WIP

I don't know how else to get the point through that the planet's ecosystems are not completely understood, so how can global warming skeptics make declarations about the causes when they don't even show any interest in what's happening in oceanic research. Their job is nothing more than running interference for their paymasters. I was going to ask this before but exactly who's lives are being sacrificed by a precautionary principle? If the debate wasn't detoured by baseless challenges that the more than six billion people on earth are having no effects on the climate, we could also address other sources of greenhouse gas emissions like the slash and burn agriculture that's practised in many third world countries. If it wasn't for religious authorities like the Pope and the corresponding Muslim leaders, over-population would not even be an issue now! The birth rates are declining in all countries, even third world nations, that allow women access to birth control. It's only the Muslim and Catholic dominated nations that ban birth control and abortion which are still growing out of control.

That's true, but from a humanist perspective I would rather see the pop-atheism writers like Dawkins and Hitchens devote more time to establishing secular ethics and morality and worry less about disproving religious beliefs. If someone, regardless of what their religious beliefs are, shares the same perspective I have on social and ethical issues, I don't really care what else they believe in. This is a central argument in C.F.I.'s Austin Dacey, who says that most atheist groups have tried to privatize beliefs and keep them out of the public square and this has made it impossible to resolve issues like abortion, embryonic research, euthanasia etc.. Instead, all beliefs should be brought into these debates, but beliefs that are based on metaphysical notions such as immortal souls, should be subjected to the same scrutiny as beliefs based on arguments from psychology, sociology and other research. And the secular push to privatize belief and strip secularism of developing ethical and moral positions have left it to the religious to define morality. And if secular atheists refuse to define what principles they believe in, it's easy for hacks like Chris Hedges, William Lane Craig and Dinesh D'Souza to define our beliefs as they wish. http://www.austindacey.com/writing.html

Chris Hedges is the worst of both worlds to me - a far left religious fanatic! Hedges condemns the religious right in the U.S., and then gets all upset when people like Sam Harris and Christopher Hitchens point out that you can't have religious extremism without the religious dogma as the catalyst. In his imaginary world, Christian nationalists like John Hagee and Pat Robertson aren't really Christians...and of course neither is George Bush! And he makes the same excuses for the violence and abuses that have been perpetuated by Islam in the Middle East (tiny minority of extremists) The new religious left typified by people like Hedges, David Kuo, Joel Osteen and Tim LaHaye, have a vested interest in keeping America's obsession with religion going. They just want it to be the driving force on the left side of the political aisle as well. Hedges point about the dangers of utopianism is total stupidity. There might be a case to be made that Neoconservative ideology of nation-building which George Bush bought in to is paternalistic, but how is it utopian? I'm not going to bother reading his books, but in the interviews I've listened to, Hedges never developes a point that trying to improve world conditions is a utopian vision. Is sending aid to Africa utopianism also? By his logic, any action that might improve people's living conditions might be trying to make them better people. With Hedges's twisted logic, there's no point to trying to improve our lot in life. His way of thinking would have left us mired in the dark ages.

McCain always came across as a dimwit to me, but I was surprised to hear on Chris Matthews' show "Hardball", that he graduated 5th from last place at Annapolis. Considering that he's not the brightest bulb to begin with, maybe he doesn't really have a grasp of who's who over in Iraq and Iran.

