The Daily Howler Examines the "Mars is Warming!" Silliness

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Special report: Mars is warming!

PART 4—MAD RUSSIAN SCIENCE: On Monday, Caller 9 knew Gore was wrong; after all, he told C-SPAN, Mars is warming (see THE DAILY HOWLER, 3/27/07). But Caller 9 was hardly alone when it came to this troubling issue. On last Wednesday’s Washington Journal, C-SPAN previewed that day’s congressional hearings, featuring Gore and global warming—and one caller caught Rep. Rick Boucher (D-VA) and host Steve Scully by surprise. As Caller 9 would later do, this caller said, Mars is warming:

   CALLER (3/21/07): I don’t quite buy the whole global warming thing yet...I read something like the Mars probe, about a temperature increase on Mars. Human beings don’t live on Mars; and what’s causing that temperature increase? And I’ve traveled—I travel quite extensively throughout the world, and I don’t really—and a lot of people around the world don’t really buy that whole global warming thing either.

   BOUCHER: Uhhh—where did the gentleman say there were temperature increases?

   SCULLY: I think he—he’s still on the line. Caller?

   CALLER: Yes. There is a published article they did on Mars, about the Mars probe—

   SCULLY: On Mars, the planet!

   BOUCHER: On Mars, the planet!

   CALLER: On the planet Mars, yes! And there’s a temperature increase from when they did the Mars probe. How does he explain that increase?

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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.

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Abdussamatov has hatched a design which debunks current warming theory. For that reason, his work has been praised to the skies in some regions, and people call C-SPAN to proclaim the good news: People, Mars is warming! Of course, these callers haven’t heard “the rest of the story”—the part Ravilious went on to explain. Uh-oh! Abdussamatov has a novel idea. But the vast majority of warming scientists say that it’s just “habibullsh*t:"

RAVILIOUS: Abdussamatov's work, however, has not been well received by other climate scientists.

  “His views are completely at odds with the mainstream scientific opinion," said Colin Wilson, a planetary physicist at England's Oxford University.

  "And they contradict the extensive evidence presented in the most recent IPCC report."

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