Last year, we saw that Jupiter's Great Red Spot was shrinking.  Unfortunately for our Jovian neighbors, it now seems that their home planet has lost one of its famous rings:Why did this happen?   You guessed it...planetary climate change. Jupiter is about 300 times as massive as the Earth, and its diameter is over ten times the diameter of the Earth.  Yet in a few short months, the planet has seen major planetary changes, the scale of which dwarfs anything on Earth.   I've checked into this, and found that the scientific consensus is that Jupiter's climate change has occurred naturally.  There's no smokestacks or SUV's on Jupiter.  Here at home, of course, the scientific consensus is that a 2 degree temperature fluctuation over 20 years -- on our tiny planet, less than three-tenths of one percent the mass of Jupiter -- must be due to carbon emissions.  Isn't there an extraterrestrial tragedy of the commons?(Read Full Post)