Scientists are grappling with a warming phenomena observed on other planets in our Solar System and are at a rush to explain it (since there aren’t any gas-guzzling SUVs on those planets last they checked).
National Geographic reported about the findings of Habibullo Abdussamatov on Mars:
Habibullo Abdussamatov, head of space research at St. Petersburg’s Pulkovo Astronomical Observatory in Russia, says the Mars data is evidence that the current global warming on Earth is being caused by changes in the sun.
“The long-term increase in solar irradiance is heating both Earth and Mars,” he said.
Although some scientists are quick to point to other reasons for martian weather changes:
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.
But Mars isn’t the only planet warming up, as Live Science reports:
Others have pointed out anomalous warming on other worlds in our solar system.
Benny Peiser, a social anthropologist at Liverpool John Moores University who monitors studies and news reports of asteroids, global warming and other potentially apocalyptic topics, recently quoted in his daily electronic newsletter the following from a blog called Strata-Sphere:
“Global warming on Neptune’s moon Triton as well as Jupiter and Pluto, and now Mars has some [scientists] scratching their heads over what could possibly be in common with the warming of all these planets … Could there be something in common with all the planets in our solar system that might cause them all to warm at the same time?”
Peiser included quotes from recent news articles that take up other aspects of the idea.
“I think it is an intriguing coincidence that warming trends have been observed on a number of very diverse planetary bodies in our solar system,” Peiser said in an email interview. “Perhaps this is just a fluke.”
This of course flies in the face of the common assumption that the scientific has a “consensus” about global warming. A quick look below the surface shows that scientists are more divided about the issue than in agreement. From Chris Gupta:
The media rarely help, of course. When Newsweek featured global warming in a 1988 issue, it was claimed that all scientists agreed. Periodically thereafter it was revealed that although there had been lingering doubts beforehand, now all scientists did indeed agree. Even Mr. Gore qualified his statement on ABC only a few minutes after he made it, clarifying things in an important way. When Mr. Stephanopoulos confronted Mr. Gore with the fact that the best estimates of rising sea levels are far less dire than he suggests in his movie, Mr. Gore defended his claims by noting that scientists “don’t have any models that give them a high level of confidence” one way or the other and went on to claim–in his defense–that scientists “don’t know. . . . They just don’t know.”
So, presumably, those scientists do not belong to the “consensus.” Yet their research is forced, whether the evidence supports it or not, into Mr. Gore’s preferred global-warming template–namely, shrill alarmism. To believe it requires that one ignore the truly inconvenient facts. To take the issue of rising sea levels, these include: that the Arctic was as warm or warmer in 1940; that icebergs have been known since time immemorial; that the evidence so far suggests that the Greenland ice sheet is actually growing on average. A likely result of all this is increased pressure pushing ice off the coastal perimeter of that country, which is depicted so ominously in Mr. Gore’s movie. In the absence of factual context, these images are perhaps dire or alarming.
Nonetheless, the presumed consensus precludes alternative ideas to the global warming phenomenon, such as the solar theory propounded by scientists like Abdussamatov above and other theories. More from Chris Gupta:
Never mind that the current trends in climate are nothing new to this planet and have been repeated over and over again in a very identifiable cyclic pattern for many many millions of years. What Gore and Clinton are not talking about is the evidence that climate, volcanism, tectonic activity, cratering, and magnetic reversals may all be correlated. The evidence amassed from geological history shows irrefutably that there is a 14.1 million year cycle to the appearance of large craters on this planet, to tectonic movement, to sea level changes, and to magnetic reversals. The magnetic reversals coincide (every 28 million years) with the mass extinctions evidenced in the fossil record of the earth…just like a clicking clock (or bomb). And all of this coincides with the passage of our solar system through the galactic plane and again as we reach the furthest point away from the plane when we reverse direction and head the other way (the 14.1 million year cycle). All the planets in our solar system are presently showing signs of increased temperature. Our solar system (and the earth with it) is presently passing through the galactic plane.
What to make of all this then?
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