Rejected letter to NCSE in response to the awful polemic by David Morrison in NCSE Reports 31(5), along with some preliminary commentary
Guest post by Pat Frank
Most everyone at WUWT knows that the National Center for Science Education (NCSE) has turned their mission into an irony by a big-time entry into AGW-alarmism. They’ve hired Mark McCaffrey as their climate program director. Mark has degrees in education and worked previously at the “Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences (CIRES) at the University of Colorado at Boulder, where he was Associate Scientist III,” and where he apparently took a “leadership role in the development of Climate Literacy” Mark’s background makes him not particularly trained in climate science itself, but distinctly trained to promulgate his views about it.
Mark is probably responsible for such scientifically indefensible NCSE statements that,
“Many independent lines of evidence show that human activity is responsible for most of the climate change in recent years, particularly the warming of the atmosphere and ocean in the last 150 years,… that we’re “ seeing … dramatic changes in … climate and … ecosystems, including the distribution of rainfall, storm activity, extinction of plant and animal species, and seasonal change.”
Not to mention responsible for factually indefensible statements such as that,
“climate change deniers [are] people and organizations who deny or doubt the scientific consensus around climate change, [in] order to derail, delay, or degrade public policies on climate [and who] frequently seek to obscure or disparage the scientific consensus around climate change.”
Anyway, Volume 31(5) of the NCSE Reports, NCSE’s house journal, featured an article by Dr. David Morrison, modestly titled, “Science Denialism: Evolution and Climate Change.”
I’ve been a member of NCSE for many years, and that issue of NCSE Reports was my first notice that they had drunk the AGW kool-aid. “Shocked and dismayed” insufficiently conveys my feelings.
David Morrison is Director of the SETI Institute, and is a very reputable astronomer with a distinguished career. Nevertheless, his article is 4.5 pages of sloshing through the scientific shallows concerning climate (such as “today’s warming is taking place far faster than any historical cycles” and “we don’t need numerical [climate] models to tell us that the world is rapidly warming”), followed by another 4.5 pages of ankle-deep polemics equating AGW skeptics with creationists and tobacco lobbyists (such as, “The counterpart of the Marshall Institute … is the Discovery Institute” [a creationist organization – PF] and “strategies used by the opponents of both evolution and global warming are based on sowing misinformation and doubt… often called the “tobacco strategy”.” The article is full of global warming “denialists,” “denialism,” and “denial.” Dr. Morrison tells us that, “The only way [warming denialists] can make their case is to deny the international scientific consensus on the causes of climate change.” I’ll bet no one at WUWT knew that.
After reading so much misinformation, and after exchanging got-nowhere emails with Eugenie Scott (Executive Director of NCSE) and Andrew Petto (Editor of NCSE Reports), I decided to submit a letter to “NCSE Reports” in response to David Morrison’s article.
It went in on 16 January, 2012 and was rejected on 14 March. NCSE editor Dr. Petto wrote that, “Our decision is to: decline the piece as a response to Morrison’s piece, since it does very little to engage or refute Morrison’s main argument in the case which had to do with how those who opposed current climate change models present their information to the public and government officials.”
With extensive quotes to back me up, I pointed out in response that, “Dr. Morrison’s main argument is about climate science, and only secondarily about “denialists” who are then said to misrepresent, ignore, or lie about it. My submission concerns the first part — the main part — of Dr. Morrison’s thesis; which is a valid restriction of focus.” And that, “if Dr. Morrison’s science is false, his thesis about communication is pointless and irrelevant.”
Dr. Petto was not moved.
That’s the background. Here’s the (rejected) letter, forthwith. Honestly? I think it was rejected on a pretext. You’re invited to decide for yourself whether it “does very little to engage or refute Morrison’s main argument.”