Is there a point to this rambling blogpost? The author states: Now I am no ocean scientist, nor am I a chemist, but something smelled. After a little looking I found my information on the CO2, carbonic acid, calcite system. So right off the bat he declares he has no expertise to challenge whatever evidence there is for oceanic acidification, but that's not going to stop him from throwing in his two cents worth anyway: The oceans are a vast reservoir of Carbon in various forms and there is a well regulated compensation system that covers a wide range of CO2 concentrations and temperature variation that has worked over billions of years. The other thing was that volcanos spew out CO2 but also SO2 as the Number 2 gas. Sorry, no pun intended. SO2 dissolved in water yields sulfurous acid, so I am told by Oliver Manuel, which is a much stronger acid than carbonic acid. So the effects associated with volcanic eruptions are unrelated to the current situation and was more severe. But that has never bothered the DAGW proponents. When I presented my rebuttal, the response was that this has nothing to do with the AGW agenda. This is different. IT CLEARLY IS NOT! And that's it??? How much has this crank read about the theories and research into the Permian-Triassic Extinction? If he read other research besides the one quoted in the Economist he might realize that the acidification may not have come directly from volcanic activity in the first place, but instead was a consequence of oceans becoming stagnant as increased greenhouse gas levels warmed the poles enough to drastically slow down the convection system that powers ocean currents. The result would be a stratified ocean with less ability to absorb oxygen. And the following study also notes that sulphuric acid in the oceans was not directly from volcanoes either, but instead resulted from hydrogen sulfite given off by anaerobic bacteria: The oceans of the Permian seem to have been very stratified. That is to say that the oceans did not intermix from the bottom depths to the ocean surface. There were very distinct layers. Additionally, as the world warmed, the ice caps melted. This decreased the salinity of the top waters and made the stratification worse. This caused the bottom of the ocean to be anoxic (ie very little or no oxygen dissolved in the various layers). The warming made the anoxic conditions worse. Warm water holds less oxygen than does cold. Life in the water would be...less than comfortable. With the melting of the very extensive ice caps, the oceans would rise and the anoxic layers would be brought up to depths that would originally have been habitat for the Permian marine organisms (This is Hallam's regression-transgression-anoxia theory). Then the warmed ocean unleashes a nasty surprise for the surface and atmosphere: we get methane hydrate burps. There is a large amount of methane sequestered in the ocean in the form of ices. When the water warms too much, the methane is released from the ice. This makes it way into the atmospehre. Methane is a much better greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide. This ended up causing a further 5 degree C atmospheric rise. This happened very quickly and helped to pummel the End-Permian lifeforms even more. If the simulations (PDF) of Jeff Kiehl and Christine Shields of NCAR hold up to the fossil record, this means that the methane in the atmosphere end up whacking the ozone and unleashes a lot of normally blocked ultraviolet light [here too] above and beyond the norm which helps kill off the terrrestrial ecosystems as well. As if to add insult to injury, the hypoxic-anoxic oceans encouraged growth of anaerobic bacteria that produce lots of hydrogen sulfide. Hydrogen sulfide is nasty stuff and highly toxic. It would help kill even more in the oceans than even oxygen deprivation would. It would, futhermore, bubble out of the oceans and kill right and left anything that took a whif on land. However, to make things even worse, Kiehl et al state that it increases that length of time that the methane remains in the atmosphere. This increases the amount and heating and away we go. In the end, what killed life at the end of the Permian? It was a negative feedback that in effect, even in such a hellaciously hot climate (72 C at the equator!), snowballed. If ever there was a time that we, the planet Earth, was dangerously close to tripping over the edge into a run away greenhouse, that would have been it. Not the Eocene. The mechanisms that regulate the CO2 content in the atmosphere broke down, got depressed, and nearly shot itself in the head; in effect nearly ending all life. http://thedragonstales.blogspot.com/2006/1...used-great.html

RAMBLE! So you want "conclusive empirical evidence" that increased ocean CO2 levels can continue on with no harmful effects to life on earth. Excuse me if I prefer to err on the side of caution! Just like no outsiders knew before last week how much unrecoverable debt Bear-Stearns was holding, there is no way to know how much Exxon-Mobil is devoting to their multifaceted disinformation campaign unless someone does a forensic audit. I already pointed out previously that there are political interests on both sides of the global warming debate; but there is a much larger and more diverse group of scientists worldwide who believe there is a compelling case for man-made global warming, so they can't all fit in George Soros's hip-pocket like the small band of expert skeptics who are funded by lobby groups working for Exxon or the coal companies.

Do a little further reading on the subject. The research is not all done on mDNA, the results are also based on examination of Y-chromosone DNA samples. And physical characteristics such as blond hair and blue eyes that you mentioned are a result of gene expression (actively coding proteins). Specifically, the gene that causes this trait is called OCA2 and is carried by virtually every race of people walking the planet. The only mystery was why this gene was selected for in the European population and not in other groups. It should serve as a caution to everyone like you who is hung up on superficial physical characteristics that different races possess! http://www.scienceblog.com/cms/all-blue-ey...stor-15361.html

Your welcome! The P/T Extinction might indicate that we should be more worried about what happens with CO2 absorbed by the oceans than worrying about storms or rising sea levels. This is what bothers me about the "don't worry, be happy" collection of global warming skeptics - they are narrow focused on either disproving a human connection to climate change or denying that CO2 levels impact temperatures; none of them are interested in gaining a further understanding of how they weather cycles function. I heard one of these idiots offer the fallback position that even if the climate is getting warmer, it's good news for Canada! That's an indication of how superficial the skeptics want to treat the issue.

