If we’re causing global warming, what about Mars?

A story at the National Geographic site[*1] :

Mars, too, appears to be enjoying more mild and balmy temperatures.

In 2005 data from NASA’s Mars Global Surveyor and Odyssey missions revealed that the carbon dioxide “ice caps” near Mars’s south pole had been diminishing for three summers in a row.

Habibullo Abdussamatov, head of the St. Petersburg’s Pulkovo Astronomical Observatory in Russia, says the Mars data is evidence that the current global warming on Earth is being caused by changes in the sun.

Naturally, much of the story attempts to rebut (mainly via argument from authority rather than by rational, logical means) Abdussamatov’s contention.