Posted on 10/30/2003 5:04:39 PM PST by Dales
LIVERMORE, Calif. -- A trio of scientists including a researcher from the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory has found that humans may owe the relatively mild climate in which their ancestors evolved to tiny marine organisms with shells and skeletons made out of calcium carbonate.
In a paper titled "Carbonate Deposition, Climate Stability and Neoproterozoic Ice Ages" in the Oct. 31 edition of Science, UC Riverside researchers Andy Ridgwell and Martin Kennedy along with LLNL climate scientist Ken Caldeira, discovered that the increased stability in modern climate may be due in part to the evolution of marine plankton living in the open ocean with shells and skeletal material made out of calcium carbonate. They conclude that these marine organisms helped prevent the ice ages of the past few hundred thousand years from turning into a severe global deep freeze.
"The most recent ice ages were mild enough to allow and possibly even promote the evolution of modern humans," Caldeira said. "Without these tiny marine organisms, the ice sheets may have grown to cover the earth, like in the snowball glaciations of the ancient past, and our ancestors might not have survived."
The researchers used a computer model describing the ocean, atmosphere and land surface to look at how atmospheric carbon dioxide would change as a result of glacier growth. They found that, in the distant past, as glaciers started to grow, the oceans would suck the greenhouse gas -- carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere -- making the Earth colder, promoting an even deeper ice age. When marine plankton with carbonate shells and skeletons are added to the model, ocean chemistry is buffered and glacial growth does not cause the ocean to absorb large amounts of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.
But in Precambrian times (which lasted up until 544 million years ago), marine organisms in the open ocean did not produce carbonate skeletons -- and ancient rocks from the end of the Precambrian geological age indicate that huge glaciers deposited layers of crushed rock debris thousands of meters thick near the equator. If the land was frozen near the equator, then most of the surface of the planet was likely covered in ice, making Earth look like a giant snowball, the researchers said.
Around 200 million years ago, calcium carbonate organisms became critical to helping prevent the earth from freezing over. When the organisms die, their carbonate shells and skeletons settle to the ocean floor, where some dissolve and some are buried in sediments. These deposits help regulate the chemistry of the ocean and the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. However, in a related study published in Nature on Sept. 25, 2003, Caldeira and LLNL physicist Michael Wickett found that unrestrained release of fossil-fuel carbon dioxide to the atmosphere could threaten extinction for these climate-stabilizing marine organisms.
If science is about truth, then it cannot say that God is out of the question. If science is not about truth, then science is irrelevant.
The atheists/materialists/evolutionists have been trying to push science into this precipice of dishonesty which makes science worthless. It is trying to politicize science and thus make it a matter of opinion instead of a matter of facts and evidence.
One must ask why evolutionists, atheists and materialists are trying to do that if they supposedly have evidence for their position? The answer is that they have no evidence, that their position is completely rhetorical and that the only way they can support their viewpoint is by destroying the search for truth in science.
And evolution does not do any of that. Look at the present article - kids writing a video game is all that this is. It is not digging facts and doing dirty work. Look at the works of Gould and Dawkins - neither of them a scientist, neither of them involved in experimentation, or research. I doubt that either even owned a microscope. Darwin did not either. These people are rhetoricians, not scientists. Darwin spent 20 years writing and zero doing science. His followers do the same.
Laplace didn't say God was ruled out when he wrote a book on celestial mechanics which omitted mention of Him. He merely had "no need of that hypothesis." Archimedes didn't use Zeus in his law of the lever, but he didn't get any grief over it.
Totally false. There is absolutely no evidence of any species transforming itself into a more complex species. NONE, ZERO, NADA.
All the evidence is that such transformations are impossible:
1. genetics shows how utterly impossible it is for a new trait to spread.
2. DNA shows how utterly impossible it is for a new gene, a new functio, a new ability to arise.
3. the interconnectedness of life shows how impossible it is for anything new to become an integral part of the rest.
4. the regulation of functions shows that new abilities cannot arise gradually because unless regulated they will be not just harmful but deadly.
So your statement is completely false scientifically.
Who cares. Your statement above only shows that your post was knowingly dishonest and irrelevant. I showed it was irrelevant for other reasons so there was no need to delve further into your verbiage.
Not you, right?
Poetic justice, me lad, will have you dying from an antibiotic resistant Staph. aureus infection.
DNA shows how utterly impossible it is for a new gene, a new functio, a new ability to arise.
