The Dangers of Junk Science.

[JAMESBJOHNSON]

I actually would question Dr. M what he means by 'blind chance' and 'all at once, all in the same place'. We don't really know how amino acids formed, how the first life formed. There's reason to believe that life began in different parts of the ocean at different times, and even cellular life may have begun separately. And then there's the whole billion years of bacteria, not very complex at all for the time frame. There are the same problems with the big bang and a period of time after, there's just no usable information. If we find bacteria on mars or on some moon in our solar system it should show that life/genetic information isn't rare at all.

Yes, physics has similar problem and it has at least a few hundred years on biochem, thousands of years of detailed observation before Galileo and Newton. And physics gets pretty screwy for the first 100,000 years after the big bang. Evolution can map changes in bacteria/virus, is probably fifty years away from Laws ala Newton's for motion and those of thermodynam.

Evolutionary theory makes predictions about the fossil record and about future developments. The problem is the amount of time it takes for changes, that's why bacteria is so important. The mechanisms of evolution are: Adaptation, Genetic drift, Gene flow, Mutation, Natural selection, and Speciation. If you doubt the mechanisms of evolution you have to speak to these directly. The first four are measurable, have modern applications, the last two are still in classical terms. As we know with physics, gravity doesn't fit in the quantum picture with the other three forces. Physics deals with incomplete theories and so does biology, but people don't doubt gravity, people doubt Speciation because it conflicts with their silly solipsistic dogma.

Edit: Speaking of doubting gravity, most people who follow astronomy news probably believe the universe is expanding and doing so more rapidly. Why can't physics explain an ever expanding universe? Dark matter? It would seem it's an important question to the fundamental understanding of the universe but all we get are placeholder theories. There's more and better empirical information for the origin of you than that of the universe and how it functions.

Life likely began with crystals. Crystals reproduce. DNA is a crystal.

As for evolution: I planted 25 tomatioes in my garden. They all came from the same packet of seeds, all are in the same environment, and one of them was exceptional from the beginning. Its sisters are about 4 feet tall and flowering, its almost 7 feet tall and loaded with fruit. Its seeds will produce the next generation of tomatoes in my garden if the fruit pass the taste test. This is how evolution works. Mutation + selection + reproduction.

 

[dr_mabeuse]

ID is specious not for lack of data, but for lack of a scientific method. Its central argument is an article of faith; we can't prove or disprove the existence of an ID god.

Even though we don't understand all of the steps, there is still a lot of data supporting evolution theories as an accurate description of natural processes.

That's a very good point. Because there's no way to experimentally prove or disprove Intelligent Design (barring a surprise appearance by the Designer Himself to claim credit), it simply can't be accepted as science. All scientific hypotheses have to be testable, and there's no way to test ID. That puts it beyond the realm of science.

I want to be clear too that there's no doubt in my mind that nature works through evolution, and I think most scientists--ID supporters as well as mainstream--believe this too. The principles of Darwin's theory aren't just supported by a huge amount of facts and data, but are derivable from first principles too. I myself don't believe in ID. I do believe, however, that there are large parts of the evolutionary process that we just don't understand. and that we should be open to creative theorizing. Creative, but not Creational.

I actually would question Dr. M what he means by 'blind chance' and 'all at once, all in the same place'.

I was actually thinking of the apparently simultaneous appearance of, say, a protein, and, for example, the enzyme that works on this protein (which is another protein itself). Neither one is useful in the absence of the other, each is terribly complex, and yet they both have to appear in the same place at exactly the same time for either to be effective.

Clearly these two are not forming from scratch by random mutation. They're co-evolving from simpler forms, but how? Something else was going on there that we just don't understand yet. Maybe there were simpler, earlier forms of the pair, or maybe they were originally one structure that became dissociated, or something. Something had to exist to reduce the huge loss in entropy that occurs when more-ordered structures appear from less-ordered ones.

One of the most interesting ideas on the early evolution of biomolecules suggests that they might have assembled on pre-existing "templates": inorganic surfaces that would adsorb amino acids, say, and serve as jigs or templates for the assembly of complex molecules (proteins are strings of amino acids). One of the best candidates for these inorganic substances are simple clays. Clays are collections of microcrystals of elements like Aluminum and Calcium and Silica and are actually very elegantly ordered on the atomic level. They are also known to strongly adsorb organic molecules to their surfaces, holding them in position where they can be attacked by other molecules in a process known as surface catalysis. (One of my areas of interest was the use of clays to speed up organic reactions, and sometimes the results can be pretty spectacular.)

It would be nicely ironic if it turns out that clays were critical to the evolution of life, seeing as how in Genesis, that's what God uses to make Adam.

