles before man's greenhouse gas emissions entered the picture? If so, what do you think caused these fluctuations?
With regards to the current (Pleistocene, i.e., within the last 2-3 million years) earth climatic cycles, the prime driver is (I believe) thought to be the Milankovitch Cycles. I think Martian climate is believed to vary analogously with similar orbital cycles, but they are really influenced by the much more eccentric (elliptical) orbit of Mars as compared to earth, see, for example, this article.
I think studies of Martian climate are in their infancy--and there is just a huge lack of "ground truths", like ice cores, tree rings, and historical measurements (more than 20 years or so). It is, I feel, specious to make a quick comparison of trends for the last 20 years or whatever, where we have some measurements from spacecraft for Mars.
Of course, solar cycles, such as sunspots, are going to have an effect on both planets, but such a "quick-and-dirty" comparison of very different sets of measurements could be misleading.
Tom,
According to some stats the increase in CO2 will increase temp and plant growth which will use the CO2 and decrease CO2 levels which will decrease temp and plant growth. What? A cycle of tropical evirons to ice age environs. Everyone knows that hasn't happened here before. Right? Yea right.
Seems sort of odd that the findings by the solar scientists in Germany of the sun burning hotter has been erased from the picture. Since when have we been in a stable environment?
Anon's 50/50 odds don't work if [say] cooldowns are slow and heatups are rapid on one of the planets being compared!
In any case, the size of the Martian icecaps has been logged for decades, although not with the precision available today.
I once believed in the IBWO, and the man was causing global warming due to CO2 emissions. Then I actually read the evidence, something the algore apparently has not done.
I used to believe in the existance of the IBWO and not in the existance of Global Warming.
Now, I have reversed those beliefs. Funny....how belief works.
There's not as much data being passed around as there are simply headlines - simple slogans that people can remeber easily, such as "Global warming is bad", and "We need to reduce greenhouse gas emissions". Does the average person even know what a greenhouse gas is? Do they know how much they are helping by not driving to work? Are they being presented with information that has been taken out of context, and often is not scientifically proven, but simply an estimate? I'm looking into this for a science project, and quite frankly, the way that the information is researched and the way that it is presented to the public are so different as to be really astounding.
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