Nonsense. DNA sequencing in fact shows us exactly how: genes duplicate and then one evolves in a new direction.
the interconnectedness of life shows how impossible it is for anything new to become an integral part of the rest.
You mean, like the way house sparrows and starlings died out in the United States after they were introduced? Or kudzu? Or zebra mussels? Or nutria? Or the mongoose in Hawaii?
Don't call yourself names. Your link - as usual with evo links - does not address my statement, let alone refute it. Darwin did absolutely no scientific work during the 20 years he was writing that garbage. In fact, he never did an honest day's work in his life. The Beagle voyage was long before he started writing the Origins. And his work there was nothing we would call science nowadays. He was employed as a naturalist merely cataloguing what was seen not experimenting or examining anything scientifically in any way. In short he was little more than a bird watcher.
The tree of life. Get a clue about it.
There were sexually reproducing animals 850 million years ago. They had nuclei, mitochondria, ribosomes, the whole bit.
Nobody knows the total variety of life before the presumed big freeze hit 700 mya. The fossil record is very scant and ambiguous. Your statements on the subject have been ill-informed--very ill-informed--ranting and no more.
That is not a new trait. For evolution to be true it has to have added new genes, functions, and abilities to a species. The DNA of a bacteria is about a million base pairs, of humans some three billion. So no, the change of one bit pair (if true) does not constitute evolution or proof of it.
DNA sequencing in fact shows us exactly how: genes duplicate and then one evolves in a new direction.
Gene duplication has never been observed. Sequencing can only tell us that genes are similar, it cannot tell us how it happened.
the interconnectedness of life shows how impossible it is for anything new to become an integral part of the rest.-me-
You mean, like the way house sparrows and starlings died out in the United States after they were introduced? Or kudzu? Or zebra mussels? Or nutria? Or the mongoose in Hawaii?
Totally irrelevant to my point. We are talking about the organisms themselves. There is no hint that those things evolved. Put a penguin in a tropical forest and let's see how long it lasts or if it evolves enough to survive. In fact the introduction of new species into new habitats shows quite well that new predators in an environment result in the destruction of the old species, not in their evolution - something which evolutionists claim is one of the prime movers of species transforming themselves into new species.
And then he wrote Darwin did absolutely no scientific work during the 20 years he was writing that garbage.
You said he did zero years doing science. Learn to write what you mean.
And his work there was nothing we would call science nowadays.
Who's 'we'?
He was employed as a naturalist merely cataloguing what was seen not experimenting or examining anything scientifically in any way.
Well, I guess every biologist and zoologist in human history can conclude their life was in vain, because a FR poster with no scientific qualifications and a demonstrable history of posting ludicrous scientific howlers has decided they're not scientists.
A drawing is proof of nothing. Five year olds can draw. There is no tree of life. In fact, science shows us it looks more like a bush with many origins. That is what the Cambrian shows us and you and evolutionists can draw all the pretty pictures you like and it will not be any evidence against that incontrovertible fact.
And yes, we do know that there were photosynthetic bacteria long before the Cambrian and that if the world had been covered with ice as the dishonest SciAm article you linked to claims, they would have never survived as we know they did.
BTW - continuing to throw irrelevancies in the hope that one of them will stick shows very well your utter desperation and inability to refute my statement made some 160 posts ago.
Of course it's a new trait. Antibiotic resistance is a trait, and it wasn't present previously, so it's new. I think you think you can simply make unfortunate facts disappear by denying them. T
Gene duplication has never been observed.
Really?
Dev Biol 2002 Sep 1;249(1):96-107
Duplication of the Hoxd11 gene causes alterations in the axial and appendicular skeleton of the mouse.
Boulet AM, Capecchi MR.
Howard Hughes Medical Institute, Department of Human Genetics, University of Utah, School of Medicine, Salt Lake City, Utah 84112-5331, USA.
The Hox genes encode a group of transcription factors essential for proper development of the mouse. Targeted mutation of the Hoxd11 gene causes reduced male fertility, vertebral transformation, carpal bone fusions, and reductions in digit length. A duplication of the Hoxd11 gene was created with the expectation that the consequences of restricted overexpression in the appropriate cells would provide further insight into the function of the Hoxd11 gene product. Genetic assays demonstrated that two tandem copies of Hoxd11 were functionally indistinguishable from the normal two copies of the gene on separate chromosomes with respect to formation of the axial and appendicular skeleton. Extra copies of Hoxd11 caused an increase in the lengths of some bones of the forelimb autopod and a decrease in the number of lumbar vertebrae.
