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I have read Geo. Chilingar's which can be http://schwinger.harvard.edu/~motl/usc-climate.html"
The same journal that published this paper (Environmental Geology)
also printed a rather scathing rebuttal which can be http://schwinger.harvard.edu/~motl/usc-rebuttal.html" (one wonders why they published the Chilingar paper at all if this rebuttal is well founded).
Neither paper is all that difficult to understand. I would be interested in some of your comments (eg. Andre, Evo, Bystander) to these questions:
1. Why would anyone in a serious paper talk about the heat given off by burning fossil fuels? It represents a miniscule fraction of the amount of heat from the sun. Since no one is arguing it has an impact on global warming, why even talk about it?
2. Why talk about annual fluctuations due to changes in the sun-earth distance? That has nothing to do with changes in the average Earth temperature, which is an annual average temperature.
3. Why talk about total outgassing of C02 since the dawn of time? Isn't this like saying don't worry about Katrina: the rain it will bring is but a tiny fraction of all the rain that has fallen on New Orleans since the dawn of time, and the wind energy it will pack is but a tiny fraction of the wind energy that New Orleans has withstood since the dawn of time!
This paper sounds like something written by someone at the end of a distinguished career starting to dabble in something that they only partially understand. The name of William Shockley comes to mind. Ponds and Fleishmann and cold fusion also comes to mind.
AM
The same journal that published this paper (Environmental Geology)
also printed a rather scathing rebuttal which can be http://schwinger.harvard.edu/~motl/usc-rebuttal.html" (one wonders why they published the Chilingar paper at all if this rebuttal is well founded).
Neither paper is all that difficult to understand. I would be interested in some of your comments (eg. Andre, Evo, Bystander) to these questions:
1. Why would anyone in a serious paper talk about the heat given off by burning fossil fuels? It represents a miniscule fraction of the amount of heat from the sun. Since no one is arguing it has an impact on global warming, why even talk about it?
2. Why talk about annual fluctuations due to changes in the sun-earth distance? That has nothing to do with changes in the average Earth temperature, which is an annual average temperature.
3. Why talk about total outgassing of C02 since the dawn of time? Isn't this like saying don't worry about Katrina: the rain it will bring is but a tiny fraction of all the rain that has fallen on New Orleans since the dawn of time, and the wind energy it will pack is but a tiny fraction of the wind energy that New Orleans has withstood since the dawn of time!
This paper sounds like something written by someone at the end of a distinguished career starting to dabble in something that they only partially understand. The name of William Shockley comes to mind. Ponds and Fleishmann and cold fusion also comes to mind.
AM
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