BTW: Biological DNA isn't a crystalline substance. It's a polymer. Some proteins can be crystallized, and small scraps of DNA are probably crystallizable, but generally speaking, the bigger and more complicated a molecule is, the more difficult it is to crystallize.

 

[Epmd607]

Evolutionary Theory is different from Abiogenesis. Evolution only has to deal with how life operates once it appears, it doesn't have much to do with how it appeared. That's why the Catholic Church finally jumped on the evolutionary train. The Church is still sorta suspect on it though, because kids in Catholic schools will often hear Intelligent Design speakers right after 9th grade biology.

Chemical evolution, why some amino acids are special and some aren't -- how the first organic molecules formed -- is a question for a chemist.

Saying there's no evidence for anthropo climate change is to refute the world standard. We went over this in the Journalistic Integrity thread. If you don't believe people have a hand in climate change then you have to speak directly to the standard that says people do. That is, one of the myriad of IPCC reports, specifically 2007 where they say "Human beings burning fossil fuels play a part in Global Warming and human actions can mitigate the impact we have on our atmosphere." -to paraphrase.

Something like half the people in America don't believe in evolution(that we share common ancestors with the other apes) and I think it's roughly the same number of people that don't believe in anthropogenic climate change. Majority belief doesn't make for science. The majority believed the earth was flat in 1491, while the educated, the sailors had a good idea that it was round. But the majority of people held onto the flatness, well after 1492 and all that stuff you learn about in middle school.

 

[trysail]

Carter poses more than fair questions for proponents of the anthropogenic global warming hypothesis. In fact, I've been waiting for someone to rephrase the question and I'm delighted I stumbled across his piece. It's overdue.


[Emphasis mine]

http://www.quadrant.org.au/blogs/doomed-planet/2009/10/alarmism-contra-science

The science of deceit
by Bob Carter, Ph.D.
October 26, 2009

Science is about simplicity

A well-accepted aphorism about science, in the context of difference of opinion between two points of view, is “Madam, you are entitled to your own interpretation, but not to your own facts”.

The world stoker of the fires of global warming alarmism, the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), cleverly suborns this dictum in two ways.

First, the IPCC accepts advice from influential groups of scientists who treat the data that underpins their published climate interpretations (collected, of course, using public research funds) as their own private property, and refuse to release it to other scientists.

Thus, confronted in 1996 with a request that he provide a U.S. peer-review referee with a copy of the data that underpinned a research paper that he had submitted, U.K. Hadley Climate Research Centre scientist Tom Wigley responded:

First, it is entirely unnecessary to have original “raw” data in order to review a scientific document. I know of no case at all in which such data were required by or provided to a referee ….. Second, while the data in question [model output from the U.K. Hadley Centre’s climate model] were generated using taxpayer money, this was U.K. taxpayer money. U.S. scientists therefore have no a priori right to such data. Furthermore, these data belong to individual scientists who produced them, not to the IPCC, and it is up to those scientists to decide who they give their data to.​

In the face of such attitudes, which treat the established mores of scientific trust and method with contempt, it is scarcely surprising that it took Canadian statistics expert Steve McIntyre many years to get the primary data released that was used by another Hadley Centre scientist, Keith Briffa, in his published tree-ring reconstructions of past temperature from the Urals region, northern hemisphere. When he finally forced the release of the relevant data, McIntyre quickly proceeded to slay a second climate hockey-stick dragon which - like the first such beast fashioned by U.S. scientist Michael Mann, and widely promulgated by the IPCC – turned out to be based on faulty statistical methodology (see summary by Ross McKitrick here: http://www.financialpost.com/opinion/story.html?id=2056988 ).

A variant on this, along “the dog ate my homework” path, also involves the Hadley Centre – which is the primary science provider of global temperature statistics to the IPCC. Faced with requests from outside scientists for the provision of the raw temperature data so that scientific audit checks could be undertaken, Hadley’s Phil Jones recently asserted that parts of the raw data used to reconstruct their global temperature curve for the period before about 1980 cannot be provided to outsiders because it has been lost or destroyed. In other words, it is now impossible to conduct an independent audit of the Hadley temperature curve for 1860-2008, on which the IPCC has based an important part of its alarmist global warming advice.

So much for data perversions. The second type of common distortion of normal scientific practice by the IPCC and its supporters concerns not data but hypotheses – which IPCC likes to define in its own way to suit its own ends. This attitude often manifests itself in the fashion expressed in a recent letter sent to me, viz:

Proponents of AGW claim that their theory is supported by peer reviewed literature whilst the case against it is not. This is a very effective argument and, although Solomon's book The Deniers goes some way to counter it, I am not aware of an equally effective refutation. If there is one I would be most grateful if you could point me to it.​

In an Australian variation of this, Greg Combet, assistant to climate Minister Penny Wong, earlier this year asserted with blatant inaccuracy that “we use only peer reviewed science and our opposition doesn’t”. Other IPCC sycophants phrase it slightly differently, such as: "if you climate sceptics had a scientific point of view it would have been published in reputable, peer-reviewed journals".

