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Author Topic:   So now there is a record going back over 600,000 years
jar
Member (Idle past 394 days)
Posts: 34026
From: Texas!!
Joined: 04-20-2004


Message 1 of 21 (263524)
11-27-2005 3:29 PM


Beyond being yet another indication that the earth is entering an interesting period, this article is yet another wooden stake in the vampire called Young Earth Creationism.
Ice Core goes back 600,000 years plus

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Nighttrain
Member (Idle past 3993 days)
Posts: 1512
From: brisbane,australia
Joined: 06-08-2004


Message 2 of 21 (263531)
11-27-2005 4:30 PM
Reply to: Message 1 by jar
11-27-2005 3:29 PM


Couple sues evolution site
An interesting snippet from the side-bar on that site---
BERKELEY, Calif. (AP) -- A California couple has sued the operators of a University of California-Berkeley Web site designed to help teachers teach evolution, claiming it improperly strays into religion.
Jeanne and Larry Caldwell of Granite Bay say portions of the Understanding Evolution Web site amount to a government endorsement of certain religious groups over others because the site is partly funded through a public money grant from the National Science Foundation.
In the lawsuit filed last month, the Caldwells contend the site is an effort "to modify the beliefs of public school science students so they will be more willing to accept evolutionary theory as true.''
The plaintiffs are not proponents of "intelligent design'' -- a theory that living organisms are so complex they must have been created by a higher intelligence -- but they object to the teaching of evolution as scientific fact, Jeanne Caldwell said.
The site is run by UC Berkeley's Museum of Paleontology----

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Omnivorous
Member
Posts: 3978
From: Adirondackia
Joined: 07-21-2005
Member Rating: 7.3


Message 3 of 21 (263533)
11-27-2005 4:33 PM
Reply to: Message 2 by Nighttrain
11-27-2005 4:30 PM


Re: Couple sues evolution site
The site is run by UC Berkeley's Museum of Paleontology----
Hell, I guess they should sue UC Berkeley, too.

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RAZD
Member (Idle past 1405 days)
Posts: 20714
From: the other end of the sidewalk
Joined: 03-14-2004


Message 4 of 21 (263536)
11-27-2005 4:46 PM
Reply to: Message 2 by Nighttrain
11-27-2005 4:30 PM


Re: Couple sues evolution site
so evidence that contradicts myth is religion?
by who's ... um ... book?

we are limited in our ability to understand
by our ability to understand
RebelAAmerican.Zen[Deist
... to learn ... to think ... to live ... to laugh ...
to share.

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RAZD
Member (Idle past 1405 days)
Posts: 20714
From: the other end of the sidewalk
Joined: 03-14-2004


Message 5 of 21 (263538)
11-27-2005 4:47 PM
Reply to: Message 1 by jar
11-27-2005 3:29 PM


may need to update {age dating correlations}... if I can get a science article link that talks to the age dating methodology.

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wiseman45
Inactive Member


Message 6 of 21 (263562)
11-27-2005 6:00 PM
Reply to: Message 4 by RAZD
11-27-2005 4:46 PM


Re: Couple sues evolution site
Good point. I don't get the logic either: now, if we were talking about creationism, and not evolution, maybe these people might have a case, but they don't. Are they under the impression that evolution is a religion? Or is this just another gold-digging frivilous lawsuit that is a lame attempt to get some cash? Who knows??
As for Young-Earth Creationism, I really don't care about that. So who cares if the people who follow that want to be dumber than a brick? I don't. So long as I am able to just tune-out that kind of thinking, and I don't have to learn about it or read about it, I don't care. They have a right to be stupid. That's the beauty of the system, isn't it?
Now, if someone were to try to bring Young-Earth Creationism into a scientific forum, that would be a WHOLE different story, especially if they got anywhere. But people aren't THAT stupid.
Wiseman45

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crashfrog
Member (Idle past 1467 days)
Posts: 19762
From: Silver Spring, MD
Joined: 03-20-2003


Message 7 of 21 (263592)
11-27-2005 7:44 PM
Reply to: Message 6 by wiseman45
11-27-2005 6:00 PM


Re: Couple sues evolution site
Maybe they're trying, in sort of a backwards way, to establish a legal precedent that evolution is not religion.
Although I was under the impression that that precident already existed.

