Inkwell: Authors and Artists

    
If you're copypasting from a Word document, please make sure there
aren't any quotation marks or apostrophes in it. They don't display
correctly on the Well's platforms. If you can, use Notepad (Windows)
or TextEdit (Macintosh) instead.
  

    
As noted yesterday, my responses back to around #55 disappeared
after I posted them. Today I am reconstructing those responses in
plain text, which I will then paste into Inkwell.

#55 jswaltz criticizes my thoughts about global warming. 
#57 Emily supports jswatz.

While they suggest that my views are not supported by experts, they
fail to explain why in my experience as an IPCC reviewer the IPCC
has disallowed citations to papers that support the absence of water
vapor trends. Rather than simply questioning the details, let us
examine the views on global warming models provided for a lay
audience by influential climate scientist Dr. Roy Spencer in Global
Warming: Observations vs. Models. BG3809_0.pdf (heritage.org) If
this URL does not work, just Google Spencer and a few words from the
title.

Spencer contradicts jswalz and Emily with a graph to support his
claim that:  Warming of the global climate system over the past
half-century has averaged 43 percent less than that produced by
computerized climate models used to promote changes in energy
policy.

I am well acquainted with Spencers claims, for I was an expert
reviewer of the exaggerated claims based on models in IPCC
Assessment Reports 5 and 6. As for the absence of a trend in water
vapor, the key greenhouse gas, the 3 reviewers of my 30-year
climatology paper in Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society
who expressed concerns about my water vapor data (which showed no
trend) accepted findings elsewhere that buttressed my finding. My
paper was then accepted and published. You can find it online by
searching on Mims BAMS 30-year climatology. I urge you to look at
the 30-year plots of total column water vapor (no trend), total
column ozone (down after the Pinatubo eruption of 1991 and now
closing in on the pre-1991 level), and aerosol optical depth (haze
has noticeably declined since the closure of many coal-burning power
plants).
 
#58-59: Betsy offers a refreshing change of subject by commenting on
my daughter Sarahs significant discovery that living spores and
bacteria can be found in biomass smoke. Details are in Maverick
Scientist. Sarah was apparently the first person to discover that
living spores and bacteria are found in biomass smoke. She
discovered this during her junior year in high school. I transformed
her science fair report into a publishable paper, which made me a
co-author. We submitted her finding to a leading journal,
Atmospheric Environment. They sent the paper for expedited review.
In only 22 days, the paper was formally accepted by the journal.
That was far faster than any of my many peer-reviewed papers. Due to
its significance, it was published as the first paper in the next
edition. Sarahs discovery has since become a new field of
atmospheric science called pyroaerobiology. See Maverick Scientist
and Google Sarah Mims for much more.

#60-#62. Jswatz and jonel suggest we return to the book, about which
jswatz writes I am sure is great. Thanks to both of you. I should
point out that Maverick Scientist covers virtually all the topics
raised so far and many more.

#64. bryan wonders if Darwin was wrong about his theory, why has it
become so dominant. In On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural
Selection, Darwin acknowledged his concerns about the lack of
transitional fossils in the earliest fossil record of his time.
Based on my many radio debates, very few people are aware of Darwins
doubts. I have met only 3 people who have read his historic but
rather boring work. Darwins concern was the many advanced animals
found in the earliest Cambrian era deposits. More recently, species
as advanced as Cambrian species have been found much earlier. How
did natural selection produce these highly sophisticated life forms
that suddenly appear in the Cambrian and earlier deposits? Darwin
had no answer--and neither do todays paleontologists.


Why are the many insects encapsulated in my amber collection
identifiable as modern species? 

How did molecular motors evolve? Go online and search on the kinesin
molecule. Learn how this incredibly small nanomotor does complex
tasks within all our cells with no eyes and no brain. Molecular
motors are causing even some evolutionists to have second thoughts.

