Craig <[email protected]> wrote:
> Here's what's known: > > * CO2 is increasing -- pretty much in a linear fashion. > > * CO2 is a greenhouse gas. But CO2 is an extremely small percentage of > the total atmosphere; something like .039%. It's also not a very strong > greenhouse gas. Water vapor is something like 55 times stronger than > CO2, and water vapor comprises about 2% of the atmosphere. > > * Temperatures are increasing. Are they? It depends on how you look at > it. . . . I do not know enough about climatology to critique this critique, but I do know about other fields such as cold fusion, Japanese linguistics and Battle of Midway. I mean I know a lot -- enough to write a graduate thesis. I have also read critiques of these subjects written by amateurs. Some of these critiques are excellent. Others suffer from a particular set of problems, and my guess is that your critique has these same problems. They are: 1. You need to establish that your points have scientific merit. That means you have to spend weeks or months reading textbooks and the literature to be sure you are really right. 2. You need to establish that experts in the field have not overlooked the issues you raise. It is likely they have already answered all of your objections. Not just likely; it is virtually certain they have. Ed Storms often points this out in discussions of cold fusion. All of amateur critiques, such as the Wikipedia article, fail for both of these reasons. They list imaginary problems that are not physically possible, such as recombination. If these problems were possible, the researchers knew all about them before they began. These are professional electrochemists so they know a great deal about recombination and shuttle reactions. Mel Miles once gave a lecture on that subject with way more detail than you can imagine. Bockris probably wrote the book on it (literally). The dweebs of Wikipedia know less than nothing about recombination compared to any of these people. In other words, don't teach grandma how to suck eggs. Before you write a critique of global warming, you better read a half-dozen books and major papers on the subject or you will only make yourself look like a fool. - Jed
