Valley Networks formed by basal melting

Well just to show that my wildest imaginings are indeed backed up by scholarly research -- here is an article by Michael Carr (2003) about:

Basal melting of snow on early Mars: A possible origin of some valley networks

He writes that:
The perception of an early, warm Mars is, however, being increasingly questioned because of (1) failure to detect weathering products from orbit [Christensen, et al., 2001], (2) the vulnerability of an early atmosphere to losses by impact erosion [Melosh and Vickery, 1989], (3) the likely rapid scavenging of CO2 from the atmosphere by weathering under warm, wet conditions Pollack et al., 1987], and (4) climate modeling studies which show that it is difficult, if not impossible, to sufficiently warm Mars with a CO2-H2O greenhouse so that rainfall could occur [Haberle, 1998; Kasting, 1991]. The latter problem is particularly acute early in the planet’s history, when the Sun’s output was likely significantly less than it is today [Newman and Rood, 1987].

There is a lot here about how the thermal physics could create melted ice water, but very little about the morphology of the valley networks and whether they are consistent with this type of formation. Is anyone familiar with more work done on this hypothesis?