” … we are close to finding life on Mars.”

MarsCity-Header

" Green argues that finding the faint traces of Martian life, past or present, will unleash countless new questions that we’re not prepared to answer.

There is, of course, a religious angle to all of this. The origins of life on Earth are still the subject of debate today and science has always had to compete with stories for mindshare.

I mean, we live in a time where a not-insignificant chunk of people still claim to believe that the Earth is flat, so finding alien life on another world is sure to come with its own host of conspiracy theories and true believers spouting… whatever it is they truly believe.

Green may be right and mankind may not be ready to deal with the implications of finding life outside of Earth. But science waits for no one and if there’s life to be found on Mars, those discoveries aren’t going to wait until we’re ready to deal with them. Brace yourselves."  NY Post

————

One of the old timers on SST wrote me recently to admonish me to abandon my "frivolous" interest in humanity's coming migration from Terra.  He suggested that I should embrace climate change as the focus of SST.  I declined to do so since I think the leftist theme song of impending doom is yet another manifestation of the result of allowing teachers  who are the spiritual offspring of the nutty sixties and seventies to indoctrinate our children for decades.

People are causing climate change?  What an amusing thought!  I will try to live long enough to dance on the grave of this stupidity.  pl

https://nypost.com/2019/10/02/nasa-chief-says-we-are-close-to-finding-life-on-mars-but-the-world-wont-be-ready-for-it/

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73 Responses to ” … we are close to finding life on Mars.”

  1. Martin Oline says:

    After the last ice age, about 15,000 BC, the sea level rose about 400 feet. I live in Florida and if it raises another 20 feet, I’ll deal with it then. Ignorance is bliss and I’m a happy guy.

  2. Lars says:

    I hope you know how to slow dance. A lot of people, including me, have seen weather change lately compared to how it used to be. We have also seen the world population increase substantially in our lifetime.
    Then there is the majority of scientist who claim what is causing this.

  3. turcopolier says:

    lars
    BS, leftist hysteria and fantasy. Are you that gullible , really? Did you believe in Iraqi WMD? Same sort of log-rolling. Most scientists? What a joke! I m an expert at generating false beliefs in the masses. Climate changes. that is all.

  4. Markopasha says:

    I am sadly old enough to have lived through the new ice age scare, then it was nuclear holocaust, then it was acid rain, then the ozone layer, and now global warming.
    Are there any I missed?

  5. A. Pols says:

    I agree with the “BS, leftist hysteria and fantasy”. I’ve gone to the trouble of researching available stable site weather stations here in the US. There are only a few stable site stations with at least a century of continuous records. What I mean by stable site stations is as follows: The instrument location must have been constant; it cannot have moved, for example, from bottom land to hilltop in the same vicinity. The instrument site must not have become surrounded by urban development after having been previously in open country. The reason for this is microclimates have a big effect. An example of this is Wash. DC. Observation sites that in 1900 were semi rural are now heavily urbanized and this is reflected in higher average temperatures, but this is all due to the urban heat island effect. Therefore those stations’ observations must be discarded when looking for evidence of general warming. Discarding non stable site stations and concentrating on the stable sites shows overall temperature trends since a century prior are remarkably stable. NOAA maintains a climate database that anyone can access for free. The two I have looked at are Charlottesville’s McCormick observatory and the one at Dale Enterprise outside Harrisonburg. Both show remarkable long term consistency. I think a large part of the near universal perception of warmer conditions is related to the concentration of vocal public intellectual types in the big urban centers which have warm microclimates and the other factor is the selective memory many people have about weather. Their memory is largely composed of vignettes rather than a complete timeline and such individuals remember weather events in terms of extremes, which lead to such nonsense I hear from people around Charlottesville such as: “when we were kids the snow stayed on the ground from Thanksgiving until Easter” This is from people younger than I am and they believe their memories. I’m am oddity in that I retain full continuity of memory about many things and recall the exact timelines of weather events that play tricks on many people’s recollections. I also tend to look up stuff to corroborate what my recall tells me. So, at least here in mid-latitude east coast there is simply no evidence that the climate of today differs in any way from that of a century ago.

  6. turcopolier says:

    markopasha
    How about the millennial crash of civilization? The climateers are the kind of people who would have bought a lot of tulips.

  7. Fred says:

    Lars,
    Have you sold your Florida home and moved to higher ground yet?

