Michael Larkin
Member
Donald Scott makes a remark about the greenhouse effect that is interesting. He points out, what in retrospect is pretty obvious, that a greenhouse really works by stopping heat escaping by convection!
If a greenhouse really worked as suggested, I think the glass panes would be hot - just as if the CO2 was having an appreciable effect, the troposphere would be warmed up - and that hasn't been detected. I think it is conceivable that referring to this phenomenon as the greenhouse effect, was a false analogy, which accidentally or deliberately exaggerated the effect - so those who say weak AGW might/should be real, might be right, but the effect doesn't resemble the operation of a greenhouse.
I got sick of Tom Findlay's book (fortunately I got the free PDF version), because he seemed to assume essentially no science knowledge on behalf of his readers. He was explaining things at a level that I knew at about age 10! I don't really know why people write books like that, because someone who never bothered to learn basic science, just isn't going to want to read a book about alternative cosmology!
However, the above Donald Scott's "Electric Sky", seems a much more interesting read. I must say, the EU (I wish it didn't have that acronym!) is a very thought-provoking concept. I'd really like EthanT to read it and tell us what he feels. I do feel a sympathy for those who feel mathematical abstraction has led cosmology astray. It is vividly apparent when people discuss a time 10^(-36) sec after the big bang! As Scott comments, in most areas of science (he is an electrical engineer) equations with singularities are recognised to be invalid at or near those points (I think EthanT said as much somewhere above).
BTW, We probably should not dwell on CAGW, or we will scare EthanT and others away, and the CAGW vultures will move in instead :) In any case, the nature of the universe is a much more interesting topic.
David
I agree to some extent about Findlay's book (got just over half-way waiting for it to start, then scanned the rest and decided to stop), and that Donald Scott's is better. But for the person with little scientific training, I can't see that there's anything much better out there. It's surprising: many who dropped science in school in favour of the arts can be surprisingly ignorant about the basics. Ask them to sign a petition against dihydrogen monoxide and they might well; ask them what the substrate of computer chips is, and they're quite likely to say silicone; and they're likely vague over the difference between carbon, carbon monoxide, carbon dioxide, carbonic acid, carbonates, and so on.