The Satanic Gases: Clearing the Air about Global Warming
The Satanic Gases: Clearing the Air about Global Warming – Review
Many times there is the strongly warning through the book: do not criticize global warming advocates simply because some climate models have flaws. Such is petty and nonproductive behavior, and productive previously thought and research are desperately needed. Right now we want to continue developing climate and Earth models for superior accuracy and predictablility. Also, the most main idea from this book is to continue only asking the questions “how” and “how much,” especially the second (p60). These approaches are not conservative, but rather what true scientists try to do every day. The book title sounds combative, and likely turns off many on the Left, who frequently appear to choose only hearing sad news only. The authors claim that hurricane wind speeds actually decreased as ocean temperature rose over the last century. This seems surprising, and allows forever checking out with other originally published numbers-based results. The CO2 part of the book is quite well done, but the minor part about toxicity levels can be carefully ignored. On the other hand, the chapter “Greening the Planet” is well worth simply reading a second time. CO2, they remind us, is not a pollutant, but rather a gaseous fertilizer for plant life. It is possible, though, to argue that ANY chemical is a pollutant if present in great enough quantity, if one wishes to split hairs. The last chapter, as with just about all climate change books, is not particularly strong. Most last-chapters are hand wringers, but Satanic Gases is at least not one of them. The authors advocate effectively swapping the previously existing biased federal funding of research and development for private funding, and this is a further thought. A small observation: for some reason, critics maintain badmouthing the authors’ statement about ozone finally breaking down to the hydroxyl radical. Clearly, this criticism is mean-spirited, as professional people must know extremely well that the hydroxyl radical is tangled in the transitional paces of the chemical change, although the authors did make a poor selection of prepositions. Their high school English teachers would be tsk-tsk’ing!