  8. Babak Makkinejad says:

    Earth is warming, caused by gradual changes in 3 parameters of its orbital motion. See please “Ice Ages and Astronomical Causes” by Dr. Mueller. And nothing can be done about it.

  9. Babak Makkinejad says:

    The issue is man’s contribution to the inevitable global warming. What percentage is due to man’s activities and what percentage resulting from changes to orbital motion? One can make a lot of money from gullible people.

  10. fotokemist says:

    In case anyone missed it, Mish Shedlock published an amusing summary of the fraudulent data practices that are being used in the attempt to shove the ‘Green New Deal’ through. The link is: https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/global-warming-fraud-exposed-pictures

  11. Rick Merlotti says:

    Climate Alarmism is a religious cult akin to the Flagellants, neo-flagellants, if you will. They hate themselves and humanity in general. They want to kill billions of humans to “save the earth”. The earth will be fine, thank you, if we can expel these maniacs from polite society.

  12. Petrel says:

    May I endorse the opinion of A Pols about temperature changes around instrument sites. A case in point is the meteorological site at Reagan National Airport. Formerly a 20 ft x 20 ft green sward in the midst of more green sward located on landfill dumped on the wide Potomac River floodplain, the site is now a 20 ft x 20 ft well surrounded by three floors of an office building.

  13. Diana C says:

    You missed the overpopulation scare that asked us to believe we would soon be eating “soylent green.”
    My personal belief was that this particular scar was started by the people who were anti Catholics–you know those people who did/do not like birth control AND by the hippies who just wanted to engage in sex, drugs, and rock and roll without having to worry about the consequences.
    Heck….I saw a video tonight on television of a deranged young woman so worried about climate change that she felt we needed to “eat babies.” (I couldn’t follow her reasoning, thus my determination that she was deranged.)
    As for me, I believe that God created the world, and to me that means the universe in which it is located) and IT IS GOOD. But then, I grew up in and still live in a place where I get to see nature every day and take week-end trips into farmland and rocky mountains with mountain streams and high mountain lakes.
    My hometown is known for the smell of feedlots that sometimes is wafted into the downtown from the east. In our case, it’s not the flatulence that bothers us but the lack of cow toilets I guess.

  14. catherine says:

    Climate change?
    I think there are ‘natural climate cycles’, the Ice Age, etc, already proven.
    But I also think humans do add to it with more pollution and more extinction of certain species. Therefore reducing what we can is the prudent thing to do. Living on the ocean all my life I have seen the ‘natural cycles’..such as one beach shrinking and another growing due to the ocean’s movements. But then I have also seen the side of a mountain forest die due to pollution from a factory,erasing the trees that clean the air and destroying wildlife habitats .
    Since the earth doesnt need humans but we need it to live on common sense says we should do what we can to lessen, not add to any negative effects of the natural cycles.

  15. TonyL says:

    Colonel,
    This is from NASA website:
    “Multiple studies published in peer-reviewed scientific journals1 show that 97 percent or more of actively publishing climate scientists agree*: Climate-warming trends over the past century are extremely likely due to human activities. In addition, most of the leading scientific organizations worldwide have issued public statements endorsing this position. The following is a partial list of these organizations, along with links to their published statements and a selection of related resources.”
    https://climate.nasa.gov/scientific-consensus/

  16. Bill H says:

    I lived in south central Kansas in the early 1950s and having anywhere from six to as many as a dozen tornadoes reported every day for several weeks at a time during the summer was not at all unusual. I watch the “weather reporting” hysteria on the national news today and just laugh.

  17. Ingolf Eide says:

    I’m no climate expert and don’t have the knowledge (or any desire) to debate the science. FWIW after starting out as something of a sceptic 15-20 years ago I ended up coming down on the other side of this issue.
    To my mind, Nassim Taleb has the right approach:
    “This leads to the following asymmetry in climate policy. The scale of the effect must be demonstrated to be large enough to have impact. Once this is shown, and it has been, the burden of proof of absence of harm is on those who would deny it.
    It is the degree of opacity and uncertainty in a system, as well as asymmetry in effect, rather than specific model predictions, that should drive the precautionary measures. Push a complex system too far and it will not come back. The popular belief that uncertainty undermines the case for taking seriously the ’climate crisis’ that scientists tell us we face is the opposite of the truth. Properly understood, as driving the case for precaution, uncertainty radically underscores that case, and may even constitute it.”
    https://twitter.com/nntaleb/status/895790889171386369

  18. Jack says:

    We have over a century of weather data at our ranch. We have seen temperature and rainfall extremes distributed across that time horizon. I have to conclude that there are no patterns or trends at our ranch.
    I would argue that what we have is man made pollution. Plastic and chemical waste, polluted creeks and streams and increased particulate matter in the air in some places like Beijing and New Delhi. Deforestation and habitat destruction are also issues.
    Carbon trading and offsets are another scheme for financial interests to make money.