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When is Purported Science not Science?
by Patrick Frank
In his excellent book, “Galileo,” [1] Stillman Drake points out Galileo’s very modern understanding of science praxis, writing, “In his book on Hydrostatics, Galileo remarked that the authority of Archimedes was worth no more than the authority of Aristotle; Archimedes was right, he said, only because his propositions agreed with experiments.” Galileo, writing this in 1612, conveyed an understanding of science identical to Einstein’s, expressed almost exactly 300 years later: “If the red-shift of spectra lines due to the gravitational potential should not exist, then the general theory of relativity will be untenable.”
Einstein’s statement about theory and observation is recounted by Karl Popper in his autobiographical “Unended Quest,” [2]. Popper goes on to say that Einstein’s critical observation was a revelation, and opened the way to his own career-spanning argument that science is the interplay of falsifiable theory and empirical results (conjectures and refutations). Theory must produce unique and falsifiable predictions by way of analytical deductions. Data, replicable by any and by all, pronounces its verdict. Only those two activities together constitute valid science. Either apart, is not science.
A corollary to this relationship is that the meaning of empirical data is found only within the context of a falsifiable theory. This is true, even if the meaning is that the data contradict the prediction and refute the theory. Only a falsifiable physical theory distinguishes the meaning of lightning away from the hand of god. Only the capacity of falsification produces a unique prediction and provides an unambiguous meaning to the data. [3]
In a recent NCSE Reports, Dr. David Morrison wrote an essay [4] about “Science Denialism,” which was one long effort to equate evolution deniers with AGW skeptics (Anthropogenic Global Warming). There was very little science in Dr. Morrison’s essay. Here’s most of it: “Climate models are indeed complex, and they do not always agree on details such as the timing of future warming. However, the evidence for warming is empirical, and its future trends are anchored in basic physics, such as the greenhouse effect and the heat capacity of the oceans.”
Those cognizant of meaning in science will immediately see the weakness of Dr. Morrison’s position: he grants causal meaning to climate warming while admitting the absence of a climate theory. The evidence for warming is certifiably empirical. But the meaning of that warming can come only from a falsifiable theory that makes unique predictions about climate. Is the warming due to the extra atmospheric CO2, or not? No amount of empirical data shuffling can answer that question.
Dr. Morrison claims that the greenhouse effect (a misappropriation of terms but let’s leave that alone) and heat capacity are enough to predict how the climate of Earth will react to rising levels of atmospheric CO2. But “the greenhouse effect” — essentially radiation physics — and heat capacity are not an adequate theory of climate. They predict nothing of how increased energy in the atmosphere will distribute itself into the all the climate modes, such as the ENSO cycles, and especially into the global hydrologic cycle of melting, evaporation, cloud formation, and precipitation.
Dr. Morrison made a remarkable demurral that, “we don’t need numerical models to tell us [that increased CO2 is] a harbinger of much worse climate disruptions to come.” But of course we do indeed need climate models to tell us that. How else are we to know? Climate models represent the physical theory of climate. It is only their predictive power that gives causal meaning to increased atmospheric CO2. This is the bedrock of science, and Dr. Morrison got it wrong.
Let’s take a short look at climate models. They do much less than, “do not always agree on [the] details” of future climate. They do not ever agree with the realities of past climate. For example, Demetris Koutsoyiannis and his group evaluated the advanced general circulation climate models (GCMs) used in the 2007 Fourth Assessment Report issued by the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change). [5, 6] The IPCC used these GCMs to “retrodict” 100 years of 20th century climate, at all the points on a global grid. The reproduced trend in global average temperature looked great. As it should do because GCM climate models are adjusted to reproduce the known global average temperature. [7]
But the Koutsoyiannis group used the IPCC’s gridded 20th century global climate to reconstruct what these climate models said about the 20th century temperature record of the continental US. The GCM climate models got it very wrong. They also used the GCM retrodiction to reconstruct the 20th century temperature and precipitation records at 58 locations around the world. The reconstructions failed badly on comparison with the real data. This is a basic test of GCM reliability of that no one thought to carry out during 20 years of climate alarm; climate alarm ostensibly made credible by those very GCMs. Climate models cannot reproduce the known climate. Why should anyone believe they can reliably predict an unknown climate?