Statements such as these all reflect a fundamental lack of understanding about the way that science works. They also exemplify the way in which climate alarmists always seek to frame the debate in ways that delivers them control, especially by clever choice of language (clean energy; climate change instead of global warming; carbon dioxide is a pollutant instead of a beneficial trace gas, etc.), or, in this case, by framing a hypothesis for testing that suits their political ends rather than Science’s ends.

If you accept at face value questions and comments like the ones enumerated above, you fall into a carefully laid climate alarmist trap. For the question “why are there no papers in peer-reviewed journals that disprove the hypothesis of dangerous human-caused global warming” is predicated, as is all related IPCC writing, on faulty science logic; specifically, it erects a wrong null hypothesis.

Scientists erect hypotheses to test based upon the fundamental science assumption of parsimony, or simplicity, sometimes grandly referred to as Occam’s Razor. That is to say, in seeking to explain matters of observation or experiment, a primary underlying principle is that the simplest explanation be sought; extraneous or complicating factors of interpretation, such as “extraterrestrials did it”, are only invoked when substantive evidence exists for such a complication.

Concerning the climate change that we observe around us today – which, importantly, is occurring at similar rates and magnitudes to that known to have occurred throughout the historical and geological past - the simplest (and therefore null) hypothesis, is that "the climate change observed today is natural unless and until evidence accrues otherwise".

In regard to which, first, no such evidence has emerged. And, second, like any null hypothesis, that about modern climate change is there to be tested, as it has been. There are literally tens of thousands of peer-reviewed papers in major scientific journals that contain observations, data, experiments and theoretical reasoning that are consistent with the null hypothesis, which has therefore yet to be falsified (but, of course, one day might be).

The onus is therefore on Penny Wong and her scientists to provide some “evidence otherwise”. To give a clue how hard that task is, note that since 1988 (when the IPCC was created) western nations have spent more than $100 billion, and employed thousands of scientists, in attempts to measure the human signal in the global temperature record. The search has failed. Though no scientist doubts that humans influence climate at local level - causing both warmings (urban heat island effect) and coolings (land-use changes) - no definitive evidence has yet been discovered that a human influence is measurable, let alone dangerous, at global level. Rather, the human signal is lost in the noise of natural climate variation.

That the correct null hypothesis is the simplest hypothesis is, of course, no reason why other more complex hypotheses cannot be erected for testing. For instance, should you wish to test (as the IPCC should) the idea that "human carbon dioxide emissions are causing dangerous global warming", then there are several ways that that can be done.

The result, long ago, has been the falsification of the dangerous human-caused warming hypothesis. Failed tests include: that global cooling has occurred since 1998 despite an increase in carbon dioxide of 5%; the lack of detailed correlation between the carbon dioxide and temperature records over the last 100 years; consideration of cause and effect timing of past carbon dioxide and temperature levels in ice core records; the absence of the model-predicted temperature hotspot high in the tropical troposphere; the low sensitivity of climate to carbon dioxide forcing as judged against empirical tests; and the demonstrable failure of computer GCMs to predict future climate.

These matters, and that the dangerous warming hypothesis fails numerous empirical tests, have been described in many places. Such writings, whether in refereed journals or not, are simply disparaged or ignored by those who wish to pursue the alarmist IPCC line.

It bears repeating that the onus is on Minister Wong, or her advisory IPCC scientists, to provide any evidence that the null hypothesis regarding modern climate change is false. Because she cannot do so, the clever trick is used of inverting the null hypothesis to demand that climate rationalist scientists demonstrate that human-cased global warming is not occurring.

Perhaps none of this would matter particularly were we dealing only with a squabble amongst scientists. But when ministers in our governments write, as did the Queensland Minister for Climate Change recently, that “The Queensland Government, along with the Australian Government and governments around the world, supports the findings of the IPCC”, it becomes a critical matter of necessity to understand that, in addition to being political in the first place, IPCC advice is also based upon faulty, indeed manipulative, science practice.

As independent scientific advisors to Senator Fielding have shown, the IPCC-derived science advice that the Australian Government is using as the basis for its carbon dioxide tax legislation is utterly flawed. This finding has yet to be rebutted.

Senators who vote for the second version of the misbegotten and misnamed Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme bill will be supporting strongly harmful legislation that is based upon faulty science. Thereby, they will be abandoning their duty of care for the welfare of the Australian people.

