Why do people deny evolution?

@farmerman,

farmerman wrote:

Relax and have another lonely Sunday suds and speculate what it would have been like to be some kids father.

Ouch, that's pretty nasty even by my standards.

How have you concluded spendius smells?

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@Finn dAbuzz,

Quote:

How have you concluded spendius smells?

sheer projection of course! Wink

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@Finn dAbuzz,

Quote:

How have you concluded spendius smells?

A number of years ago, he stated bout how he enjoyed his weekly baths.

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Dino- "SIR, I wanna fly, SIR!"
Jesus-"Forget it sweet pea, who you think you are, Richard Gere?
The only way you're gonna be an ay-vee-aytor is to go through ME, and I can tell you right now you ain't never gonna make it!
YOU EYEBALLIN ME BOY?
I want your D.O.R!"

http://i53.photobucket.com/albums/g64/PoorOldSpike/sub3/jes-dino.jpg

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@farmerman,

Quote:

That's just because youre easily impressed by idiots.

That is not true. Q doesn't impress me, it's all stuff I have heard many times before. But he is right about one thing and it is that your assertions and insults, which are of a rather small range for a man of your experience, are worthless in any circles where a modicum of intelligence still thrives.

Because I agree with Q about that, and have told you myself many times long before Q came on the scene, does not mean I agree with him about anything else, and nor does it mean that I am impressed by idiots. I feel sure Q and I agree on many things such as the necessity to get our dicks out before taking a leak rather than pissing all down the inside of our trouser legs: which is what you are doing in the metaphor.

Which is why you're hanging on a peg in the cloakroom on failing the "Machine" test and the "Monogamy test". And I know why you failed.

Science has declared itself not to be simply the exercise of the disinterested curiosity. Which it is, and basically requires a reasonable private income. It is now asserted to be the servant of human utility as well, with an occasional nod in the direction of the true tradition. A pose really. All that bullshit about evidence, rationality, reality, objectivity and what not which you specialise in as badges on your chest.

Obviously there is a big problem about what utility is to be served, which these days involves large quantities of money, representing scarce resources, and thus engages politicians and lobbyists and hangers on in media, and the idea that science is the exercise of disinterested curiosity flies out of the window and disappears. Except in speeches of course.

If the utility turns out to be a complete **** up evolution says that it was an error and that maintaining the validity of science is thus a hoax. A ruse.

And we have very elaborate plans in case of a **** up which the Australian aborigines probably couldn't even imagine as a possibility in their lives as we must be doing.

I think Q is coming from some theoretical position which I don't do unless I'm jesting. I'm an evolutionist. I'm not stuck in 2014 peddling my arse.

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@farmerman,

Then it would seem to be a fair conclusion. Not necessarily scientific but reasonable.

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Reputedly, a woman once told Winston Churchill that he smelled. He is said to have replied: "No, madame, you smell--I stink."

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@farmerman,

Quote:

Relax and have another lonely Sunday suds and speculate what it would have been like to be some kids father.

I did so speculate and decided that it is a ghastly business. I don't take any notice of people who have no choice and who have to make the best of it thereafter. Usually with a load of mealy-mouthed, mawkish malarkey.

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WHY? just because Ive concluded that youre an ugly smelly drunk whom women find offensive?

Women have shown no sign of finding me offensive. Had they done so I would gone places. I couldn't do what Ulysses did. My heart is not hard enough. And I have a bath every night and don't smell and I have not even been slightly tiddly in years.

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Your professed "Catholic" viewpoints and published creed would not comport with your worldviews on having ones children aborted.

Just in case that tripe confuses anybody I am on the record many times on A2K as finding abortion disgusting and would have nothing to do with anyone who has had any connection with one at a personal level. And I got that off Ovid.

I consider that the Catholic Church and myself agree on common sense. Most people agree with the Church on a large range of matters. It's the sex side where the disagreements appear.

We are all lonely old boy. Does it bother you? Have you not read Riesman's The Lonely Crowd or Proust?

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@Quehoniaomath,

Quehoniaomath wrote:

As long as you are using the 'lottery' I assume you really have no clue at all indeed.

Are you arguing that the math is different when we do lottery odds vs the way your sources do odds for evolution? Please explain why you think they are different.

