> This is exactly what I mean, you've decided that 'the media' is your enemy and therefore any claims they make or report can be attacked and demolished without

> This is exactly what I mean, you've decided that 'the media' is your enemy and therefore any claims they make or report can be attacked and demolished without actually trying to understand what they're actually saying. No, you are wrong: Maybe the media is my "enemy", but I'm setting that aside and paying attention just to the media claims that there is an ozone hole. Of course there's an ozone hole -- so what? The media has been claiming that there is a threat from CFCs, but they didn't make their case: The situation and the standards and criteria for making a case are simple and old: If the media wants to claim that there is some threat, then they need to follow at least common high school standards for term papers -- e.g., references to primary sources. > actually trying to understand what they're actually saying. What they are "actually saying" has low credibility, e.g., is just not solidly rational. Again, for a creditable case, rational, scientific, detailed, they just didn't make it or give references to such a case. I outlined what would be part of a credible case -- from 1 kilogram of some CFC, how many kilograms of ozone and how many Watts of UV .... > for a moment thought 'Huh, surely they wouldn't have given a Nobel Prize in Chemistry for something as basic as "CFCs speed up this reaction," maybe there's something to this atmospheric ozone thing' Yes, maybe there is "something", in which case the media claiming a threat needs to make a case, give the "something", or at least give some good primary references. For > surely they wouldn't have given a Nobel Prize ... That's not good evidence that CFCs cause a significant problem. If there is good evidence, then give it. > Were you expecting me to be impressed? No, not at all. My purpose and claim were clearly stated right at the beginning of the paragraph: > I know something about writing credible content: For your > I've also got a PhD in mathematics, and in the years since I've met literally hundreds of mathematicians with better careers than this. Irrelevant. Apparently you mean a "better" "career" as an academic, research mathematician. Actually, I never once, not even for a nanosecond, ever had any desire to have a career in academics or in research mathematics. My main reason for going to graduate school was simply the old idea that a better education would lead to a better job; academics was not such a candidate job. Since this idea seemed to work for my father, I tried it. The Indiana University teaching was as a graduate student. For the three courses they had me taking, two of them were beneath what I'd done in college, and the third was by a prof who was ready to fail me until I read my solution to him and he saw that my solution was correct and one step shorter than his. He was nasty to me for no good reason. I never saw him again. There were some topics I wanted to study in math and physics, but the best way was just to get a job and study on evenings and weekends. Then I got strongly recruited for work in math, physics, and computing for US national security near DC and also did well in much of the independent study I had in mind. And I got into scientific computing -- Assembler, Basic, Fortran, Algol, PL/I, numerical analysis, statistics, the fast Fourier transform, digital filtering, phased arrays, lots of algorithms, etc. At Georgetown I was hired into the computing center. I did too well and scared the head of the center. Then the university needed someone to teach computer science so gave the job to me. Then I helped start FedEx -- with some computing and applied math, saved the company twice. The promised stock was late, and I was commuting from DC where my wife was in her Ph.D. program. So, I got a Ph.D. Just as a reading course, in two weeks I did the work on the KTC. Mathematical Programming wanted my Lemma to be named a Theorem, and I didn't get around to fixing that and publishing until much later. While I've published some papers, I am not now nor have I ever been at all interested in publishing anything. I took the job at Ohio State so that my wife, who suffered in graduate school, could be near her home and family farm. I had 0.000 interest in the academics. Now I'm doing what I always should have -- I'm an entrepreneur doing a startup. The foundations are some math, computing, and, now, the Internet. Again, I don't want a career in math -- never did, still don't. At times, some math did me some good in school: My math SAT scores and the GRE math score were good enough to damp down nasty politics, get people out of my way, and open doors. Some of the independent study I did let me blow away the rest of the students -- I was best in the department on 4 of the 5 Ph.D. qualifying exams and for the 5th had already written the first draft of my Ph.D. dissertation. There was a LOT of nasty politics. The thing I did with the KTC beat down nearly all the bad politics, eased my path through my Ph.D. Somehow doing something independent and publishable in a good journal in two weeks was a magic wand. Silly. Instead of publishing papers, I want to be successful in business. In my brother's side of my family, there are three kids. I give them little encouragements to know some math and science but NO WAY would I encourage them to try for an academic "career". Again, once again, over again, yet again, one more time, my background in math was to support my claim > I know something about writing credible content: in particular to critique the media claims that CFCs are a threat. To me their claims are not what I regard as "credible content".