Holy hell batman! So you mean the earth warming up is normal!?

[CrAz3D]

http://www.cnn.com/2006/TECH/science/03/23/polar.icemelt.ap/index.html
I realize we may be speeding it up, but ... uhm, it happened A LONG time ago, what "green house gasses" existed then?

Greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide are chemicals that have been increasing in the atmosphere since the Industrial Revolution, raising fears of altering the planet's climate by trapping heat from the sun.

Michael Oppenheimer of Princeton University, who was not part of the research teams, said one point that stands out is "that a modest global warming may put Earth in the danger zone for a major sea level rise due to deglaciation of one or both ice sheets."

So does that mean that the ice just won't come back & we'll burn up?...

[dxoigmn]

I realize we may be speeding it up, but ... uhm, it happened A LONG time ago, what "green house gasses" existed then?

Volcanoes seem to spew out a lot of CO2.

[rabbit]

A similar scheme has been used in Mars terraforming plans (IE: start warming and the rest happens by itself).  It's not hard to follow:
1. Make greenhouse gasses.
2. Gasses heat atmosphere.
3. When hot enough, permafrost melts releasing MORE greenhouse gasses.
4. After that the polar sheets melt releasing even MORE greenhouse gasses.
5. Mars = Blue

[shout]

A similar scheme has been used in Mars terraforming plans (IE: start warming and the rest happens by itself).  It's not hard to follow:
1. Make greenhouse gasses.
2. Gasses heat atmosphere.
3. When hot enough, permafrost melts releasing MORE greenhouse gasses.
4. After that the polar sheets melt releasing even MORE greenhouse gasses.
5. Mars = Blue

Mars's core has frozen, it has no magnetic protection from *stuff*.

[CrAz3D]

I realize we may be speeding it up, but ... uhm, it happened A LONG time ago, what "green house gasses" existed then?

Volcanoes seem to spew out a lot of CO2.

word, but is it comprable to what we release in cars/industry?

[rabbit]

Well, no.  There aren't any cars/industry on Mars.  ANYWAY, the first step in the Mars terraforming project (at least the one I'm thinking of) is to built CO₂ plants which basically make loads of CO₂ and then dumps it all into the atmosphere, which is a more intentional method of screwing with the atmosphere.