Dr. Morrison mentioned that climate models do not get clouds right, and then quickly dismissed this problem as irrelevant. But tropical and subtropical clouds strongly affect the amount of energy retained by the atmosphere. [8] Clouds have a net cooling effect on Earth. [9, 10] I evaluated the GCM cloud error as reported by the scientists of the “Coupled Model Intercomparison Project,” and found that the GCM cloud error, averaged over the globe, was at least ±10.1 %. [11]
This cloud error translated into a GCM error of at least ±2.8 Watts/m2 in energy. That ±2.8 Watts/m2 error equals all the extra forcing by all the extra greenhouse gases liberated into the atmosphere during the entire 20th century. That is, GCM cloud error alone equals ±100% of the increased “greenhouse effect.” It doesn’t take a very astute person to realize that when the error is as large as the effect, the effect itself becomes undetectable.
The scientists who use GCM projections to predict future climate do not take cloud error into account. Competent scientists would propagate that error into their predictions. But climate modelers do not. Neither does the IPCC. Propagating the cloud error would show that the growth of error quickly makes climate predictions no better than a random guess. [11] GCMs can’t predict the global temperature even one year ahead, much less 10 years or 100 years. But Dr. Morrison tells us that’s irrelevant, because rising CO2 is enough all by itself to certify a catastrophically disrupted climate.
Remember the criterion of science? Only falsifiable predictions yield the meaning of observations. Climate models do not give falsifiable predictions, especially not at the resolution of CO2-forcing. Therefore, they can give no causal meaning to increased atmospheric CO2. They cannot explain the warming climate. They can not predict the future climate. The observation of rising atmospheric CO2, alone, is not enough to certify anything except a rising level of atmospheric CO2. Knowing causality and predicting outcomes requires a falsifiable theory. Dr. Morrison hasn’t one, and neither does anyone else. Those who predict torrid climate futures literally do not know what they’re talking about. But that hasn’t stopped them from talking about it anyway. Dr. Morrison’s position on climate is indistinguishable from an intuitive alarm grounded in subjective certainties.
Like the wages of sin among the believers.
A review of the scientific literature reveals plenty of papers testifying to the unreliability of GCMs. But those papers don’t play into alarm. A responsible scientist would study the relevant literature before making declarative public statements. AGW-conclusional studies are mere causation-mongering because there is no falsifiable scientifically valid uniquely predictive theory of climate.
Much more could be written. But the general message should be clear so I’ll stop here. The answer to the question, by the way, is, ‘When it’s tendentious.’ Such is AGW science, and that includes the surface air temperature record, [12, 13] on which Dr. Morrison puts such stock.
References:
1. Drake, S., Galileo: a very short introduction, Oxford University, Oxford 2001.
2. Popper, K.R., Unended Quest, Open Court (pbk), La Salle 1976.
3. Frank, P. and Ray, T.H., Science is not Philosophy, Free Inquiry, 2004, 24 (6), 40-42.
4. Morrison, D., Science Denialism: Evolution and Climate Change, NCSE Reports, 2011, 31 (5), 10.
5. Anagnostopoulos, G.G., Koutsoyiannis, D., Christofides, A., Efstratiadis, A. and Mamassis, N., A comparison of local and aggregated climate model outputs with observed data, Hydrolog. Sci. J., 2010, 55 (7), 1094–1110; see also http://www.itia.ntua.gr/en/docinfo/978/ Last accessed 13 March 2011.
6. Koutsoyiannis, D., Efstratiadis, A., Mamassis, N. and Christofides, A., On the credibility of climate predictions, Hydrolog. Sci. J., 2008, 53 (4), 671-684; doi: 10.1623/hysj.53.4.671.
