Thomas Gale Moore wrote the paper Global Warming, A Boon for Humans and
Other Animals as one of a series of papers for a conservative
think-tank, the Hoover Institution. Both the
original copy
of this paper and the
current version
(with better format and later corrections) are available. Sci.environment posters discovered many serious scientific
errors in this paper; some of their posts are reproduced here. Note that
Moore has published this paper in The Public Interest
magazine, and has talked it up in various
places. He also gave Congressional testimony
about it. Moore later corrected some of these
errors once they were pointed out -- after mass media publication and
Congressional testimony had already occured.
I thank Tom Gray for assisting me by recovering old posts from an Econet archive.
Meteorology and Climate
R. T. Pierrehumbert gave a meteorological
critique, later expanded, of Moore's paper. If you wish to read only
one document on this page, read this -- it's by far the best general
critique here and incorporates many of the points made further down.
The Medieval Warming Period
Moore's reference to this period as a guide to a higher-CO2 world
was criticized by Jan Schloerer.
William Connolley described a
misleading citation by Moore. Later, Schloerer made additional
comments based on tree ring data.
Historical CO2 Levels
At least three sci.environment posters caught a critical error by Moore
in reading a graph in a work that he cited. Paul Farrar was one of the
people to describe this error, which Moore later
claimed to have corrected.
General Methodology
An initial critique by Rich Puchalsky focussing
on Moore's anecdotal method, plus a later one covering the same ground.
Finally, I'll end these comments with a warning from Paul Farrar about the
necessity for review of work that
addresses scientific issues prior to publication.
Rebuttal
In the interest of fairness, Thomas Moore was given space on this page to
provide a rebuttal of these critiques.
E-mail: rpuchalsky1@gmail.com
Last modified: June 30, 01999
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