#67. Thanks to Alan Fletcher, who writes that an inquisition of my
beliefs is out of place here. Alan notes that I quote Darwin, not
the Bible. Darwinists are especially puzzled why their most
important scholarly publication, The Journal of Molecular Evolution,
gave me two full editorial pages to defend my beliefs. Is that not
the traditional approach to handle controversies that has largely
disappeared today? It certainly has not disappeared from Inkwell,
and for that we should all be grateful for the freedom to express
our views.

Today simply expressing concerns about climate models can cost a
scientist his or her reputation. Consider Nobel Laureate John
Clauser, who received his award in physics in 2022, and is now
condemned for denying global warming concerns. Judith Curry, Freeman
Dyson, Richard Lindzen, Ian Plimer, Roger Pielke, and other highly
placed scientists have expressed serious concerns about the problems
with the models given wide publicity by the IPCC. Those of you who
have incorrectly stated the models are not in error need to see Dr.
Spencers paper cited above. 

Finally, many of the points and questions raised thus far are
addressed in Maverick Scientist. For example, the chapter entitled
Mims Family Science will explain some of the award-winning projects
my three children entered in science fairs. I am way past science
fair age, but the memoirs last chapter describes some of my new and
favorite projects, including twilight photometry that provides
altitude profiles of dust, smoke and volcanic aerosols in the
atmosphere. The method even detects meteor smoke in the mesosphere
(80-90 km)!
  

    
I wonder if your instruments confirm this recent Nature paper

<https://www.theguardian.com/environment/article/2024/may/30/termination-shock-
cut-in-ship-pollution-sparked-global-heating-spurt>

The slashing of pollution from shipping in 2020 led to a big
"termination shock" that is estimated have pushed the rate of global
heating to double the long-term average, according to research.

Until 2020, global shipping used dirty, high-sulphur fuels that
produced air pollution. The pollution particles blocked sunlight and
helped form more clouds, thereby curbing global heating. But new
regulations at the start of 2020 slashed the sulphur content of
fuels by more than 80%.

The new analysis calculates that the subsequent drop in pollution
particles has significantly increased the amount of heat being
trapped at the Earth's surface that drives the climate crisis. The
researchers said the sharp ending of decades of shipping pollution
was an inadvertent geoengineering experiment, revealing new
information about its effectiveness and risks.
...

Abrupt reduction in shipping emission as an inadvertent
geoengineering termination shock produces substantial radiative
warming
<https://www.nature.com/articles/s43247-024-01442-3>
  

    
Thanks for taking the trouble to retype your responses!

Darwin expressed his discomfort with missing transitional species like any
good scientist would, and if that's not well-known, there's still no scandal
there. Since then, more and more things have been filled in, and will continue
to be, and timelines adjusted as more is known; all of this has confirmed
natural selection. When you consider all the luck that needs to occur for a
fossil to form, it's not surprising that the fossil record is not complete,
and never will be. But it doesn't have to be for the theory of evolution to be
likely, which it indeed appears to be.

Compare that to creationist or intelligent design theories, which offer NO
evidence.
  

    
Of course, finding ONE missing link creates TWO new missing links!
  

    
Indeed. And yet the theory is not then twice as weak.
  

    
Alan at #78 asked if my instruments confirm warming resulting from
reductions in pollution generated by ships. As noted earlier, my 30
years of aerosol optical depth described in my latest paper in
Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society showed a significant
reduction. Could that contribute to warm? Definitely. Indeed, that's
what has been occurring across Europe as they close their
coal-burning power plants. The air is cleaner, and the warmer
temperatures may be a byproduct. I have no way of determining if
cleaner ship emissions are impacting my AOD data.
 
  

    
Bryan at #79 notes that it's not surprising that the fossil record
is not complete, and never will be. True, but in view of widespread
Cambrian and pre-Cambrian fossils, is it not past time to find
linkages?