Totally irrelevant to my point.
You said "the interconnectedness of life shows how impossible it is for anything new to become an integral part of the rest". That's utter nonsense. The United States is full of introduced organisms that became integrated into ecosystems. You posted, for about the eighth time tonight, something that was almost comically wrong, and you don't have the cojones or the intellectual honesty to own up to it.
Ah! You appeared for a long time to be trying to claim that the bacteria were all there was. Your claim above makes a certain amount of sense. And, as totally usual, you recklessly fling charges of dishonesty.
In fact, the logic looks nice but there are too many maybes. The evidence points to both the most extreme glaciation ever on the planet and to some variety of life, plants and animals included, having survived. There's nothing dishonest about it--that's what the evidence says. We don't know the details of what survived and how, but that's not to be expected at this point. You have to start with what you have and go from there.
I have three direct questions for the both of you:f.christian has not stopped, ever, calling everyone he disagrees with a nazi, socialist, athiest, liberal, etc.
Has it occurred to you that perhaps he is correct? Has it occurred to you that perhaps those he calls nazis are nazis, that those he calls socialists are socialists, that those he calls atheists are atheists, and that those he calls liberals are liberals?
I read that garbage
Then how did you manage to miss the *six* different times they mentioned that the evidence had led people, "decades ago", to consider worldwide glaciation in the late preCambrian?
If you had actually read the article, why did you go on to say "If it was correct there would be tremendous amounts of evidence for it and such a claim would have been made decades ago", as if you were totally unaware that such a claim *had* been made decades ago?
and my objection to it has not been refuted
Yes it has, several times. The fact that you refuse to accept those refutations does not change the fact that refutations have indeed been made.
- life could not exist in the oceans for hundreds of millions of years if they were covered with ice.
You keep forgetting to provide your evidence for your claim.
In any case, if you knew anything about climatology, you'd have realized that the oceans would be unlikely to be *totally* frozen over for any length of time -- there would likely be small patches of unfrozen ocean surface even at the temperature ranges mentioned in the article.
But finally, the article itself explains why your claim is unfounded. Are you *sure* you read it?
The article is therefore nonsense.
Or perhaps you're overlooking a number of things.
As to models, they cannot prove what we do not know because they cannot be tested and cannot take account of influencess which are unknown. Models are only useful as shortcuts for what we already know.
You are extremely mistaken. Models allow us to make predictions, which can be tested against known and yet-to-be-discovered evidence (often the models can even tell us what to look for or where to look for it), which then verifies the model and gives us confidence in its results.
Simply repeating your original claim after being asked to provide actual support for it does nothing to bolster its credibility. Quite the contrary, in fact.
Now, would you like to actually support your accusation, with quotes from Gould, or shall we just add this to the Gore3000-FABNAQ (Frequently Asked But Never Answered Questions)? Your choice.
He and Eldredge made up punk-eek because the fossil record - specifically the Cambrian fossil record - totally disproved gradual evolution.
You didn't even bother reading post #197, did you?
But nowhere does it claim that he didn't, contrary to your incorrect (and unsupported) assertion above.
It claims that the creation of species was accomplished gradually by natural selection.
...among other mechanisms...
That the Cambrian creatures were created directly refutes evolution since the claim of evolution is universal.
Please provide your evidence for this amazing claim.
In addition to which as I said, if God created life there is no way that evolutionists can deny that God created man in His own image instead of in the image of an ape as Darwin and evolutionists claim.
How do you figure that? What if he created primitive proto-replicators and then sat back to see what happened from there (including man eventually descending from apes)?
The Creator cannot be said to be a force that does not exist and could not have accomplished changes in His creation. So yes, evolution is both materialistic and atheistic.
Your conclusion does not follow from your argument.
Then you can relax, because it doesn't say that.
If science is not about truth, then science is irrelevant.
It is about truth.
The atheists/materialists/evolutionists have been trying to push science into this precipice of dishonesty which makes science worthless. It is trying to politicize science and thus make it a matter of opinion instead of a matter of facts and evidence.
Both of your claims are false, but feel free to try to support them with evidence if you think you can.
One must ask why evolutionists, atheists and materialists are trying to do that if they supposedly have evidence for their position?
They're *not* doing that. They're only doing it in your imagination.
The answer is that they have no evidence, that their position is completely rhetorical and that the only way they can support their viewpoint is by destroying the search for truth in science.
Uh huh... We've shown you reams of evidence through countless threads, don't keep falsely claiming that we don't have any.
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