  19. turcopolier says:

    Ingolf Eide
    “Once this is shown, and it has been,” It has not bee SHOWN. Peer reviewed academic studies generally prove one thing and that is that academics are conformists who seek approval from other academics.

  20. Babak Makkinejad says:

    It is worse in this specific case, the consensus, at times, rests on the agreement with (and among) 6 global climate models. I do not trust those models to embody Climate Science Truths.

  21. Babak Makkinejad says:

    Appeal to Authority? What is this, a religion?
    Please see here: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milankovitch_cycles

  22. Vig says:

    Or scientist are experts “at generating false beliefs in the masses”?

  23. Fred says:

    TonyL,
    Trust the government:
    https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/30/health/red-meat-heart-cancer.html
    “researchers produced a series of analyses concluding that the advice, a bedrock of almost all dietary guidelines, is not backed by good scientific evidence.”
    Evidence. Why I bet these scientists were all trained at schools that knew there were only 2 genders.

  24. Yeah. You missed the Great Global Warming Scare of the 1930s.
    https://www.zerohedge.com/political/dozens-failed-climate-predictions-stretch-80-years-back
    All my life somebody (with lots of scientists real and assumed) has been telling me We Are Doomed!!!
    All that changes is the cause of the doom.

  25. Eric Newhill says:

    Global warming is a means of manipulating city slicker types to join the globohomo socialist movement. Pity how the public schools and universities are used to brainwash our youth. I don’t know anyone out here in the country that buys into the plot.
    IMO, it’s like a social club. All the “cool kids” believe in this uniting fear of warming. So I will too. Now I’m cool.
    Also a pity that the whole thing is a massive hoax because I’d like to have warmer weather where I live, I’d like to see NYC sink beneath the waves and all of those fleeing city slickers would pay a pretty penny for my update land.

  26. Joe100 says:

    This is the “space” I have worked in for 30+ years. A few observations from my “path” ( I could add many more):
    1. The IPCC assessment process is quite political
    2. Federal climate science funding flows mostly to modeling that flows back to IPCC assessments, little funding is available to better understand critical modeling parameters like how does co2 move in and out of oceans. At a meeting on geo-engineering maybe eight years ago I had dinner with a climate scientist who had been fairly high up in the Clinton administration. He told me that he agreed that we are starved for the science we need to effectively understand climate change, but Al Gore decide after the Kyoto climate meeting that “we had enough science and needed to move on to policy, so we don’t need to continue to spend federal dollars on climate science…
    3. Some eminent climate scientists have long noted that we lack the global environmental data networks to even begin to understand our climate system and have outlines what such systems would look like.
    4. Clearly clouds and cloud processes have large climate impacts. About a decade ago another climate scientist told me that there was essentially no interaction between the climate modeling and cloud physics communities..
    I would also note here that it is not helpful to a climate scientists’ career and research funding to be raising questions about current climate science, it is much easier to “go with the status quo flow”..
    5. We actually know very little about how global forests interact with our climate system, as most research has focused on carbon stocking – as this was thought decades ago to be the key interaction. In reality there are many other interactions like changes in albedo, reflective aerosol emissions, etc., most of which have been largely unexplored as there are no serious research funding programs that could support this work. This is a big gap in our knowledge and suggests that much existing public policy addressing forest management climate may not be having the assumed beneficial impacts.
    6. Much western (US, CA & Europe) climate action advocacy and government policy has roots back in the late 1960’s with the”soft path” renewables and energy efficiency vision vs. the (at the time) “hard path” based heavily on nuclear power. This vision created a significant global advocacy community that much later “grabbed” climate change as the key rationale for developing renewable energy and the existing “anti-nuclear” community initially pushed energy efficiency hard as an alternative to new power plants. In the US, several major San Francisco philanthropic foundations have committed billions of dollars to funding federal, regional and state environmental advocates to push energy effiiciency and renewables investment. Once again, climate change became the eventual rationale for a pre-existing advocacy/philanthropic agenda.
    7. The environmental advocacy community typically has a single approach: the cry out that “the sky is falling (pick your example, in this case climate change) and everyone needs to eat their spinach and do what we want them to do”.. Often with little basis for or vast overstatement of claims of harm.
    8. Stuart Brand presented a brilliant assessment of why we find ourselves incapable of rational treatment of climate change in chapter seven of his book “While Earth Disciple”. He observes that climate advocates are typically romantics, but we need engineers to sanely and effectively address climate change.
    9. The recent uptake and amplification of the romantics’ green climate agenda is unfortunate as much of the current western climate action agenda is probably constraining global energy system decarbonization.
    This is not to say that some degree of climate change is probably real, but rather than there is much more that we don’t know about our climate system to usefully understand what is going on, that western climate policy evolved before climate change surfaced as an issue and is continuing on “auto-pilot” without regard to what sensible and likely effective action would be to minimize potential climate change challenges.
    My short message is that one pretty much can’t believe that either side of this debate is on solid ground..
    Sorry for the rant!

