Wednesday, March 7, 2007

Mars and Earth - both sweating out a heatwave

Mars south polar icecap The Mars south polar icecap. This recent photo shows the melt runoff channels. Photo-recon proves Mars global warming.

Some may recall that on February 2 I posted an article in Blogspot called "ENVIRONMENTALISM - THE NEW CANADIAN RELIGION". I wasn’t overly aggressive, and found it hard to be brief on such a weighty topic. One of the points I made was that Mars has a geologic and climate history which has many similarities to Earth. I supplied a photo of Mars’ south polar icecap as it was in 1877, pointing out that our neighbor goes through melting cycles even without the man-made influence of automobile exhaust and smokestack industries.


Last week there was a flurry of stories refuting the "man-mad" Global Warming thesis. One report in particular caught my eye because it was in the National Geographic News e-magazine. Not even the crankiest of Doubting Thomas’s, I hope, could slough off the venerable NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC as being an organ of the “vast right wing conspiracy”. That article, entitled “MARS MELT HINTS AT SOLAR, NOT HUMAN, CAUSE FOR WARMING, SCIENTISTS SAY” reported on the analysis of daily satellite reconnaissance imagery coming from Mars orbit. The findings show that solar irradiance has caused dramatic melting of the carbon dioxide and water icecap for three years in a row. The conclusion? “The long-term increase in solar irradiance is heating both Earth and Mars.” The reaction to such contrarian thinking from runagate scientists is predictable. Scientists and Global Warming enthusiasts all over the planet began bombarding the media with press releases mocking the latest heresy.
The N.G.N. story is here.



It's kind of fun to read this a.m. that even the powerful Washington politicians who have been running with this issue, can themselves be stymied by the ... weather. A case in point. This morning a Senate Committee was scheduled to fill American TV sets with live reiterations of reiterations on Al Gore's "Inconvenient Truth".

The website schedule says "Subcommittee on Energy and Air Quality Hearing on "Climate Change: Are Greenhouse Gas Emissions from Human Activities Contributing to a Warming of the Planet?" at 10:00 a.m., in room 2322 Rayburn House Office Building" The problem is, one inch of snow overnight has created chaos in D.C. The suits have rescheduled.

The Mars Society - logo
One last comment on the subject of Mars: I am of course a big fan of Mars colonization, and have been receiving the informative mailings of THE MARS SOCIETY for many years. (our logo above) Yesterday’s post brought news of the Tenth International Mars Society Convention, scheduled for Los Angeles in late August. I had to smile when I read the list of Conference Sessions.

No. 28 reads “Law, Governance, and social systems for Mars”.

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