SkepticLance

Re chimp/human sex Yes, of course it has been done, and many times. The general rule in human sexuality is this : If you can imagine it, someone has done it! I had a book some years ago that actually described a woman who kept a pet male chimp, who was specially trained to provide service. Guess what kind. End result of all of this. There has never been a human/chimp hybrid born. It can't be done. Chimps and humans are too different genetically.

To Bascule There is truth in what you just said. I agree with you with one proviso. I do not like calls for action that include too much urgency. There are too damn many silly bugger ideas out there. For example : pumping vast amounts of sulfate aerosol into the atmosphere to cool things down. It has now been suggested that such an action would have the side effect of ozone layer damage on a massive scale. We have seen the effect of ethanol biofuel production on food prices, and the exacerbation of poverty. Malnutrition increase can only follow. Action must be considered, well researched, and well managed. This takes time, and we cannot afford to be rushed into silly so-called remedial action.

To dichotomy My apologies for misinterpreting your comment. The word 'nutrient' is a tricky one. It can include all sorts of materials, including vitamins, minerals, antioxidants, etc. I think, for the purposes of this discussion, it is better to consider energy sources, than all ancillary nutrients. This tends to be the main thrust in ecology, and the search for energy, more than other nutrients, is a major driver in evolution. Various organisms can obtain energy from a range of sources. I am fascinated by the 'worms' found next to black smokers - deep ocean volcanic vents. In the darkness, immense pressure and extreme high temperatures there, they have found a source of energy utilised with symbiotic bacteria. They hold bacteria inside their bodies, which convert the inorganic chemicals from the volcanic vent into energy. The bacteria die at a rapid rate, and are replaced by new bacteria. The dead bacteria become food for the 'worms'. The energy source here is not organic chemicals as we expect from carnivores and herbivores, or sunlight, as we expect with green plants - but sulfates, which are totally inorganic and the result of geological processes. The ultimate source for that energy is probably nuclear fission. Ancient Uranium, left over from the formation of the solar system, splits to release heat, which in turn drives the chemical reactions in the magma to make the sulfates, and thus give energy to living organisms.

To iNow Thanks for your comments re my Dad. He is dead now, but at the time rose to the occasion. My Dad was very intelligent, and knew an opportunity when he saw it. I won't tell you exactly what happened, but I suspect you can guess. As to why so many farmers fail without subsidies. I cannot answer that for every situation. I can only tell you what I observed myself. You have heard of street smarts, no doubt. Well, there are also farm smarts .....

To Bascule Further quotes from the same article : Quoting Palmer agains. "He warns that models often share the same biases and blind spots about features of the climate system that are critical for regional forecasts. They cannot reproduce El Ninos in the Pacific Ocean, for instance. Nor can they simulate the weather systems that bring drought to the Sahel region of Africa, or the Atlantic storm tracks and blocking high pressure zones that determine whether Western Europe is wet or dry." Another quote "Last year, a panel on climate modelling that was preparing the ground for next week's summit concluded that current models 'have serious limitations' and that their uncertainties 'compromise the goal of providing society with reliable predictions of regional climate change' " And another "The big picture remains clear. Our planet is straying into unknown climatic territory, with consequences that we probably have to accept are almost impossible to predict." And another "Equally worrying is the fact that climatologists are losing confidence in the ability of existing models to work out what global warming will do to atmospheric circulation - and hence to local weather patterns like rainfall." While the focus of this article was local and regional predictions, and the impossibility to carry out such, it is also clear that the climate scientists interviewed for the article had less than total confidence in the ability of models to predict accurately on a global level also. The article suggests that, to solve the problem, an increase in computing power of the order of 1000 fold will be needed. No doubt this will happen eventually. In ten years time, I will probably not be continuing this argument because I would then be wrong. Today, I am not wrong.

To Bascule I love science of all kinds. However, I think a lot of people, including your no doubt worthy self, tend to ascribe greater knowledge to climatology than actually exists. This morning I was reading an article in New Scientist (Australian printed version, 3 May, page 8) titled 'We need better forecasts - and fast.' New Scientist has an editor who has shown himself in editorials to be a global warming catastrophist. So this article is not one favouring people of my bent. It starts by quoting Tim Palmer, climate modeller at the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts at Reading UK. "Politicians seem to think the science is a done deal. I don't want to undermine the IPCC, but the forecasts, especially for regional climate change, are immensely uncertain." Later in the article, it says " On top of this, some climate scientists believe that even the IPCCs global forecasts leave much to be desired." Of course, since the editor is such a believer in catastrophe, the tone of the article is that, if climate models are so unreliable, then the true situation is likely to be much worse. They show little or no evidence for why it should be worse, and not better, but if you are biased to alarmism, then that is what you write. The point I am making is that even alarmists like the New Scientist writers appreciate that climate models are unreliable, whether local or global in nature.

