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Some good reading HERE for those on either side of the global warming debate. It's a PDF and covers most everything thats being discussed on this topic.

   

I think it's not so much that he doesn't understand as he doesn't want to understand.

   

The planet Venus is hotter than Mercury <I>despite</I> the fact that it is farther away from the sun. This is because Venus's atmosphere does a better job of trapping heat energy. The sun is not the only factor determining a planet's temperature. Atmospheric factors play an important role.

   

Funny thing is that Mars is one cold sucker of a planet and that it's atmosphere is 95% CO2, that mystical, magical, wonderful material which is setting our atmosphere on fire with only trace amounts----according to the crazies...........and hockey pucks.......

   

So what, retard? The atmosphere of Venus is 97% CO2 and the temperatures reach 450 degrees Celsius. Mercury also reaches similar high temperatures, but dips way below zero when the sun goes down - guess why? NO CO2 ATMOSPHERE TO MAINTAIN THE HIGH TEMPERATURE.

Someone with a little sense might also take into account the fact that Mars is 50% farther from the sun than Earth when comparing surface temperatures.

While you're struggling with that one, I'll remind you that my previous post still needs your attention - surely someone whose life revolves around global warming can answer my silly little questions and comments.

   

Bart, as much as I agree with you on alot of things, you don't neccessarly need extra sunlight to cause the increase the dust storm activity on Mars. I'll try my best to explain what would cause the ice caps to melt on Mars.

Let's say Mars is covered in white and dark dust swirls(like chocolate and vanilla swirls). Now, in this case, there is much more white dust than there is darker dust, which means Mars reflects alot of sunlight than it would if there was dark dust.

Now picture the dust storms going across Mars, mostly traveling in the white dust areas and kicking up white dust. Now, one of the dust storms starts going towards a dark areas and kicks up dark dust. This dark dust is in the air covering the lighter dust areas. Instead of light areas reflecting, you have dark areas absorbing(in the dust storm cloud). With the extra energy be absorded, this creates more winds and would kick up more dust, dark dust if parts of the storm are over the dark areas.

Now what is to stop this continous buildup of energy and storms? At some point, the storms will travel long enough over lighter dust areas to let some of the dust settle. This loses energy. It'll everntually go back to it's normal levels until the next dark area.

I hope this help explain a few things. It's not the questing of extra sunlight, but the efficiency of which the planet is absorbing that sunlight.

   

Average absolute temperature (Kelvin) on Mars is about 80% of Earth's. It's 50% further from the sun, but light decreases with distance squared, so it gets less than half the sunlight. The energy it does absorb, it can't retain very well, because it has less than 1% the atmospheric pressure.

Our atmosphere has more than a trace of CO2, but the concentration is low (about 380 parts per million), so I can understand why you might have a hard time believing it could do anything. There's only a few ppm of ozone in the ozone layer, and that has an even bigger effect on ultraviolet radiation than CO2 has on temperature. 10 µg/kg of pufferfish toxin will kill you, ten parts per <i>billion</i>. A lethal dose of polonium is less than one part per <i>trillion</i>. They're all very good at what they do.

It isn't magical. The structure of CO2 makes it very good at absorbing infrared radiation.
It isn't mystical. All you need to test the basic principles are a tank of CO2 and some relatively cheap lab equipment.
It isn't setting the atmosphere on fire. It's a matter of a few degrees. But so's a fever.

   

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