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Post by poitsplace on Jan 24, 2009 5:28:10 GMT
At the level you are talking about it, it is settled science. That different species share common ancestors, eg that humans descended from ape-like ancestors is settled science. I am seeing a pattern here... Hmmm.....please show me the transition species; we really have kind of scoured the geologic record and I don't see the transitions that Evolutionary Theory would require. So 'settled science' in your 'Evoulution is fact' church, is still just a myth in my 'It ain't fact till I can touch,see,smell,feel, or observe it' church. Show me the transition between temperatures. Show me any period when the temperature was intermediate and not a specific level. Do you see how stupid that sounds? This is exactly what you're asking for. If it were observably different it would be given the classification as a species or subspecies. The problem is not the theory, the problem is your perception of what the theory says. [/quote]Evolution is very much a religion[/quote] No it's not. You need to just deal with it. There are certainly people that treat it like a religion, but that doesn't make it a religion any more than any single church goer having a belief makes that belief a church tenet. Evolutionary theory has evidence. It's like me claiming that I had a teddy bear once. I don't have the full teddy bear any more but I can produce it's head, citing its destruction. I can produce pictures of me holding the bear as a child. I can bring in family friends to mention that I once had the bear. More importantly it is COMPLETELY feasible that I would have the bear. ...then we've got religion. Religions claim there's a god and when I ask for proof their "proof" is that I can't prove there isn't one. They may also cite as "proof" that a flower is complex or that things are pretty or that someone once had a good run of luck (ignoring the things that are ugly or religious people that had bad luck). Here's another difference between science and religion...falsifiability. This is really a misnamed concept. The basic idea is this...to qualify as science it has to be possible to test it and have an outcome go one way or another. There's probably nothing I could do to prove to you there's no god. I couldn't even make up evidence. Michael Mann and James Hansen have done some GREAT work on falsifying results. They've been found out of course. Mann's work has been shreaded on multiple levels. Hansen's work has been shreaded as well but he's just got the prestige of working at NASA propping him up. He's also (to be fair) done actual science that produced meaningful results. He's probably lost it recently though With anthropogenic global warming we have a hypothesis that's easily tested...as CO2 levels rise, temperature will go up. Unfortunately, they haven't shown any "driving" capability in the past and don't appear to be showing it now. On the other hand, solar forcing works out pretty well...over the same period of time we could plot out (inverted)sunspot cycle length v/s temperature and even on the decadal scale it's pretty darned close. See, we have competing theories...we have people falsifying results to at least make it LOOK like one might be real. We have evidence. We have some (crappy) peer review that has caught some of the offenders. Oh, and of course we've got the evolution thing...you apparently wouldn't accept ANY intermediate species because by definition it would be different and you (and scientists) would classify it as a unique species, subspecies or possibly just an individual with a slight mutation....again, a problem with your methodology, not the theory of evolution
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Post by jimg on Jan 24, 2009 6:49:29 GMT
C'mon. Evolution is just that, a theory. A theory is believed to be true until it is falsified. But that doesn't mean it's true if it hasn't been falsified yet.
Take the expansion of the universe. Until Hubble, the theory went that the universe was expanding, slowing down as it went, and eventually it would reverse course and begin collapsing.
Now, thanks to Hubble, we have measured that the universe is expanding, and increasing in velocity. So that one day, it expands out and just goes dark.
There are alot of mysteries within evolution. Transitional species, quantum leaps in beneficial mutations that create organs, sexual reproduction and so on. We don't have the answers to these issues, and likely never will. Unless of course there is a God, then we will probably have a concise answer when we die.
Therefore, as such, there are tenants in evolution that require faith to make the theory complete. You have the conviction that its principles are true, even though you don't have evidence for them.
Faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.
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Post by Acolyte on Jan 24, 2009 8:45:24 GMT
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Post by poitsplace on Jan 24, 2009 9:37:52 GMT
evolution has a problem with the falsifiability though doesn't it? How do you falsifiy it? So if the environment stays the same then life forms shouldn't alter? damn, there go big boobs & peathingy tails... ;D But seriously, how is Evolution falsifiable? The environment doesn't have to change, environmental changes just cause huge equilibrium shifts in the various traits (many of which may have been neutral with respect to the conditions in the previous environment). Selective breeding is in fact proof of evolution, but most pepole get hung up on the concept of "natural selection" thinking it somehow doesn't apply...but there's no difference to the organism with respect to "natural" selection. As for falsifiability...one could simply lie about the results on selective breeding or on tests that demonstrate some aspect of evolution. Of course, it's very difficult to do this because evolution is supported in so many ways there isn't really much wiggle room left. The minor details may change (like the minor details of our understanding of gravity) but essentially everything we "know" about evolution (or gravity) will be in some way applicable even then. Here, check this out...it's rather fast talking and probably contains a lot of information that may be hard to comprehend but...that's not my problem or the problem of the person making the video (BTW there are some others on that user's site) www.youtube.com/watch?v=5MXTBGcyNucalso...this really needs to be in another area of the forums now.
