More proof that Global Warming - if global warming there be - is driven by solar activity.

According to NASA, Hubble telescopic images of the Kuiper Belt Object (formerly planet) Pluto showed marked atmospheric increase between 1994 and 2003:

"The data reveal an icy molasses-colored world with a surprising amount of activity. Buie compared Hubble images taken in 1994 vs. 2003 and discovered that Pluto's northern hemisphere has brightened while the southern hemisphere has dimmed. Ground-based observations suggest that Pluto's atmosphere doubled in mass during approximately the same time period. And no one is certain what's causing the molasses-colored splotches on Pluto's surface."

Now, why would the Plutonian atmosphere double?  Solar driven global warming.

Granted, Pluto's year is 249 Earth years long, and it reached perihelion (closest approach to the Sun) September 5, 1989 (due to it's rather eccentric, or elongated, orbit Pluto was closer to the Sun than Neptune between 1979 and 1999) and so Pluto has been receiving more solar radiation, but it is interesting to note that Earth's temperature peaked during the same time period.  A doubling of the Plutonian atmosphere during this same period clearly illustrates a warmer planetoid, in contradiction to what we have been told by climate alarmists. The claim that the Sun has little to do with planetary temperatures is clearly false when one considers the case of Pluto, at any rate.

It is also interesting to note that the atmospheric doubling occurred AFTER Pluto moved out beyond the orbit of Neptune; if this is purely seasonal, would not we have witnessed the thaw occurring BEFORE perihelion?

Either the Sun has minimal influence on planetary temperatures, or is a primary forcing. Pluto, like Mars, and Jupiter and Neptune's moon Triton, suggests (along with common sense, that oft-neglected commodity) that the role of the Sun is being seriously neglected by advocates of anthropogenic global warming theory.

Perhaps one or two worlds exhibiting warming trends could be explained as coincidence, but too many coincidences form a pattern. But too much has been invested in the AGW theory to allow an inconvenient truth to stand in the way.  This latest analysis of Pluto speaks volumes.