  27. Sam says:

    Babak,
    Dr. Muller has recanted that assertion:
    https://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/30/opinion/the-conversion-of-a-climate-change-skeptic.html
    He now believes the rate of warming is almost entirely the result of humans.
    It should be noted he is still very skeptical of the alarmist claims and their speculations of the impending disaster (as am I).
    But to quote him:
    “our analysis does not depend on large, complex global climate models, the huge computer programs that are notorious for their hidden assumptions and adjustable parameters. Our result is based simply on the close agreement between the shape of the observed temperature rise and the known greenhouse gas increase.”

  28. BABAK MAKKINEJAD says:

    I am aware of his recantation but he does not provide any evidence. Nor is he recanting the content of his book.

  29. BABAK MAKKINEJAD says:

    I do not trust anything coming out of IPCC.
    The interaction of forests with the climate is one issue, the changes in the albedo of Earth by clouds in a moister warmer Earth is another area where science still must progress.
    I do think that Earth is warming – NASA satellite images indicate more vegetation in desert areas of the world – and I have read that vineyards in British Colombia are experiencing longer and longer seasons.
    I am still waiting for someone to tell me how much the average surface temperature of Earth will rise if all the know oil reserves are burnt up (I will exclude gas fields for now).
    Everyone knows that there is only so much CO2 or any other substance one can dissolve in a liquid before it saturates and starts to precipitate – in the form of acid rain.

  30. Unhinged Citizen says:

    Global warming or not, there are too many damn people in the nations of the world that cannot support themselves except under conditions of crushing poverty, and this causes an explosive demographic time bomb that will result in mass migrations and political upheaval on a scale not seen yet, with a slight trigger, be it a solar flare, rising oceans etc.
    The developed world needs to impose population controls on those who breed prodigiously. Of course such thoughts are forbidden in the flatulent Western intellectual collective thought.

  31. BABAK MAKKINEJAD says:

    Well, we already have a Clash of Civilizations; what is a Crash Civilization on top of that?
    I agree, the Climate has been around for 3 billion years and does not require or need cuddling.

  32. Mark Logan says:

    Babak,
    Well, Argument from Personal Incredulity is another logical fallacy.
    The case the CO2 is a greenhouse gas seems credible, therefore the notion we are changing the atmosphere is plausible.
    Does the existence of cycles preclude the possibility of CO2 also causing warming? No. Do we demand absolute proof? Then the question must be asked.
    What proof, if any, would serve?
    We aren’t going to get double-blind control experiment to prove or disprove this, so it must be to some degree an article of faith.

  33. Barbara Ann says:

    Joe100
    A very helpful rant, thanks

    Once again, climate change became the eventual rationale for a pre-existing advocacy/philanthropic agenda

    The GND is a perfect example of this, with one of its architects even admitting as much. On your same point, it is the anti nuclear lobby that is responsible for the insanely Quixotic policy of despoiling our beautiful landscapes with wind turbines – a pox on their houses.
    To your point #8, romantics should stick to writing poetry and similar pursuits and leave tiresome real world worries to scientists and engineers.

