LifeOfTheMind:

Just to be clear. I’m not making prescriptive statements. I’m not claiming that the next time such a theory is proposed, that it will be automatically false due to the process I describe.

I believe that I have seen arguments and data on each side of the controversies I listed, and claim that I have come to conclusions based on that data. I did much the same with fonts/kerning in the Mary Mapes saga.

I’ll admit I over-simplified my statements. They should have read something like:

CO2 influences climate enough to change normal climate variation to any significant degree. Etc.

My desire for brevity caused problems in that case.

James