As for mindless evolution vs. planned creation, I ask Bryan to
explain how molecular motors evolved. I will settle for an
explanation of the evolution of the kinesin molecule. Over my
career, I have built thousands of electronic circuits. My shop is
filled with thousands of electronic components. Never have I
randomly assembled an electronic circuit. While I may experiment
with the values of resistors and capacitors in particular circuits,
those circuits are all carefully designed. The same applies to the
many computer programs I have written and some I have published.
None were randomly generated. They were created by very careful
planning. Note that advocates of intelligent design or creation
fully realize that people can cause major changes in plants and
animals. For example, consider corn, which is a huge adaptation of a
much simpler plant (probably teosinte). Consider the enormous
variety of dogs that people have developed by selective breeding.
Human intervention was responsible for both, not random,
unpredictable evolution. If you are unable to explain the evolution
of a single kinesin molecule, I will not be out of order to suspect
you cannot explain the evolutionary origin of a primitive dog, much
less you or me. I then suggest we move on to other topics in my
memoir.
    
  

    
It's hard for the human mind to grasp just how old the earth is--life has been
evolving for maybe 4 billion years. That's a length of time and a number
that's hard for the human brain to grasp. That's two million times as long as
Christianity has been around.

Hard as that may be to grasp, it's long enough for the complex things you cite
to have happened by random selection, yes. "I can't see how it happened at
random" is not much of an argument. Rather, it's an indication that you don't
grasp the enormity of 4 billion years.
  

    
> neither do todays paleontologists

That's not true.

The sudden appearance of preserved fossils and the absence of
detailed history in the form of intermediate species are both
artifacts of preservation. The oldest fossils we see are of things
that had hard parts that were preserved, which many earlier life
forms did not.

That few "transitional" species are preserved is an illustration of
how incomplete the fossil record is. Nicholas Steno wrote about the
processes that make it incomplete two centuries before Darwin.

> is it not past time to find linkages?

What "linkages" do you have in mind, and what in the world does
"past time" mean? Paleontologists, both professional and amateur,
have not stopped looking for new evidence that would show us more
about earth history.
  

    
To me, citing the complexity of evolved entities (the molecular motors,
eyes, consciousness) is an argument by incredulity. That carries no weight.
  

    
"I don't know" is a perfectly sensible, and arguably only, honest
answer to those sorts of questions. Defaulting to teleology is
simply fanciful wishcasting.

What we know we know is vastly outstripped by what we know we don't
know, and what we know we don't know is but a minuscule fraction of
what we don't know we don't know.

You know? 

There's no shame in not knowing. The shame is in attributing
phenomena we simply do not understand to an alien agency we cannot
measure or prove by test. Candid ignorance must suffice.
  

    
I agree, <axon>. Ya know?

Forrest mentions heritage.org. This is the website of The Heritage
Foundation, an ultra-conservative think tank that has been elevating
climate deniers for decades. Its funders have included foundations
connected to the Koch, Coors, Scaife, Mercer and DeVos families,
which have been pouring money into conservative politics for
decades.

Lately it's gotten into the papers for becoming the shadow
transition team for a potential new Trump administration. See:
<http://www.politico.com/story/2016/11/trump-transition-heritage-foundation-231
722>

In short, it's a partisan, highly biased source of information on
any topic or policy arena it cares to pay attention to. On
reflection, I could not let a mention of it on Inkwell go
uncommented.
  

    
Thanks Emily.
  

    
This is a test post. I typed my response to the latest Darwin
advocates directly into InkWell and clicked on Post and go. But when
I checked, my post was not present. This is what occurred a few days
ago with another Darwin post. Fortunately, because of that previous
lost post, this time I copied and saved the text of my response. I
will try to post it later. 



 
  

    
In #88, regarding a piece about well-known problems of global
warming models by Roy Spencer, a leading atmospheric scientist,
Emily writes: In short, it's a partisan, highly biased source of
information on any topic or policy arena it cares to pay attention
to. On reflection, I could not let a mention of it on Inkwell go
uncommented.

