Hello everyone:
While I finally work on my upcoming installment of The Extended Phenotype, you may have at it about global warming. Just a reminder: I am going to be a lot more strict about enforcing the respectful comments rule than I have been at Amused Muse. The subject is global warming - not each other. Puh-lease! Thank you so much. :-)
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17 comments:
DaveScot aka David Springer has finally laid global warming to eternal rest over at Uncommon Descent by proclaiming in his typically arrogant, condescending fashion that global warming is a SWINDLE. Got that? Write that down.
I love it so!
"A past evolution is undeniable, a present evolution undemonstrable."
John A. Davison
Allow me to reiterate:
The subject is global warming - not each other. Puh-lease! Thank you so much. :-)
I am aware of the "Swindle" video. Perhaps we should discuss the video, then: by whom it was produced, at whom it is targeted, and what the major arguments are.
Do you really believe that one can have a reasonable discussion involving David Springer on any subject? I regard that as quite impossible and I am sure that I am not alone. What say others? The fact is that what takes place on internet blogs is determined almost entirely by the various personalities involved and has very little to do with reason or objective exchange.
When little is known with certainty, every person is an expert.
"Men believe most what they least understand."
Montaigne
"A past evolution is undeniable, a present evolution undemonstrable."
John A. Davison
"A past evolution is undeniable, a present evolution undemonstrable."
John A. Davison
I reiterate: We are not discussion the possibility or impossibility of having a discussion with David Springer here.
I think it's time to put that animosity behind you and stop hijacking this thread for your personal reasons.
Again, I ask for people to model the behavior that they would like to see from me. Thank you.
Kristine
The problem IS each other. We have forums and blogs dominated by individuals and their hired goons who will accept no deviation from their own fixed and irreversible ideologies. The various forum heads ban anyone who takes exception with them. They are nothing but fan clubs run by amateur lightweights.
How anyone can possibly be a Dawkins fan is utterly beyond me. The man lives in a fantasy world entirely of his own making. That you should be duped by this clever wordsmith is pathetic. He is a loser!
I suspect this will result in my bannishment from your wonderful little fan club.
I love it so!
"A past evolution is undeniable, a present evolution undemonstrable."
John A. Davison
My daughter sent me Al Gore's DVD "An Inconvenient Truth"for my birthday, and I have just found time to watch it. While already aware of some of the evidence, I still found the film fascinating, with the wealth, diversity and depth of evidence so well presented.
The instability of the Greenland Ice shelf alone ought to be enough to get some action from our politicians. I thought the only problem was disruption of the Gulf Stream, and didn't realise if/when the shelf melts. sea level rises 20 feet.That is a global problem.
John, you are welcome to take shots at Dawkins' ideas and at my opinion of them. As you know perfectly well you will not be banished for doing so. It is personal attacks that I won't tolerate here. Bring those to Amused Muse (if you absolutely must) but I do place limits there, too.
Now, back to global warming.
I did see Al Gore's film and thought it accurate; I understand, however, that the claim that one can see (if I am remembering correctly) the rise of the Industrial Revolution in the core samples from Antarctica is not really true.
If you have seen Al Gore's film and wish to chime in on this, then go ahead, John.
I also saw the Gore film and was impressed.
I think global warming is a very serious issue and it should not be summarily dismissed as Springer and others have done. It is obvious that more and more real scientists are taking the problem seriously. Personally, I believe it ranks right next to pandemic disease as the greatest threat to our survival. You can't have monocultures of 7 billion large mammals, an equal number of chickens and huge additional populations of cattle, pigs and other domesticated creatures and expect a balanced prosperous ecology to continue. It is quite impossible, especially when at the same time we are destroying the tropical rain forests which are a significant sink for atmospheric CO2.
The best antidote to global warming would be to go to a nuclear energy economy and eliminate the burning of fossil fuels as soon as possible. I do not see that occurring in the immediate future and neither does anyone else.
I am also convinced that the earth is doomed as the normal consequence of the fulfillment of a planned and now terminated evolutionary sequence. Just as all individuals die so do virtually all species become extinct. Blindly to assume that man is an exception is without foundation.
In fact, judging from his history, Homo sapiens may well prove to be the shortest lived species of all time. I realize this is not a very rosy projection yet it remains in full accord with what we see around us. It may well prove to be the way it was all supposed to be, a giant cosmic joke.
It was all planned you know, just as Robert Broom proclaimed. Of that I am now certain, just as Leo Berg was, when commenting on both ontogeny and phylogeny -
"Neither in the one nor in the other is there room for chance."
Nomogenesis, page 134.
So was Albert Einstein -
"Everything is determined... by forces over which we have no control."
So am I.
"A past evolution is undeniable, a present evolution undemonstrable."
John A. Davison
See, John, there is something we can agree on.
The best antidote to global warming would be to go to a nuclear energy economy and eliminate the burning of fossil fuels as soon as possible. I do not see that occurring in the immediate future and neither does anyone else.
My latest bill for electricity informs me that 85.8% was provided by nuclear generators, another 5% by renewables (hydro, wind etc.)and 9% by fossil fuels.[/schadenfreude]
I believe it ranks right next to pandemic disease as the greatest threat to our survival.
Well, at least pandemics are self limiting.
I am also convinced that the earth is doomed
Permit me to take Pascal's wager here, too, John, and work on the assumption that it isn't.
Well, everything is "doomed," ultimately. Everything dies, ultimately. The question is whose legacy gets thrown onto history’s trash heap (and since I don’t have any kids, that would be mine).
Alan and John, why do you think that nuclear power is safe and cheap in Europe, whereas we are still realing from the Three Mile Island scare? Did the citizens of the U.S. overreact? I recently watched The China Syndrome just for nostalgia's sake (Oscar month at TCM). This rather hokey film had a huge influence on people's perceptions of nuclear power, I think, due to the Three Mile Island accident, but the whole premise of the plot actually revolves around the danger of people cutting corners and not following standard procedures, rather than some inherent "danger" of nuclear power itself. This can be true of anything, not just nuclear fission, so why shouldn't we consider nuclear power as at least a short-term option?
P.S. I seem to be having trouble commenting at my own blogs sometimes.
It's odd that I have no memory at all of the Three Mile Island accident.
The PBS documentary on Three Mile Island.
Here's an interesting interpretation of the timeline by some Oregon State engineering students.
Possibly nuclear power generation is too problematic to leave to private capital, and needs government sponsorship and control, to avoid the short cuts on safety that seem to creep in. Though Chernobyl was state run, and, well, you know the rest.
Alan Fox thinks that domestic dog breeds prove contemporary evolution. So much for Alan Fox. Bye now.
John, when you say "evolution," do you mean speciation, specifically? Because frankly, domestication of dogs does involve evolution, but not the creation of a new species, necessarily.
(Or, I supposed you could see it as evolution "winding down," since they're becoming pets, after all.)
Kristine
Read my papers and stop reading Dawkins.
Bye now.
May I direct to an article outlining the dangers and deciet of the message of Global Warming. It is entitled Nothing New Under the Sun and is hosted by www.thegiftofgod.co.uk.
Okay, I looked at it.
Are you kidding me?
“Conspiracy of global warming?” What a crock! “Nothing new under the sun”? Not with conspiracy theorists! Same old crap.
Inform yourself. We’re talking about massive upheavals, displacement of people, mutation of pests and extinction of mammals, not silly little Bible verses. You don’t take a book - any book, not even Origin of Species - and try to make reality fit what it says. Reality is the text that must be read.
Someday in the future, Christian theologians are going to claim that people like you weren’t true Christians, because you didn’t “see the signs.” I predict.
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