Gary wrote:
Provided that Nick agrees, I suggest that you place a rough draft of your joint paper on this website. Everyone here could argue about the merits of your respective positions. This would probably result in a better paper.

Alex writes:
If this were a closed site, then I *might* not have a problem with open discourse, which is how scientists (see my back and forth with Bob Clark below) normally operate. They circulate drafts of papers within the community among their colleagues for comments and suggestions before submitting to a journal for consideration, and possible review and acceptance. However, in this particular case a couple of points should be made. First, out of courtesy to SpaceDaily (and Simon Mansfield, the Editor), we should let him have exclusive use of the material until he decides if/when he might publish it; he may wish to embargo the pieces until the publication date. This, however, presupposes that what Nick and I may write is actually Earth (or Mars) shattering in the first place ;-) Secondly, most of the pro-H2O and pro-CO2 debate, at least between Nick and myself, is fairly well-known to this group, as well as other forums where we participate, though we may have a few new takes on the issue. If the truth be told, Nick and I probably agree on more of the issues than not, but there are differences. I see a slight convergence in the two models, which is predictable but by no means certain. At any rate, Nick and I will certainly exchange our pieces with one another for comments and suggestions, and in my case, I'll be soliciting the opinions of other colleagues.

BTW, as an aside I'll mention that David Harland (author of Exploring the Moon: The Apollo Expeditions and Jupiter Odyssey: The Story of Nasa's Galileo Mission) has a forthcoming book on comparative planetology entitled "The Earth in Context." Nick Hoffman and I helped a little with the review of the Mars chapters. Personally, I also recommend the Mercury chapter, which is a very decent summary. According to David, the book should be published in October of this year, and I have a PDF file of the book jacket that he sent to me.

Alex R. Blackwell
University of Hawaii