It should be obvious! Many uninformed people are citing the cold winter as evidence against global warming. The Russian story points out what should be an obvious fact that the weather is not the same everywhere. This winter, using North American temperature readings might appear to be evidence for cooling or no change, while temperatures in Russia are 2 degrees above normal. It all depends where you're taking the measurements from. And that same variability impacts arguments like the contention skeptics use that the climate was warmer in the middle ages because grapes were growing in England and the Danes were able to set up colonies in Greenland and Labrador. But anecdotal evidence from the MiddleEast and China showed that they were having droughts and cold winters during that time, and that this was a primary incentive for Genghis Khan and the Mongols to leave their homeland and try to conquer the world. The biggest complaint I have about the climate skeptics is that they are using uncertainty about climate cycles as "proof" that higher CO2 levels don't cause global warming. Some of the challenges I've read so far point to the time lag between rising CO2 and increase in temperatures, and if I'm not mistaken, Richard Lindzen claims that rising temperatures cause an increase in CO2. What these idiots are doing, is taking advantage of a system that's not completely understood and making sweeping generalizations about climate change based on their own simplistic understanding, and show little or no curiosity about the big picture: Case in point - CO2 absorption by the oceasns. Many climatologists and marine biologists have been aware that half of the CO2 dumped into the atmosphere is absorbed by the oceans. The questions now being asked are: How much CO2 can the oceans take in? and what effects will increased ocean CO2 levels have on marine life? http://ioc.unesco.org/iocweb/co2panel/HighOceanCO2.htm and http://www.gdrc.org/oceans/fsheet-02.html and http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archi...2-in-ice-cores/ etc........there are lots more links for anyone interested in the subject, but I haven't come across any studies or analyses of the issue on ocean CO2 levels conducted by any of these global warming skeptcs! Ross Gelbspan journalist and author, wrote a 1995 article in Harper's Magazine which was very critical of Lindzen and other global warming skeptics. In the article, Gelbspan reports Lindzen charged "oil and coal interests $2,500 a day for his consulting services; [and] his 1991 trip to testify before a Senate committee was paid for by Western Fuels and a speech he wrote, entitled 'Global Warming: the Origin and Nature of Alleged Scientific Consensus,' was underwritten by OPEC." [3] While generally considered a climate skeptic, John R. Christy was a co-drafter of the American Geophysical Union's December 2003 position statement on climate change, which concludes that: "Human activities are increasingly altering Earth's climate, and that natural influences alone cannot explain the rapid increase in surface temperatures observed during the second half of the 20th century." Dr. Roy Spencer is a principal research scientist for the University of Alabama in Huntsville and the U.S. Science Team Leader for the Advanced Microwave Scanning Radiometer (AMSR-E) on NASA's Aqua satellite. [1] Spencer is a prominent global warming skeptic. Since February 2004 he has been a columnist for TCS Daily writing over forty columns, almost entirely on the the topic of global warming. TechCentral Station by the way, receives substantial funding and advertising from Exxon-Mobil. TCS does not run stories that support the global warming side, so I would say that there is an obvious quid pro quo, and Spencer is being rewarded for playing his part in the disinformation campaign even if his money goes through so many hands that it can't be traced directly to Exxon. http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title...keptics#Funding * I couldn't find Pielke in the sourcewatch list. As mentioned above, accounting is a very creative artform and large corporations such as Exxon do not have to fund skeptic researchers directly. Note that in the case of Spencer, he is being paid by an internet news source that receives large funding from Exxon.