7. Kiehl, J.T., Twentieth century climate model response and climate sensitivity, Geophys. Res. Lett., 2007, 34 (22), L22710,1-4; doi:10.1029/2007GL031383.
8. Hartmann, D.L., Tropical Surprises, Science, 2002, 295 811-812.
9. Chen, T., Rossow, W.B. and Zhang, Y., Radiative Effects of Cloud-Type Variations, J. Clim., 2000, 13 (1), 264-286.
10. Hartmann, D.L., Ockert-Bell, M.E. and Michelsen, M.L., The Effect of Cloud Type on Earth’s Energy Balance: Global Analysis, J. Climate, 1992, 5 1281-1304.
11. Frank, P., A Climate of Belief, Skeptic, 2008, 14 (1), 22-30; open access: http://www.skeptic.com/the_magazine/featured_articles/v14n01_climate_of_belief.html.
12. Frank, P., Uncertainty in the Global Average Surface Air Temperature Index: A Representative Lower Limit, Energy & Environment, 2010, 21 (8), 969-989; open access: http://meteo.lcd.lu/globalwarming/Frank/uncertainty_in%20global_average_temperature_2010.pdf.
13. Frank, P., Imposed and Neglected Uncertainty in the Global Average Surface Air Temperature Index, Energy & Environment, 2011, 22 (4), 407-424; open access: http://multi-science.metapress.com/content/t8x847248t411126/fulltext.pdf (1 MB).
- NCSE accepts Gleick’s resignation (wattsupwiththat.com)
- Comments On “Defending Climate Science” In The January 31 2012 Issue Of EOS (pielkeclimatesci.wordpress.com)
- Gleick and the NCSE (climateaudit.org)
- My warning about Gleick to the NCSE (noconsensus.wordpress.com)
- Why is NCSE Now Concerned with Climate Change? – – – National Center for Science Education (richarddawkins.net)
It is fair enough for commenters above to have a different perspective on how they would have responded to this tendentious and dumb article. But instead of criticising Pat Frank – how about writing your own letter?
Pat, I think your letter just went completely over their heads. Judging from the quality of the stuff they see fit to publish, conceptual thought is a bridge too far for this crowd. They just don’t seem to be very bright.
Perhaps Pat Frank should write another letter thanking them for their letter of rejection as it has enabled many more readers to benefit via publication on WUWT. Readers can draw their own conclusions as to the reason for rejection. Another example of alarmists not wanting to discuss or debate their science. The brotherhood of peer review redefiners knows no bounds.
I guarantee that the only response by the NCSE will be to assign someone the task of digging up dirt on Pat Frank.
re. different posters above …
first 3 paragraphs are absolutely essential … because they are a rehearsal of what Science is all about, and what has been completely ignored and neglected by “climate scientists”
this letter was rejected for one simple reason: because it makes sense …
and sense atm is not what is needed, what is wanted, neither by these “scientists”, nor by the majority of politicians that support them …
politicians want our money and our minds … these climate scientists just want money (just reread the opening emails of Climategate, and how much Hantemirov and Briffa were hopeless for funds …) … together they make a great team, and they will go on as long as possible …
this is the big picture …
this will be a long combat …
Please don’t take this wrong, as your intent and information are terrific. I agree that they denied you because of pretext. The carrot here is meeting whatever standards (not publlished of course) they are measuring letters (complaints) by. Meet them head on and address their stated concerns, but don’t back down! After a few thread followups here, it’s going to get pretty Da%* embarrassing for them when Anthony and the WUWT crew are publishing their mealy CAGW two step they expect of real science and scientists asking for real science.
That said, I do think you need to address some of your writing.
Your intro is nebulous, vague and wandering. Yes, the paragraph is beautiful and the end sentences are especially blockbusters; they’re just not in the right place with those beginning sentences where your trying to interest readers and call editors and authors to the carpet for bad science. Remember, your letter is about being upset with bad science. You have a right and expectation to be indignant and blunt; don’t let poetic or formally beautiful writing get in your way as those irresponsible ‘letter to the editor’ editors are looking for those complicated wordings as outs.
