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Global Hot Air
Posted by KTK

There seems to be some sort of stupidity contest underway on the conservative blogs, triggered by this (old news) report from the London Times Online about rising temperatures on Mars:

Mars is being hit by rapid climate change and it is happening so fast that the red planet could lose its southern ice cap, writes Jonathan Leake.

Scientists from Nasa say that Mars has warmed by about 0.5C since the 1970s. This is similar to the warming experienced on Earth over approximately the same period.

Since there is no known life on Mars it suggests rapid changes in planetary climates could be natural phenomena.

The mechanism at work on Mars appears, however, to be different from that on Earth. One of the researchers, Lori Fenton, believes variations in radiation and temperature across the surface of the Red Planet are generating strong winds.

In a paper published in the journal Nature, she suggests that such winds can stir up giant dust storms, trapping heat and raising the planet’s temperature.

Yeah, the “could be natural phenomena” line was dumb. But not nearly as dumb as the reaction among conservative commentators.

From the Times Online’s comments section:

You go on ahead and worship mama nature if you’d like. I will continue to worship the Creator. Is “Green” the new state religion? Notice how all us skeptics are being labeled as heretics? The debate on global warming was non existant just 20 years ago. It was all about global cooling…when this fraud was exposed, the hippies shouted global warming!
I love my Carbon Footprint!

Douglas, Port Angeles, WA

I wonder if anyone has bothered to corelate the rise in Martian temperatures with the “global warming” we are having here on our own planet Earth.

I guess it would wreck many reputations if it does indeed turn out the …agh!! the SUN is causing glabal warming and not human caused.

Jim Chapman, Beverly Hills, USA/Michigan . . .
Why is it that, it must be dust storms on Mars that is heating that planet up. Instead of what it really is, A SUN CYCLE. All of the solar system is heating up and the last I checked we were not on any of them with our terrible SUV’s, Big Trucks and industry. Give me a break.

Mark Shaw, Alcoa, TN . . .

We knew this months, if not years ago. It’s just the media and the social scientists that constitute the “consensus” on man-made global warming have intimidated and censored the opposition to their politically motivated power play.

Warming is happening on Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Neptune. How did Americans pollute those other planets? I really want a great climatologist like Al Gore, Heidi Cullen or Sheryl Crow to explain that one to me.

Cheryl, Austin, TX USA . . .

Enough of this garbage science presented by al-Gore who is going about terrorizing our children. Just for the record, Venus,and Jupiter are all showing signs of Global Warming!!! Those Martians and Juipterians had better watch out and stop generating all those Grean House gasses, Oops Green House DUST.
As I have heard and believe, since I have actually studied this, WE ARE ALL PART OF THE SOLAR SYSTEM, WE ARE ALL ACTUALLY WITHIN THE SUN’S ATMOSPHERE!

Randy Washburn, Arlington . . .

If it wasn’t obvious to anyone yet, here is the truth: Al Gore is in need of a paycheck, period, and he has manufactured a sense of terrorism about this global warming thing in order to do two things, 1. get paid, 2. stay in the spotlight. He loves the stage just like Bill Clinton and he’s upset that he’s not given the opportunities that Clinton is given to be in the spotlight. There is just as much evidence againt humans causing global warming as ther is evidence for it. To assume that Al Gore, a politician, has better knowledge than scientists, is proof that stupid Americans don’t care what a celebrity says, they will believe them no matter what. Anyone who is convinced that humans are the cause of global warming is an ass because the data is just not conclusive!!! Wake up stupid!!!

Bill Manganaro, Columbia, TN

Duh………those Martians better hurry up and sign the Koyto treaty or they will be doomed like us!
Seriously folks, when something is heating up should you not first check the original source of heat , like oh I don’t know maybe the SUN. Oh that’s right I forgot, those limousine riding, private jet flying liberal zealots can’t legislate sun activity. Now thats an Inconvenient Truth!

Allen, Macon Georgia, USA

sun + mankind = a warming earth
sun - mankind = a warming earth
earth - sun = a cold mankind

uhh The vegetation of the world produces co2 at night

Rodney, Sandusky, Ohio . . .
Clearly Algore needs to set his sights on Mars next, that is if members of the Stalinist Left release him from his contract with the Devil.

Bruce Davidson, Livonia, MI.