DISCLOSURE: Bob Carter is one of the four independent climate scientists who, at Senator Fielding’s request, undertook a due diligence audit of the global warming advice being provided to Climate Minister Penny Wong by her Department. The three other scientists were David Evans, Stewart Franks and Bill Kininmonth.

 

[WRJames]

I am sure we are in for many more rounds of the ID vs evolution and the global debates. Hopefully scientists will continue to expand our knowledge, and not fall into the trap of saying that somethings is "proven science" when in fact it is far from proved.

But I think the posts here show how far away we are from having proved that there is global warming, or, if there is, it is caused by human activity, or, if it is caused by human activity, that the culprit activity is one or another source of greenhouse gases.

As for ID and evolution -- there is still some mystery as to the mechanisms of evolution, and a lot a hand waving, as far as I'm concerned, over the vast improbability of what those mechanisms have produced. Of course, the very notion of ID is at its core unscientific. Science by its very nature must look for "natural" explanations. But that is not the same thing as saying that science has somehow proved that we are in fact living in a purely "natural" world. The evolution debate has always been one where science ventures into the realm of philosophy and religion, where it attempts to explain, as Darwin baldy stated, origins. That is why a non-scientific alternative like ID has any place in the discussion.

 

[Huckleman2000]

I am sure we are in for many more rounds of the ID vs evolution and the global debates. [...]That is why a non-scientific alternative like ID has any place in the discussion.

I think you're arguing (or at least, observing) from your conclusions backwards in this post.

 

[DeeZire]

ID is impossible because... God would have had to have a PHD in science in order to pull it off, but there were no colleges for God to go to get his PHD from back when He was working on His design for life on our planet.

 

[Epmd607]

...
Science by its very nature must look for "natural" explanations. But that is not the same thing as saying that science has somehow proved that we are in fact living in a purely "natural" world. The evolution debate has always been one where science ventures into the realm of philosophy and religion, where it attempts to explain, as Darwin baldy stated, origins. That is why a non-scientific alternative like ID has any place in the discussion.

Science can't prove that we live in a natural world as opposed to a supernatural world. When Darwin talks of 'origins' he's talking about our origins in a common ancestor with other apes, which goes against the Bible and religion at the time. Darwin had no idea how life started, especially since he had no idea about genetics even while Gregor Mendel was publishing on it during Darwin's lifetime. The Earth was the center of the universe for a while too until science set the record straight on that.

Each time science makes an advance religion will usually back off and say "Oh, yes, we have no business talking about the natural world anyway, we're talking about what's beyond the world of science." Still, these religious idiots keep reaching back in and trying to dip their finger in science and they get burned every time...they should just keep quiet and take credit for the stuff science doesn't deal with. Like saying, "Yes, you've described the Big Bang, but it happened because God set the whole thing in motion." Stuff that's not provable and basically childrens fairy tale type statements.

 

[Epmd607]

"As for ID and evolution -- there is still some mystery as to the mechanisms of evolution, and a lot a hand waving, as far as I'm concerned, over the vast improbability of what those mechanisms have produced."

These books are easy reads, there are even better up to the minute texts that get a little technical if you're interested but these are a good start if you've never read or learned about the mechanisms of evolution. http://www.mit.edu/~ejhanna/sci/evobook.html


The Blind Watchmaker--by Richard Dawkins

A very clear and eloquent explanation of how the mechanisms of evolution function. Very enjoyable to read. Reading this book is about the easiest way in the world to understand evolution.

River out of Eden --by Richard Dawkins

Somewhat more brief than The Blind Watchmaker, somewhat less technical as well, but just as powerful and beautiful an account of evolution through natural selection.

The Selfish Gene (1989 edition) -- by Richard Dawkins

A reprinting of one of the most accessible and understandable works on the driving forces behind evolution. It is a joy to read, for layman, student, and expert alike.

Evolution and the Myth of Creationism--by Tim M. Berra

This book is really good at answering a lot of supposed evidence against evolution.

 

[WRJames]

"As for ID and evolution -- there is still some mystery as to the mechanisms of evolution, and a lot a hand waving, as far as I'm concerned, over the vast improbability of what those mechanisms have produced."

These books are easy reads, there are even better up to the minute texts that get a little technical if you're interested but these are a good start if you've never read or learned about the mechanisms of evolution. http://www.mit.edu/~ejhanna/sci/evobook.html


The Blind Watchmaker--by Richard Dawkins

A very clear and eloquent explanation of how the mechanisms of evolution function. Very enjoyable to read. Reading this book is about the easiest way in the world to understand evolution.

River out of Eden --by Richard Dawkins

Somewhat more brief than The Blind Watchmaker, somewhat less technical as well, but just as powerful and beautiful an account of evolution through natural selection.

