Shawn writes: > makes you think any global warming is more due to solar activity than > anything else. To a degree, that's correct. The amount of incident solar radiation on the earth's surface is the primary determinant of its temperature. However the words you want to know are "orbital eccentricity," "obliquity" and "precession." All of these orbital attributes contribute to what are called Milankovitch Paleoclimatic Cycles: http://deschutes.gso.uri.edu/~rutherfo/milankovitch.html http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milankovitch_cycles http://www.windows.ucar.edu/tour/link=/earth/climate/cli_sun.html Because Mars' orbit is substantially more eccentric, with greater planetary precession, than the Earth's, the effects are only greater. See bottom half of: http://www.uapress.arizona.edu/onlinebks/mars/chap13.htm Wirt Atmar * To join/leave the list, search archives, change list settings, * * etc., please visit http://raven.utc.edu/archives/hp3000-l.html *
