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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."
...the orbiter shows that the climate on Mars is heating up at the same rate as Earth's?
Not saying we don't have issues we need to address as well... but isn't that an interesting co-incidence?
Agile Artisans
The Mars face has started to smile.
--- Eat my sig.
Well if Mars is going through what appears to be similar changes as the Earth then perhaps we need to go back and look at what we share in common, namely the sun.
Now of course with Mars we have even less history of their climate than our own but we could extrpolate from earlier photos just how much the visibile frozen material changed on the poles.
One could hope that since climate study on Mars should not be easily politicalized, at least early on, it may give us new isights into our own.
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
Okay, we're using impact craters for age definition. On a surface as windy and subject to sand storms as Mars' is, isn't that a bit subjective? Can they really extrapolate the age of a surface based on erosion?
In the next paragraph they state,
However, the extent and duration of dust storms varied from year to year.
Seems to me they may need to reevaluate age determination some more.
Beagle II has been digging to bury alien bones!
Careful, lest ye be branded heretic by the Environmental Priesthood. Global Warming is obviously caused by SUVs (as opposed to accelerated by them). Remember, there's no PAC money if they find out that nature is simply taking its course.
nos laetus epulor qui would domito nos
While it may be tempting to draw parallels to what is happening to the climate on earth, keep in mind that:
* Correlation does not equal causation.
* Data from Mars is only available for three years, while data from Earth is available for thousands of years.
* Climate dynamics on Mars might be completely different from Earth.
It does show that climate can change rapidly on a global scale without the help of man.
Strictly speaking, not everybody is assuming that. Those with a political motivation for assuming so often assume that, and those with a political motivation to assume the opposite often assume the opposite. Those not inclined to let their political inclinations determine their opinion (which includes those cynical enough to see past their political idealism) are a mixed lot. The environment is such a politicized issue that it's hard to take a sensible position without being shouted down by one group of zealots or another. "Obviously mankind couldn't possibly cause global warming" vs "Obviously if we hadn't elected Bush, global warming wouldn't be a problem today."
I, for one, am agnostic about how much mankind has contributed to the current bout of global warming, though I am attracted to some aspects of environmentalism or conservationism for quality of life reasons (I prefer to breathe clean air, etc.)
Well if Mars is going through what appears to be similar changes as the Earth then perhaps we need to go back and look at what we share in common, namely the sun.
Congratulations! That's an excellent use of rhetoric. In a single stroke, you make climatologists look like idiots ("The sun! Oh my god, we forgot about the sun!") and you push your political agenda.
Do you really expect readers to be naive enough to believe that Martian or terrestrial climatologists have not incorporated solar output into their models? Of course they have, for as far back as those measurements exist. Solar output is taken into account both for climate models on Mars and on earth, and it fails to account for global warming on earth. Climate change on Mars is expected and has been predicted.
Does this mean there are pirates on Mars?
Okay so it's possible that global warming isn't entirely, if at all mans fault. We don't have all the data necessary to say without a doubt that one model is correct and another is wrong. There are still a lot of hypothesis that could be correct. Including some theories that doesn't lay all the blame at just one source.
It is important to not thought that this is data runs just THREE YEARS. This could be a fluke, or it could be mars warming. Again it just the last THREE YEARS. This is by no means a smoking gun.
Finally, the Kyoto Protocol. First of all, lets go with the why. We don't know why the climate is warming up. We have various ideas, but like I said before the data isn't there to concretely state that one of them is correct. What we do know is that it the Earth is heating up and it could cause us some problems.
That being said taking some reasonable steps to try to reduce what ever effects we might be having on the environment wouldn't be a bad idea.
Also it wouldn't have been all that hard to meet the kyoto protocols. The technology is already here for the most part. The biggest thing would have been speeding our assets more wisely. For example improving public transit, and not rolling back EPA rules. Yes you are correct that developing nations were not asked to reduce as much as americans. However there are some important differences.
Mainly that the average American is producing so much more green house gasses then some family in the Congo burning a wood fire to cock their meals. The average american manages to produce more than even other develop nations. So yeah whatever
Heh.
Thats the exactly the problem with the Global Climate Change movement.
If anyone looks at any data beyond CO2/Greenhouse gases causing climate change they are called idiot, crank, jerk, etc.
The above poster linked to a number of sites on solar climate data, if you'd looked at them, are not about Mars, but about the Sun, and because they are not about human activity you throw them out.
In other news...
Sun Energy Output At Over 1,000 Year Peak
http://www.futurepundit.com/archives/002242.html
Hmm...
First it has to be established that Earth's heating is anthropogenic. That hasn't happened and there's a piss-pot full of data that shows the earth has been hotter in the past than it is now. In fact, for the past million years, every 100,000 years or so the earth has heated up just like it is now. And yes, the last time it happenned was 100,000 years ago. Before you go chasing CO2 as the culprit, you'd better be sure it's the guilty party otherwise you're wasting resources that could be better used elsewhere.
The second issue is that the developed world represents about 1.5 billion people whereas there are another 5 billion people out there who have yet to get out of crushing poverty. As they climb out of that hole in the next century, their contribution to CO2 is going to drawf whatever cutbacks we would make. Even if we cut back 100%, it's still going to rise. IF CO2 turns out to be the hazard some would have you believe it is it makes more sense to figure out how to get it out of the atmosphere because there isn't much prospect of preventing those 5 billion from adding to what's already there. You can't very well say to them, "No, you're stuck in grinding poverty because if you crawl out, you'll make the world warmer."
Disconnect your brain and blame Bush for this as well. Information? Facts? And understanding of processes? We need none of these. Instead we should stifle businesses without knowing what's going on. Why? Because we will FEEL better about ourselves for doing our part. Who cares if our efforts actually do anything, we'll have a clearer conscious.
Prof. Farnsworth - "Oh a lesson in not changing history from Mr I'm-My-Own-Grandpa!"
http://volcano.und.edu/vwdocs/Gases/man.html
b s/351387a0.html;jsessionid=47E7825B96884284A97B6E5 C50343A70
Kilauea kicks out only 8,000 tons a day.
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v351/n6325/a
Etna kicks out 13+-3Tg/yr, or roughly 1,171,000 US tons of CO2 per year...
Seems like a lot, but, US CO2 production is something a billion tons of CO2 per year. So, the volcanos give out 1/1000 of CO2 as the USA does.
Rock on!
This is my sig.