When we discuss ethics, we are saying bye bye to science. We enter a world of totally subjective, and ever changing decisions. Today's ethic is tomorrows sin. In my totally subjective way, and knowing that there are no right or wrong answers, I declare my personal ethic to be focussed on my own species. For totally subjective and possibly incorrect reasons, I choose to adopt mentality as the defining characteristic to be valued. 'Human' means having a high level of sentience, intelligence, self-awareness, and just plain brain power. This means that when I look at the world of non humans, I give greatest importance to those that have high levels of brain power. That is - closest to human in the way that matters most. This is not science, and I can give no evidence for the rightness or otherwise of this approach. It is just my own subjective and emotional decision.

To iNow In relation to my 'condescending dismissal' of cottage agriculture. This is partly based on our experience in NZ. In 1984 we got a new government that had little sympathy with the way farmers had been mollycoddled before that (my father was one of those farmers - a small scale dairy farmer). The new government took away all subsidies and made small scale agriculture uneconomic. Farmers went bust all over the land, and others bought their farms cheap and turned them into large scale enterprises. Today, with no subsidies or financial assistance from taxpayers, New Zealand's farming industry is one of the most efficient on Earth and makes enormous amounts of money. It is the number one mainstay of our economy. I am a firm believer in agriculture being forced to stand on its own feet. This requires the economy of scale. To achieve this will mean temporary pain and long term gain. There is not a hell of a lot of room in this for cottage agriculture!

iNow said : "And, Lance, you've also been shown several times how the change is not linear, so a conclusion such as yours appears to have no solid foundation on which to stand." This was in relation to my own prediction of future climate change. The first thing you need to understand, iNow, is that I am a true sceptic. I am sceptical of my own predictions as well as others! I suggest a continued warming and sea level rise at roughly the same as today. If this happens in spite of the non linear relationship between CO2 and warming, it is because the rate of CO2 emission increases - non linear. With the way China is going, that seems a real possibility. However, I do not really take my own predictions very seriously. I think they are more likely than the computer models, but that is not much of a recommendation!

We simply do not know what the first animal was. In Precambrian rocks, there is a vast lack of fossils. Just a few idiocarans and various mudstone impressions. Even the phrase 'first animal' is of limited meaning. The first organism with enough of the appropriate animal traits was likely to be very similar to the last one with insufficient. In fact, the distinction would be highly subjective. Even if we had fossils of every generation of these organisms, it would be almost impossible to know where to draw the line and say : "This organism was the first animal. That other organism was not an animal." If we made a subjective judgement based on this non existent fossil record, and pointed to one species as the first animal, it might have eaten almost anything, as far as we can know. Carnivore, herbivore, filter feeder, or even obtaining nutrients by being in symbiotic union with bacteria or single celled algae. Lucaspa, I think, has misunderstood the question, and talked about vertebrates. The question was not vertebrates, but animals - quite different as Lucaspa well knows.

To dichotomy Your sarcasm does you little credit. Some organisms can use, as resources, such diverse materials as sulfur, or hydrogen gas, or methane or any source of energy. Stalactites are not likely to be used as a resource since they are low in chemical energy.

To Bascule What do you mean by 'reasonably reliable?' I have said, several times, that my own prediction for the future is a continuation of the current situation. Warming of 0.18 Celsius per decade plus or minus a bit, and a sea level rise of 3 mm per year plus or minus a bit, until about 20 years after humans manage to control carbon emissions. In my opinion 'reasonably reliable' means a computer model that is able to come up with predictions that are appreciably better than the prediction I just gave. Mine was based on a continuation of the current situation. The models you rank so highly must be able to be substantially better than my predictions, or else what value are they?

To Rev The Percy Schmeisser case was reported world wide. I really do not care what was said in a tavern. The court found that he had broken the law by stealing a copyrighted seed. The courts had lots of resources available to establish the facts. I find myself doubting that a few guys getting drunk together could come up with more accurate data. Schmeisser has managed to turn himself into a poster boy martyr for such groups as Greenpeace. In my opinion, this is evidence for his guilt - not innocence. Canada has lost 5000 small farmers per year??? So what? The future lies with large scale agriculture. Let's not get hung up on sentimentality about cottage agriculture. The world needs, and will get, the efficiencies of scale. The current world food crisis devolves back to President moronic idiotic Bush junior. Plus a minor contribution from a temporary Australian drought. A year or two, a little rain in Australia, and a new President, will fix it.