The Selfish Gene (1989 edition) -- by Richard Dawkins

A reprinting of one of the most accessible and understandable works on the driving forces behind evolution. It is a joy to read, for layman, student, and expert alike.

Evolution and the Myth of Creationism--by Tim M. Berra

This book is really good at answering a lot of supposed evidence against evolution.

I am not doubting that natural selection operates as a mechanism for evolution. I just don't think it can account for the results we see.
'
Do any of these books attempt to calculate the probabilities of evolution arriving where it has?

 

[Huckleman2000]

I am not doubting that natural selection operates as a mechanism for evolution. I just don't think it can account for the results we see.
'
Do any of these books attempt to calculate the probabilities of evolution arriving where it has?

Umm... "the probabilities of evolution arriving where it has"
seem to be about 100%, unless you doubt our existence and that of every other lifeform.

Your question might be, "What are the chances of evolution leading to sentient life?", which is very different from "Is evolution a valid theory?"

 

[WRJames]

Umm... "the probabilities of evolution arriving where it has"
seem to be about 100%, unless you doubt our existence and that of every other lifeform.

Your question might be, "What are the chances of evolution leading to sentient life?", which is very different from "Is evolution a valid theory?"

You are dodging the question. This is where the hand waving begins.

 

[Epmd607]

I am not doubting that natural selection operates as a mechanism for evolution. I just don't think it can account for the results we see.
'
Do any of these books attempt to calculate the probabilities of evolution arriving where it has?

This is a link to a website that goes over some questions people have had over chemical evolution probabilities. I've only glanced at it, but it looks interesting. I'll get you some links to texts that deal specifically with advanced probability theory in evolution during my lunch break. But I agree with the other poster, how you're posing your question makes it sound like "What is the probability of the evolutionary path that has already occurred." and the answer is 1:1, there's only one possible outcome as it's an event in the past, 100%.

http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/abioprob/abioprob.html

"I will try and walk people through these various errors, and show why it is not possible to do a "probability of abiogenesis" calculation in any meaningful way."

 

[amicus]

One can equate Intelligent Design, AGW, and Area 51, Roswell, New Mexico as wishful explanations for those who have an agenda to support. Religion, Anti-Industrial Environmental Activists, and the X-Files crowd.

Yet, even today, in the 21st Century, you can find ID trying to invade the classroom, AGW taught in schools as factual, and mass belief in Alien Abductions.

Trysail's last post, if read and understood, should dispell any lingering doubts over the false shallowness of AGW proponents and the political Environmental movement that gave birth to and sustains the myth.

As mentioned in Trysail's post, if it were just a squabble between egghead scientists, it would not be of great import. But the social and political effects of government supported and activist driven legislation is a threatening cloud on the horizon concerning the well-being of millions of people.

Amicus

 

[ishtat]

I am sure many subscribers to this thread have read Richard Lenski's exquisite dissection and demolition of a doubter Andrew Schlafly but if you haven't this is it.WRJ may particularly enjoy it.

http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/lenski_dialog

It stems from Lenski's 20 year experiment to demonstrate evolution in e coli.

Schlafly was made to look a complete ass but in a tradition not unknown in these parts having been utterly trounced he pronounced himself victor in the debate!

 

[dr_mabeuse]

Look what was in the news this morning...

==============

WASHINGTON – Have you heard that the world is now cooling instead of warming? You may have seen some news reports on the Internet or heard about it from a provocative new book. Only one problem: It's not true, according to an analysis of the numbers done by several independent statisticians for The Associated Press.

The case that the Earth might be cooling partly stems from recent weather. Last year was cooler than previous years. It's been a while since the super-hot years of 1998 and 2005. So is this a longer climate trend or just weather's normal ups and downs?

In a blind test, the AP gave temperature data to four independent statisticians and asked them to look for trends, without telling them what the numbers represented. The experts found no true temperature declines over time.

"If you look at the data and sort of cherry-pick a micro-trend within a bigger trend, that technique is particularly suspect," said John Grego, a professor of statistics at the University of South Carolina.

Yet the idea that things are cooling has been repeated in opinion columns, a BBC news story posted on the Drudge Report and in a new book by the authors of the best-seller "Freakonomics." Last week, a poll by the Pew Research Center found that only 57 percent of Americans now believe there is strong scientific evidence for global warming, down from 77 percent in 2006.

Global warming skeptics base their claims on an unusually hot year in 1998. Since then, they say, temperatures have dropped — thus, a cooling trend. But it's not that simple.

