Fake News: Trump official, Scaramucci, says Earth is only 5,500 yrs old.

Here’s one example. “Richard is correct.”
Richard is clearly not correct.
1) “…scientific method was defined as studying only that which is repeatedly observable.” Just because you may have been told that is the definition, doesn’t mean it IS the definition. (Also, there has been plenty of time since having been given that false definition to have learned the correct one.) Either way, that statement is wrong.
2) As is the illogical conclusion drawn from it: “By definition, that limits science to studying present day physical phenomena.” No.
Richard is incorrect, therefore your first sentence is wrong.
That’s the easiest example. Addressing your misconception about the extent of our knowledge about the origins of life on Earth, and the process and progress of science are much more difficult tasks. Fortunately there is an ocean of information freely available, gathered by people far smarter and more industrious than me.
Also, why the defensive view of the term “ignorant?” You can–and should–call me ignorant about almost any subject you could name. It simply means that I don’t know anything about it. Nothing wrong with that. It is true of everyone. Ignorance is an opportunity to learn.
WILLFUL ignorance, on the other hand, impedes human progress. It partially explains the rise of the CAGW insanity…

TheLastDemocrat: I noticed that those who called you wrong merely claimed that you’re wrong, they didn’t show why you’re wrong. They merely made assertions, not reasons.
I first learned the scientific method from a textbook co-authored by George Gaylord Simpson and William S. Beck called “Life, an introduction to biology”, 1966. On page 14 we find, “Observation of a particular object or occurrence is the fact, the datum, from which all scientific knowledge stems and to which all scientific theories must return. It is essential to the nature of science that an observation, against which the answers to scientific questions are tested, be repeatable.” In the following pages the authors described how hypotheses and theories were derived from observations, but that no theory could be called scientific if it could not be supported by repeatable observations. I checked numerous textbooks in biology, chemistry and physics in the university library, and of those textbooks that gave a definition, they gave a unanimous agreement with this definition. I also asked other professors, and they too agreed with this definition, unanimously.
What sort of observations are repeatable? Only those done in the present. For example, we can tell the present ratios of radioactive isotopes in a rock sample, but what were the original ratios and what events could have changed those ratios over time? Where are the observations that give answers to these questions concerning the unobservable past? How can radiometric dating be scientific, when it’s dependent on factors that are impossible today to observe? We observe fossils in rocks, but can’t observe when and how they were deposited into the rocks.
Those who say that we are wrong about science, must then answer the question: has the definition of scientific method changed in the last half-century? If not, then their disagreement is with all textbooks of that time. If so, what is the new definition of science? Merely to make a statement that we’re wrong is a logical fallacy.
Now, when we look at so-called “climate science”, how can it be science, when it’s dependent on theories, and not observations? Isn’t that what this whole site is about?

Richard,
You make a common mistake among those who can’t be bothered to learn the science behind radiometric data.
You don’t need to know the original amount of any isotope. It’s the ratio that matters, regardless of the original amount. All you need is enough to measure.
It would seem that this should be obvious, but apparently isn’t.

Although technically should be an oligomer of RNA rather than DNA.
As you know, the ribose sugar in DNA has one less oxygen atom than in RNA, hence its name. And RNA uses uracil rather than thymine, which is methylated uracil.

Gloateus:
Don’t you see the problem with your answer stating “Discovering the abiotic origin of life is simply a biochemical engineering problem”? That it’s an engineering problem shows that you have an addition of information to the soup, that it’s not just random. While I don’t rule out that some day that man will be able to create a living cell, yet already the effort is turning out to be an engineering feat of great complexity. Right now, that complexity is beyond out knowledge, for we don’t know everything that goes on within a cell, even the simplest of self-replicating cells.
Let’s take two examples: the physical record of the great Bonneville flood, and the simple doodle on a beach “John ♡ Mary”. The great Bonneville flood and its record can be explained as the simple action of water against rocks, the simple doodle “John ♡ Mary”, while physically much simpler than the record of the flood, reveals a type of complexity lacking in the flood record, namely information. That you call it an “engineering problem” shows that you are adding information, that it’s not just a random event.
Nowhere have we observed information arising from randomness.

