bdk wrote:
If you don't like the wording of my poll, feel free to make your own.
I also don't write news stories, so occasionally I post ones that I think might be of interest to others. I don't claim to be a credible source of information on this topic. This is a discussion forum- you get what you get!
I am not a climatologist on the cutting edge of my field so there is nothing I can prove or disprove regarding the climate. I claim to have done no original work in this field, have you? I gather information from sources both pro and con. I read and make a decision for myself. I found the subject of this article to be somewhat ironic as it suggests that the same people who claim to be environmentally conscious are themselves contributing to the problem. Sorry if my point was not clear enough in this respect.
I happen to believe the earth is warming (at this moment). I also believe there are causes, but human intervention is not primary among them. When I was a teenager though, there was a great fear that we were heading into a new ice age. The same fear mongers that were running around then, or their disciples, are still with us.
Darwin has never been conclusively proven right or wrong. That is why it is the THEORY of evolution. Many scientists agreed at one time that the earth was flat and later that the universe revolved around the earth. Many widely accepted theories of the past have since been disproven. Just because there is overwhelming evidence doesn't make something so. It is the things you don't know that make the difference!
Quote:
"No one wants to learn from mistakes, but we cannot learn enough from successes to go beyond the state of the art." -- Henry Petroski
I don't mind your wording. Your grasp of the English language is just fine. Your use of the scientific method wouldn't pass you in a college course
You left out about 1/4 of your respondants, or forced us to choose an incorrect answer. as for posting my own polls, I am not much of a pollster, thanks. I just know how to write them to get a proper range of answers so that they actually mean something.
No, I have done no original work in the field. I am an anthropologist, thanks. However, in my field I have had to do a large amount of work on climate change and effect. At the moment I am working at China Lake, on South Range. If that isn't a clear and strong picture of what a change in weather patterns will do, I can't think of a better one. And yet there are those today who simply cannot see what is coming.
As for Darwin, he has in fact been proved BOTH right and wrong. On some marks he hit the nail on the head, while on others he missed by a mile (he had a book describing Gregor Mendel's discoveries sitting unread on his shelf when he published. Darwin actually only collated all the other theories which were building over a period of about a hundred years before his time--by scientists who were afraid of the chruch and conservatives.
That he stood up to conservatives and spoke obvious truths changed the world. And of course conservatives immediately took to misreading and misrepresenting what he wrote almost immediately. Monkeys my hairy butt!
It always makes me smile when someone points out that it is only a theory. Yes, of course it is. It will only ever be a theory. Laws rarely apply to living things, because they are by nature, mutagenic. It's like claiming that last years cars weren't as cool as this years cars. Well... last year they were. The Japanese planes were better than American planes, weren't they? It's a bogus claim. A theory is a fact which may be proven wrong (usually unlikely) or modified (more likely) but is not a hypothesis in the sense that it HAS been tested and generally not found wanted. That it is a theory means it has stood up to most testing. That it isn't a law isn't a negative, it's more a statement of logic. See what I mean?
The theory of evolution is not a debatable thing. facets of it are, such as where we evolved from, or where life began. But those are gaps, not evidence it the theory is bunk.
There is way more than enough information for us to use Darwins theories as an actual rough frame for how we look at and describe the natural world. The only people who refuse to do so, choose to for reasons which have nothing to do with logic or science. That is their right, and in fact they may get more out of believeing an alien planted us in Peru 6,600 years ago. But if they never seem to mind going to the doctor, when almost all of medical science as we know it is built on viral evolution.
Why am I blabbing about evolution and naysayers? Because there is a massive amount of information which states that our little ball of dirt is warming up. And yet, for various reasons, there are people out there who refuse to believe it.
There are no solid (proved) theories about why it is happening, but that it is now seems to be scientifically pretty much proven. The real argument now should be WHY it is happening, and of equal importance, what it will cause. But we can't get to those questions because of the same nattering nabobs of negativity who have reasons based on "other realities" who are preventing it.
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