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RAZD
Member (Idle past 1405 days)
Posts: 20714
From: the other end of the sidewalk
Joined: 03-14-2004


Message 8 of 21 (263594)
11-27-2005 7:47 PM
Reply to: Message 6 by wiseman45
11-27-2005 6:00 PM


Re: Couple sues evolution site
It comes down to standards for evidence. People expect that everyone else uses the same standards until they are disabused of the idea, and those that are {naturally\rendered} incompetent to see a higher standard ... ?

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Coragyps
Member (Idle past 734 days)
Posts: 5553
From: Snyder, Texas, USA
Joined: 11-12-2002


Message 9 of 21 (263596)
11-27-2005 7:55 PM


The same couple sued the National Center for Science Education over a similar thing a while back. They dropped the suit, IIRC. It's just harassment.

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Omnivorous
Member
Posts: 3978
From: Adirondackia
Joined: 07-21-2005
Member Rating: 7.3


Message 10 of 21 (263622)
11-27-2005 9:20 PM
Reply to: Message 9 by Coragyps
11-27-2005 7:55 PM


I'd like to sue
Pat Robertson for assault. That would certainly seem to be a stronger case than this one.
Let me know if you hear him call down any wrath on my part of the world.

Real science did not really get going until Christians began applying the inference of a lawful universe made by a rational God to the study of the physical creation. --Faith

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wiseman45
Inactive Member


Message 11 of 21 (263760)
11-28-2005 12:11 PM


Maybe its more clear now
Perhaps this is just another attempt by a background religious fundamentalist group to level the playing field, per se. For instance, you can't make creation look like science, but maybe you can use the scientific world's use of evolution as the primary explanation for the origin of modern life to make it look like a religion. That way, its easier to downplay it. I've talked to several people about this and they seem to think this is the case. Just a thought.
Meanwhile, Pat Robertson seems to be getting loonier the older he gets, but he's still got the sense to be particularly selective about what he says. He actually cannot say "Come on, god, strike down these people". Get it?

  
Adminnemooseus
Administrator
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Message 12 of 21 (263775)
11-28-2005 1:47 PM


People - Topic theme!
Please, not another Pat Robertson topic.
Adminnemooseus

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Omnivorous
Member
Posts: 3978
From: Adirondackia
Joined: 07-21-2005
Member Rating: 7.3


Message 13 of 21 (263785)
11-28-2005 2:27 PM
Reply to: Message 12 by Adminnemooseus
11-28-2005 1:47 PM


Re: People - Topic theme!
Sorry, Moose. Mea magna culpa.
Let me nudge us a bit back on course.
Skeptics of greenhouse-gas driven global warming have largely appealed to cyclic variation to explain current climate change. I think this 650K year finding moves the peg well past the length of any cycle proposed to explain current climate change.
This, in concert with the recent findings about rising ocean levels (see Oceans, gases rising faster, makes me imagine Pat Rob...er...uh, die-hard skeptics clinging to a coastal mountaintop, respirator-equipped/air-conditioned bubble suit-clad, declaiming, "No proof! No proof!" as the waves wash them away.
So I'm looking for specifics now in the skeptic literature--does anyone already have a handle on the duration/age of those proposed cycles? Is there a climatologist in the house?
This message has been edited by Omnivorous, 11-28-2005 02:28 PM

Real science did not really get going until Christians began applying the inference of a lawful universe made by a rational God to the study of the physical creation. --Faith

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Omnivorous
Member
Posts: 3978
From: Adirondackia
Joined: 07-21-2005
Member Rating: 7.3


Message 14 of 21 (263824)
11-28-2005 4:08 PM
Reply to: Message 13 by Omnivorous
11-28-2005 2:27 PM