Me,
Don’t believe me if you don’t want to, but the results of experiments have all been published and are readily accessible in the literature, as well as on Youtube.
The two main outstanding issues are, in the first place, getting longer strands of RNA without the protein enzymes used by life today, and, next, unzipping the replicated strands. This latter problem has probably been solved by the Szostak lab, which also identifies in what environment on the early earth this would have happened. But there are other scenarios.
The best candidate for nonenzymatic polymerization of RNA remains clay, but my lab is working on a (what I think, naturally) superior approach, which recognizes that amino acids and nucleotides would have been concentrated together from the beginning. So to speak.
I’m less optimistic than Szostak’s five years, but more so than the most pessimistic estimates, which tend to come from the “metabolism first” school of OoL research. I’m of the replication first school, or at least simultaneous with the demonstrated abotic Krebs cycle.
You overstimate the difficulty with forming the constituent parts from simpler compounds. Self-assembly of amino acids, nucleobases and even oligomers of RNA have been observed and reproduced in the lab. Plus, as noted, amino acids, sugars, phosphate groups, nucleobases and lipids have been found in meteorites, so we know that these reactions would have occurred on the early earth, if they happen in space.
Thus, the gap between complex organic chemistry and life is small and getting tinier with each year. Basically, the last remaining big hurdle is getting the naturally occurring nucleotide oligomers to lengthen before they split up, without a biological enzyme. This is a far from insurmountable problem.
My lab is working on the long shot that amino acids and nucleotides co-polymerized from the origin, while other labs are looking at mineral catalysts and RNA self-catalysis.
My prediction splits the difference. I estimate within ten years. Or sooner if someone gives me more money.

Menicholas July 31, 2017 at 6:20 pm
Clearly your calculations don’t take into account prebiotic organic chemistry.
Oligomers, chains of monomers shorter than polymers, of both amino acids and nucleotides form spontaneously, as indeed do the monomers, ie amino acids and nucleotides. It’s just chemistry. When the constituent chemical compounds are concentrated under the right conditions, such as would have existed on the early earth or in space as the solar system was forming, amino acids and nucleobases form. It has also been discovered that nucleobases, sugars and phosphate groups also self-assemble into nucleotides under certain circumstances, such as in the pockets of liquid water within ice. Then these nucleotides further hook up to form oligomers of RNA.
However, without biological enzymes, the oligomers don’t stay together long enough to form the polymers needed for life. But that is a small gap to be crossed, and is being worked on by great scientists, including well-funded Noble Prize winners. My lab, unfortunately, is not among the best funded.
But, as noted, the few remaining biochemical engineering problems will be solved, and sooner than you suspect. There is nothing magical about life, wonderful though it may be. It’s an inevitable consequence of the nature of matter and of energy transfers under certain conditions. It solves energetic issues that arise in the physics of bodies in space, given the abundance of H, C, O, N, S, P, Se, K, Fe, etc in our universe, thanks to the stars.

Me,
But seriously, the thing is that it isn’t random. Chemistry causes complex organic molecules to form, then their shapes permit further reactions among them. No magic required.
For the benefit of readers who might not be familiar with organic chemistry, amino acids, sugars, phospate groups and nucleobases form spontaneously. You can’t stop them, given the right conditions, which we know existed on the Hadean earth and in outer space.
The monomer of RNA is a ribose sugar attached to a phosphate group, forming the backbone of the nucleotide, with the other end of the sugar attached to a nucleobase, ie adenine, guanine, cytosine or uracil. To make an oligomer, this sugar, which has a free attachment site, further connects with another phosphate group, which is also attached to another sugar with another nucleobase on its other end. And so on. Five, six or seven such bondings occur naturally, but at the same time are subject to breaking up.
The trick of life is to keep this bonding going for dozens of nucleotides, without the enzymes which polymerize nucleotides today. As I said, no magic required, nor is it a random collision of molecules and elements. The very nature of the molecules and elements assures that they will combine into the constituents of life.

Menicholas July 31, 2017 at 6:45 pm
This is not in least little bit a problem. It would help to have studied molecular biology, but no matter.
There is no magic involved in the coding for amino acids of groups of three nucleotides. Indeed the whole point of my experiments is to rely on this chemical fact.
Complex chemical compounds have primary, secondary, tertiary and even higher structures. It’s no surprising that with 64 different three-base codons, they form tertiary structures which glom onto the 21 particular amino acids used by life, which have complementary structures.
The more biochemistry and molecular biology you know, the less mysterious it all becomes. In the lab, the problem is keeping unwanted glommings to occur rather than getting the right ones to happen. Complex organic compounds just naturally hook up, based upon their structures, physics and chemistries.

Menicholas July 31, 2017 at 6:49 pm
Not to worry.
Synthetic protocells, as would be those of the Hadean if transported to the Phanerozoic, would be so totally at the mercy of today’s highly evolved organisms that they’d be nothing but instant snacks for modern life. Their juicy package of nutrients would be immediately devoured by the countless advanced organisms out there, hungry for H, C, O, N, etc, especially when so conveniently packaged.

