Re:So if we humans are the cause of bad comparison
Posted by: Anonymous Coward
on August 08, 2006 02:03 AM
The Mars polar ice caps are made of Carbon Dioxide, not water, so any comparisions to the earth are apples to oranges. Still, I read TFA.
It admits that we don't know what caused the Mars polar ice caps to recede, but they speculate that dust storms could have had an impact by trapping some of the heat. It admits that we don't even know whether they are receding - becasue they only have ONE YEAR of data! The article states that we don't know how the sublimation of the Mars ice, which they are guesstimating could increase the Mars atmospheric density several percent, will affect the climate except that it'll probably be insignificant because the atmosphere is so thin to begin with. So this is a terrible analogy to use for debating the earth's climate.
There is no doubt that manmade carbon dioxide, methane, refrigerants, etc. are trapping heat in the Earth's atmosphere. There is no doubt that on average this will increase the Earth's temperature. There are reasonable debates about how and how much the global climate will be affected and how particular local climates will change.
Pointing out that the climate has undergone large scale changes in the past ignores the serious impacts those changes have had on survival and extinction and ignores the novelty of man's expanding influence.
Learn about Linux
Download Linux
Get Linux help
Re:So if we humans are the cause of bad comparison
Posted by: Anonymous Coward on August 08, 2006 02:03 AMIt admits that we don't know what caused the Mars polar ice caps to recede, but they speculate that dust storms could have had an impact by trapping some of the heat. It admits that we don't even know whether they are receding - becasue they only have ONE YEAR of data! The article states that we don't know how the sublimation of the Mars ice, which they are guesstimating could increase the Mars atmospheric density several percent, will affect the climate except that it'll probably be insignificant because the atmosphere is so thin to begin with. So this is a terrible analogy to use for debating the earth's climate.
There is no doubt that manmade carbon dioxide, methane, refrigerants, etc. are trapping heat in the Earth's atmosphere. There is no doubt that on average this will increase the Earth's temperature. There are reasonable debates about how and how much the global climate will be affected and how particular local climates will change.
Pointing out that the climate has undergone large scale changes in the past ignores the serious impacts those changes have had on survival and extinction and ignores the novelty of man's expanding influence.
#