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(Apologies for my previous "Anonymous" comment. That was me.)

I realize we may have to agree to disagree on this issue, since we seem to be unable to come to an agreement on cause/effect.

While I accept that it is theoretically possible that there is some other, unexplained mechanism for the reduction in Mars' albedo reflectivity, the most logical culprit is be increased dust storm activity - Which would deposit more dust everywhere, including the poles, obscuring the light colored polar regions.

The only logical cause for increased dust storm activity is increased solar irradiance.

Unless someone can point to a large, soft mineral deposit on Mars that was suddenly exposed to wind erosion; and has been subsequently rapidly eroding over the past decades (thus "injecting" a tremendous amount of dark dust into the Martian atmosphere, causing a reduction in albedo without an increase in dust storms), I will remain unconvinced that the increase in Mars' temperature is due to anything else other than increased solar irradiance.

Interestingly, the theory du jour of 1975 was global cooling: http://denisdutton.com/cooling_world.htm

One of the supposed remedies for this was to coat the polar ice caps with soot to decrease the Earth's albedo.