Since 1998, temperatures have dipped, soared, fallen again and are now rising once more. Records kept by the British meteorological office and satellite data used by climate skeptics still show 1998 as the hottest year. However, data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and NASA show 2005 has topped 1998. Published peer-reviewed scientific research generally cites temperatures measured by ground sensors, which are from NOAA, NASA and the British, more than the satellite data.

The recent Internet chatter about cooling led NOAA's climate data center to re-examine its temperature data. It found no cooling trend.

"The last 10 years are the warmest 10-year period of the modern record," said NOAA climate monitoring chief Deke Arndt. "Even if you analyze the trend during that 10 years, the trend is actually positive, which means warming."

[...there's more...]==============

I posted this not only to set the record straight, but to show how data can be misinterpreted by well-intentioned laymen. I've been saying all along that the process of global warming is very complex and doesn't always make common sense. (For instance, the greenhouse effect will actually cause the stratosphere to cool as more heat that would normally be radiated back into space is trapped near the surface of the earth.) The debate is best thrashed out by professional scientists in peer-reviewed journals, people who actually know what they're talking about.

This is the way science is done and has always been done. Messy, loud, and controversial, it's still the best method we've found to arrive at the truth.

 

[trysail]

Look what was in the news this morning...

Zoot,
I commend you for posting the story. No one with any statistical spurs is going to suggest that any ten year ( or fifty year, for that matter ) period represents a statistically significant sample size in the face of hundreds of millions of years of climate history. That doesn't, of course, stop certain parties ( and you know who I'm talking about ) from extrapolating.

I will point out that the notion and nomenclature of a "greenhouse" is either unfortunate or deliberately chosen as it carries an inaccurate suggestion of an impervious atmospheric layer. We both know that it is ultimately impossible to trap heat.

I am in the midst of reading a book that involves Germany's Messel Pit, the source of some of paleontology's most important fossil finds. Colin Tudge's description of Germany's Eocene "paratropical" climate is a perfect example of the enormous natural climate variation that has been the normal state of affairs throughout earth's history. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Messel_pit

http://www.junkscience.com/Greenhouse/grnmhse85.jpg

 

[Epmd607]

I am not doubting that natural selection operates as a mechanism for evolution. I just don't think it can account for the results we see.
'
Do any of these books attempt to calculate the probabilities of evolution arriving where it has?

Richard Dawkins' Blind Watchmaker is the book that answers your questions I think. Physical Anthropologists take a special anthro quantitative methods course, statistics and probabilities for people in the field. We used this book in one of the molecular classes: http://www.amazon.com/Statistical-Methods-Molecular-Evolution-Statistics/dp/0387223339

Any contemporary book on evolutionary theory should go over your probabilities question. All you have to do is read a few of them. Stephen Jay Gould and Richard Dawkins wrote some popular ones and some more science based books. If you don't want to read Dawkins because he hates God, Jared Diamond and Stephen Gould have some super popular books.

In case you have JSTOR or one of the many research paper subscriptions you might want to check this out if you're interested in how math(game theory, probability of strategy) can relate to evolutionary theory.

http://arjournals.annualreviews.org/doi/abs/10.1146/annurev.es.09.110178.000335

 

[dr_mabeuse]

I am in the midst of reading a book that involves Germany's Messel Pit, the source of some of paleontology's most important fossil finds. Colin Tudge's description of Germany's Eocene "paratropical" climate is a perfect example of the enormous natural climate variation that has been the normal state of affairs throughout earth's history. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Messel_pit

Yes, there's no doubt that the earth has been both much warmer and much cooler in the past than it is now, and that mankind had nothing to do with these trrends. But it's my understanding that the natural warming/cooling "background noise" can be separated from the temperature curve and when it's subtracted from the data, it leaves a residue that shows anthropogenic global warming as a real effect.

I have to confess that it's my earnest belief too that outfits like that National Academy of Sciences, the Royal Meteorological Society, the American Meteorological Society, the American Statistical Association, the American Chemical Association, the AMA, and 45 other scientific organizations of national and international standing would have been clever enough to take into account the natural heating and cooling cycles of the earth when they evaluated the data. These people are not dupes. And they still endorse anthropogenic global warming.

I'm curious as to how you explain away their findings to yourself. Are they all just mistaken and jumping aboard some sort of scientific bandwagon? Have they all overlooked something you've discovered yourself? Are they all using bad data while yours is accurate? Or are they all in cahoots as Amicus thinks, with the purpose of sending us back to the stone age while raking in fat speakers' fees for themselves?

I suppose it's possible that they're all wrong and the dissenters are right, but I wouldn't want to bet any money on it.

