Comparing to hundreds of other articles about climate change that I read on Medium, William MacDonald deserves credit for doing his homework. In particular, for reaching and studying arguments of his opponents.
I did not read Mr. Wrightstone’s book. But, I am familiar with the reasoning he presented.
William MacDonald is wrongly claiming that a person without formal scientific credentials cannot be right when questioning scientific theories coming from the ivory tower. He is not right either when discrediting Mr. Wrightstone for his cherrypicking of facts supporting his point of view. Mr. Wrightstone is not a scientist presenting a new theory. He is a skeptic, pointing out weaknesses in the theory that Mr. MacDonald supports. As long as at least one of the pillars of that theory can be reasonably questioned, by anyone, then the whole theory needs to be revised. Judging from the text by Mr. MacDonald the book by Mr. Wrightstone achieved as much.
Also, I checked reviews of Mr. Wrightstone’s book on Amazon. There are 608 of them. Most reviewers (89%) gave this book five stars. The most negative review, with one star, was written by the mother of Mr. MacDonald. I like the comment from J. Harris, who gave this book three stars:
“As a farmer, I don’t care if climate change is happening or not, just tell me how to deal with the future. There is important information in the book, but it does contain misinformation also. My college training was in agronomy. As a graduate student, one of my classes looked at this issue. It was many years ago (about 50) and the science has come a long way, but still can’t reliably predict the weather beyond a couple of weeks. (…) Mr. Wrightstone’s book is an important addition to the discussion, but not a slam dunk.”
After doing my own homework on climate change, I see that science is still not conclusive in understanding the processes we observe. Consequently, there is a high margin of uncertainty in any recommendations about what we should do about it if anything.
My recent post on the subject is here:
Comment by Mr. MacDonald will be appreciated.