My suggestion(s): Introduce your subject. Summarize the article as your perceive the main points of David Morrison’s polemic. Identify your specific concerns both about the overall article and about how NCSE could allow an article with such overwhelming mis-information and hate towards people who question science. Identify explicitly which points of David Morrison’s you intend to question or rebut and which points you feel are moot because of the emotional stance they advocate.
Keep your sentences short! You’re not writing a reference paper for other researchers. You’re writing a piece for a publication where people skim first and read later. Explain, document, link, reference after you make a darn good opening sentences for your points. Keep the letter short too, they may have a limit on how many long letters they publish.
Good Luck!
Richard Wright says:
March 27, 2012 at 8:48 am
How was any of this predicted? ….{Evolution}
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The prediction is genes mutate and favorable/neutral mutations cause drift in the population eventually leading to new subspecies and then species. If you want an example in the present:
Dear Dr. Frank: I suggest you send your excellent letter to the Wall Street Journal along with the background story. That way a large audience will be exposed to shenanigans of organizations like NCSE.
johanna says:
March 27, 2012 at 10:10 am
…. instead of criticising Pat Frank – how about writing your own letter?
Pat, I think your letter just went completely over their heads…. They just don’t seem to be very bright.
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No Johanna WE understood and can appreciate Pat’s letter, We just do not think NCSE can. In other words we think they have the attention span of a three year old and should be treated accordingly.
Hot under the collar says:
March 27, 2012 at 10:11 am
Perhaps Pat Frank should write another letter thanking them for their letter of rejection as it has enabled many more readers to benefit via publication on WUWT….
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Excellent idea!
I am sure WUWT has a much wider audience than NCSE and the publication of the whole mess on the internet was not what they wished for when they tried to bury the rebuttal.
jerry says:
March 27, 2012 at 10:52 am
I guarantee that the only response by the NCSE will be to assign someone the task of digging up dirt on Pat Frank.
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Oh, he has already rattled their cages. http://www.rabe.org/doubt-makers/
Gail Combs says:
March 27, 2012 at 11:39 am
johanna says:
March 27, 2012 at 10:10 am
…. instead of criticising Pat Frank – how about writing your own letter?
Pat, I think your letter just went completely over their heads…. They just don’t seem to be very bright.
______________________________
No Johanna WE understood and can appreciate Pat’s letter, We just do not think NCSE can. In other words we think they have the attention span of a three year old and should be treated accordingly.
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Gail, please read my post again. What I said was that NCSE didn’t get it, not WUWT readers. The WUWT readership is, IMHO, much smarter than the dim bulbs at NCSE.
An excellent letter, but as others have said, obviously pitched way above and beyond the understandings of the management of the NCSE.
The lunatics have complete control of the asylum!
Gail Coombs:
Gail, you are still missing Richard’s point. What you have cited is not a prediction, but an hypothesis. Inherent in the Darwinian hypothesis is that the mutations in genes are random. By definition, they are not predictable. No one can predict what kind of mutation will come next. A testable scientific hypothesis can make predictions about what the outcome of a particular perturbation may be, and then subject that prediction to experimentation to verify whether the outcome is as predicted. This is the falsifiable dimension of the problem. Simply put, the Darwinian model of evolution is not falsifiable.
This is not to suggest that the cases that you cite are incorrect or invalid. There is a fundamental epistemological distinction here that is frequently misunderstood. Evolution cannot, by its very nature, be validated by the scientific method promoted by Popper and summarized in Pat Frank’s letter. The strengths or weaknesses of the Darwinian hypothesis must be tested by essentially legal-historical means, more analogous to the methods employed in a court of law than by the scientific method. All we have to go on is our understanding of the present state of a given biological life form, coupled with evidence of former states (be they fossil records, divergent species, genetic mutations, etc.). It is therefore the preponderance of the evidence, both for and against the hypothesis, that either strengthens or weakens the hypothesis. This is an entirely appropriate way to pursue knowledge. However, this is not the scientific method (in the Popperian sense), and we must studiously avoid conflating the two.