Is Emily classifying Dr. Spencers report as partisan and highly
biased simply because she strongly disapproves of the publication
that printed his report? Should I have declined her invitation to
participate here on InkWell because her views are much more to the
left of mine? Of course not.

While I completely support Emily's right to criticize the
publication that carried the Spencer report, I reject her blanket
criticism of the report solely because of where it was printed. (I
had never read that publication prior to the Spencer report.) Dr.
Spencer is a former high ranking, highly published, and
award-winning NASA climate scientist who received an award from the
American Meteorological Society for his satellite-based temperature
research. He has published many papers in scholarly journals.  

InkWell would do well to consider what I report in Maverick
Scientist about specific examples of leading publications that have
published both my opinions and my science even though their
editorial views are quite different from mine. Here on Inkwell I
described how in 1992 The Journal of Molecular Evolution published
my 2-page defense of my rejection of Darwinism. They did not change
or cut a single word.

In 1999, the American Association for the Advancement of Science
(AAAS) Science, one of the world's leading science journals, invited
me to write a lengthy guest editorial on amateur science. Even
though I poked gentle fun at the editor for his silly claim that
serious science is no longer conducted by amateurs, they printed my
editorial in full. That essay has received at least 47 citations in
the scholarly literature. 

Before that, the AAAS defended me in its letter regarding the
Scientific American affair that was kindly reprinted here on InkWell
by Alan #65.  

Then there is Nature, the world's leading journal of science.
Although the editor, Sir John Maddox, was a leading skeptic and
Darwinist, he differed with his staff over their rejection of my
paper on a major ozone satellite error. He directed that the paper
be sent for review by a prominent scientist, who recommended
publication. It became my first paper in Nature, even though the
Scientific American affair was well known at the time. Maddox also
approved my paper on enhanced solar UV caused by cumulus clouds and
a string of letters to the editor, one of which gently rebuked
Maddox. Quoting from Maverick Scientist:

Compulsory Read?

SIR--—Nature is tempted to involve “all of Darwin” to defend
evolution from California creationists (Nature 364, 746; 1993). To
begin with, I suggest that Darwin’s The Origin of Species and
Journal of Researches be made compulsory reading for the students of
California. The risk, of course, is that the former may put many
students to sleep while the latter, which was Darwin’s favourite, is
much more lively and better written. Moreover, it contains
inspirational passages about Christian principles and an essay about
the hollow conical pitfalls of the lion-ants of England and
Australia, which reads, in part:

There can be no doubt that this predacious larva belongs to the same
genus with the European kind, though to a different species. Now
what would the sceptic say to this? Would any two workmen ever have
hit upon so beautiful, so simple, and yet so artificial a
contrivance? It cannot be thought so: one Hand has surely worked
throughout the universe. (Voyage of the Beagle, 325; Penguin 1989).

Yes, let “all of Darwin” be used to defend evolution from California
creationists.

Forrest M. Mims Ill
(Nature 366, 11 November 1993.)

"The skeptics might have ridiculed me had I read any of the Biblical
biblical passages that influenced me to abandon traditional
Darwinian evolution. But few of them had much to say after their
prophet’s words were read. Even more remarkable was that the highly
prestigious Nature published without change what I would have never
written, much less been allowed to write, in the Scientific American
column." (End of quotation from Maverick Scientist.)

The many scientific journals and other secular publications that
have published my writings are listed at www.forrestmims.org.
Finally, the most detailed background search of my career was
performed by Rolex. Evidently they were much less concerned about my
views on Darwinism and climate than some InkWell folk, for I
received a 1993 Rolex Award. Rolex also funded my research with
fellow Rolex Award alumnus Dr. Andrew McGonigle that led to our
major paper on solar UV across Hawaii Island in which I installed
calibrated UV-B photodiodes on a mannequin head to study the impact
of UVB at different times, altitudes and angles.
  