  34. Effinghell says:

    Spot on

  35. Barbara Ann says:

    If evidence of past life on Mars is found it will surely mark the greatest discovery in all of human history. The implication being that the Cosmos is almost certainly teeming with life. That would be quite something.
    I should declare my own view (seemingly a minority among present company) that anthropogenic climate change (global warming) is likely a reality. Should it be used as an excuse to force a tyrannical regime of one kind or another upon us? Absolutely not. We are tribal carnivores, not colony living drone animals like bees or ants. We must live or die as free agents. Do I worry and despair? No. My faith in human ingenuity is strong and when suitably motivated there is little we cannot achieve, especially thru the judicious use of free enterprise. And if it is to be our doom? Well in that case what is the sense in worrying – all the more reason to enjoy the short time we all have.
    God forbid this illustrious forum be given over to discussion of such a dry subject, there is so much more of interest going on in the world.

  36. The doomsayers can’t sell for shit. I’ve been in sales all my life. None of them would be successful as a used car salesman. Which I was successful more new than used though.
    Their arrogance and condescending attitude and refusal to debate for the last 20 years lost a huge portion of the electorate. Including me. There may be a slight warming effect due to humans. I follow the UAH satellite reading since it is the only one I trust. Until they die. And it shows a slight uptick since measurements begin in 1979. But that is such a short time span. And it doesn’t explain the medieval warming period or why the 1930s were a hot hellhole for the US.
    But I am 100% certain that the forces behind this are not on the level. If they were they would hold China to account and not be in it only for the money via NGO payoffs to corrupt government officials around the world and carbon taxes. They can go to hell.

  37. charly says:

    We are in a phase that the precession would lead to a cooling

  38. Babak Makkinejad says:

    I am not denying the probable contribution of methane, co2, and water vapor to green house effect. I am asking for a percentage contribution above what could be attributed to astronomical causes. I have read Dr. Mueller’s book and am familiar with Milankovitch Cycles: they ring true to me, a scientific judgement of mine.

  39. TonyL says:

    Fred,
    Their finding was “extremely likely due to human activities.” It is not the same as saying they have proof. Like with weather models, ie. statistical, we trust the forecast of a typhoon, hurricane, tropical storm … forming. “extremely likely” is quite a strong consensus that should be taken very seriously.
    For thoudsands of scientists to form the same conclusion, I think you’ll need alien mindcontrol or some craziest conspiracy theories 🙂

  40. Babak Makkinejad says:

    Vikings did find life on Mars.

  41. Babak Makkinejad says:

    You sound like a person that has not read anything since the Populationn Bomb in his youth.

  42. charly says:

    The problem with global warming is that you only see in the media the explanation for elementary school kids or for third year meteorology students. The first is to much trust the experts and the last assumes you already understand it so well that you can calculate a simple model. I think a 101 Meteorology:How CO2 increases Temperature would convince most of you that Global warming is real but i can’t find one.

  43. Ingolf Eide says:

    “It has not bee SHOWN. Peer reviewed academic studies generally prove one thing and that is that academics are conformists who seek approval from other academics.”
    PL,
    I’m sure you’re right that academics (including scientists) are prone to conformity. To conclude that a broad scientific consensus is therefore worthless, however, seems to me a step too far.
    Anyway, for what they’re worth, here are two links of the sort that eventually persuaded me to shift away from scepticism. The first looks at the sceptics’ case and also provides links to quite a few more detailed aspects:
    https://skepticalscience.com/The-Scientific-Guide-to-Global-Warming-Skepticism.html
    The second visually presents the contributions of various natural and man-made factors:
    https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2015-whats-warming-the-world/

  44. jd hawkins says:

    Damn… I wanted to say “spot on”, but Effinghell beat me to it.

  45. jd hawkins says:

    “…if we can expel these maniacs from polite society”.
    Your comment (portion) regarding “polite society” is certainly polar opposite of my definition of same. I do understand your comment was only to ‘draw attention’, so it worked. I’d also say you are very lucky we’re not in the era of Andy… as in Jackson… or you would probably be ‘facing a white [or black] glove to the face!

  46. jd hawkins says:

    Two thumbs up for your comment.

  47. jd hawkins says:

    Damn good common sense statement!

  48. Babak Makkinejad says:

    You cannot find such a document since a credible scientific argument for it does not exist.

  49. Fred says:

    Sam,
    How many Neanderthal factories did it take to end the Ice Age? What happened to them all?

  50. Fred says:

    Tony,
    Thousands of scientist did not conduct thier own studies to come to the same conclusion, nor did they try and validate the studies.