Are cold temperatures here proof that the climate isn't changing? And the weather isn't the same all over the world. Take a look at what's happening in Russia for example: The Ups and Downs of Global Warming Andrew MOISEENKO, translation: J. Marshall Commins — 25.03.2008 The year 2007 marked the warmest year in the history of Russian climate observation, according to the Russian Federal Hydrometeorological and Environmental Monitoring Service (Rosgidromet). The average annual temperature was 2°С above the norm. Few doubt that the Earth's climate is changing, but no one knows exactly why or how long the process will last. The international community must start preparing today for the effects of global warming..........continued http://www.volgograd.kp.ru/daily/24069/308198/ I was a climate change skeptic also, until the preponderance of evidence started showing clear evidence that human activity is playing a part in altering the climate. If it was just a few cranks like David Suzuki, it would be easy to write them off. Left wing idealogues gravitate to any issue that will require government action as part of a solution. Environmentalism has provided a convenient home for every activist who hates capitalism and wants government ownership of industry. That said, the consensus of opinion among the scientists who study climate research is not on the side of the skeptics. And even more troubling is the fact that most of these skeptics exagerate their credentials and are indirectly funded by energy companies who have a vested interest in maintaining the status quo: New analysis of the latest ExxonMobil funding reports reveals that in spite of recent public statements to the contrary, the company continues to bankroll organizations that misrepresent the science and urgency of global warming. The research, conducted by Greenpeace’s ExxonSecrets.org project, shows that in 2006, ExxonMobil spent $2.1 million funding dozens of prominent climate-denial organizations. Moreover, recently unearthed Exxon tax forms show that the company specifically covered up grants earmarked for Global Climate Change Efforts, Activities, Issues, Education or Outreach to fourteen skeptic organizations in 2005. “Exxon’s decade-long campaign of denial and deception on global warming has provided cover for the Bush Administration’s inept climate policy,” said Kert Davies, Research Director at Greenpeace “Although Exxon’s public rhetoric on global warming appears to be shifting, in reality they continue to fund the denial industry.” Greenpeace’s analysis shows that Exxon continues to fund the core network of front groups that have been misrepresenting the science on global warming and attacking the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change since the early 1990s. Among the recipients of Exxon funding in 2006 are several organizations which have been at the center of Exxon’s tobacco-style disinformation campaign. http://www.polarisinstitute.org/exxon_stil...limate_skeptics Global warming skeptics http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title...change_skeptics

On the subject of oceans being poisoned by increasing CO2 levels, you might be interested in checking out the book "Under A Green Sky" by paleontologist Peter Ward. Ward was studying rock layers of the Permian-Triassic Extinction - referred to as "the great dying," it was an event that wiped out at least 96% of marine animals on earth. Ward was looking for evidence of a comet or asteroid impact similar to the one that caused the later extinction of the dinosaurs, but instead found evidence that a sharp spike in CO2 levels warmed the poles and slowed the circulating ocean currents enough to literally poison the oceans. http://www.amazon.com/Under-Green-Sky-Warm...s/dp/006113791X The P/T Extinction was caused by volcanic flood basalts, but he sees the increase in human-produced CO2 as capable of creating the same kind of mass extinction in the next 50 to 100 years.

I can see solar activity, volcanoes and other natural processes affecting climate, but I can't see a growing population that's increasing CO2 output having no effect on the climate. Most of the climate skeptic challenges I've read about temperature data look like attempts to lull the public into ignoring the issue so energy companies that pay these skeptics can carry on business as usual.

The operative word should be "climate change" instead of global warming because there are too many numbskulls who look at the bad winter we're having hear in the East and declaring that there can't be any case for global warming! The earth's climate is an extremely complex system, so trying to make clear predictions about how it will affect our weather is going to be difficult. There is uncertainty about whether "tipping points" will occur and cause a runaway greenhouse effect; and it's even in dispute whether higher temperatures will cause more or less hurricanes on the average. The only thing that is agreed upon is that more energy in the planet's climate systems will cause more severe storms and greater shifts in weather. That would fit the pattern with what's happening this year! For my part, I'm not going to put much stock in the oil company-financed "skeptics" unless they can show that the steady increase in man-made CO2 levels can carry on without having any impact on the climate.

