Have the environmentalistas told Marvin the Martian to stop flying his gas guzzling spacecraft yet? Because the past 3 Mars years the polar caps on Mars have been shrinking!!!
Considering there is no life on mars to help warm the planet, this evidence points directly to something on a larger scale warming planets in our solar system. Scientists, for years, have speculated that solar flares affect the temperatures of the planets and this type of evidence provides a pretty good indication that they are right.
The image below is an animation of two images exactly 3 Martian years apart and was taken by the Malin Space Science System satellite currently in orbit around the red planet.
Note to those inspecting the dates in the two photos. The typical Mars Year is about 669 days so when you take three Mars years it throws the Earth date out by about 6 months (or about 180 days).
The south polar residual cap of Mars is composed of layered, frozen carbon dioxide. In 1999, the Mars Global Surveyor (MGS) Mars Orbiter Camera (MOC) showed that the carbon dioxide layers have been eroded to form a variety of circular pits, arcuate scarps, troughs, buttes, and mesas. In 2001, MOC images designed to provide repeated views of the areas imaged in 1999–with the hope of creating stereo (3-D) images, so that the height of scarps and depth of pits could be measured–showed that the scarps had retreated, pits enlarged, and buttes and mesas shrank. Only carbon dioxide is volatile enough in the martian environment to have caused such dramatic changes–the scarps were seen to retreat at an average rate of 3 meters (about 3 yards) per Mars year. Most of the scarp retreat occurs during the southern summer season; in some areas the scarps move as much as 8 meters, in others, only 1 meter per Mars year.
Three Mars years have now elapsed since MOC first surveyed the south polar cap in 1999. Over the past several months, MGS MOC has been re-imaging areas that were seen in 1999, 2001, and 2003, to develop a detailed look at how the landscape has been changing. This animated GIF provides an example of the dramatic changes that have occurred during the past three martian years. The first image, a sub-frame of M09-05244, was acquired on 21 November 1999. The second image, a sub-frame of S06-00973, was obtained on 11 May 2005. The animation shows the changes that have occurred between 1999 and 2005. Each summer, the cap has lost more carbon dioxide. This may mean that the carbon dioxide content of the martian atmosphere has been increasing, bit by very tiny little bit, each of the years that MGS has been orbiting the red planet. These observations also imply that there was once a time, in the not-too-distant past (because there are no impact craters on the polar cap), when the atmosphere was somewhat thinner and colder, to permit the layers of carbon dioxide to form in the first place. Just as Earth’s environment is very different today than it was just 11,000 or so years ago, the martian environment has also been changing on a similar time scale.
I bet they find a way to blame Rona Ambrose for this.
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Good one. I’ll use it tomorrow.
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Jack’s Newswatch
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Lots and lots of people have a lot of ‘splaining to do. Redhouse gases, anyone?
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Jupiter has also been exhibiting signs of global warming. It has a new storm similar to the Great Red Spot, which has just formed in the last few years. This storm, while not as big as the Great Red Spot, is still about the size of the planet Earth. It takes a lot of energy to form a storm that size.
Search for “Oval BA” or “Red Spot Junior”.
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Hold on a minute! The Americans can be blamed for this, they put two vehicles on Mars!
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You’ve cited Jupiter’s “Great Red Spot” and the enormous energy required to generate the storm. What about other planets? Is it pervasive in our immediate solar system? This is fascinating and theories as to cause? The questions are formulating aren’t they? Put this together with increased reports of “debris” from space entering earth’s atmosphere (recent example reported in New Jersey) whose composition (rock/metal description) hasn’t yet been determined. Frankly, I was surprised that local officials were permitted to physically handle the material ungloved.
Main question: are the other planets showing signs of “global warming?”
Great pix of phenomenon. Keep them coming.
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I’ve long thought that solar activity has to be the main influence on climate, whether “warming” or “cooling”. Great post. Though, I’m sure someone – David Suzuki? Al Gore? – will soon let us know how multinational corporations have been secretly pumping “greenhouse” gases into the atmospheres of Mars & Jupiter via secret NASA programs . . .
it’s all a CONSPIRACY!!! Don’t you people understand? When will you wake up???
;^)
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Ed (#4) I found this site http://www.redspotjr.com/ which outlines how Oval BA was formed and it does explain the merging of three smaller storms to one big one. Their is some indication that it is the size of the storm that has turned this one red like the Great Red Spot with the theory being that it would take a big storm to be able to propel chromophores above the cloud cover high enough for the sun to turn them red.
I am still not sure how this would tie in to climate change on Jupiter.
Anna (#6) I have contacted an astromer friend to see if he can help enlighten me on what might constitute climate change on other planets.
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Climate change is a fact of life. Whether human activity contributes to it is debateable. Cleaning up pollution is a great idea. Following the whims of enviro-activists is a bad idea. Any questions? 😉
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There is global warming. It is a fact that no credible scientist disputes. HOWEVER, there is no direct evidence that it is being influenced by human activity.
Does this mean we should do nothing about it? If we can do something we should, the changes are going to produce some costly consequences. That being said we may only be able to make the best out of a bad situation.
Oh for the days of sacrificing virgins to appease the weather gods, sure is easier than trying to understand nature.
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“Oh for the days of sacrificing virgins to appease the weather gods”
There you have it, folks, the environmental movement in a nutshell.
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I’m following this post and your new ones are more than interesting, TrustOnlyMulder. Noone’s doing much coverage of the possible UFO citing at Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport where several witnessed the phonomenon and a long-term employee interviewed on CNN provided description and artist made sketch. The sketch done was commended by an apparent witness as representative of an eliptical, dark grey shaped object which apparently vertically shot up at record speed piercing a “hole” in the cloud cover.
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Anna, perhaps it was the Americans exporting thermal bombs to Mars.