  51. blue peacock says:

    Well said, Jack. I have seen a chart of Cat 5 hurricanes/cyclones around the world over the past 100 years and it was also distributed randomly across that period.
    “Carbon trading and offsets are another scheme for financial interests to make money.”
    Absolutely. That’s why Wall St likes it. Then add in all the taxpayer subsidies for “green washing”. Ethanol and the subsidies for Tesla. A very good answer to less hydrocarbon pollution is nuclear. But, the greenies don’t like that.
    I agree with you that our focus should be on man-made pollution and habitat destruction.

  52. Barbara Ann says:

    Babak
    Wiki says “To date, no proof has been found of past or present life on Mars”.
    Are you by chance referring to this? If so the results appear inconclusive:

    The team concedes, however, that this finding by itself isn’t enough to prove that there’s life on Mars

    https://www.nationalgeographic.com/news/2012/4/120413-nasa-viking-program-mars-life-space-science/

  53. Barbara Ann says:

    charly
    Suggest you start here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenhouse_effect#Description
    All gases with 3 or more atoms (H2O, CO2) absorb more of the longer wavelength heat radiation re-emitted by the earth’s surface than the incoming shorter wavelength heat radiation from the Sun. If our atmosphere had no ‘greenhouse effect’ at all the surface equilibrium temperature would be about 0 degrees (Fahrenheit) a little cold for my liking.
    Joe100, Babak and others will quite rightly point out that there are secondary negative feedback effects, such as more evaporated water vapor increasing albedo due to clouds etc, but as a stand alone factor more CO2 means more heat absorption.
    Does this prove Global warming is real? No, because as others have said the climate models used to predict future temperatures are still woefully inadequate. However, we would be wise to be at least cautious over messing with atmospheric CO2 at current levels, given the estimated historic correlation between CO2 and temperature (see the lower chart and note that current CO2 is now over 400ppm).

  54. David Solomon says:

    Maybe you can consult Egill Skallagrimsson?

  55. TonyL says:

    Fred,
    I’d agree that they did not do their own studies. But they did verify or study the existing models. That’s what scientists usually do. First, we have models, and then others will chanllenge each model. It’s very costly otherwise.

  56. charly says:

    I would suggest more you start from this https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planetary_equilibrium_temperature. Your link is elementary school level with added big words and while the references are good they are to my taste a little bit to much Meteorology 201 instead of 101
    and use Kelvin for all temperatures. It shows that a seemingly small change, say 5%, is for humans gigantic

  57. charly says:

    I have no doubt that if you don’t believe in evolution you would sat the same thing about evolution.

  58. charly says:

    Forgot to comment about your statement if Global warming is real. Another term for it is climate change. Having more clouds is a change in climate. And the ideas that you don’t have global warming because of extra clouds etc. can only keep the temperature constant on a global level, not local.

  59. Barbara Ann says:

    I am sorry my comment was not to your taste, I necessarily had to make a guess as to where you are ‘at’ scientifically. I will be sure to use the correct Lordly units in any future correspondence. The reason I parenthesized “Global warming” was that this is the important result of the anthropogenic aspect of ceaseless “climate change”. And if it is real, the IPCC’s line in the sand is likely to be about as effective as King Cnut’s.

  60. charly says:

    Normally i don’t really care what units people use (as long as they use standard units normal, non-Americans can understand). But with climate change it makes it obvious that a change from 300K to 301K is for the solar system a very small change but for us it is significant. It kills the how can such little CO2 change the climate so much.

  61. Babak Makkinejad says:

    No, in fact, I no longer accept the Theory of Evolution based on Darwinism or its remediated version – punctuated equilibrium- by Gould. The mathematics does not work out. Then there is the problem of speciation and the absence of intermediate forms in the fossil record.

  62. Babak Makkinejad says:

    The emergence of mankind, requires multiple cocomitant beneficial mutations over a relatively short time. How likely were all those tens of mutations to occur, in brain size, in metabolism, in human female etc.? What were the mechanisms?
    What we are told are scientistic fables, in my opinion. And no, I am not an Intelligent Design proponent.

  63. turcopolier says:

    Babak
    Then, what are you?

  64. Babak Makkinejad says:

    Some are indeed purveyors of Scientistic fables, opposing the religious fables of some others. I am struck also by how much Agency some have endowed Evolution: “In Evolution everything is possible”

  65. turcopolier says:

    Babak
    It does not seem that you are a Muslim.

