Bob Clark wrote:
That's not very kind. It would be sufficient to say you don't agree with his anomalist viewpoint.

Alex writes:
That is a very astute observation. It's heartening to see that *some* of my previous post was comprehensible.

Bob Clark wrote:
Holger was the one who pointed me to this TES web page. He found the graph on the TES web site and wrote to one of the scientist responsible for the graph.

Alex writes:
I (and many others) have been aware of that particular TES web page since it first appeared, and have seen it referenced many times in online discussions.

Bob Clark wrote:
According to this scientist they were planning on writing a paper on the data.

Alex writes:
No doubt. The question is: What will the paper say?

Bob Clark wrote:
However, certainly the scientists making conclusions about the possibilities on liquid water at a site on Mars would base that on the most favorable conditions at the site. They wouldn't say liquid water is impossible at a site based on the average temperature at that site anymore than you would say liquid water in impossible in Antartica based on the average temperature being below zero in Antartica.

Alex writes:
That's a strawman argument, especially given that I never said that "liquid water is impossible at a site based on the average temperature." And let's not forget pressure. Does anyone have a reading for that variable in these locales? What I did say, which apparently was missed, was that the TES bolometer brightness data depicted in the graph that you referenced is also measuring the rather heavy dust content of the atmosphere, which is not unusual considering the season. As Leovy pointed out in his Nature article, this has little or no (actually the inverse) effect on the average surface temperature. The mere "possibility" that liquid water might exist at a site is NOT evidence that it in fact does exist there.

Alex R. Blackwell
University of Hawaii