SUV’s, pollution, etc. … ?
What’s the source of this information?
Maybe the sun’s running a fever. Somebody should take its temperature.
Numerous sources on this, space.com also …
The folks at realclimate.org seem to think that the Martian ice cap shrinking is more of a regional climate change than a global one:
Note that Mars doesn’t have any nifty heat stabilizing oceans nor much ground cover to keep the dust down.
So slight changes can have large, durable temperature effects. What wouldn’t cause even a blip on Earth can cause years-long dust storms on Mars.
(OTOH, maybe some microbes from one of our probes may have started to “terra-form” the place.)
ok, we can play that game also, cite that the Earth’s global warming isn’t “regional” …
Really, but we are suppose to have a “CO2” / “greenhouse gas” problem here … does Mars? If not, what is causing the warming again?
All those Mars Rovers are polluting the atmosphere.
Try almost any reference on the subject. It’s called “global warming” because the overall result has been an increase of the average temperature of the Earth when measured over the past century. However, the local climatic effects this overall warming produce vary, and may include warming in some areas and cooling in others (as well as changes in rainfall, etc.). It is better to refer to these regional effects as “global climate change,” rather than simplely “global warming” since the latter tends to confuse some people into thinking that the climate is warming on a local level everywhere.
Climatic data on Mars go back at most a few decades, compared to over a century on Earth (and many thousands of years based on ice cores and other evidence). There simply isn’t enough long-term data yet to establish that long term warming on a global Martian scale is occurring.
Ummm … what? In 1975 they were talking about global cooling? Do you remember? You would just be making crap up here would you?
[quote]
1975 Newsweek article on global cooling.
Newsweek ^ | April 28, 1975
There are ominous signs that the Earth’s weather patterns have begun to change dramatically and that these changes may portend a drastic decline in food production– with serious political implications for just about every nation on Earth. The drop in food output could begin quite soon, perhaps only 10 years from now. The regions destined to feel its impact are the great wheat-producing lands of Canada and the U.S.S.R. in the North, along with a number of marginally self-sufficient tropical areas – parts of India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Indochina and Indonesia – where the growing season is dependent upon the rains brought by the monsoon.[/image]
screwed that quote up eh? … 
Perhaps you should do a little basic reading on the subject, and then come back to us once you have learned something:
U.S. Environmental Protection Agengy’s Global Warming Site
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change
US Global Change Research Program
Lots more out there. If you don’t think Global Climate Change is real, the US government, the UN, the World Bank, and a large majority of climate scientists certainly do.
Please excuse me if I don’t wait up.
Mars does have CO2 in its atmosphere—in fact, a very high proportion of it, compared to the earth’s—but it doesn’t have anthropogenic emissions of CO2 as the earth does. Its south polar ice cap is currently releasing more CO2 into the atmosphere.
As for “what is causing the warming”, did you read the link I provided? It says there that this seems to be an effect of the high instability of Mars’ regional climate at the south pole. You’ve heard talk recently of climate “tipping points”, crucial points at which climate systems can undergo drastic and sudden change? Well, Mars, having a very thin atmosphere and no oceans, has a lot less climate stability than the earth does, so it’s a lot more volnerable to tipping points, particularly in the extra-unstable south polar region. So Mars can go through some very severe changes, especially on the regional level, more or less at the drop of a hat, and it appears to be going through one now.
Sure I remember, but as Colibri says, you can’t just assume that hypotheses from back in 1975 somehow invalidate different hypotheses now, thirty years later. Climate science is still rapidly developing, and many of the most important climate effects that we appear to be seeing now have become apparent only quite recently. You do kind of have to put some effort into keeping up with current findings if you want to have any meaningful grasp of the issues.
Excuse me? “Game”? What “game”? Are you here to ask honest questions about planetary science because you’re looking for factual answers, or are you just playing a “game” to get other posters to give you answers that you can smirkingly refuse to believe?
If you’ve already made up your mind that anthropogenic climate forcing isn’t real or isn’t a potential problem, please don’t hang around here pestering us with insincere questions about it. SDMB participants have enough work as it is trying to fight ignorance for people who actually want their ignorance fought.
Is the Martian global warming responsible for the phenomenom that every year it appears as big as the Full Moon ? 
Sorry for the frivolity but since a few folks have already thrown in some humor I couldn’t resist doing likewise.
Both Earth and Mars have gone through cycles of heating and cooling in their history, with solar cycles palying a large part. So, Mars and Earth before around 1980 can be explained “naturally”.
However, those explanations break down after around 1980 in the case of Earth. Look at these graphs. You’ll note that before around 1960, none of these greenhouse gases were too far off the historical equilibrium concentration (eg. 280 parts per million for CO2). However, after that date you’ll note the concentrations begin to rocket, and their increase is still exponential today. This is why attempts to explain current warming trends naturally fail for post-1980 data, while Anthropogenic Climate Change (ACC) models are largely accurate.
There are almost no ACC-deniers in professional or academic climatology any more.
All of which prooves nothing but that which folks want to think!
Proof?
Read non-factual postings on the SDMB’s.
That link was written by Gavin Schmidt, a climate modeller at the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies. That article cites specific scientific data and research in coming to its conclusions.
Schimdt’s qualifications as an authority on the subject:
Such as yours?
The OP obviously has an agenda … this would be a great GD thread.
Flash: of course the climate is changing. It always is and has – and would still do so now if there were not a human being upon the earth.
The actual debate is exactly how much human activities contribute to the apparent changes. IMHO, this seems to be close to unknowable, as we don’t have a sufficient control planet with which to compare. But extrapolation of information from various disciplines (fluid mechanics, astronomy, etc.) can help form some compelling hypotheses.
Was thinking GD first, but the are certain facts we know … like 45 million years ago the whole Earth was a “tropical” environment, … even Antartica … there have been periods of global cooling greater than the recent warming, one 100 km^3 volcanic eruption puts more pollution in the atmosphere than man has, cumulatively, since his existence on Earth … thus it seems to really come down to facts and proof I think … GQ?
Read the information on the sites I linked to. There are plenty of facts on global climate change there.
Before you even think about doing a GD thread on this subject (of which there have been many) you need to educate yourself a little more. Do some homework.