July 31, 2008

Climate change : what's happening to planetary temperatures in the rest of the solar system?

The claim that other planets in the solar system are showing temperature increases came up on the Simpol Forum discussion board. This was one of the issues discussed at the recent meeting in Second Life on climate change. See:
http://globaljusticeideas.blogspot.com/2008/06/second-life.html

When I queried the claim on the discussion board, I was directed to this link:
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2007/02/070228-mars-warming.html

Search the internet and you find plenty of blogs saying planets from Mars to Pluto (sadly no longer a planet) are showing temperature increases. But dig a little further for evidence and the idea that climate change is a natural phenomena caused by changes with the sun is quickly shown to be incorrect.

The evidence is still overwhelmingly that we are experiencing human-caused climate change and that we could enter a runaway situation if action is not taken. Action such as achieving implementation of proposals like Contraction and Convergence through the Simultaneous Policy campaign. If you have not done so already, then sign up as a Simultaneous Policy Adopter today. If you believe that no action is necessary, also sign up so you can vote against the proposals.

My post to the forum below also refers to David Icke, who suggests that the call for action on climate change is an Illuminati plot.

---Post to forum
The National Geographic article is based on three years of observation of Mars. It strikes me as odd that this should be used to try to suggest all planets are warming at the same time as dismissing (as David Icke does) the vast amount of written and natural data showing the climatic history of the Earth and the impact that human activity has had since the industrial revolution. Nothing like this type of data exists for other planets and it would be difficult to obtain it, when on Earth we are talking of temperature changes of a few degrees and on the outer planets the fluctuations would surely be far less, if due to solar activity. While there are not SUV's on Mars and Pluto, neither are there meteorology stations, nor has there been ice-core analysis, tree ring analysis etc. etc.

There are plenty of blogs saying that Pluto is increasing in temperature. However, it is worth looking a bit deeper into where this data comes from as this website does:
http://www.skepticalscience.com/global-warming-other-planets-solar-system.htm

An extract: "Pluto's warming consists of two observations 14 years apart noting a difference in atmospheric thickness which implies warming - scientists are unable to explain why yet. But considering Pluto's orbit is equivalent to 248 Earth years, this says nothing about climate change. It's like saying Earth is warming when comparing winter to summer. Plus Pluto is more than 30 times farther away from the Sun than the Earth is. If the Sun were warming up enough to affect Pluto at that vast distance, it would blowtorch the Earth."

It would also have an impact on Uranus, which is closer to the sun than Pluto, but there is evidence suggesting that the temperature on Uranus is falling (citation on the above site).

The speaker at the recent climate change discussion in Second Life says that NASA has said there is no evidence, though there are records of the activity of the sun itself, which is surely a more reliable guide and one that is far easier to observe, and that evidence disproves the theory it is solar activity that is to blame (he was Al Gore-trained, though, and David Icke says Al Gore is part of the inner circle). See:
http://globaljusticeideas.blogspot.com/2008/06/second-life.html

Also from the above website (which links to the supporting source material): "The whole theory that a brightening sun is causing global warming falls apart when you consider solar output hasn't risen over the past 30 years (when warming has been highest) according to direct satellite measurements that find no rising trend since 1978, sunspot numbers which have leveled out since 1950, the Max Planck Institute reconstruction that shows irradience has been steady since 1950 and solar radio flux or flare activity which shows no rising trend over the past 30 years."

Theories are there to explain the world and need to change when they are found to be wanting, rather than ignore or dismiss the evidence. If a theory cannot accommodate it - and the evidence is something that can be replicated - then the theory has to change.

It seems to me that David Icke goes beyond what evidence demonstrates in his theory of reptilian shape changers driving human history through secret societies and there is much wrong with his analysis (as the above shows regarding his climate change conspiracy theory).

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