Kentucky State Senator Brandon Smith says climate change science is false because Mars is the same temperature as Earth.
How do you explain someone out of a hole that deep?
Sounds like the distinguished gentleman has garbled one of the more reliable Climate Crocks, “There’s Global Warming on Mars”..
one of my favorite videos with a movie mash-up – below.
As humorous as it is, it points up how far we have fallen in understanding of basic science concepts, when we hear a civic leader say something that is so obviously divorced from hundreds of years of observation, data, and experience.
The world is as it is, not as we would imagine, or like it to be – no matter how attractive that fantasy world is..
Monckton came out with similar nonsense. Debunked by Peter Hadfield:
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TRCyctTvuCo&w=640&h=390]
So, no warming on Earth, despite millions of temperature measurements over the last century taken from all over the World, and also by thousands of satellites…
But, oh yeah! We got a couple photos of Mars 30 years apart! This golden cache of data will tell us all we need to know! What planet are these people from again?
Barsoom.
I very occasionally read WUWT, mainly for light amusement. I remember about six months ago, one of their posters “proved” that global warming is a hoax because he had learned that the atmosphere of Mars is nearly 100% CO2, but it’s cold there, indeed much colder than earth where CO2 is well under 1% of the atmosphere. Everyone on WUWT was congratulating this gentleman on his brilliant insight.
Apparently, it hadn’t occurred to this genius that the Martian atmosphere has a density less than 1% of the earth’s atmosphere. It is, of course, the amount of greenhouse gas present that creates warming, not the percentages. Which is why it’s so much colder in the high mountains of Tibet than it is down on the coast at the same latitude.
The atmosphere of Mars has about 1 millibar of CO2, roughly equivalent to 1000 ppm of CO2 at Earth sea level. Going along with this, Mars has roughly half the insolation.
The same denialist clowns will say that water is the major greenhouse gas on Earth, but blink in incomprehension when you tell them that there’s almost no water in the Martian atmosphere because it’s so cold.
OK, so I saw this story, too, and watched the video of his presentation. I did a little sleuth work. While the statement is stupid, it is possible that the addled senator from Kentucky was trying to say the Mars is experiencing slight levels of warming and that led him to the (erroneous) conclusion that global warming on Earth is part of some cosmic natural process.
Josh Kilburn probably explained the badly phrased statement best on his Americans Against the Tea Party blog. Slate had an article also, but left out the rarely noticed bit about a NASA study, as did Kilburn.
The gist is that some NASA scientists noticed in satellite images shrinking of the polar ice caps of Mars (http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v446/n7136/abs/nature05718.html) over the course of 22 years (no historical data available before that obviously). A quick surf to skepticalscience.com (http://www.skepticalscience.com/global-warming-on-mars.htm) reveals that the study has been discredited. So Sen. Smith is wrong on all accounts–but the quote is priceless!
Sure a lot of self satisfied, I got it right or is that left posters. The tiny problem is not the senator and what he said or did not say, it is in the science. In the ice core studies and in the Mauna Loa study of CO2 levels and climate change the CO2 level has zero correlation with climate change so CO2 has not actually changed the climate in 800,000 years. NASA does have a study showing shrinking polar caps which can be seen as caused by several different things, more solar gain is only one. The tiny problem with solar gain is it has been flat for a while which is a major reason the earths climate per the giss data set has not increased in 16 years, see IPCC for their take, just like it did not increase from 1940-80, giss over at NASA. That is most likely the reason the US average temperature per NOAA has decreased a bit from 1998-2014 which is easy to see as NOAA has a temperature graft, plug in the dates and it shows the yearly temperature as far back as 1895. I would point out the older data is most likely not nearly as accurate as more current data. both have been adjusted a lot by NOAA researchers. Example, Kansas actuall data for 2013 for one month was adjusted upward by .46C which is a huge number. NOAA has a long explanation for the adjustments. My take is garbage in garbage out but everyone has their opinion.
Nice “retelling” of the facts. Here’s the actual facts right from the NOAA/Mauna Loa web site”
“Carbon dioxide pumped into the atmosphere by fossil fuel burning and other human activities is the most significant greenhouse gas (GHG) contributing to climate change. Its concentration has increased every year since scientists started making measurements on the slopes of the Mauna Loa volcano more than five decades ago. The rate of increase has accelerated since the measurements started, from about 0.7 ppm per year in the late 1950s to 2.1 ppm per year during the last 10 years.
“That increase is not a surprise to scientists,” said NOAA senior scientist Pieter Tans, with the Global Monitoring Division of NOAA’s Earth System Research Laboratory in Boulder, Colo. “The evidence is conclusive that the strong growth of global CO2 emissions from the burning of coal, oil, and natural gas is driving the acceleration.”
Before the Industrial Revolution in the 19th century, global average CO2 was about 280 ppm. ***During the last 800,000 years, CO2 fluctuated between about 180 ppm during ice ages and 280 ppm during interglacial warm periods. Today’s rate of increase is more than 100 times faster than the increase that occurred when the last ice age ended.****