User talk:HistorianofScience

Hello - Historian of Science!

I'm finding the article at Global Warming disturbing. Every time I've visited there it's to answer specific points of "dissent" that I've seen in the popular press. The first was Dr Will Happer, a well-published scientist who was (so he claims) victimised in 1993 for skepticism and is still very un-convinced. Another example concerned "soot" which I saw was blamed for melting glaciers in the Himalayas. (Reference to soot was eventually added, but there seemed to be a totally unnecessary battle over it).

Then I saw a very popular and really very well regarded British presenter (Tony Robinson) do a documentary called "Catastrophe: Snowball Earth" in which he treats this theory (the earth more or less solidly iced c. 600 million years ago) as accepted and makes the rather startling hypothesis that this is what kicked off the Cambrian explosion (ie virtually every modern form of life). Without Snowball Earth, according to Robinson (on our Channel 4, also very well regarded, never known for conspiracy theories or other nonsense), life on earth would have been stuck at green slime. (I've double-checked this to confirm that the program does indeed say exactly what I thought I'd heard and made these edits to illustrate what I found).

On seeing this, I had to know more about it, so I dialed in trusty ol' Wikipedia. What do I find? Snowball Earth didn't happen geologically speaking and couldn't have happened, since there'd be no way out (albedo effect - this objection is dealt with by reference, I think, to the super-eruptions that formed enormous areas of lava we know about in, I think, India and Siberia).

These two examples strongly indicate serious editing problems over the whole topic, Global Warming "must" be true, no dissent allowed, while "Snowball Earth" is part of the detritus of failed theories that the world is littered with, despite the fact that the premier accessible source on it in the UK, anyway, says that it's true and not even contentious.

Then we discover that one of the encyclopedia's top AGW experts (I can personally vouch for him being an expert, at least on some topics) has been de-syssoped and named in the press as a POV-pusher. As are some of his acolytes, see my TalkPage - without the feedback I've had I might have abandoned this whole effort to improve articles.

I don't understand a lot of what's going on, but when I'm told that policy on Global Warming is different from what it is anywhere else, but I'm not allowed to know what it is (or even ask!), then, as BozMo might have said, it looks like a duck. MalcolmMcDonald (talk) 09:45, 8 January 2010 (UTC)
 * thanks _ I will be in touch no doubt! HistorianofScience (talk) 19:38, 8 January 2010 (UTC)

Global warming
Thank you for your contributions to the encyclopedia! In case you are not already aware, an article to which you have recently contributed is on article probation. --TS 13:58, 9 January 2010 (UTC)


 * Doubtless the scientific paper is correct, and I am mistaken. In this case, I'm glad I'm mistaken. Rick Norwood (talk) 12:51, 10 January 2010 (UTC)


 * This kind of modeling probably can't be done without taking a large number of factors into account. To mention just one example, if a warming trend tends to increase cloud cover, then ground heat is reflected back to the Earth instead of radiated out into space.  That's one reason Venus can stay so hot.  Rick Norwood (talk) 13:07, 10 January 2010 (UTC)


 * You might like to add your views to Malcolm's poll on this article, which should be on his talk page soon. By the way I am a AGW sceptic.  I am very happy to discus with you why. Martin Hogbin (talk) 21:13, 23 January 2010 (UTC)

Improvements at Global Warming
I believe you have views on improving the GW articles. I am concerned that there is one way to keep the article the same and many ways to make improvements, but that division of effort in the latter is hampering progress.

Some active editors are prepared to publicly their support or opposition to movement in specific directions, at a chart on my TalkPage here. If you would like to encourage this effort then please consider adding your name to the parts you think most important. MalcolmMcDonald (talk) 12:31, 24 January 2010 (UTC)
 * Thankyou. I've made slight changes to shorten comments, please be sure it's still what you intend. Remove strike-out if I've read you correctly. Maybe comment "I'd not thought of [that objection] but it makes sense/valid now" MalcolmMcDonald (talk) 13:32, 30 January 2010 (UTC)
 * Are you intending to say that politics of GW should be treated as an integral part of the article? Don't let me put words into your mouth! MalcolmMcDonald (talk)
 * The first version of the comment implied exactly that :o) HistorianofScience (talk) 14:48, 30 January 2010 (UTC)