Global Warming/Cooling Cycles
Here's a start, from the National Center for Policy Analysis, a clearly skeptical site. The NCPA is a conservative foundation-supported think-tank with close ties to the Republican Congress. They are most recently upset with an "alarmist" report on global warming by Fox News (!).
Elsewhere on their site, they note two cycles, the 90,000 Ice Age cycle and a 1500 +/- 500 year cycle of moderate warming/cooling. They cite ice core evidence for the second cycle, but do not address atmospheric CO2 concentrations from those ice cores. Their position seems to be that any finding of cyclic variation falsifies human-driven global warming. The quote below is taken from here, and the study they cite is available in full as a pdf.
NCPA writes:
THE PHYSICAL EVIDENCE OF EARTH'S UNSTOPPABLE 1,500-YEAR CLIMATE CYCLE
Daily Policy Digest
GLOBAL WARMING
Friday, September 30, 2005
Human activities have little to do with the Earth's current warming trend, according to a study published by the National Center for Policy Analysis (NCPA). In fact, S. Fred Singer (University of Virginia) and Dennis Avery (Hudson Institute) conclude that global warming and cooling seem to be part of a 1,500-year cycle of moderate temperature swings.
Scientists got the first unequivocal evidence of a continuing moderate natural climate cycle in the 1980s, when Willi Dansgaard of Denmark and Hans Oeschger of Switzerland first saw two mile-long ice cores from Greenland representing 250,000 years of Earth's frozen, layered climate history. From their initial examination, Dansgaard and Oeschger estimated the smaller temperature cycles at 2,550 years. Subsequent research shortened the estimated length of the cycles to 1,500 years (plus or minus 500 years).
According to the authors:
An ice core from the Antarctic's Vostok Glacier -- at the other end of the world from Greenland -- showed the same 1,500-year cycle through its 400,000-year length.
The ice-core findings correlated with known glacier advances and retreats in northern Europe.
Independent data in a seabed sediment core from the Atlantic Ocean west of Ireland, reported in 1997, showed nine of the 1,500-year cycles in the last 12,000 years.
Considered collectively, there is clear and convincing evidence of a 1,500-year climate cycle. And if the current warming trend is part of an entirely natural cycle, as Singer and Avery conclude, then actions to prevent further warming would be futile, could impose substantial costs upon the global economy and lessen the ability of the world's peoples to adapt to the impacts of climate change.
Source: S. Fred Singer and Dennis T. Avery, "The Physical Evidence of Earth's Unstoppable 1,500-Year Climate Cycle," National Center for Policy Analysis, Policy Report No. 279, September 29, 2005
The key question, of course, is whether there is both a natural cyclic variation and human-driven climatic change, or only natural variation.
Of particular interest to me is Figure 1 in the PDF (which I regret I cannot reproduce here) which purports to show temperature variation from about 900 AD to 1950. This figure, then, shows the Medieval Warm Period and the Little Ice Age, but lops off the most recent 50 years or so of rising temperatures; still, the last 50 years in the figure show a slope steeper than any segment of the Medieval Warm Period, suggesting at least one good reason for not including the past half century.

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RAZD
Member (Idle past 1405 days)
Posts: 20714
From: the other end of the sidewalk
Joined: 03-14-2004


Message 15 of 21 (263882)
11-28-2005 6:42 PM
Reply to: Message 14 by Omnivorous
11-28-2005 4:08 PM


Re: Global Warming/Cooling Cycles
According to the authors:
An ice core from the Antarctic's Vostok Glacier -- at the other end of the world from Greenland -- showed the same 1,500-year cycle through its 400,000-year length.
The ice-core findings correlated with known glacier advances and retreats in northern Europe.
Independent data in a seabed sediment core from the Atlantic Ocean west of Ireland, reported in 1997, showed nine of the 1,500-year cycles in the last 12,000 years.
There's another correlation, as both Vostok and Greenland are used to count annual layers, and thus we have the same cycles at opposite ends of the earth while also getting the same years counted.
And not just with the other glacier, but this cycle adds another "clock" to the system from just the annual one.

we are limited in our ability to understand
by our ability to understand
RebelAAmerican.Zen[Deist
... to learn ... to think ... to live ... to laugh ...
to share.

This message is a reply to:
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