Notes from Scientific American

[Mike Carrell]

The current issue, in addition tothe piece about cold fusion, has some other interesting items.   A page is devoted to the comments of Michael Shermer, editor of The Skeptic, who has this to say about "The Fossil Fallacy": "We know evolution happens because innumerable bits of data from myriad fields of science conjoin to paint a rich portrait of life's pilgramage." Nothing about falsifiable theories, which is used to hack at "intelligent design". A beautiful testament of faith, which with a few word substitutions, would be an anthem in support of cold fusion.   In my view, it is demonstrable that natural selection can drive adaptation, and in combinatorial chemistry, can drive the discovery of new compounds, and works in many fields. But unless I am mistaken, there has never been an experiment demonstrating the creation of a species by natural selction. Various hypotheses are offered, but none rates the status of a "theory".   The other item of interest is the cover story, in which changes in received solar energy, tied to the interplay of the Earth's precession and orbital motion, strongly correlate with the methane and CO2 content of the atmosphere over hundreds of thousands of years. Following that cycle, we would now be in a strong cooling trend. However, the beginning of agriculture some 5000 years ago has dumped methane from decaying crops and reduced CO2 uptake by deforestation. The two combined have offset the reduction in received solar intensity and kept the earth warm. But we may have overdone it....   Mike Carrell