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Mars Orbiter Sees Changes
pin_gween writes "The long-lived Mars Global Surveyor (8 yrs and flying) has enabled scientists to see changes in the surface of Mars. From the article: 'New gullies that did not exist in mid-2002 have appeared on a Martian sand dune. New impact craters formed since the 1970s suggest changes to age-estimating models. And for three Mars summers in a row, deposits of frozen carbon dioxide near Mars' south pole have shrunk from the previous year's size, suggesting a climate change in progress.' The probe's primary mission ended in 2001 and scientists are hopeful the orbiter's life can be extended for another 5 -10 years."
I'm glad you wrote that first phrase, because the real answer to your question is... maybe, maybe not.
Undoubtedly, people are going to start screaming about how global warming on Mars proves that global warming on Earth is due to natural forces, not man's activities. I've already seen several comments here to that effect. To believe such a silly thing is scientific idiocy.
No one has ever said that a planet's climate is stable. It has been known for quite a while that Earth's climate goes through warmer and colder phases. While natural warming of the planet does exist, this is not what "Global Warming," in the sense of the political topic, is. The thing that is alarming about the temperature changes in our own planet is not the fact that it exists, but the rate at which it's changing and the possible consequences of the change.
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Is our own global warming exacerbated by man's activities? Maybe, more study is needed. The Republican way is not to study, though, it is to simply dismiss it as untrue. Now that scientists have "proven" that there is climate change on Mars (something that is only logical), my fear is what seems to be happening right here: people are going to use it as "evidence" that our own global warming is just a bunch of tree-hugging liberals trying to scare people. If they manage to convince enough people of this, it will likely lead to significant environmental problems in our not-too-distant future (at best) or the ultimate destruction of our species (at worst).
Is that scary enough for you? While I don't go through life in constant fear of our extinction, it is of great enough concern to me that I think that scientists are warranted in wanting to check into the possibilities, and it wouldn't hurt to take some reasonable measures now to possibly prevent such dire consequences while we have plenty of time to do so, even if it is at the expense of slightly reducing the profit of rich oil companies and Washington lobbyists.
Worse, knee-jerk non-scientists will use this as an opportunity to dismiss decades of study that have already taken place as invalid and/or untrue, just as new discoveries that modify our understanding of our own planet's age, development of species, and other such finds is used as "proof" that the Theory of Evolution is wrong.
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I just wish everyone would hold off on drawing wild inferences from these new observations until they can be studied and logical, well-thought-out hypotheses put forth.
Either you're not American, or you missed the mandatory "I got mine, screw you" economics seminar.
Also, on Earth, piracy is actually a worsening problem in areas like the Malacca straits. Our climate is getting warmer, though. So it's not an inverse correlation at all, is it? Huh?? Seems like pirates might be contributing to the problem.
Personally I think we have a much bigger set of information -- across multiple planets and decades of data -- showing that unmanned interplanetary probes inhibit White Shark attacks. When was the last time we had a shark attack problem with one of our probes? Never. Not one. Also there haven't been any problems with elephant stampedes. And have there been any race riots on Mars, or Saturn, or anywhere else we've sent a wee robot? Nope.
If only we'd kept these probes at home, they could be used to address pressing social problems like those. Instead the government throws money at these military industrial complex boondoggles. Sheesh.
"Fundamentalism" isn't about divine morality. It's about human authority.
What do they run on anyway?
Solar power. I guess that isn't "green" enough for the truly militant left. Maybe we need "wind powered" rovers instead. Or we could have stayed home and wondered about those "canals" on Mars, I suppose.
Tequila: It's not just for breakfast anymore!
His post was reasonable and thoughtful.
No, his posting was uninformed and biased. It may seem "thoughtful" to you based on no data at all, but he is basically doing the equivalent of arguing that the earth is flat because "everybody can see that it is".
As I'm sure you well know, even scientists get it wrong sometimes. We are allowed to question them.
Of course, we are allowed to question them. A good place to start might be by actually asking questions. But he didn't ask questions, he accused climatologists of being idiots that ignore one of the most obvious factors. Face it, he wasn't questioning scientists, he was pushing a political agenda.
Interesting. What is the cause of that climate change? Can you point to a source, please?
Look for "climate change mars" on Google. You'll get lots of articles about tilt, the fact that the Martian atmosphere freezes out, chemical processes, and other factors. Whatever climate models apply to Mars, the two systems just are not comparable.