    
Wow -- you edited Reference Data for Radio Engineers  !!  (ch 6,
p82)

That was my bible in my Radio Astronomy days, mid 60's. I built a
small Mills Cross (which either detected the milky way hydrogen
line, or recorded the overnight temperature in the research hut) and
a complicated copper-plumbing feed horn at Jodrell Bank (involving
strip lines and milled coaxial segments).

I'm looking forward to reading chapter 7 on the MITS Altair.
  

    
Forrest, I think Emily mentioned Heritage Foundation because, as she
says, it "has been elevating climate deniers for decades." The point
being that denial of anthropogenic climate change has become a
position embraced by conservatives, especially those concerned with
the economic implications of the consensus among climate scientists:
that we must stop burning fossil fuels and spewing carbon into the
atmosphere. But this is a political and economic position, not
supported by scientific consensus.

Re. Roy Spencer, here's a skeptic's view:
<https://skepticalscience.com/skeptic_Roy_Spencer.htm>. That page
includes reponses to many of his views.
  

    
Alan at #92 writes about my editing of Reference Data for Radio
Engineers. While I did indeed edit this massive tome (for Howard W.
Sams & Co.), I also added a few chapters and major new sections. 
This assignment arrived after I had written my first several books
on semiconductor lasers, light emitting diodes, optoelectronics, and
the history of lightwave communications. Back then my sole income
was royalties from those books and my columns in Popular
Electronics.

After the 1,000-mile bicycle trip from Albuquerque to Padre Island
National seashore in 1974 (described in Maverick Scientist), my wife
and I decided we wanted to move from her home state (New Mexico) to
mine (Texas). That is when Sams assigned the giant editorial job for
Reference Data for Radio Engineers. After that project was
completed, we did as we always did and prayed that I would be fairly
paid. Our goal was a huge $2,500, but that did not occur. Instead,
we were paid $10,000! That enabled our move to Texas.

This story is described on page 82 of Maverick Scientist. Emily has
requested that I discuss more about the book, but I've had to spend
hours here responding to critics of my stand on evolution and my
concerns about important shortcomings in climate models denied by
some InkWell folk, who are unfamiliar with this important topic,
much less the role of column water vapor.  
  

    
Reverting for a moment to climate :

I'm not an expert on sea-level change.  Some of the claims of "no
acceleration" are in J. R. Houston; R. G. Dean  2011
<https://meridian.allenpress.com/jcr/article-abstract/27/3/409/28456/Sea-Level-
Acceleration-Based-on-U-S-Tide-Gauges> [abstract, $$ paper ]

A detailed rebuttal ("amateur", not published ...) is at
<https://skepticalscience.com/decelerating-sea-level-rise.htm>

Main objections: 
-- even 57 USA tidal gauges are too noisy and too local
-- 500 global tidal gauges from 1880 and satellite data agree in
shape
-- the noise is auto-correlated (I don't understand that)
-- a quadratic fit is not statistically valid -- a cubic polynomial
is
-- the choice by H&D of a 1930 start date might 
   have been selected to show minimum acceleration
   (argument's a bit muddy to me)

Main finding: 
-- the rate accelerates from 1930 to 1950, decelerates to 1990, and 
   is now rising sharply. 

<img
src="https://skepticalscience.com/pics/tamino_sea-level-rise_resid2.jpg"; width=543>

<https://skepticalscience.com/pics/tamino_sea-level-rise_resid2.jpg>

-- And during this century, we expect acceleration of sea level rise
because of physics. Not only will there likely be nonlinear response
to thermal expansion of the oceans, when the ice sheets become major
contributors to sea level rise, they will dominate the equation.
Their impact could be tremendous, it could be sudden, and it could
be horrible. ... Even given the observed acceleration, the forecasts
we should attend to are not from statistics but from physics. 