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@Setanta,

Setanta wrote:

When, not if, but when the West Antarctic ice sheet detaches, you're gonna see an economic cost from sea level rise which will make the cost of doing something now look paltry. Your claim is simply the whining of capitalists--history's biggest and most virulent parasites--about anything that interferes in their relentless greed for profits, no matter who has to pay later or elsewhere.

Think about it. The Antarctic ice sheet is already in the ocean and displacing water equivalent to its mass, IF it melts, and there is no conclusive evidence that it will melt, it will have zero effect on ocean levels anywhere. NONE, ZERO, NADA !!

The nonsensical remedies being pushed by zealots will have devastating effects on the human population and, if their theories are correct (and I don't believe they are) will have little effect on the warming they forecast.

The earth is not a stable benign garden infested by human vermin. Indeed it is neither stable nor benign, We know that with luck it will end up being fried and swallowed up by the sun in its Red Giant phase. I believe the welfare of the human inhabitants on it is the highest value here.

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@georgeob1,

I have said this time and time again...But let me put it in a way so even an enviromentalist whackos can understand...If you have an ice cube in a glass of water filled to the brim and the ice cube melts, the water in the glass doesnt spill over the top.

GOT IT???

As for capitalists, I shudder to think we would be without them...right comrade?

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@giujohn,

Greenland and Antarctica are not ice cubes floating in a glass of water. You might want to check out what happens when you melt ice over a glass filled to the brim and let the melted ice add to the water in the glass.

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@parados,

parados wrote:

Greenland and Antarctica are not ice cubes floating in a glass of water. You might want to check out what happens when you melt ice over a glass filled to the brim and let the melted ice add to the water in the glass.

The first law of holes is ... "When you're in one, stop digging."

Water expands as it freezes at 32 dg F (at sea level). That's why ice floats. The water associated with the ice in your example above is already in the glass, displacing an amount of liquid water exactly equal to its mass.

As the ice melts it contracts back to its former specific volume, so the water level doesn't change at all during the process.

This is a standard topic in high school physics. All the evidence one needs to deduce this principle is the simple observation that a body of formally liquid water, once frozen, floats with a small portion of its volume above the water level, and to note that the mass involved doesn't change in the process.

By the same principle a ship floating on a body of water doesn't raise the water level if it sinks (provided that all its internal compartments are flooded in the process.

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@georgeob1,

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Think about it. The Antarctic ice sheet is already in the ocean and displacing water equivalent to its mass, IF it melts, and there is no conclusive evidence that it will melt, it will have zero effect on ocean levels anywhere. NONE, ZERO, NADA !!

Hmm.... that seems an odd thing to say. The West Antarctic ice sheet is on land that is below sea level but the ice extends well above sea level.

The ice is not floating on the water. It is extends above sea level by 2 km at some points. Floating ice doesn't have more ice above water than below.

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@georgeob1,

You should really stop digging then george because you are only making yourself look like a fool.

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@parados,

You seem to be in the hole partner...ever heard of the Ross Ice shelf? (Thats the one in Antartica that everyone is always cying about)

From the NSIDC web site:

"What is an ice shelf?

Ice shelves are permanent floating sheets of ice that connect to a landmass.

Most of the world's ice shelves hug the coast of Antarctica. However, ice shelves can also form wherever ice flows from land into cold ocean waters, including some glaciers in the Northern Hemisphere. The northern coast of Canada's Ellesmere Island is home to several well-known ice shelves, among them the Markham and the Ward Hunt ice shelves....Because ice shelves already float in the ocean, they do not contribute directly to sea level rise when they break up."

The problem with this discussion is that there is a difference between an Ice Shelf and an Ice sheet.
There is melting of the Ice sheves (they float on water) and wont raise levels.
And Ice sheet is on land and doesnt float. And while if they melted the sea level would rise, lets put it in perspective. If ALL of the ice sheet in greenland melted it would only raise the seal level 20 feet. Now does anyone think thats going to happen???

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@parados,

parados wrote:

Quote:

Think about it. The Antarctic ice sheet is already in the ocean and displacing water equivalent to its mass, IF it melts, and there is no conclusive evidence that it will melt, it will have zero effect on ocean levels anywhere. NONE, ZERO, NADA !!