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Post by nautonnier on Jan 24, 2009 10:10:48 GMT
PLEASE Move this discussion of Evolution to the Open Forum?? Its an extreme thread drift from a discussion of Sea Ice 2009
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Post by Acolyte on Jan 24, 2009 11:51:27 GMT
I agree - I'd alreadys tarted a new post over in Open - I came back to my desk, hit F5 & replied to what I saw - I thought I was still in the Theory of Evolution thread over there. I've now copied mine & poitsplace last posts over to that thread.
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shm6666
Level 2 Rank
The Sun :-)
Posts: 98
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Post by shm6666 on Jan 24, 2009 11:55:38 GMT
I totally agree. Let's get back to the sea ice 2009. I live in Sweden and we have the Baltic sea that have had some trouble freezing this year but it is ahead of 2008 so that is good. This link was published here and it is a good page about the status about the Baltic Sea ice. www.fimr.fi/en/itamerinyt/en_GB/jaatilanne/Right now we have about 0 to -8 degrease Celsius in the northern part and here in Stockholm we have from +2 to -2. Under these conditions the is forming in the north but not as far south as in Stockholm or Åland. But in the coming days. Starting from Monday .A high pressure with cold air from the arctic is coming down over the Baltic sea. It will be up to -16 in the North and down to -4 over Åland. Here in Stockholm we could see -12 or lover. Also it will be between -8 and -12 in the Gulf of Finland. If this turns out to be true. Then the Ice season will be much larger then in 2008 (and 2007). /Sven
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Post by byz on Jan 24, 2009 12:31:35 GMT
I totally agree. Let's get back to the sea ice 2009. I live in Sweden and we have the Baltic sea that have had some trouble freezing this year but it is ahead of 2008 so that is good. This link was published here and it is a good page about the status about the Baltic Sea ice. www.fimr.fi/en/itamerinyt/en_GB/jaatilanne/Right now we have about 0 to -8 degrease Celsius in the northern part and here in Stockholm we have from +2 to -2. Under these conditions the is forming in the north but not as far south as in Stockholm or Åland. But in the coming days. Starting from Monday .A high pressure with cold air from the arctic is coming down over the Baltic sea. It will be up to -16 in the North and down to -4 over Åland. Here in Stockholm we could see -12 or lover. Also it will be between -8 and -12 in the Gulf of Finland. If this turns out to be true. Then the Ice season will be much larger then in 2008 (and 2007). /Sven Wow nice website I didn't know about that one, added to my bookmarks ;D
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Post by woodstove on Jan 24, 2009 14:33:40 GMT
Yes, thank you Sven! Glad to see the thread back on topic.
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Post by Ole Doc Sief on Jan 25, 2009 5:22:12 GMT
I know Greenland not only 'land ice' surrounded on the north by sea ice...how is that part of the Arctic ice pack doing. Are we re-adding to land and sea ice around Greenland?
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Post by effortrequired on Jan 25, 2009 7:48:03 GMT
The link below is also very good for Baltic sea ice cover www.smhi.se/oceanografi/iceservice/is_prod_en.phpand this one looks at various forecasts and includes ensembles. www.smhi.se/polarview/index.htmlFrom Swedish Meteorological and Hydrological institute. I live in Denmark and so far this winter here and the rest of the baltic has been fairly mild with not much ice. And as a side note 2008 was the third warmest ever in Denmark. By the way quick question to you folks. Do you know if the Baltic ice cover is used in the Arctic ice numbers or not? It is a geographically separate sea but then again so is the sea of Okhoskt (kamchatka area). if it is included why doesn't NSIDC have their orange median 1979-2000 line in there somewhere? Thank you all for some great contributions
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Post by woodstove on Jan 25, 2009 14:19:57 GMT
I know Greenland not only 'land ice' surrounded on the north by sea ice...how is that part of the Arctic ice pack doing. Are we re-adding to land and sea ice around Greenland? Well, one curiosity is an apparent opening of a hole in the ice off Greenland's northwest coast. Watching the "movie" on Cryosphere Today, you can see warm water trying to fight its way up the west coast of Greenland, but the apparent hole is hundreds of miles north of the southern extent of sea ice. Presumably, it is another satellite problem. If it is real, however, it could lend support to the view that there is more vulcanism up there than we know.
