“Nobody else other than [I] says this”? Well, you admitted that the children’s books made that same argument. And here is a curious thing: those “other factors,” when and to the extent that the alarmists mention them, weaken their own argument. Which is: government must not allow humans to run around loose, for humans shall certainly harm themselves and wreck the planet. They forget, all the while, that government officials are human, too.

And yes, I do say that negative feedback will negate any effect of man on the climate. And there’s something else you have forgotten: the world went through a Little Ice Age beginning at about the time of the Renaissance and ending during the Victorian Era. Your alarmists evidently see the Little Ice Age as normal and appropriate. Furthermore, since the recent heat wave went away, and temperatures in the Northeast turned distinctly mild, the alarmists have fallen silent. I would expect no better of them. They love to come out and sound their alarms in high summer. But then I think of Al Gore having to cancel speaking engagements on account of—wait for it—ice and snow at the venue. Not to mention his keeping his engine at idle, the air conditioner full on, until he comes out of a speaking venue to ride away. (Like so many celebrities, he seems almost to have forgotten how to drive his own automobile.)

The arguments against Austin crash and burn on this count: if their position was correct, then Geochron Laboratories ought to have reported “Age undetermined; argon undetectable.” They did not. Nor did they suggest in any way, shape or form that they would have a lick of trouble determining the dates on any of the samples they received. Austin sent them five different samples from the same lava dome. Geochron reported seeming ages that were much further apart than their respective tolerances (the “error bars”) would allow. Those ages varied from half a million to 2.8 million years.

And so, when he revealed that all five samples came from the same location, and that location formed ten years before sampling, the predictable howl went up from game-players who realized, with a sickening thud in their hearts, that the game was up:

“FOUL!”

Sorry, Geochron. The only “foul” is the procedure that you have followed all these years. Might that explain why Geochron shut down their K-Ar dating service shortly after that disgraceful episode? In any event, that’s why I insist that the proportions are the raw data. As to the depth: well, the depth of the sample when found is a raw datum. But if you’re going to calculate a depth from the mother-daughter proportion, that is a derived datum. Do you know what derived data are? Absolutely any number that you calculate from another number or numbers is a derived datum. And I challenge all derived data, because I challenge the assumptions that lie beneath the derivation.

We deal here with trying to explain what many call “the geological column.” Two, and only two, possibilities exist. Proposition A: billions of years of erosion laid it all down. Proposition B: the one event in the history of the earth that deserves the name cataclysm laid it all down in one year. If you’re going to accept as fact certain derived data that depend on Proposition A above, then you favor Proposition A a priori. That wasn’t how my professors of physics, physical chemistry, and organic chemistry taught me to do science. That might be the way uniformitarians do science. But that means that they are so wedded to their scheme that they won’t admit, even to themselves, that another scheme is possible. And you never test one theory by assuming as fact the predictions of another. That’s a special form of circular reasoning called “Your theory does not work under my theory; therefore your theory must be wrong.”

Now about relativity. False? Far from it. In fact, I say that it doesn’t go far enough. Einstein worked out an excellent scheme for explaining local effects. But Carmeli (1996) and Hartnett (2007) worked out a relativity applicable on a cosmic scale. And their scheme—guess what?—totally obviates “dark matter” and “dark energy,” while at the same time showing that the universe can be no older than six thousand or so years by clocks on earth even though we see light from far-off objects.

So I accept relativity as true, and in need of expansion. I don’t accept dark energy or dark matter. At best, those are yet more questionable derived data. At worse, those are mathematical fudges, on the order of the assumed “Planet Vulcan” of the early 20th century (not to be confused with 40 Eridani III, or whatever number it was supposed to be, that Gene Roddenberry invented).

The burden of proof is yours, once again, because you propose to curtail my liberty. And that of everyone else. And, given the latest dust-up at CERN, you arguably don’t even have standing.

That is what this debate is all about: human liberty. Which you would deny.

By the way: with your use of the acute accent, does that make you a Frenchman? If so—well, you’re free to comment, of course, because you haven’t talked total trash. But I suggest that, though the motto of your country is still “Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity,” you probably do not understand Liberty nearly as much as you do Equality and Fraternity. In fact, I suggest that you pursue Equality and Fraternity at the expense of Liberty.

In America, Liberty is the abiding principle.

The hypothetical court, in which I suggest that you have not proved your case or even shown standing, is an American court, not a French one. French courts perhaps allow a much wider application of res ipsa loquitur (Latin, “the thing speaks for itself”) than do American. To argue res ipsa loquitur in our courts, you must show that the thing is under the exclusive control of the defendant. In the case of (hypothetical) global warming, you have not so shown. Indeed, Jasper Kirkby at CERN has recently shown the opposite.

As for the rest of what you said: No cosmologist has made any more satisfactory showing of the Hubble Principle than has Hubble. Which is to say, they have made no showing at all. The Hubble Principle is still more asserted than proved. And it stays current because current cosmologists like the philosophy behind it. They don’t want to think of the implications of finding that our galaxy is at the center of the universe.

Well, it is at the center. In fact, it’s even at the center of the rotation of the universe. Did you know that the universe has a definite spin? And that our galaxy lies along the axis of that spin, and itself spins in the same direction?

What you call your evidence is merely a matter of opinion. It is the body of opinion of the conventional community. No one has dared challenge it—until now. Now I have challenged it. And I don’t care what you think of my “credentials.”