Our galaxy moves through space. Space is NOT homogeneous. We are traversing an area with MORE energy. Is this energized space galaxy sized? solar sized? or other? you decide! But our entire solar system is undergoing changes. And now one is mentioning the elephant in the room, which is braying louder every day - plasma cosmology and the electric universe. Good and Bad may be debated by “You ain’t seen nothing yet!”

Sam, Louisville,

(To be fair, there are a number of commentators who point out that the article in question explicitly cites evidence of changes in Martian albedo affecting energy absorption - negating any weird nonsense about the Sun “heating up”, let alone “plasma cosmology and the electric universe”, but the kind of scientific literacy displayed above is rampant.)

The conservative blogs are worse. Elizabeth Kantor, at The Right Angle, writes sarcastically:

[I]t’s obvious that temperatures on Mars (entirely devoid of oil companies and Americans) must be changing for reasons that are entirely different from the causes of global warming here. . . .

Of course. That must explain it.

What on Earth (or Mars, for that matter) made me jump to the conclusion that this coincidence might have anything at all to do with the one big thing that both planets have in common?

That would be the Sun.

From PoliBlog, a refreshingly near miss with common sense - but a miss nonetheless:

I usually stay out of the global warming discussion because I am not an environmental scientist. Still, if Mars is experiencing similar warming to the Earth during the same period of time, it does at least raise the question of whether some solar systemic issues might be at work rather than terrestrial ones.

The Q and O Blog seems to have some kind of almost perverse desire to be wrong:

Of course the article goes on to say that the mechanisms on Mars are different than those here on earth (strong winds, dark areas absorbing light, etc), but the fact remains something other than AGW has caused the initiation of this “different mechanism” on Mars. But somehow not mentioned in of all of this is old Sol. While we worry about our lightbulbs here, the biggest lightbulb in the solar system is essentially ignored or waved away when talking about an increase in temperature on Mars. What “could be” a more natural phenomenon than that?

(The writer explicitly acknowledges non-Earthlike mechanisms at work on Mars, then concludes the correlation must be due to common causes. WTF? That’s beyond ignorance - that’s just flaunting your stupidity.)

Since these people are clearly struggling with . . . technical issues . . . we won’t hold them to any real scientific knowledge. It’s not a requirement for conservatives engaged defending their pet scientific theories. But, you know, there are a few little things that I think are just basic facts - at least, basic for anyone who makes even the slightest pretense of writing about planetary science - that ought to have suggested something to the dimmest intellect: and knowledge for the dimmest intellect is exactly the kind of information these people so desperately need.

For one, Mars is barely 1/10 the size of Earth. For two, it has about 1/100th the atmospheric pressure of Earth and no ozone layer. For three, it’s 1 1/2 times as far from the Sun, which means it gets less than half the solar radiation of Earth per surface area (for reasons that involve numbers and things - just take my word for it). For yet another, it is not 3/4 covered by a massive liquid heat-sink that convectively carries heat across its surface. For numero tambieno, its non-existent liquid heat-sink is not in phase-change equilibrium with massive polar ice caps that sequester vast amounts of the heat-storage substance. For sixes, it is not undergoing large-scale (or, any) shifts in greenhouse gas content of its unbreathably thin atmosphere. Und siebte, it is not covered with an immense biomass engaged in carbon-cycling and O₂/CO₂ interchange. And those are just the ones I can think of off the top of my head, on the basis of 25-year-old memories of Carl Sagan videos.

In other words, even if you imagine that only natural phenomena are at work, almost none of the major factors participating in climate change on Earth even exist on Mars, and the supposed “common factor” - solar radiation influx - affects the two planets in completely different ways and with different magnitude. This should be obvious even without noting the fact that the report they are citing does not attribute Martian weather patterns to solar radiation. The only reasonable conclusion is that superficially similar phenomena on the two planets must be due to different causes, because the relevant factors are so completely different and the supposedly similar ones are not, in fact, similar! It’s simple, really: whatever is the cause of Martian surface temperature rises over 30 years - if it’s even confirmed - that cannot be the same thing that is causing Earth temperature rises over the past 100 years, and, just to be clear, it cannot be the particular common factor the right-wing noise machine is now trumpeting. It simply cannot be. The conditions are hugely different, and not in subtle ways.

But why should facts matter?

April 30th, 2007 General, Science, News & Current Events, Climate Change | 14 comments