The world climate is changing rapidly – Texas drought 2001 – 2011 demonstrates it according to NCSE:
http://ncse.com/climate/climate-change-101/is-climate-changing-now
This is science NCSE? No. Easy to check:
http://www.real-science.com/1930-worst-drought-in-us-history-2
http://www.real-science.com/permanent-drought-update
http://stevengoddard.wordpress.com/2011/07/15/worst-drought-in-history/
NCSE became yet another organisation that does not care about science but sold itself (for a few bucks? what for?) to the CAGW meme.
They are on the other side, on this side is Ivar Giaever, Freeman Dyson, I feel confortable on this side of science. Maybe they should reconsider their participation in the CAGW crusade, it is not helping any science what they do, but promoting a pseudo science, the Gleick affair should have rang a bell.
johanna says:
March 27, 2012 at 12:04 pm
Gail, please read my post again. What I said was that NCSE didn’t get it, not WUWT readers. The WUWT readership is, IMHO, much smarter than the dim bulbs at NCSE.
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Sorry Johanna, I thought the “over their heads” referred to us (WUWT) since we were the subject of the first paragraph.
thereisnofear says:
March 27, 2012 at 12:34 pm
Gail Coombs:
Gail, you are still missing Richard’s point….
________________________________
OK I can understand where you are coming from but if I recall from my very sketchy Biology background I think experiments were run using irradiation to create mutations in Fruit flies.
Ah yes here are a references:
http://www.jstor.org/discover/10.2307/2458677?uid=3739776&uid=2129&uid=2&uid=70&uid=4&uid=3739256&sid=55956809903
and
http://www.ndsu.edu/pubweb/~mcclean/plsc431/mutation/mutation3.htm
I do not know if anyone went the next step and determined if any of the induced mutations were “Useful” HMMMmmm seems that sort of thing was look at as early as 1926.
So again I really do not think you can equate Evolution with climate at least at this stage because experiments CAN be done in the field of evolution. That is artificially creating mutations that are nonlethal in the offspring.
I realize this is not quite the same as what you have stated:
However if mutations could not be produced by gamma radiation (a radiation seen in elevated doses near volcanoes) or by any other method then at least that part of the theory would have been brought into serious question and the specific hypothesis gamma radiation produces mutations would have been falsified.
Of course now with the ability to insert genes Monsanto and other companies ARE producing a particular perturbation and verifying whether the outcome is as predicted.
The Theory of Evolution of course is a broad topic and is really a series of linked hypotheses some of which are certainly testable and I think that is what you are trying to say by saying it is not “falsifiable”
I had some worry the NCSE might know some better science that would change my mind. Now I know it is the same fear-mongering and guilt-mongering pseudoscience of AGW. The Younger Dryas was 4-8C cooler than the periods before and after it and it terminated in just a decade.
Lucretius said that natural philosophy is the means to free ourselves from fear-mongering. It does not seem as though NCSE is with Lucretius.
In some ways evolution is like cosmology, you don’t get to do a re-run on another universe/Earth and compare results.
However there are predictions in both cases.
For example, if a new antibiotic, insecticide or herbicide is introduced, and widely used, we can predict that organisms will gradually become more and more resistant to it – not less. And observation shows this is indeed the case.
Likewise, we can make predictions about what sort of fossils we might discover in future. We’re never going to discover a crab with feathers, or a frog with a mammalian ear. An intelligent designer might find such hybrid designs appealing, but features from widely separated lineages are impossible in evolution for reasons of history.
Gail Combs says:
March 27, 2012 at 11:34 am
And they are still deer. Mutations occur and adaptation occurs. No one debates this because they are observable. What has not been observed is mutation causing a deer to change into something else. That is a very big difference. And there are other theories that speak against it happening, e.g., Information Theory. One has to account for the fact that humans have far more information in their genetic code than do bacteria. To suggest that this information is the product of random mutation is not only at odds with Information Theory but contrary to all other experience.