Menicholas July 31, 2017 at 6:54 pm
Thd difficulty is not downplayed, but advances in the past 20 years have reduced the odds such that it is a virtual certainty that life will be made in the lab in the lifetimes of most reading this.
Twenty years ago, however, OoL researchers were highly pessimistic, even the giants who originated it and had then been working on it for going on fifty years.
Then, practically every year in this century, as more funding became available, startling advances and discoveries were made. I got involved only after it was found that RNA oligomerizes in ice and that it is both a genetic information storehouse and can act as a catalyst. Some of my colleagues are working on the possibility that it catalyzes its own polymerization, but that easy solution is now looking less likely. But still possible.
With a tiny fraction of the resources squandered on the fantasy of catastrophic manmade global warming, we would already have made life in the lab, from scratch.

Menicholas July 31, 2017 at 7:04 pm
A protocell is not like a virus. The problem for a protocell would be staying together long enough to split. Viri are hard to kill, as they lack metabolism. They’re parasites invading cells.
Really, you have to see how tenuous pure lipid membranes are to realize how totally non-threatening and vulnerable protocells would be. They could not survive in the real world. They would exist only in labs recreating the environment of the Hadean earth, where there were no modern cells, let alone multicellular organisms. Outside the lab, they’d be toast in seconds, if that long.

Me,
The origin of viruses remains a controversial subject.
My personal opinion is that they can’t be close to the origin of life, since they have protein coats (another feature which makes them hard to kill). However, that many still use RNA for genetic info storage is an argument against this view. Also, the ribosome, the protein factories in every cell, are a bunch of tRNA with bits of protein on the outside.
My view, for what it’s worth, is that, as parasites, they came after the rise of cellular life, but perhaps not long thereafter. In which case, they are not much younger than prokaryotes, ie originally arising over 3.5 billion years ago. Possibly well before then.
Once there was genetic coding for protein coating, as it were, then strands of RNA and later DNA could go out on their own, free from the constraints of metabolism, ie working for a living, and become biochemical pirates and raiders. And why wouldn’t they?
They’re the Vikings to the peaceful farmers of bacteria and archaea.

Gloateus:
Ahh, the ad hominem attack—“Satanic paid liars”—that’s a sign that you don’t have an intelligent answer. The ad hominem is always the last resort of the liberal who is losing an argument.
In politics, that includes leftists calling their opponents “Nazis” or “Fascists”, while neglecting to state the fact that both Nazis and Fascists were branches of Marxist socialism, i.e. far left.
Another is to take an opponant’s statement(s) out of context, then harp on the falsity of the statement(s). That’s what was done with Scaramucci. (Scaramucci stated the consensus of univeristy historians.)
You have done the same taking out of context in my statement “original concentrations of U-235 and U-238 to each other and to lead in zircon”. The “concentrations … to each other” is another way of saying “ratio”. You take it out of context by leaving off “to each other”. And yes, you do need to know the ratios, and the only way to know them is to have observations of the original ratios.
There’s an old saw that claims that if a million monkeys typing 24/7 on a million typewriters for a million years, will there be somewhere in that stream of randomness a Shakespearian sonnet? The answer is even if one is made, it will merely be lost as part of the stream of randomness unless there’s a filter that can recognize it, a filter which already presupposes intelligence.
Your handwaving “explanation” leaves off a whole slew of improbable events even if gene coding RNA strings that are not negated by being parts of strings of random RNA did appear (unlikely in the first place). One thing you’ll need is self-assembling proteins without the help of a ribosome. The probability of all the necessary events to produce the first life through randomly happening events is so remote that it’s effectively zero.
Look at the irreduceable complexity of even the simplest life: it needs to be self-contained, to be able to take in raw materials, change them to energy and building blocks for the cells, be able to expel waste materials, and to make a copy of itself. Each of those functions also has more than one step. All of that done with self-assembling proteins that don’t need a ribosome for assembly? And all of this just happening to come together at the right place at the right time with the right amounts of biochemicals out of a random soup of organic chemicals while excluding that which would tear it apart? If you can’t even do that with careful biochemical engineering, what makes you think that random processes could have done them?
What was the pre-biotic Hadean earth like? All you have is conjecture based on belief, no observation. According to modern science, the lack of observability makes it non-science. But in the post-modern world where anything goes ………
All of science is in trouble, and it’s not just climate science.
I’m with Menicholas, I’ll believe it when I see it.