[shotgunslade]

I'm sure you read your "scientific literature" as closely as you do this thread. The "global cooling threat of the 1970's" is a good example of the misinformation thrown out by the "global warming skeptics" crowd. It simply didn't happen.

By the way, that rumor that in the 70's scientists were predicting a new ice age is just that, a rumor. A literature search of refereed publications between 1965 and 1979 on the topic of climate temperature trends shows the following results:

* 7 articles predicting cooling
* 44 predicting warming
* 20 that were neutral

"Martian Global Warming" has been touted by certain publications and blogs in an effort to debunk Earth Global Warming. But put on your thinking cap for once. How would anyone know that Mars is warming? The earth has been surrounded by satellites for 30 years. We have ice cores that go back millenia, we have tree ring data for hundreds of years and fossilized tree rings for thousands, even millions of years. We have geologic strata and can measure C12 and C14, and other isotopic differentials related to temperature phenomena, concentrations embedded in these strata. What do we have for Mars? Rovers that have been in a very limited area for 5 years, about 2 Martian years, and telescopic observation that was limited to visible light up until we had satellites. (Earth's atmospheric is too opaque to long wave infra-red to be able to get good radiative temperature measurements of planetary bodies) Remember up until about 70 years ago, scientists thought Venus had a near-earth temperature. In fact, "Martian Global Warming" is almost entirely related to fairly recent recession of the Martian South Polar Cap. We really don't know how these recessions compare with historical trends before the 20th century, however, because we don't have good telescopic photography of the planet's surface before then. There are very many reasons why this could happen, and the sun could be part of it, but since we have much less than 100 years of information of any kind to go on, you can't really infer trends or causalities.

We do have good information about solar intensity, which has gone up over the last 100 years as shown by the red line on the graph below. But is not nearly enough to generate the temperature rises we have seen on the earth.



By the way, I don't need to buy greenhouse gas credits to offset my motorsports activities. I make them happen by designing the mechanical systems for highly energy efficient buildings.