Tuesday, February 20, 2007

Just a little somethin’ I noticed

One of the oft-quoted wing-nut pieces of evidence against anthropogenic activities being a major cause of recent warming is the recent shrinking of Mars’ southern polar ice-cap.

Worldnetdaily proclaimes:
Global warming on Mars – without SUVs!
Planet experiencing increased temperatures despite lack of humankind
Glen Reynolds of Instapundit.com notes:
GLOBAL WARMING ON MARS: "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."

If only we had ratified Kyoto.

However, over the past month or so Svensmark’s cosmic ray theory has taken off in crazy land. It so proves AGW wrong!

Here’s Reynolds again:
GLOBAL WARMING AND COSMIC RAYS: We must, of course, follow the science, and not let the fact that a lot of politicians have invested their credibility in greenhouse theory affect the analysis. It's wrong to politicize science.
And Worldnetdaily:
Global warming? It's in the stars, says scientist
Blames high-energy rays from distant parts of space smashing into atmosphere
Jeff Jacoby, Globe Columnist, even manages to put these two theories into the same paragraph:
Henrik Svensmark of the Danish National Space Center, for instance, believes that changes in the sun's magnetic field, and the corresponding impact on cosmic rays, may be the key to global warming. Nigel Weiss, a past president of the Royal Astronomical Society and a mathematical aerophysicist at the University of Cambridge, correlates sunspot activity with changes in the Earth's climate. Habibullo Abdussamatov, who heads the space research laboratory at Pulkovo Astronomical Observatoryin Russia, points out that Mars is also undergoing global warming -- despite having no greenhouse conditions and no activity by Martians. In his view, it is solar irradiance, not carbon dioxide, that accounts for the recent rise in temperature.
“It’s all solar!”, claims Jeff.

Svensmark’s theory relies on cosmic rays initiating cloud formation, which has a cooling effect.

Less cosmic rays = less clouds = warmer.

One problem.

Mars doesn’t have clouds.

So, to use the contrarian scientific method, these conclusions are all unequivocal fact:

1. Mars’ recent warming proves Svensmark wrong.
2. Svensmark’s theory proves the Mars missions were faked.
3. Islamoleftistscientists hacked our servers and to make us look like we are contradicting ourselves.
4. The Earth is the centre of the universe evolution is a lie.

Problem solved. What contradiction?