The National Geographic article you posted is consistent with the Out of Africa model of modern human settlement. It doesn't matter a whole lot if migratory patterns went to India before Europe as far as I'm concerned. The one I posted yesterday that based its conclusions on the latest DNA evidence contends that the first settlers venturing into the New World 40,000 years ago, were trapped in Beringia for 20,000 years until the glaciers receded and allowed travel across the continent. Any comments? http://www.livescience.com/history/080212-new-world.html

No, the Age of Aquarius doesn't start in 2012! Not that it would matter anyway, but this is the usual convergence of pseudoscience that happens every time someone picks a date for the end of the world. Dec. 21, 2012 is only significant because the Mayan calendar makes a role-over. Every 144,000 days or 395 years, the Mayan Calendar reaches a "baktun" where it advances to the next age. There have been 12 so far since the calendar began in 3114 B.C. and there's no reason to expect the next baktun to be any more significant than previous turnovers. But since this is the next date set for the apocalypse the astrologers have jumped on the bandwagon and declared it to be the beginning of the Age of Aquarius. Since astrology claims to base its systems on astronomy, astrologers are supposed to be determining these constellation ages on the precession of equinoxes. According to various calculations noted in the Wikipedia article, the earliest date claimed for beginning the Age of Aquarius is 2150: Timeframes In 1928, at the Conference of the International Astronomical Union (IAU) in Leiden, the Netherlands, the edges of the 88 official constellations became defined in astronomical terms. The edge established between Pisces and Aquarius locates the beginning of the Aquarian Age around the year 2600. The Austrian astronomer, Professor Herman Haupt (astronomer), examined the question of when the Age of Aquarius begins in an article published in 1992 by the Austrian Academy of Science: with the German title Der Beginn des Wassermannzeitalters, eine astronomische Frage? (The Start of the Aquarian Age, an Astronomical Question?). Based on the boundaries accepted by IAU in 1928, Haupt's article investigates the start of the Age of Aquarius by calculating the entry of the spring equinox point over the parallel cycle (d = - 4°) between the constellations Pisces and Aquarius and reaches, using the usual formula of precession (Gliese, 1982), the year 2595. However Haupt concludes: "Though it cannot be expected that astrologers will follow the official boundaries of the constellations, there will be an attempt to calculate the entry of the spring equinox point into the constellation of Aquarius." ... "As briefly has been shown, the results and methods of astrology in many areas, such as concerning the Aquarian age, are controversial on their own and cannot be called scientific because of the many esoteric elements."[13] * Zodiacal 30 degrees: * Heindel-Rosicrucian based interpretation: begins in ca. AD 2654[14] (the Orb of influence started in ca. 1934/1930s). * Elsa M. Glover interpretation:[15] ca. AD 2638. * Neil Mann interpretation: begins AD 2150. * Dane Rudhyar was one of the most important astrologers of the 20th century. His many influential books helped reconcile astrology with modern psychology and free it from the deterministic trappings of the past. According to his interpretation, the Age of Aquarius will begin in AD 2062. * Constellation boundary year: * Shephard Simpson interpretation: begins in ca. AD 2680. * Hermann Haupt interpretation begins in ca. AD 2595 the letter w also plays a role in this. [edit] Overview http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Age_of_Aquari...Aquarian_age.29

