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The second, and far sneakier point, almost seems to make sense, and could easily trap the unwary. I will only mention in passing that if Taylor [F.W. Taylor, in chap. 20, Hunten, et al. (1983)] really had meant to imply that all data prior to PV should be "tossed out", then he could easily have said so more directly, or in fact, since he was the lead author of the paper in question, he could have simply done it. But he didn't do it, nor did he say it, nor did he imply it. We don't need Mr. Holden to tell us what Taylor "really" meant.

This is basically Tim Thompson's desparate and idiotic claim that albedo values for Venus dating from the 1800's need to be averaged in with the good readings from Pioneer Venus in 1978, since that would produce a slightly lower number which would be more to his liking.

The basic problem: 1978 technology is simply better than 1878 technology.

Don't believe me? Lotsa different ways to settle that one... We could have a race: I'll use my 1995 automobile, and you can use a horse. Or a shooting contest: I'll use a modern rifle and you can use one of Custer's 45/70's. Or a boat race: I'll use a modern hydroplane and you can use a paddlewheel....

Tim Thompson is a total idiot and nobody with any brains and talent would quote him.

Now you're just being thick. He never said what you say he said. What he did say is that you can safely include the figures from the late 19th century to the present in reference to the albedo of Venus. The methods used to measure albedo at that time are as valid as they are today, and no one said today's measurements obviated, or even contradicted the earlier measurements -- that seems to be something you came up with all on your own in an effort to bolster a hypothesis that has very little going for it. If you need to cook the numbers and dream up "conspiracies" by the scientific community to make a case for your pet hypothesis, maybe it's time to take a good look at what you are trying to prove.

Tim Thompson is a total idiot and nobody with any brains and talent would quote him.

He does seem to have done a whole lot more actual research than you have. If that makes him an idiot, maybe you need to make a dictionary your next major purchase.

I'll use a modern rifle and you can use one of Custer's 45/70's.

Now, if you let me use a .303 Lee-Metford bolt action rifle and you get an M-16A2, we can take pot shots at each other from 1000 meters ...

All very nice, but today's very latest instruments weren't around in the late 19th or early 20th centuries. They can't tell us anything about what the albedo of Venus was in the late 19th century. We have no time machine.

Just the same, we have data from an already sufficiently technological society on just that subject. The people who were alive at the time were interested in the question and took readings.

And I still say that none of this albedo stuff can possibly rescue Velikovskian catastrophism. Whether or not Venus is in thermal equilibrium right now, it isn't as young as you need it to be.

The crust, the craters. The observations of Venus as a morning and evening star by the Sumerians in 3000 BC. The silliness of Velikovsky's story.

The island of Thera (AKA Santorini) blew up. A biggie, like Tambora in 1815, many times bigger than Krakatoa. A 6000 foot mountain powdered itself, turning itself into a crater in a lagoon formed by the broken ring of islands (remnants of the one big one) around it.

The whole eastern Mediterranean took a hit. Tsunamis, ash clouds. We know for sure this happened.

That's all you need to postulate to explain the fall of the Minoan Empire (a garbled version of which is the Atlantis legend), darkness in Egypt, flooding, etc. You don't need a wandering Venus.

Occam's Razor.