Because macro evolution has never been observed and is likely to never be observed (because of the proposed time scale), and because no one has come up with an experiment that might show it, evolutionists resort to the interpretation of archeological findings and pointing to similarities of DNA. But similarities do not prove causation and interpretations of archeology are, well, interpretations. It’s all very much like climate science. A lot of interpretation, supposition of cause and effect and appeal to authority. There’s a little science underpinning it, but lots of extrapolation and claims that have not been substantiated via the scientific method.
Notice the difference with Newton’s law of gravity which is mathematical, predictable, subject to experimentation and verifiable by multiple researchers at multiple times. That’s why there is no debate about it and why there is a lot of debate about global warming.
> To suggest that this information is the product of random mutation is not only at odds with Information Theory but contrary to all other experience.
That’s the fundamental misunderstanding right there, among most anti-evolution folks.
They think that random mutations are pushing towards adding fitness or information, etc.
The theory is that random mutations go in pretty much all directions. Most the directions are towards less fitness, more randomness etc. But the environment acts a filter, removing all the less fitness variants. The analogy of a hectacomb (the mass slaughter of animals) has been used.
As an illustration, here is a little game:
Imagine a box with 10 dice in it. Let’s start with them all at random. Those 10 dice values represents the gene of the organism. The higher the total of adding up all the dice, the fitter the organism. Duplicate that box, including the dice & values shown on them, to get your population of organisms (we are using a population of 2).
Now each generation what you do is pick the box with the highest total dice score (from the population of 2) and use that to generate offspring. Obviously in the first round, the two boxes are identical, so it doesn’t matter which box you choose, but as you progress in the game, it will.
Offspring are made by duplicating the parent exactly (including dice & values shown on them), except you pick one dice at random from the 10, and re-roll it. Sometimes the offspring will come out more fit (higher scoring) than the parent, sometimes less fit. it’s random. A random mutation.
But each generation you choose the offspring with the highest score. the environmental filtering for fitness, and use that to generate the next generation. And that is not random.
You need to do this for a long-time, and there may be many detours along the way, but eventually you will find that you approach the maximum score (10 dice each with a 6).
I’m a little bit reluctant to jump into the evolution vs religion argument, but I do want to add one bit of perspective:
Folks are bouncing back and forth about new species formation using a mental model of single gene mutations. As though that was all there is. That is simply not the case. The number of ways that genes change and move between species is fairly large and in many cases does cause a ‘species creation like event’.
Just off the top of my head, we can have chromosome duplication or loss (the whole thing… see yyx ‘double male’ individuals), there are “jumping genes” and transposons and other bits of whole chunks or arms of a chromosome that can move from one chromosome to another, sometimes flipping over and being put in place backwards. Various viruses (and perhaps some bacterial forms) can not only swap DNA with each other, but move DNA from one critter into another wholesale (that’s how we do “genetic engineering”, by using what is done more randomly in nature – and it’s why I’m not keen on GMO foods as those SAME things still operate inside your gut and I’m not interested in a “Roundup Ready” gut flora..).
In fact, there are large blocks of DNA that look like they were moved from one species, wholesale, into another. This has caused some grief for the folks doing Cladistics as they use a ‘quantity of same DNA’ metric to determine evolutionary closeness, that breaks down dramatically if large chunks get swapped about… ( Our mitochondria, for example, have indications of having been a free living organism ‘way back when’…)
But even THAT doesn’t capture the ‘looseness’ with which nature swaps DNA about. Just 2 quick examples. One of which has quite clearly led to many species of plants ( and that I’ve used in my backyard to make a very special Kale) and the other makes a new species that could easily show up suddenly in nature, but for the fact that we keep them all in farms so it depends on our desire to let that new species form.