Stop right there! Without realizing it, you are making my point....at least regarding India! The Aborigines were small in number, and lived in largely inhospitable deserts, so developing technology was out of the question. It's a similar situation in much of Africa: even today, Africa is a cauldron of lethal diseases that drastically shorten lifespans compared with more temperate climates of the world. There have been African civilizations (mainly in East Africa), and they followed the same pattern of conquest that Europeans did. The Zulu tribes used their knowledge of metal forging to design and make superior weapons and expand their empire along East Africa and into South Africa. When the Dutch arrived, they drove them off their newly acquired lands because they had the better weapons (guns). I still contend that your case that Europeans are immoral plunderers is baseless since cultures in Africa, Asia, and the Americas were just as ruthless as Europeans when they had a chance to drive out or enslave other tribes. The only difference is that the Whites had the better weapons! But I digress; back to India, even though a few South Asians I've talked with speak with contempt of the British occupation and plundering of their resources, they can't deny that the same British occupation created the infrastructure of the modern state of India and has given them a chance to become a world power. India had developed high levels of learning in philosophy and mathematics, but was stagnating because of a rigid caste system that prevented any advance above feudalism. There was no national identity and no unifying language. The British created the political structure of modern India - the parliamentary system; they built railways that provided the necessary transportation links to create a nation; and strangely enough, they provided the unifying language since cultural rivalries prevented the indigenous languages from becoming truly national languages. This has provided an unexpected windfall in the last 20 years or so since it's that army of English-speaking Indians that have attracted the high tech companies and call centers to set up shop. In short, the Indians may have a lot to complain about, but they never would have become a nation without the British occupation! Keep in mind, that good news stories don't make the news. Natives that have become successful do not become the focus of the story. My father was a structural steel ironworker and most of the men he worked with were Six Nations Indians. There were some deadbeats and alcoholics, but most of them were at the top of their trade and made good livings working at one of the highest paid bluecollar trades. Many retired to start their own businesses, but their success stories never seemed to make the news. Only the Indians getting arrested in Caledonia or living at the homeless shelter seem to be featured in the newspaper. But once again, the technologically backward cultures are doomed to be dominated by ones with advanced weapons and other inventions. If you're saying that the New World would have received technology anyway, that's true! But it still would have been at the point of a gun! The problem is that developing a technological society needs an infrastructure to allow the accumulation and organization of new knowledge. First, you need a written language. The tribes of North America only had simple record-keeping forms such as wampum belts. This would be of no value to record sophisticated ideas. It wouldn't be any help for Plato and Aristotle, and all of their great ideas would have died with them and everyone else would have to begin again from scratch. It's the ability to record and pass on new information that made modern civilization possible. Even the pictograph writing of the Aztecs and Mayans wouldn't advance learning, because the writing systems were too difficult to use for everyday use. The ancient Greek philosophers and mathematicians had the tools in place to advance civilization. The biggest impediment to improving technologies invented by Archimedes and others was that the slave-based economies of the time made labour-saving devices unimportant to the average Greek citizen. And in the opening paragraph you've blown apart the argument that Natives take care of the land! The Mayan civilization collapsed before the Spanish arrived because they used up the local resources and ruined the land through intensive agriculture. Even the Spanish conquest of the Aztecs and Incas is overblown. They were slave-based societies that like many civilizations, expanded their territories too far and were busy fighting enemies on all sides. So, they were bound to fall as well. As for today, I would rather see civilization continue and develop, rather than go back to the forest like the Mayans had to do. The earth right now is too over-populated to allow going back to the old ways.

My point was not to denigrate native cultures but to show that the First Nations have gained monetary benefits as a result of the European invasion, and these benefits of modern living should be mentioned in the same arguments about who owns the land. Also, I have done a little bit of reading about Aboriginal societies, and the point should be made that you can't speak uniformly of every tribe when you're talking about cultural values. There was huge diversity among the groups of North American Indians. They had different religious and spiritual beliefs. Some like the Plains Indians were warrior cultures that put skill in warfare ahead of everything, others were pacifists and abandoned their territories to avoid conflicts. Many were simple hunter/gatherers while others were developing agriculture (though none raised livestock). But even the most advanced societies were not developing the infrastructure to build the technologies that we depend on today. It's one thing to ramble on about how the Europeans came and ruined everything, but how far would the First Nations have developed if we never arrived? Would there be cities? Would you have doctors and hospitals, or would you be stuck with shamans and medicine men? Would there be paved roads with cars? Electronic gadgets from radios, TV's to computers? So my question is now that you've informed us about how much you think your land is worth to us, how much of the modern way of life that we brought here and continue to develop, is worth to you? I don't see many hardline native activists willing to part with their guns, ATV's and health cards!