 

[amicus]

Mab's Post includes a source link:

Seth Borenstein of the Associated Press has written another truly frightening little sci-fi piece entitled Warming Report to Warn of Coming Drought. The article, which claims to have scooped the findings of the IPCC 4th Assessment Working Group 2 (WG2), and predicts a coming eco-apocalypse, has created quite a stir since being published last Saturday. This, despite the fact that the very same author made similar predictions last month regarding the findings of another IPCC group - predictions which proved to be baloney.


On February 1st, the AP published Borenstein's Working Group 1 (WG1) forecasts under the politically sensational headline Warming Linked to Stronger Hurricanes. This preposterous "leak" claimed that the pending report would place the blame for stronger Atlantic hurricanes "such as Katrina" squarely on the shoulders of man-made global warming. Of course, the very next day revealed an appraisal which made no such broad claims. To the contrary, qualifying footnotes such as these used whenever human contribution was declared "more likely than not," thereby revealing hypothesis rather than conclusion, were mysteriously absent from the article:

~~~

Click the link supplied by Mab, search under the writer's name and you will find the above...and more...of this science fiction writer with an agenda.

Amicus

 

[amicus]

Keyword search: creation of ipcc 1988

http://www.ucsusa.org/global_warming/science_and_impacts/science/ipcc-backgrounder.html

IPCC History and Mission

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) was established in 1988 under the auspices of the United Nations Environment Programme and the World Meteorological Organization for the purpose of assessing “the scientific, technical and socioeconomic information relevant for the understanding of the risk of human-induced climate change. It does not carry out new research nor does it monitor climate-related data. It bases its assessment mainly on published and peer reviewed scientific technical literature.” [1] The goal of these assessments is to inform international policy and negotiations on climate-related issues.

http://www.spiked-online.com/index.php?/site/article/3540/

Challenging the constraints of the climate change debate
This conference brought together 341 delegates, including 20 politicians and ambassadors, 118 policy and legal advisers and senior government officials, 73 physical scientists, 50 industry representatives and energy specialists, 30 social scientists and 50 environmental activists from 46 countries. Franz notes that the conference’s call to reduce CO2 emissions by approximately 20 per cent of 1988 levels by 2005 fell far short of the 66 per cent reductions in CO2 emissions recommended by the Villach and Bellagio workshops of 1987, and concludes that ‘the contribution of science to this outcome was minimal’ (19).

From very early on, the relationship between science and politics around the climate change issue has been an unhealthy one, and this has had a negative impact on both the scientific and political spheres. With regard to science, it seems obvious that its objectivity is open to question once science becomes allied with advocating what should be done rather than telling us what is currently known and what the complexities and uncertainties involved with that knowledge are. Yet today, in pursuit of achieving the action on climate change that they think is right, it is striking how many in the scientific community have become extremely intolerant of dissent.

~~~

The first link is a lengthy read, but if you want a real history of climate change research and the various organizations, both science and social, that have been the motive powers behind the creation of the UN's IPCC, which has become the Holy Grail of Global Warming advocates, then you will find this most informative and broad based.

Amicus

 

[WRJames]

This is a link to a website that goes over some questions people have had over chemical evolution probabilities. I've only glanced at it, but it looks interesting. I'll get you some links to texts that deal specifically with advanced probability theory in evolution during my lunch break. But I agree with the other poster, how you're posing your question makes it sound like "What is the probability of the evolutionary path that has already occurred." and the answer is 1:1, there's only one possible outcome as it's an event in the past, 100%.

http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/abioprob/abioprob.html

"I will try and walk people through these various errors, and show why it is not possible to do a "probability of abiogenesis" calculation in any meaningful way."

Thanks. That was a very interesting article, although it seems somewhat in contradiction to Dr. Mab's post which I suspect is based on more recent discoveries. If you can in fact dump amino acids in sufficient volume into a lake or small pond and get self replicating peptides in a reasonable amount of time, why hasn't someone done this?

 

[trysail]

Zoot,
In a nutshell, COMPLEXITY.

http://www.giss.nasa.gov/tools/modelE/modelEsrc/

I honestly don't think we ( humanity or the scientific community ) really, fully and truly understand this stuff. When humanity fully understands something, given a variable, we can correctly calculate an outcome. Humanity can accurately predict all of the full lunar eclipses from now until the end of time because we have reduced planetary and lunar motion to time-tested laws. As Newton said, "I can predict to you the motion of heavenly bodies but not the madness of crowds." I think climate, on the other hand, remains subject to the butterfly effect.

I've spent enough time around bench scientists to comprehend that they don't always know what they're talking about and that they can be every bit as unintentionally self-delusional as the rest of humanity ( sometimes exacerbated by their location in the bellies of social organizations called institutions ).