But back to the MITS Altair (there are quite a few archived posts on
the well), Basic and Microsoft  ...  did you consider (if you were
asked) joining Allen & Gates ? 
  

    
The Heritage Foundation is relentlessly partisan. They don't publish
or promote articles that diverge from their preferred narrative.
Generalizations about what academic journals are willing to publish
are not relevant to this.

Some flags popped up for me when I read the article in question.
First, his summary of the way climate modelers use hindcasting is
incorrect and misleading. Second, his comparison of model
predictions of warming versus observed warming is based on "author's
calculation" to represent the data. I'd prefer to see more about
which data sets were used and about how they were collapsed into a
single trace.

Handwaving about how climate and ocean currents are chaotic is
inadequate to explain how rapid observed warming has been in the
past half century, in comparison to warming episodes in previous
earth history.
  

    
Alan #95 and Sea Monkey #96 continue the barrage about global
warming/climate change, topics barely discussed in Maverick
Scientist and neither of which are in the index. Are we to assume
that all climate change skeptics are conservatives and all believers
are liberals? I hope not. Is there a middle ground? Definitely. Do
my critics model or measure climate and publish their findings in
major peer-reviewed journals? Apparently not.

Finally and refreshingly, Alan #95 introduces a highly relevant
point raised by Maverick Scientist when he states: But back to the
MITS Altair (there are quite a few archived posts on the well),
Basic and Microsoft  ...  did you consider (if you were asked)
joining Allen & Gates ? 

This question refers to the nativity of Microsoft at MITS. I
co-founded MITS with Ed Roberts, Bob Zaller, and Stan Cagle in
September 1969 after my article on how to make a transistorized
tracking light for night-launched model rockets was published in
Model Rocketry magazine. This was my first magazine article sale
($93), and our first product was my light flasher. Maverick
Scientist has full details in Chapter 5 (p. 68). 

I left MITS in 1970 to pursue my writing career. Ed and I remained
close friends, and I wrote several manuals for MITS products after
leaving, including the MITS 816, the first kit calculator. Ed
developed the Altair 8800 in the fall of 1974. The January 1975
Popular Electronics cover story about the Altair was on sale at a
Harvard bookstore. When Paul Allen saw the magazine, he immediately
bought a copy and rushed over to Bill Gates dorm room. The rest is
history (and fully covered in Maverick Scientist). 

No, I was not asked to join Microsoft. But years later Paul acquired
many of my early MITS products to display in his big exhibit at the
New Mexico Museum of Science and Technology. Earlier I donated to
the Smithsonian my 816 calculator and the Altair 8800 Ed gave me for
writing the first user manual. I also donated my high school analog
language translator that converted 20 English words to their Russian
equivalents. All these items are still at the Smithsonian and
viewable on their website if you carefully search. My Altair was
displayed for 15 years. 

Thanks, Alan, for concluding your lengthy post with a question
related to a topic actually covered in Maverick Scientist!
  

    
Moments after posting the above, the primary NOAA GOES satellite
detected an X1.18-Class solar flare. More of these can be expected,
for we are near the peak of the solar cycle. Solar flares are
unrelated to human activity, and they have been carefully documented
for decades by scientists in several countries who debate among
themselves how best to predict solar activity.  

This topic is related to Maverick Scientist, for Chapter 21 (Mims
Family Science) describes how my daughter Vicki detected a dozen
solar X-Class flares using a Geiger counter in 1989 when she was in
high school. Her project was included in a book on observing the sun
by Joseph Carr.
  

    
> Are we to assume
> that all climate change skeptics are conservatives and all
> believers are liberals?

There's a logical defect in that. No, nobody suggested so.

The American right wing has adopted climate skepticism into their
political program as being bad for business. A scientific dissenter
who accepts the Heritage Society's brand raises the bar that they
have to surpass to establish their credibility.
  

    
Thanks for wading in there <karish>.