I wasn't referring only to local floods. Many geologists believe that the retreating glaciers from the last ice age caused a number of major floods. One theory is that a collapsing glacier flooded the Black Sea and may have been the source of the flood myths in the Middle East. I wasn't sure what point you were trying to make, unless you believe that there was a worldwide flood that covered the entire earth! If so, you won't find a legitimate geologist to support that view. There are many archaeologists who believe the settlement pattern of the New World was more complicated than a long march across the Bering land bridge. New archeological and genetic information indicates that the confusion over contradictory evidence may have been the result of three distinctive migrations: The first stage of this voyage involved a gradual migration of people from Asia through Siberia starting about 40,000 years ago into Beringia, a once-habitable grassland populated with steppe bison, mammoths, horses, lions, musk oxen, sheep, wooly rhinoceros and caribou that nowadays lies submerged under the icy waters of the Bering Strait. The second phase of the journey was basically a layover in Beringia. "Two major glaciers blocked their progress into the New World. So they basically stayed put for about 20,000 years," said researcher Connie Mulligan, a molecular anthropologist at the University of Florida in Gainesville. The population there apparently did not grow or shrink much during this era, which suggests Beringia "wasn't paradise, but they survived." In the final act, "when the North American ice sheets started to melt and a passage into the New World opened, we think they left Beringia to go to a better place," Mulligan explained, resulting in a rapid expansion into the New World about 15,000 years ago. Their research suggests the New World was settled by approximately 1,000 to 5,000 people — a substantially higher number than the 100 or fewer individuals of some prior estimates. http://www.livescience.com/history/080212-new-world.html The Peru settlement was estimated to be 5,500 years old; which would be long after the Out Of Africa migrations anyway. Are you trying to make a case that aboriginals were always here and didn't come from Asia? How would you explain the genetic evidence that shows similarities with Northeast Asian populations?

I have no idea how these claims can be settled to everyone's satisfaction in this day and age. The native activists are ignoring the obvious fact that for all of their grievances, they were living a stone-age existence when those evil Europeans arrived and started developing the land. Now that modern cities are built on the land, how much do we owe for land that was never developed? Certainly not the billiions of dollars being demanded now!

I'll set aside the fact that women imported from Muslim countries as 2nd and 3rd wives are not going to be likely to speak out against this arrangement and focus on the fact that societies which feature widespread polygamy cannot function as a modern democratic states. Countries in the MiddleEast and West Africa that are polygamous, have the highest birthrates and the widest income gaps between rich and poor in the world. This strengthens the power of wealthy patriarchs who become warlords, and with their large families to back them, they become entrenched feudal lords that rule any local government. The most powerful warlords can even grow big enough to conquer nations, Saudi Arabia is a case in point. But the most dangerous and destabilizing feature is that most marriageable women are "bought" by wealthy men and the nation is left with a large group of young, single men who have no realistic opportunity to get married and have families of their own. The Saudis deal with this problem by sending surplus young men off to wage jihad and hope they never return. Strangely enough, polygamous Mormon communities in Utah and Arizona have dealt with surplus boys in a similar manner: by expelling them from the community. Do you still think allowing polygamy is a good idea? Since polygamy is still illegal, my question is why doesn't the government have the stones to prosecute Muslim polygamists? If some of their wives are collecting welfare, then they can be nailed for non-support also!

Floods are very common severe weather events. Right now there are devastating floods happening in Missouri, Arkansas, Ohio, Illinois and possibly other states as well. A flood myth from a native oral history here would not have any connection to whichever deluge inspired the Sumerian and Near East flood myths. You're making a straw man argument since most archaeologists don't even claim that there had to be a complete land bridge for a Beringian migration into the New World. Some propose that all of the migrations were trans-oceanic. There is not a complete consensus on the route, nor the number of migrations. All we know for certain is that they came from Asia. http://www.ucalgary.ca/applied_history/tut...s/theories.html They never claimed that the land was empty! They just didn't recognize any rights of the natives since they were non-white and unchristian. The LA Times story refers to an archaeological discovery of a 5,500 year old plaza discovered in Peru. How do you see this as disproving the Out of Africa theory that a wave of modern Cro-Magnons moved out of Africa 50,000 years ago and migrated into Europe and Asia, displacing the more primitive hominids. I don't see the connection!