Hmm.... that seems an odd thing to say. The West Antarctic ice sheet is on land that is below sea level but the ice extends well above sea level.

The ice is not floating on the water. It is extends above sea level by 2 km at some points. Floating ice doesn't have more ice above water than below.

OK, to the extent the ice is supported by underlying land, if it does indeed melt, it can raise the water level. However there is the small matter of the ratio of the ocean surface area to the volume involved. In case you haven't noticed, the world ocean is fairly large compared to the surface area of that portion of Antarctica, and there is no evidence the melting will be either complete or very substantial.

There are many more consequential and likely things to worry about if that is your taste. We know that the earth's magnetic field is a result of slow moving convection currents of iron rich magma around the earth's core and that these currents - and our magnetic field - have stopped, shutdown and slowly reversed themselves at least 168 times in the geological record of spreading sea floor sediment. Each one of these events could reek havoc with our atmosphere and with living creatures on the surface as a flood of energetic solar photons, particles and ejecta strips the atmosphere and irradiates the surface.

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@georgeob1,

Both the West Antarctic ice sheet and the Ross ice sheet are kilometers thick, and lie well above sea level. If they detach from the continent, then it's not immediately a question of melting, but rather of the volume of water displaced when they begin to float freely. As huge tabular bergs, 90% of their mass will be underwater--that's a hell of a lot.

But you don't have to take my word for it. From the University of Texas at Austin:

Quote:

AUSTIN, Texas — Thwaites Glacier, the large, rapidly changing outlet of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet, is not only being eroded by the ocean, it’s being melted from below by geothermal heat, researchers at the Institute for Geophysics at The University of Texas at Austin (UTIG) report in the current edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

The findings significantly change the understanding of conditions beneath the West Antarctic Ice Sheet where accurate information has previously been unobtainable.

The Thwaites Glacier has been the focus of considerable attention in recent weeks as other groups of researchers found the glacier is on the way to collapse, but more data and computer modeling are needed to determine when the collapse will begin in earnest and at what rate the sea level will increase as it proceeds. The new observations by UTIG will greatly inform these ice sheet modeling efforts.

From the Wikipedia article on the West Antarctic Ice Sheet (they have cited their sources):

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In January 2006, in a UK government-commissioned report, the head of the British Antarctic Survey, Chris Rapley, warned that this huge west Antarctic ice sheet may be starting to disintegrate. It has been hypothesised that this disintegration could raise sea levels by approximately 3.3 metres (10 ft). (If the entire West Antarctic Ice Sheet were to melt, this would contribute 4.8 m to global sea level.) Rapley said a previous (2001) Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report that played down the worries of the ice sheet's stability should be revised. "I would say it is now an awakened giant. There is real concern."

Three meters is nine feet--you can kiss Miami's ass goodbye in that case. Los Angeles, much of San Francisco and San Diego, much of New York and Boston--all would be inundated, and that's just a partial list. A lot of Europe would be screwed as would much of Asia, in particular Indonesia. Bangladesh would virtually cease to exist.

From The Guardian, in the UK:

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The ongoing collapse of a large part of the Antarctica ice sheet could devastate global food supply, drowning vast areas of crop lands across the Middle East and Asia, according to new research.

The report, Advancing Global Food Supply in the Face of a Changing Climate, urges the Obama Administration to step up research funding – especially in developing countries – to help make up a projected gap in future food supply.

The articles from reputable sources which detail this disaster in the making, and yes, a slow motion disaster, are numerous and easily found online. You're worried about economic consequences? What's that, the consequences for your buddies who are heavily invested in the energy sector? Oh, boo-hoo . . .

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@giujohn,

You shouldn't shoot your mouth off when you don't know what the hell you're talking about. The West Antarctic ice sheet and the Ross ice sheet are two different critters.

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@parados,

Quote:

Are you arguing that the math is different when we do lottery odds vs the way your sources do odds for evolution? Please explain why you think they are different.

Lottery odds are completely different, because too simple,
It is a wrong analogy.
You can't compare a lottery with 'evolution'
But you would know that if you have done any reseach in the field of evolution ansd math/statistics.

1 Reply

Why do people deny evolution?

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