Re: Speaking for the dead, Ryan Price, Feb 8.
Nobel physicist Wolfgang Pauli once described a student’s work as “not even wrong” and Ryan Price deserves the same accolade.
Earth is not -18°C as expected by its distance from the Sun, but +15°C. Ryan Price believes this is due to the weight of the atmosphere (99 per cent oxygen and nitrogen) in “Maxwell’s gravito-thermal 1872 theory”.
In those days, scientists like Lord Kelvin were trying to explain the Sun’s heat by “gravitational contraction” having realised if it was burning coal it wouldn’t last long. Then Becquerel discovered radioactivity and science moved on.
Facts –
1. Thousands of thermometers show the surface and oceans are heating up – but there is no more oxygen or nitrogen, so why?
2. Satellites show the warming is due to less heat being radiated to space by CO2 – because we have added CO2.
3. The level of oxygen in the air is actually decreasing as more fossil-fuel carbon is burned to CO2.
As Ryan Price said, Richard Feynman once explained your favourite theory is wrong if contradicted by just one fact – and I’ve given three.
Then of course Mr Price must explain why adding more CO2 to the atmosphere would not cause warming. Eunice Foote showed in 1856 that CO2 “traps” heat, and
John Tyndall demonstrated increasing CO2 in the atmosphere would warm Earth – in 1861. How many centuries do deniers need to adjust to facts?
Mr Price doesn’t understand the nature of science. Scientists make a name for themselves by showing other scientists wrong, not by agreeing with them. That is precisely why the scientific consensus on global warming is so powerful. The American Physical Society describes the evidence as “incontrovertible”; the IPCC “unequivocal”.
Everyone is free to refute the science – win a Nobel prize and the everlasting gratitude of every politician and oil billionaire on the planet.
Ryan Price believes textbook science explaining why Earth is warming and why we need to reduce emissions is of no practical use to mankind. It would seem so.
Faced with bonkers beliefs and timid politicians what our children need now is a miracle.
Dennis Horne
Howick