First, the “Triangle of Wu” (or Woo or U depending on how the guys name gets translated).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triangle_of_U
There are 3 base species of ‘Cabbages, Mustards, and Turnips’ with relatively small gene counts (8, 9, or 10 chromosomes). These different species can be crossed to give 3 new species families with chromosome counts of larger size (17, 18, or 19) and giving various kinds of Mustards and Rutabaga and Kale. The theory is that this happened accidentally in nature in some cases, but is also done in the garden deliberately these days. (This, BTW, is why the Rutabaga or Swede is a lot LIKE a turnip, but isn’t a turnip… and why Siberian Kale is a different species from common Kale. Both Siberian Kale and the Rutabaga are the same ‘cross’ but with different exact gene sets, while both the regular kale and the turnip are from parent linages with smaller chromosome counts. Siberian Kale has been recreated ‘from scratch’ via repeating the crossing.)
This is NOT a unique example, just one that is very complex and particularly important to food production.
So anyone doubting that a new species can be created ought to just go cross a turnip with a cabbage and make one themselves. (There are very many kinds of turnip, and many kinds of cabbage, and not all the ‘trials’ have been done, so you can make your own species any time you like…)
The “species barrier” is more of a “species strong suggestion” and frequently broken. It is likely that many current species arose from such crossings and not from point mutations.
Basically: point mutations make the small changes and reshuffling the deck gives the big species events, IMHO.
One more (there are hundreds..) is the sheep-goat hybrid:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sheep-goat_hybrid
In at least one case the individual was shown to be fertile in back crossing and one could form a new species with just a couple of generations of work, if desired.
It is also likely that several of the canine species are formed this way ( some species in the wild have now been found to be crosses of two other species…. )
There is an interesting chart of the crosses that ‘work’ here:,
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canid_hybrid
So, not to be a wet blanket on the “Does So!, Does Not!” argument, but, er, um, both are wrong. Each is trying to prove that point mutations can / can’t cause species to form via natural selection. But reality is not working on only point mutations. It’s like arguing about how best to bake cakes but ignoring the use of the oven…
BTW, since I’m in ‘rain making mode’: The whole ‘God vs Darwin’ debate is just a waste of breath anyway. Personally, I see no reason why God could not just chose to use evolution as His Method Of Creation. It is, IMHO, much more elegant a solution and were I a ‘creator God’, I’d not want to hand craft each species if I could just create the program, turn it loose to run, and watch it make my species “according to my plan”.
So maybe, just maybe, can we skip that particular debate? It is founded on a false premise (that God could not have chosen to create evolution) and it ignores the known non-point mutation modes of evolution. So it can never end, nor resolve.
OT
Strong swing of ~1% in vertical (green line) and ~7% in the horizontal geomagnetic component (blue line)
http://flux.phys.uit.no/cgi-bin/plotgeodata.cgi?Last24&site=tro2a&
(science doesn’t consider it as a probable or even possible trigger of a strong earthquake)
I was with the NCSE when it first started in Eugenie’s basement. Thus I’ve known Eugenie since the mid 1980’s. Though I moved on from taking on creationism in Canada once is was clear we have won that battle up here. Our target in those days was creationism only, and it’s attack on science. The NCSE was the main driver in turning the tide around, rallying scientists all across the continent and Australia.
I’m greatly disappointed in this new tact. It’s going to be a big embarrassment. I’ve toyed with the possibility of calling Eugenie and expressing this very point, but I fear nothing now will change their minds. Sad.
E.M.Smith says:
March 27, 2012 at 2:15 pm
I’m a little bit reluctant to jump into the evolution vs religion argument, but I do want to add one bit of perspective:….
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Thank you for jumping in. A lot more stuff than I was aware of although I was aware of the possibility of gene jumps with the GMOs. Like you that is my reason for avoiding them.
I also agree on your view that Evolution and God are not mutually exclusive. It is the reason I am an “Agnostic” and not an atheist.