Is the rapidly shrinkage of the South Polar Cap evidence of man-made Global Warming?

Question

http://www.realclimate.org/index.php?p=192

Oh yeah, forgot to mention. It's on Mars.

Does this mean that climates change even without man's involvement? I'm shocked! To listen to Al Gore and the mainstream media, I can only assume that climates are changed by man-made activities. So how can this be explained? Is the Bush government secretly exporting SUVs to Mars?

Answer 1

Great question! What this article highlights is the most obvious fact of all; that the sun has the most impact on global temperature variations than anything else.

Environmentalists seldom talk about the climate changes that occurred from roughly 1400 AD - 1850 AD, a period of time often referred to as the Little Ice Age, where average global temperatures plummeted nearly 1 degree Celsius. This caused cooler summers, crop failures, longer winters, and strange occurrences like rivers freezing over that ordinarily did not, and mountain tops with year round snow cover that usually disappeared during summer.

During this time period there is no questions that humans had no impact on the environment, yet for nearly half a millennium the global temperature changed. Most scientist believe that the Little Ice Age was a result of a dramatic decrease in sun spot activity during this time period.

However, now that global temperatures appear to be rising, environmental activists claim this is being caused by human beings. Forgetting that the sun like the earth is a dynamic environment that constantly changes. Moreover, the global warming proponents completely neglect the fact that we are currently in the middle of an interglacial period. For the past several million years ice ages have occurred every 40,000 to 100,000 years, with the period of time between ice ages actually increasing up to the last ice age. Therefore, an increase in overall global temperature should not be considered unnatural.

The increase in time between ice ages could be caused by a number of things, not the least of which is the fact that as the sun ages it is increasingly getting hotter and hotter, and remember human beings absolutely have nothing to do with the increase in time of the interglacial period. Modern humans have only existed on earth for one ice age!

Answer 2

Actually, the earth rotates continuously. If you roll a big enough ball long enough and far enough, eventually the North Pole will become the equator, the South Pole will become the North Pole, etc. It may take thousands of years, but it is evolution and it's going to happen. It has nothing to do with the garbage that's being fed to us about people causing global warming. What's more, the actual orbit may be shifting closer to the sun causing global warming.

I'm sure money talks and the powers that be would like us to spend billions of dollars to "fix" something that isn't broken and that really can't be altered (except by maybe GOD). Everything we use, make, eat, breathe occurs naturally on this planet. We have not imported anything from outerspace. We have polluted outerspace though. Therefore if it comes from the earth and can be made on the earth and returns to the earth, even though its form is altered when it is returned, it is a product of the earth and the earth will process it, just as the human body processes all the garbage we put into it and evolves with new tolerances for more garbage.

This is probably the best reason for not eating genetically altered food. It could upset our body's ability to digest the food and could change our appearance. Study people! Look at all the drugs that were good years ago and have been banned today because we discovered we don't know as much as GOD or Mother Nature.

Answer 3

I guess you didn't read beyond the title of your own link LOL;

"Recently, there have been some suggestions that "global warming" has been observed on Mars. These are based on observations of regional change around the South Polar Cap, but seem to have been extended into a "global" change, and used by some to infer an external common mechanism for global warming on Earth and Mars. But this is incorrect reasoning and based on faulty understanding of the data."

Answer 4

The ice contained in the Arctic Circle, yet no longer the Antarctic Circle has been shrinking maximum summers for more effective or less 10,000 years. With the soil uncovered, a lot less problem-free is meditated, which hurries the melting. something else of Earth has warmed about one degree c interior the previous 112 years or their abouts, on the conventional; probable a lengthy time period project, yet in all probability in common words a minor inconvenience the subsequent 50 years. international warming is in all probability a secondary component, no longer major. Neil

Answer 5

And to think in the 1970's scientists were convinced the world was cooling and they were warning of a new ice age.

In the 1990's the problem with the snow melting in the Alps and on the polar caps was attributed to pollution contaminiating the snow. It decreased the snow's ability to reflect the sun and led to melting, this exposed the contamination which absorbed sunlight and increased the melting. Then they found out the contamination on a greenland glacier was caused by volcanic activity, not diesel exhaust.

People have to understand that mankind does effect the environment and there is not one problem, but many.

Answer 6

Here are some facts you left out. The Mars ice caps shrink and grow with the seasons. That's a fact that has been known for years. The other fact is the Earths north polar ice cap is shrinking and it's not due to seasonality. The idea that scientific evidence would be ignored strictly for political purposes and partisan bashing is beyond irresponsible.

Answer 7

I never saw the movie, and I never heard anyone say it is man made, just that we have an impact. Maybe you guys who want to warm the planet up should move there, and melt the water on the planet, create an atmosphere, and live there permanently! BTW, that has been tried on the surface of Mars (tenting an area, releasing CFCs, and raising the surface temp enough to melt the ice)

Answer 8

Al "the blob" Gore has made it quite clear that man is causing global warming on every planet. He even thinks that we should stop driving SUVs on the sun and he should know after all he did invent the Internet.

Answer 9

lol I love the people that read this and say see it says its not global warming on mars but it is global warming on earth so you cant compare the two.

the point is it can happen without it being global warming.
HELLO....

Answer 10

helloooo don't know much about MARS do you???!! its called lots and lots of CO2 already naturally present in the atmosphere, and more being released as some of the ice melts.
matter of fact, Mars has a higher CO2 concentration in its atmosphere, than the Earth does.....for now.


with that being said, why are you posting this in politics when it belongs in science>environment/ecology??