In medicine, Steve Rosenberg ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steven_Rosenberg ) and Sol Snyder ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solomon_Snyder ) have both been guilty of egregious exaggeration and over-hyping of the level of their knowledge in their respective fields ( cancer immunotherapy and receptor-based neurotransmitter therapies ). The complexity in cancer is such that one wonders how many centuries it's going to take before we fully comprehend its causation and operation.

I've seen what ultimately turned out to be unjustified hubris in many other fields, as well. I don't think it's a complete accident that many of the fiercest skeptics of the AGW hypothesis have been old guys who have experience of institutions, the humiliating and baffling complexity of nature and whose careers are not in jeopardy.

I could be wrong but I'm not yet convinced of error on my part.

 

[dr_mabeuse]

Zoot,
In a nutshell, COMPLEXITY.

...

I could be wrong but I'm not yet convinced of error on my part.

Well, then we're going to have to remain at loggerheads.

In my experience, yes, any number of scientists may be wrong on a subject and yet passionately convinced of the rightness of their theories, but it's not so easy to convince these big institutions and academies, which tend to be very intellectually cautious and conservative and require real proof before they'll take a stand.

I've been trying to think of a case where the National Academy of Sciences, the American Chemical Society, or one of these other large institutions have been on the wrong side of an issue, and, off the top of my head, at least, I can't think of any. The big errors in physical science over the past 30 years that come to my mind are Cold Fusion and "Polywater" (notice I said physical science. Things are never so certain in the biological and social sciences.) In neither case did any national-level professional organization endorse these two phenomenon, which turned out to be false.

Where you see complexity, apparently a majority of trained scientists see a pattern, and that pattern leads them to believe that AGW is real and requires a strong and urgent response. Their belief is so strong that they've staked their reputations and the reputations of their organizations on it.

This impresses me. I have to cast my lot with the academies on this one.

 

[jacks4u]

"The Good book" story by Jacks4u

Jimmy, a 12 year old Midwesterner, of unremarkable parentage, discipline, and specific knowledge goes to church every Sunday, with his parents.

Pastor Fred is an unremarkable preacher, with a cheating wife (He doesn't know about that) and two children. Pastor Fred preaches to a Sunday congregation of about 120 adults, and his wife ministers to about 40 squalling brats during the Sunday sermons, in what's called "Sunday School"

Here's their story:

Jimmy was walking home from school one day, head down, watching his sneakers splash water out of the gutter, when, just in front of the church, out runs Pastor Fred, late for an appointment of some sort. Fred runs full on, into Jimmy, knocking him over, in the process.

Pastor Fred pulls up short, and looks at his watch, then helps Jimmy up from the dented earth his fall had caused.

Jimmy gets up, and reaches instinctively into his pocket, to see if his prize jumping frog, 'Buba' is alright. Sensing the worst, he pulls the frog out of his pocket and lets out a string of expletives, "Goddamnit! Now I have to go to that fucking swamp to get another damn..." before pulling up short, remembering the Pastor's presence.

Now, Pastor Fred glanced again at his watch, and decided Jimmy needed a little guidance, if he were to ever make it into Heaven. "Jimmy, do you know who God is?"

"Oh, yessir! God made everything, and he sits on a throne in heaven."

"And how do you know this?" Pastor asked, smiling at his wife's thorough tutelage.

"Hey, I read the book, it says so right there."

"The bible?"

"Yea. I read it in Sunday school every week."

"And are you going to Heaven?" Pastor asked.

"Sure, Pastor, I'm going to Heaven, when I die."

Jimmy said that with such certainty, Pastor just had to ask a few more questions. "How do you know that?"

"The book says, if I believe, with all my heart, I'll go to heaven!"

"And you believe that?"

"Uhu, it's true!"

But pastor just had to ask one more question, "How do you know that?"

and Jimmy let him have it - all the strengths and weaknesses of his religious faith rolled into one short phrase, "It's true! The Bible says so."


* * *

Personally, I have a REAL problem with self referential systems in general.

Here, the Bible says it's true, so yea, it must be.

There, trysail says he's correct, so yea, it must be.

Another place, some other yutz says "it's all a hoax, and I'm right on this" yea, it must be...

Data, my boy, data. Cold hard numbers. Facts as irrefutable as the day is long.

Absent that, anyone that asserts an unsupported position is just another jerk with an opinion. And if you rely on people that have a vested interest:

* * *

The Pastor's wife seeing Pastor and Jimmy on the lawn chatting, approaches, "Of course the bible's right, If you truly believe, you'll go to heaven. I'm going to heaven, and so is Pastor, and so are you..."

* * *

If you truly believe your hypothesis, find someone that believes differently - paw through their data for evidence to support your theory. If yours is correct, their data will support it, as well as your own does.

My opinion, in a nutshell

Jacks