Re: Global warming on Mars

On Thu, 05 Apr 2007 17:27:45 -0700, Johnny T <nobody@xxxxxxxx> wrote:

Gospadine wrote:
LOL OrangeSFO.
Hmmmm who caused it to warm up the same as Earth? Must be the oil
companies!! ROFL

http://news.yahoo.com/s/space/20070404/sc_space/duststormsfuelglobalwarmingonmars



All I am saying is that this follows the dramatic rise in number of cars
and amount of driving on the planet. That's all I am saying...

Cause and effect.
Effect and cause.

What's one to think?

Here is another discussion of the same story via the Aussies.

http://www.abc.net.au/pm/content/2007/s1891367.htm

Mars also experiencing global warming: scientists

PM - Thursday, 5 April , 2007 18:46:00
Reporter: Jennifer Macey
MARK COLVIN: NASA scientists have revealed that our planetary
neighbour, Mars, is also experiencing global warming.

In research just out in Nature magazine, the researchers say Mars is
heating up at a similar rate to earth.

One climate change sceptic here has seized on the study as a challenge
to the assumption that climate change is caused by humans.

Jennifer Macey reports.

JENNIFER MACEY: The red planet is heating up, so much so that the
polar ice cap on Mars has been disappearing over recent years.

Now scientists at NASA's Ames Research Centre in California have gone
part of the way to explaining this change in the planet's climate, by
researching changes in dust and reflected heat from the sun.

The research shows that between the 70s and 90s, Mars warmed by point
0.65 degrees Celsius.

Here on earth the average temperature rose by point 0.75 during the
20th century.

Doctor Charles Lineweaver heads the Planetary Science Institute
Research School at the Australian National University's Mount Stromlo
Observatory.

He says on earth greenhouse gases trap radiation from the sun, which
causes temperature changes, while on Mars it's due to the red dust.

CHARLES LINEWEAVER: Every once in a while there's a giant dust storm
on Mars, and we don't know why, and there's a feedback - the light
comes in, it's either reflected or absorbed. If it is absorbed, that
produces more heat, that produces more dust devils. The dust devils
then raise some of the dust into the atmosphere and clear off some of
the darker rocks, and that absorbs more sunlight, which produces more
dust devils, et cetera.

JENNIFER MACEY: The climate modelling systems used by the NASA
scientists to measure the temperature change on Mars are similar to
those used to forecast the weather on Earth.

Professor Andy Pitman from the University of New South Wales is an
expert on climate modelling, and was a lead author on the
Intergovernmental Panel of Climate Change report released earlier this
year.

ANDY PITMAN: The models that represent the Earth are vastly more
complex than you would need to represent Mars. But the processes that
are used to explain the results in the Marsian study, those mechanisms
are included in the climate models used to project the future climate,
and have been shown on Earth to be negligible in their significance.

JENNIFER MACEY: However, some global warming sceptics say the research
does point to holes about climate change theories here on Earth.

William Kininmonth is the former head of the National Climate Centre
at the Bureau of Meteorology, and the author of Climate Change: a
Natural Hazard.

He says it's an interesting observation.

WILLIAM KININMONTH: The variability of climate on Mars suggest that
there is an equal probability of, variability of climate on Earth, and
the fact that both Mars and Earth are warming at the same period, we
either look to coincidence, or we look to some common feature or
common factor that's causing them both to warm a little.

JENNIFER MACEY: The University of New South Wales Professor Andy
Pitman dismisses any connection between the warming on both planets as
silly science.

ANDY PITMAN: There are no links, there are no common factors, there
are no associations. It's entirely coincidental, and it's completely
explicable by known mechanisms on both planets that are in no way
related.

MARK COLVIN: Professor Andy Pitman, climate modelling expert from the
University of New South Wales, ending that report by Jennifer Macey.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------

Elaborate theories about dust storms on Mars causing Martian warming,
and they slide right by the biggest thing that Earth and Mars have in
common.

Maybe the Earth and Mars have one big thing in common, namely the sun?

I don't know.
I'm just sayin'
.