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Either that or George Dubya Bush has pointed his HAARP weather control machine at Mars? 😆
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Are you being purposely deceitful? This site http://www.realclimate.org/index.php?p=192 explains some of this phenomena, and the last paragraph cautions against inferring a global Martian warming trend from 3 years of data, and specifically asks why global warming deniers on Earth are ready to accept Martian global warming from 3 years of data:
“Thus inferring global warming from a 3 Martian year regional trend is unwarranted. The observed regional changes in south polar ice cover are almost certainly due to a regional climate transition, not a global phenomenon, and are demonstrably unrelated to external forcing. There is a slight irony in people rushing to claim that the glacier changes on Mars are a sure sign of global warming, while not being swayed by the much more persuasive analogous phenomena here on Earth…”
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Ah, the hallmark of a serious rightwingnut scientific investigation: a UFO sighting alongside a wonderful head-up-your-ass piece comparing climates on two entirely different PLANETS. Does anyone here have any scientific credentials and sources to back anything up? Or did the MSM and their Liberal party alien overlords stack every university and research institute in Canada with global-warming-friendly scientists? Ooooo, those nasty Liberals. Next thing you know, they’ll be heating up the planet and melting Arctic and Antarctic ice just to mess with us. They would have gotten away with it too, if it weren’t for you meddling blogging geniuses.
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Is that you, Sir Troll-alot?
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Anon, when I see things like a brand new storm the size of the planet Earth on Jupiter, and visible melting of the Martian polar caps (which has been observed for 40 years, not merely 3), I tend to think that both of those globes are experiencing warming.
I do not accept anthropoegenesis as the primary cause of global warming on Earth, Mars, or Jupiter. Indeed, when it is easily demonstrated that all three globes are experiencing warming, and all three globes have the same energy source, it is most reasonable to assume that the warming is in fact solar-system wide.
Couple this with the fact that the earth has been much warmer in geologically-recent history (the Vikings weren’t being ironic when they named Greenland – agriculture there fed Scandinavia) and anthropoegenesis loses more credibility.
Being skeptical about anthropoegenesis does not make me a “global warming denier”. It means that I am skeptical that humans are the cause.
The questions become (1) is the current warming a part of long-term climate change, or merely yet another minor variation such as has occurred several times since the last ice age (2) if it is climate change, will the results necessarily be catastrophic (3) if it is climate change, then how much does human activity contribute compared to things like variation in the Earth’s energy source? (Is the effect of a brightening sun an order of magnitude more important than human activity? Two orders of magnitude? More?)
One thing is clear however. One should stop listening to meteorologists styling themselves as climate-change experts. Climate change is not something that happens over the course of a human lifetime, nor even over the course of hundreds of years; climate change occurs over the course of thousands to tens of thousands of years. The real climate-change experts are geologists and astrophysicists.
This is why I claimed that the desire to sacrifice a virgin to the weather-gods was the environmentalist movement in a nutshell. These people haven’t got the first clue as to whether what we are seeing is in fact climate change, nor a testable hypothesis, but they are eager to sacrifice the livelihoods of hundreds of millions or billions of people to appease the weather-gods. Ironically, these same people are most often the ones who refer to Christians as superstitious fools.
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#13 –LOL. Hey, surprises they’ll keep a ‘comin. Hi Anon, well now, roll out your theory 🙂 even while your Liberal leaders prepare for their “descent” on your oblivious pocketbook.
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The site I quoted is one of many that explain how the Martian changes are decidely regional, not global, and therefore they are not all due to the same source.
But I suppose I should defer to the astrophysicists and climate scientists on this board who have clearly made themselves apparent. If you guys have such a handle on this topic, then you should publish and put your money where your mouth is. I have some background in complex systems science, mathematics and physics (inc. astrophysics), but I wisely defer to the experts when it comes to specialized fields, and check and recheck sources and criticisms. This is because there are too many people just linking events without any justification, and with extremely dangerous levels of understanding. This is ideologically-driven science at its worst – exactly what you accuse the other side of doing.
If you want to contribute, get some training and then publish your work and submit it to public scrutiny, like everyone else does. Go to conferences (not just friendly ones) and make your voice heard.
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anon, do you get the same free reign to criticize the main stream media? Or is every reporter who takes a record high temperature day and blames it on global warming someone who did their studies, checked and rechecked, got the right credentials and then published?
I think not.
At least I have a Bachelor’s of Science and graduated with a 3.96/4.0 GPA.
And when you can refute the evidence NASA gives us that Mars is melting, then you might have a leg to stand on. Until then, I am one of those who does not believe the earth is unnaturally warming.
But on the topic of Global warming vs. regional warming as you state, how come Al Gore or any of his environmentalista cronies point out there are places on Earth where the average temperature is dropping and has been for decades like parts of Siberia?
Or how about the fact that oil (petroleum) is the remnants of tropical rain forests yet we find it in the most barren desserts and desolate polar regions? Or as Ed points out, Greenland wasn’t named what it is because of some green shade of ice.
To me, and many like me, the whole climate change thing is the ultimate make work program. How can a whole industry be created to revolve around the environment. To me the environment means everything around us. How hokey is that? It’s freaking weather and as most people will say about their hometowns, if you don’t like the weather stick around a day or two. Except in the case of the Earth it is “if you don’t like the weather, stick around a thousand years”.
Somehow the environmentalistas have turned this phrase into “If you don’t like the weather, scaremonger with it until someone throws money at your assinine idea”.
Ex.?? One of the theories to block more sun out is to scatter sulpher particles in the atmosphere. (true story). Sulphur is what causes acid rain. There’s logic for you. Argue that man causes global warming, then block the sun out to prevent it. And create a problem later that we can rant about and we did back in the 70’s and 80’s.