Global Warming - On Mars!

New images from the Mars Global Surveyor, which has been orbiting Mars for the last 8+ years, have been collected showing the retreat of polar ice caps on Mars. That sounds like Global Warming to me, but humans are certainly not the cause in this case - it happens naturally on Mars. I know some congresscritter will claim it is George Bush's fault and some conspiracy kook will claim it's all NASA's fault for littering Mars with all those rovers and landers and orbiters....

Anyway, science at work again and there are lots of neat images on the web showing a fresh impact crater, fresh boulder tracks and fresh gullies on Mars - all of them were not there at some point in the recent past (when Viking orbited in the case of the crater and earlier in the MGS mission in the case of the other new features). Mars is obviously a very dynamic place as witnessed by these new images as well as by the images of dust devils we've seen from the Spirit rover on the summit of Husband Hill in Gusev crater. It will indeed be a very interesting place to explore for the first humans we land there. I can't wait to see what they find and what the other planned and flying robotic missions find.