Oh, well, gee then, we’ll just listen to the climate scientists on this question then.

Where did Al Gore get his climatology degree from again? I forget.

The EPA block publication of the report because it did not meet scientific standards required in EPA reports.

The author has a BS in physics, as well as a PhD in economics and apparently has a web site with most of the same information.

Galileo wrote the book, had it approved by the Catholic censors, and it was published. When the pope read the book, he was offended. The pope thought Galileo was making fun of him and ridiculing his position.

The problem for the Roman church was that it’s censors had approved the book, so they had to claim that Galileo had tricked them into approving the book.

The fact that Galileo had gotten approval to publish the book and still was charged with heresy for writing it was part of the reason this action chilled science in Italy.

I am notorious for “reading between the lines” and one of the reasons I think you are picking such nits on the Helio/Geo centric argument is because you feel the Catholic Church and the Pope have gotten a raw deal in the mythology that has risen up around the event.

I do agree with you there. I think the general attitude that the Catholic Church was some sort of dogmatic, hidebound, theocratic, reactionary bunch of neanderthals is an unfair picture of both the Pope (who, as you point out, was a friend of Galileo’s) and the church itself. Anyone who has actually studied the history of the Catholic church’s patronage of pure astronomy would know better.

However, there is no doubt that the church perceived Galileo’s published work as a threat and felt that they had to do SOMETHING in answer to it. But there were more nuances on the Catholic side, and less scientific certainty on the Galileo side than is usually presented in the comic-book style simplifications of the situation.

But it was still a BIG DEAL and the reverberations of it echo through the halls of academy and theology to this day.

And please don’t overlook Galileo’s significant accomplishments in kinematics and physical theory outside of the Heliocentric debate. Those alone would have given him an honored place in science.

Protestant Reformers, who had savaged the Vatican for entertaining sacriligious heliocentrism, unsurprisingly grumbled at the new “Popish time,” but we still use it today–because it’s astronomically accurate, which is what Pope Gregory XIII wanted it to be when he designed it.

1) Copernicus, a Catholic monk, had already done huge work on heliocentrism, and Pope Leo X, an avid science geek, had encouraged public discussion and examination of Copernicus’ novel work suggesting that the old heliocentrist idea might actually be correct.

2) When the Pope did this, the major leadership of the Protestant Reformation were incensed. John Calvin and Martin Luther both PERSONALLY savaged Copernicus and this new and pernicious “Popish” idea.

3) In areas controlled by the Protestants, the Protestant Churches followed exactly the same practices as the Roman church; if you were in Lutheran Germany and you wanted to publish something you damn well got a Luther imprimatur on your work or you didn’t publish (or you went to jail). John Calvin expected exactly the same in areas he controlled.

Getting permission from authorities, both civil and religious, to publish anything was standing practice everywhere in Europe at the time. For every person, and any purpose.

That changed later, and you have to look to the 17th and 18th century classical liberal reformers and to rabble rousers in places like the British colonies in North America in the late 1700s for that.

So actually, Mike, you’re dealing with TWO strains of the Galileo mythology:

Myth Strain 1: It was a colossal battle between Faith and Science.

Myth Strain 2: It was a colossal battle between the oppressive Catholic Church and the enlightened Reformers.

The very fact that the Pope was in favor of open examination and discussion of heliocentrism before Galileo even made a name for himself, and that Protestant leaders savagely attacked the idea of heliocentrism, can’t really be jibed with the mythology. But it’s a fact.

What it looks like to me is that a whole lot of very bright scientists who came out cultural mileus like Germany (Lutheran territory) and Britain (Church of England territory), and seem to have simply absorbed the cultural attitudes they grew up with. The Galileo mythology made sense to them because it fit their preconceptions pretty well: “Well OF COURSE the Catholic Church is a backward semi-literate bastion of irrationalism and traditionalism, it makes perfect SENSE that they’d oppress a brave scientist like Galileo!”

Never mind that the Church actually made public discussion of Galileo’s ideas possible and that the Protestant reformers might actually have imprisoned or executed Galileo if he’d run to them.

I’d merely note that Galileo actualy HAD NOT proven his case by the time he died. He had come up with some data that was hard to explain. This happens in science. He also offered proofs that were WRONG, such as his failed assertion that tidal motion proved the sun to be at the center. All he really had was some things that were tough to explain, but which did NOT make his own theory indisputable. The proof that vindicated him, the undeniable reality that the stars themselves moved, could not be shown with telescopic instruments of his day–Galieleo’s considerable advancements in telescopy weren’t sufficient to do that.

So what he had was some apparently very odd motions around the gas giants that couldn’t easily be jibed with Ptolemaic cosmology. Galileo (to my eye) seems to have had a huge intuitive leap based on that (and a few other things) and become absolutely convinced that what he was saying was irrefutable, but based on the data at the time it was compelling but not irrefutable.

Galileo really didn’t have enough data to settle the question, but he behaved as if he did, and as if anyone who disagreed with him was a chowderhead. That’s a big part of what cheesed a lot of people off (including a lot of his fellow scientists and not merely those brutish thug Bishops).