I'm a little skeptical that collaboratiion on the story would necessarily make it a more accurate history. The majority might have an interest in propagating a version of the story that puts them in a better light. The following politically correct position paper written by the Arizona Archaeological Council mentions another problem with oral histories: they blend history, religion and mythology together in a narrative: Sensitive Issues in the Use of Oral Traditions Oral traditions are intimately connected with Native American religious beliefs and knowledge, much of which is esoteric in nature. For this reason, it is essential for archaeologists to collaborate with tribal cultural advisors regarding the use of oral traditions in archaeological research. These advisors are needed to determine what aspects of oral traditions are appropriate for use in scholarly research, to help interpret the results of research, and to guide decisions about publication. http://www.saa.org/publications/SAAbulleti.../SAA14.html#top (* I can't seem to get the post link feature on this board to work for me.) To put it in perspective, the flood myths in the Middle East that led to stories like the Epic of Gilgamesh and Noah's Ark, are also believed to have been based on oral histories of a great flood that flooded the land back in prehistoric times. But aside from vast areas being drowned by flood-waters, how much of the legends can be regarded as history? I'm a little cynical about the reasons why the Supreme Court is validating oral history. In these politically correct times when archaeologists trying to examine "Kenewick Man" had to fight a local tribe for more than 10 years, even though a preliminary examination of the skull revealed that it was totally unrelated to the tribes that occupy the Pacific Northwest, I would say that it's another sign that science is being diluted to accomodate beliefs. Inicidently, the Umatila tribe near where Kennewick Man was discovered, claimed ownership because their oral history maintains that they have lived there since the dawn of time! So how much is their oral history worth? But in these strange times, the court case over the remains had to entertain this mythical belief as a legitimate legal position. It is on the same par as tribes who try to shut down all development because the spirits of their ancestors will be disturbed by construction. This primitive belief did more to delay construction of the Red Hill Expressway where I live, in Hamilton, then all of the environmental groups put together. I fear that a move towards legitimizing oral histories as serious historical narratives is a move toward incorporating myth as history, and providing undeserved legitimacy to superstitious beliefs.

Right now is a bad time to be advocating any U.S. government policies, whether health-care, economic or military! I would feel different about privatizing medicare if their system was working better than ours. They've finally realized that they need universal health coverage for at least the most basic care, but because they have a private system, the only way universal coverage can be implemented is by paying the HMO's first to manage the system.

I wouldn't mind seeing the link to that story! Astrology in general, was only useful for encouraging the keeping of records about the stars, planets and rare celestial events such as comets and meteors, so that a real science of the heavens "astronomy", had data to work with to discover real information about the stars and planets. A similar claim could be made that alchemy paved the way for the science of chemistry because some real knowledge came along from the work of alchemists who were trying to turn lead into gold. The failing of astrology and alchemy is that, like religion, they started with a base of claimed knowledge that didn't actually exist! All they had were a list of presuppositions that filled in the knowledge gap. The lines between science and religion became unblurred when their built-in expectations were cast off and replaced with knowledge based on the accumulation of facts. Science has a system called "peer review" to allow others to challenge new hypotheses. New hypotheses can challenge existing theories if they have a better model to explain observations. Since this thread is on evolution, it's worth noting that there are biologists such as David Sloan Wilson and Lyn Margulis, who want to propose alternative methods for evolutionary change that they want to add to the present modern synthesis. If the advocates of intelligent design were actually doing real scientific research, they could present it for peer review also if they had a scientific case to make! On the other hand, there is no peer review process for refining and correcting religious claims. Religions present their books and their prophets as "revelations", already in possession of the truth, and the only peer review arrives when enough members walk out the door and the church is faced with the decision of making compromises so that they can try to re-interpret their dogma in light of new information. But since any changes weaken their claims of possessing the truth, they are more likely to dig in their heels and refuse to compromise their "revealed truth." There is no "faith in science;" scientific theories are either accurate explanations for test results or they are not and have to be altered or replaced. The reason religious belief requires faith is because it's been deemed essential to maintain the belief even in the face of evidence to the contrary. Today, most of the people who will be attending church will not be all that concerned, one way or another, whether they have good reasons to belong to their chosen house of worship. Most will be their for the community and social needs, including issues of family tradition. Most will probably not give much thought to the doctrines they've grown up with and how relevant they are in this day and age.

To be blunt, God is just a place-holder for unsolved mysteries. How did the Universe begin? God made it. Where did life come from? God made it. Why does the universe seem to be finely tuned for forming stars, planets and organic molecules? God did that too! There is no scientific method to understand God, aside from personal belief and conviction. So God has no place in a serious examination that tries to find real answers to where our universe came from, or whether there are many other universes outside of ours'. There are many things left to be discovered and questions to be answered. Answering them with God does not provide a useful answer to the questions. Since a God answer can't be examined further, it just closes off further inquiry. If there is an intelligent design force powered by God and filling in gaps in the evolutionary process, how would that increase knowledge and understanding of the forces that cause evolutionary change? Does our universe have a purpose that we can understand and that gives us an important role? I don't know, but personally I'm skeptical about this big, empty universe being put here for our benefit.