I had noticed years ago that it was not just our own planet Earth that showed evidence of global warming but also the planet Mars, a confluence of planetary melts which suggested to me then that a solar (sun-caused) explanation of some kind was likely.
I have now run across a February 28, 2007 article at National Geographic News by Kate Ravilious titled Mars Melt Hints at Solar, Not Human, Cause for Warming, Scientist Says, where Ravilious wrote: "In 2005 data from NASA's Mars Global Surveyor and Odyssey missions revealed that the carbon dioxide "ice caps" near Mars's south pole had been diminishing for three summers in a row. Habibullo Abdussamatov, head of space research at St. Petersburg's Pulkovo Astronomical Observatory in Russia, says the Mars data is evidence that the current global warming on Earth is being caused by changes in the sun. "The long-term increase in solar irradiance is heating both Earth and Mars," he said."
See also Russia Blog for a comment on the article.
A solar explanation is to my mind far more sensible than the far-fetched theories (e.g. orbital forcing) being propagated by some mainstream scientists that cycles in planetary ice ages are caused by minimal changes in the wobble of a planet's orbit and tilt. We might rightly call this farcical theory of mainstream science "The Tilted Very Wobbly Theory of Climate Change". The trouble with this wobbly and surely incorrect theory is that global warming appears to be hitting the entire solar system, not just Mars.
As written at Live Science by Ker Than in Sun Blamed for Warming of Earth and Other Worlds:
"Benny Peiser, a social anthropologist at Liverpool John Moores University who monitors studies and news reports of asteroids, global warming and other potentially apocalyptic topics, recently quoted in his daily electronic newsletter the following from a blog called Strata-Sphere:
"Global warming on Neptune's moon Triton as well as Jupiter and Pluto, and now Mars has some [scientists] scratching their heads over what could possibly be in common with the warming of all these planets ... Could there be something in common with all the planets in our solar system that might cause them all to warm at the same time?""
But such facts do not disturb mainstream scientists trying to protect their private theories.The alternative - equally unsubstantiated - notion that man is primarily responsible for global warming fails to explain, for example, why Lake Baikal, the greatest repository of fresh water in the world, has been experiencing a temperature increase over the last 137 years, far longer than can be explained by man-made causes. Rising lake temperatures over such a long period of time suggest a bigger influence than man's humble changes to the environment. Man again, elevates himself above nature here, which is often a mistake.
Indeed, most people, in mainstream science and out, have simply been "brainwashed" by wobbly orbits or man-made climate change theory and thus are not open to contrary discussion. I find Abdussamatov's thesis - contrary to the very weak science against the theory - to be much more plausible in looking to long-term cycles in solar activity as the primary cause for a global warming which has hit not just Earth but the rest of our Solar System.
Just look at these photos of sun cycles and read these pages about how the Sun works.
It is quite clear that when the Sun is in a periodic "glowing" phase, the entire solar system must heat up fairly quickly. Earth is a mere speck of dust as compared to the size and impact of the Sun.
Indeed, the existence of solar cycles is undisputed, and no one doubts that these cycles affect the climate:
1. Long-term Variability in the Length of the Solar Cycle by Michael L. Rogers and Mercedes T. Richards, Penn State University
2. THE SOLAR WOLF-GLEISSBERG CYCLE AND ITS INFLUENCE ON THE EARTH by Shahinaz M. Yousef, A stronomy &Meteorology Dept. Faculty of Science -Cairo University
3. Radiocarbon content variations and Maunder Minimum of solar activity
The question is one of degree - literally - which the mainstream scientists are currently incompetent to measure accurately. In our view, longer-term cycles such as the ice ages will be related to longer-term solar cycles covering thousands of years.
Comments on this topic by others:
UnSpace cited in more detail to Abdussamatov's findings as follows:
"Today, I was able to find the book "Multi-Wavelength Investigations of Solar Activity: Proceedings of the 223th [i.e. rd] Symposium of the International Astronomical Union Held in Saint Petersburg, Russia June 14-19, 2004," edited by Alexander V. Stepanov, Elena E. Benevolenskaya and Alexander G Kosovichev. Pages 541-542 had the article "About the long-term coordinated variations of the activity, radius, total irradiance of the Sun and the Earth's climate" by Habibullo I. Abdussamatov,1 Pulkovo Observatory, Saint Petersburg, Russia.
I found the following quote to sum up the essential arguments presented:
National Post"Moreover, according to the data of Borisenkov (1988)2, in each of the 18 deep Maunder-type minima of solar activity, revealed over the span of the last 7500 years, the cooling of climate had been observed, while warming occurred during the periods of high maxima. Thus, the integral radiation has always been essentially higher at the maximum, and it had noticeably decreased at the minima. Therefore, quasi-periodic variations of the solar activity during both the 11-year cycle and 80- and 100-year cycles are accompanied by proportional variations of the integral flux of solar radiation, which result in geophysical effects. (p. 541)""
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* If you read my 1975 article "The Kondratiev Cycle and Saros Cycle in Eminent Births 1700-1800 : Compared to Prices in Southern England for the Same Period" here is why grain prices, for example, and solar activity are causally related, in plain common sense, as found at JoeCobb.com: "Two centuries ago, the astronomer William Herschel was reading Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations when he noticed that quoted grain prices fell when the number of sunspots rose. Gales of laughter ensued, but he was right. At solar maxima, when the sun was at its hottest and sunspots showed, temperature was warmer, grain grew faster and prices fell. Such observations show that even small solar changes affect climate detectably. But recent solar changes have been big."