  66. Babak Makkinejad says:

    A man in search of Scientific Truth, a dissident from Scientism.

  67. Babak Makkinejad says:

    Why do you say that?

  68. different clue says:

    There must be at least a billion words written about global warming. With a million or more fresh words being written every day. I have only been able to read a few hundred thousand of those words, so why do I think I know what I think I know?
    Some sciences can perform controlled experiments in lab conditions. Those sciences are able to show something with the certainty we would all wish for from the earth-sciences. But we don’t have a second identical “control earth” where we can “not do” the things we are and have been doing here. The closest we can come to “controlled experiments” on something like climate is to regard the earth before industrialization as the “control” and the earth during and after industrialization as the “experimental”.
    I first read about the theoretical possibility of global warming from fossil-fuel-driven rising CO2 amounts in the air sometime in the late seventies I think . . . in an article in CoEvolution Quarterly Magazine. Just recently I saw this copy of an obscure little press report from a paper maybe in New Zealand given some of the place names . . .
    https://www.reddit.com/r/Damnthatsinteresting/comments/cqf04f/107_years_ago_the_press_reported_climate_change/
    That little press piece extrapolated from a combination of knowing that CO2 molecules absorbed certain infra-red wavelengths which would radiate into space otherwise and that burning more coal would place more of this certain-IR-wavelengths-absorbing gas into the atmosphere.
    Back to more recently, as aerial CO2/NOx/methane levels have risen in the atmosphere, more heat has been retained to work its way through the earth surface systems; including the climate system. As greenhouse-gas and surface-heat levels kept rising, climatologists began making some crude large-scale predictions. Such as if this continues, the Arctic and SubArctic should warm up much faster than the non-Arctic. Those predictions based on that theory have come true, as predicted before the event by the sky-heatergas-buildup theory. The more predictions a theory allows its proponents to correctly make, the more factually founded and reality-based that theory would seem to be.
    The “Forced Changes” theorists have made several correct climate-outcome predictions so far. The “Purely Natural Cycle” theorists have not made one single correct climate-outcome prediction so far as I know. So I am satisfied with the predictive and interpretive usefulness of the “Forced Changes” theory, including ‘changes forced by heat-trapper-gas skydumping” . Satisfied enough that I expect to live my next few decades in a near-term future of rising heat-driven climate d’chaos decay. Do I take it seriously enough yet to get ready by losing a hundred pounds? That I don’t yet know.
    A problem with dispassionate discussion of these things is that the whole area of global warming thinkabouts has become wrapped around the axle of special political and commercial agendas and culture war side-taking and identity-upholding.
    In social terms, “global warming” has become the headless sheep in a several-sided game of Buz Kashi.

  69. Keith Harbaugh says:

    Some brief serious comments before pointing out something more, um, attractive 🙂
    Regarding the argument that the apparent warming effect is not really global,
    or is just due to urban growth around weather stations, urban heat islands, etc.,
    this ignores more global phenomena,
    such as the melting of polar ice, Antarctic ice sheets, Greenland ice cap, and the glaciers on land;
    also the opening of the Northwest Passage through the Arctic Ocean.
    Are the news reports about these a fiction?
    I don’t trust the media to give a balanced view of many subjects,
    but on this I do trust them.
    Likewise, there is no doubt that the scientific community (and the medical community)
    have in some cases abandoned scientific objectivity and succumbed to political pressure.
    E.g., I recently had a checkup at the local hospital, and when checking my records found that they identified me as “Assigned to male at birth”.
    What bullshit!
    That was no assignment (such as one gets in school, in the Army, or on the job),
    that was recognition of a biological reality.
    But anyhow, enough seriousness.
    I hadn’t paid much attention to the publicity stunt of that Swedish teenager, Greta Thunberg.
    However, reviewing an opera I enjoy and looking up one of its lead sopranos,
    I discovered that that soprano is none other than Greta’s mother!
    What a surprise, at least to me.
    Some of you may enjoy watching, as well as listening to, Greta’s mom Malena Ernman in, um, action.
    All in the service of art, of course.
    Click here.
    Who said classical opera has to be dull 🙂
    In case you are wondering, Malena was born in 1970; that video was made in 2011. Thus 41.

  70. turcopolier says:

    Keith Harbaugh
    As I have told you off the blog, I think you are wrong about humans causing catastrophic climate change. But assuming you really believe that the end is upon us, how do you plan to spend your remaining days?

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