PV Gap

Gilbert Said:

if global warming is man made why are the other planets in the solar system also heating up?

We Answered:

Only 6 planets or moons out of the 100+ bodies in the solar system have been observed to be warming. On the other hand, Uranus is cooling.

Martian climate is primarily driven by dust and albedo and there is little empirical evidence that Mars is showing long term warming.

Neptune's orbit is 164 years so current brightening is a seasonal response (Neptune's southern hemisphere is heading into summer).

Triton's warming is due to the moon approaching an extreme southern summer, a season that occurs every few hundred years.

Jupiter's storms are fueled by the planet's own internal heat (the sun's energy is 4% the level of solar energy at Earth). When several storms merge into one large storm (eg - Red Spot Jr), the planet loses its ability to mix heat, causing warming at the equator and cooling at the poles. More on Jupiter...

Pluto's warming consists of two observations 14 years apart noting a difference in atmospheric thickness which implies warming - scientists are unable to explain why yet. But considering Pluto's orbit is equivalent to 248 Earth years, this says nothing about climate change. It's like saying Earth is warming when comparing winter to summer. Plus Pluto is more than 30 times farther away from the Sun than the Earth is. If the Sun were warming up enough to affect Pluto at that vast distance, it would blowtorch the Earth.

The important point here is that you need to ask about each body separately, there is no singular reason for bodies to warm and cool. If the sun were the only factor, then all the planent including earth would be cooling now. The earth is warming. (Any one who says it is cooling is flat out wrong. Note that whenever people say its cooling, they never source and never provide an explanation, so dismiss then if you want to keep learning.)

Edith Said:

Is the entire Solar System heating up?

We Answered:

It's an observable fact that the polar ice caps on Mars have shrunk quite a bit (several percent) in the last 10 to 15 years. Most of it can be attributed to the (again observable) fact that the Suns radiant output is up by several percent in the last 50 years or so.

However, according to Al ('I invented the internet') Gore, it's all about pollution. But the only 'inconvient truth' in that is that we *haven't* been polluting Mars. (Unless, of course, you want to count the recent Mars missions that put some instrumentation packages and a couple of rovers on the planets surface ?)

HTH ?

Doug