Be very, very careful what you put into that head,
because you will never, ever get it out.
Thomas Cardinal Wolsey (1471-1530)
|Bad Meteorology FAQ|
Click on the symbol for its explanation.
This FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions) is written by Alistair B. Fraser. It is in response to questions posed over the years by readers of the Bad Meteorology pages. If you have arived on this page without having read those pages or the other Bad Science pages, then what follows, will probably make little sense.
Although the questions presented here are often ones asked by a specific person, each is chosen to characterize a group of similar questions which have been asked about the topic.
Questions grouped by topics
Bad Clouds FAQ (arising out of the Bad Clouds page)Air is a sponge
But, air does have a holding capacity for water vapor
A correct prediction implies a correct reasoning
The air-holding water explanation is just a simplification
Bad Rain FAQ (arising out of the Bad Rain page)Terminal velocities
Bad Greenhouse FAQ (arising out of the Bad Greenhouse page)Temperature conversion
Our atmosphere is not the source of the energy
But the Sun and atmosphere emit for different reasons
But our atmosphere would stop emitting without the Sun
Is it the same radiation emited as received?
Bad Coriolis FAQ (arising out of the Bad Coriolis page)You have it backwards
Why any spin at all?
Its not the Coriolis force, but the Coriolis effect
The Coriolis force is fictitious, because it cannot do work
The teacher was right
On firing missiles
Temporal scale versus spatial scale
Wacky things attributed to Coriolis
General meteorological FAQThe full moon and frost
Teaching FAQEmployment of metaphors
Persistence of textbook errors