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Post by poitsplace on Jan 25, 2009 15:02:34 GMT
I know Greenland not only 'land ice' surrounded on the north by sea ice...how is that part of the Arctic ice pack doing. Are we re-adding to land and sea ice around Greenland? Well, one curiosity is an apparent opening of a hole in the ice off Greenland's northwest coast. Watching the "movie" on Cryosphere Today, you can see warm water trying to fight its way up the west coast of Greenland, but the apparent hole is hundreds of miles north of the southern extent of sea ice. Presumably, it is another satellite problem. If it is real, however, it could lend support to the view that there is more vulcanism up there than we know. It might be warm water brought up by a recently reactivated thermohaline sink zone. It stopped during the 90's but it's switched back on over the last year or two. (temperature fluctuations disproportionately affect the poles so maybe the recent temperature drops were enough to bring up the evaporation rate of warmer waters and start it sinking again.
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Post by graywolf on Jan 26, 2009 8:42:20 GMT
Seems to go awfully quiet in here when there's a 'stall' in ice growth! With the recent disintegration of the Weddell sea ice pack (I thought our Antipodean posters would have picked up on this rare event) pushing southern ice extent below the 79'-2000 levels and ice extent struggling to stay in the 'pack' of ice levels on the IJIS plots we look to be in line for a records global 'ice low' come march! We must all bare in mind that we have many 'natural' cold drivers in place this year and yet we are still seeing such a pitiful display. Come the northern melt, should the stall last for a week or so, we will be very poorly positioned to retain the thin ice across the geographic pole ( if MetO/Uni East Anglia's global temp forecast is to be believed) as an early breakup of the single year ice must ,by now ,be assured and the drive of the 'Arctic Gyre' will have another month to drift out more of the remaining perennial down the east coast of Greenland. All in all it is not the year many on here were predicting during the October re-freeze, in fact it appears to be moving in the opposite direction from the predictions of the 'coolers' back then(even with the 'cold phases' of various global cycles in place).Only a month before the melt begins eh?
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Post by kiwistonewall on Jan 26, 2009 10:57:15 GMT
Seems to go awfully quiet in here when there's a 'stall' in ice growth! With the recent disintegration of the Weddell sea ice pack (I thought our Antipodean posters would have picked up on this rare event) pushing southern ice extent below the 79'-2000 levels and ice extent struggling to stay in the 'pack' of ice levels on the IJIS plots we look to be in line for a records global 'ice low' come march! We must all bare in mind that we have many 'natural' cold drivers in place this year and yet we are still seeing such a pitiful display. Come the northern melt, should the stall last for a week or so, we will be very poorly positioned to retain the thin ice across the geographic pole ( if MetO/Uni East Anglia's global temp forecast is to be believed) as an early breakup of the single year ice must ,by now ,be assured and the drive of the 'Arctic Gyre' will have another month to drift out more of the remaining perennial down the east coast of Greenland. All in all it is not the year many on here were predicting during the October re-freeze, in fact it appears to be moving in the opposite direction from the predictions of the 'coolers' back then(even with the 'cold phases' of various global cycles in place).Only a month before the melt begins eh? "Too soon, my angel. Patience" (princess Bride) Can we quote you on all this Graywolf? A month before melt begins? Where on earth do you get that? The Arctic seas are all frozen solid. The PDO changes mean that the Bering Seas is up & the other peripheral seas are down. All in all, no sign of warming, and every sign that the ice is back. The NH extent is currently closing on the mean: see arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/IMAGES/sea.ice.anomaly.timeseries.jpgThe Great Lakes are at a 15 year high ice cover, and may go higher. The Antarctic is so so normal - extent right on mean. The "break up" of ice packs has just been a sensational news item just about every year of my life (I'm in my sixth decade)- and yet, the Antarctic is still on its mean (and has been above for most of this year.) It is a fairly big constant. And the Arctic is behaving like in years past, no better no worse. Certainly absolutely no evidence for run-away Global Warming, in spite of being at the tail end of a major Solar maximum. I'm here just watching, charting & learning. Not much to say (yet) Cheers.
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