The Wall Street Journal Op-Ed page recently cited a blogger, who did a google search, to make their case that CO2 is inconsequential to the temperature of a planet's atmosphere. According to the WSJ:
"As blogger George Reisman notes, the atmosphere on Mars is 95% carbon dioxide, just shy of Venus's 96%. (The Earth's atmosphere, by contrast, is less than 0.04% CO2.) Average temperature on Mars? Eighty-one below zero."
You can just see the Wall Street Journal's James Taranto tilting back in his chair and quietly saying to himself "Checkmate." But what Taranto fails to mention is that the Martian atmosphere is only 1% as dense as earth's, and there is virtually no water vapor (which accounts for most of earth's greenhouse effect, as well as a large climate feedback) on Mars. Additionally, what CO2 there is on Mars regularly condenses at the super-cold ice caps during the very cold Martian winters, and isn't even in the atmosphere. It is precisely Mars's lack of atmospheric greenhouse gases that accounts for its low temperature.
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