Famed scientist Al Gore now believes that there really are men on Mars. Women and kids, too.

Mr. Gore, who claimed to have invented the internet, seems to have concluded that there are men on Mars who drive SUVs, work in coal-fired power plants and smoke big, fat, carbon-emitting cigars. Their wives, all soccer moms, drive the kids to after-school activities in huge Chevy Tahoes. On Sundays, the whole family goes to church to worship a shiny statue of their god – the internal combustion engine.

How could the visionary Mr. Gore reach such incredible conclusions?

Well, it seems that temperatures are rising on Mars just as they are on Earth. In fact, NASA has discovered that the icecaps on Mars' south pole are melting fairly rapidly. Pretty much similar to what is happening to some of Earth's glacial areas.

To follow Mr. Gore's logic:

2. It takes man, factories and automobiles to produce greenhouse gases.

3. Therefore, there have to be men on Mars.

Other scientists produce a different logic set:

2. Historically, both planets have warmed when the sun heats up, and both cool down when the sun cools.

3. Therefore, the sun is responsible for both global warming and cooling.

Unless Al Gore believes that there are men on Mars, it cannot be greenhouse gases that are warming the two globes. To paraphrase Democrat seer James Carville: "It's the sun, stupid."

Historically, the earth has been much hotter in periods long before SUVs, factories or cigars were even invented.

In 1991, the Danish Meteorological Institute produced a study demonstrating that global temperature changes clearly match solar irradiance cycles. It's really simple to understand. The sun is like a hot plate and Earth and Mars are like pans. When the hot plate heats up, so do the pans.

Even the Russians have long seen through the global warming fog. According to the director of the Pulkovo Astronomical Observatory in St. Petersburg, "The long-term increase in solar irradiance is heating both Earth and Mars."

It may be an inconvenient truth at this stage of your campaign, Al, but it's clearly the sun that warms and cools our universe, not greenhouse gases. Most elementary schoolkids know that.

The principle is one every Boy Scout understands: Throw an extra log on the fire. The fire gets hotter. And you get warmer. Let the fire burn down, and you get cooler.

The sun's irradiance is like that fire: it heats up and cools. And so does whoever is living on the planets during those times.

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