Rev I had a laugh at your vagina torture. Sew a live rat into a womans vagina?? Wow. I think there is a bit of straaange sexual fiction there. For a start, it would die almost immediately, from asphyxiation. The only torture really would be those stitches in her sensitive tissue. For that, I feel really sorry for the poor lass. I understand your focus on farming. I was raised on a dairy farm, and I am really focussed on the situation farmers find themselves in. Fortunately, here in NZ, some 25 years ago the government decided to stop pampering those bloody rich farmers. All subsidies were stopped. All support was stopped. All special favours were eliminated. Result? A lot of the old farmers went bust. Their farms were bought by those who managed to be more efficient. And now the farms are on average four times the size, and ten times as profitable. Farming has become the biggest money spinner of our entire economy by virtue of the cut throat politics of natural selection.

To Rev Your concerns appear to be more centred on monocultures than on GM. The business of copyright on seed well precedes GM. Companies like Pioneer were developing superior seed for farmers decades before GM came on the scene. These seeds were copyrighted and farmers had to buy new seed each season. I see no problem with that. The seed companies spent megabucks developing the superior seed, and a farmer who simply saved the seed to replant was 'stealing' the work of the seed company. Percy Schmeisser gets no sympathy from me. He knew the rules. He broke the rules by knowingly saving seed and replanting it, and in that way was 'stealing' from Monsanto. He got caught. He got punished. If you do not like the copyrighting of seeds, then that is an issue for changing the law, not breaking it. If you feel the need for a change, start a lobby group. The law is always wrong, and can always be improved. However, improving it is done by working with the law makers, not law breakers.

It is better to look at the situation from about 1976 onwards. Before that, we are dealing with smaller increases in anthropogenic greenhouse gases, and a number of other factors that alter warming/cooling. After 1976, CO2 levels are growing at a substantial rate, and other factors are minimal. Over that period there is warming of 0.18 C per decade on average. A clear cut response without the picture being muddied by extraneous other factors.

When we talk about ethics, we are leaving science and entering subjective decision making. Sure, the discoveries of science can be used to support such subjective decisions. The way I see it, there is a coontinuum of mentality extending from humans to bacteria. At the high end, we have humans and other animals of brain power, such as chimps, dolphins and the African grey parrot. We do not have to accord the other intelligent species full human rights, since (probably) none are as intelligent as humans. However, I see room for a recognition of their greater sentience in a lesser recognition of rights. Some kind of code of rights for greater sentience. For example : they may be given the right to life, and adequate space to move in, if living in captivity. The right to mental stimulation when so captured. etc.

The exact evolution of the first microorganisms is not known, for the simple reason that these wee beasties did not fossilise. Bacteria-like organisms and Archean-like organisms probably were early examples. These were neither plants nor animals. They would have evolved into Eucaryotes which were still microscopic, and which still left no fossil trace. The first such Eucaryotes would also have been neither plant nor animal. Life began 3 to 4 billion years ago, and remained unsuited to forming clear cut fossils till 1 billion years ago. Whether anything like plants and animals evolved before this time will remain speculative. The first true plants and animals probably evolved separately. It is not possible to say if the first animals ate plants. They might have been a kind of filter feeder that ate bacteria. Who knows?

To Bascule In a previous thread, you posted a series of graphs showing those historical reconstructions. Most were reasonably close to historical reality. A couple were significantly askew by comparison. Does this answer your question? To iNow Please keep the strawman verbiage out of it. If you think I misunderstand your position, feel free to describe exactly what your position is, so that we can discuss matters without misunderstanding.

The next stage is rechargeable hybrids. These will have higher capacity batteries - probably Lithium. The new Lithium technology permits much longer periods before the batteries need replacing. These cars get charged at home, by plugging into the domestic power supply. The battery capacity is such that short journeys (commuting or shopping) requires no fuel burning at all. This is most of our driving! Thus, most of the time, it is a pure electric car.

This is kind of a 'chicken and the egg' question, and I am sorry to say, a bit meaningless. Long before animals evolved as a separate taxonomic group, there were microorganisms that attacked and killed other life forms. We cannot call them animals, and cannot even call them carnivores, since what they attacked were not animals either. However, the 'life style' was similar to carnivorous. Similarly, some ate photosynthetic microorganisms. We cannot call them herbivores since what they ate were not plants, but were, instead, a kind of microbe plant equivalent. From there, evolution carried the organisms via countless small changes to the point where they could be called animals, and some could be called plants. In between was a grey amorphous region of evolutionary change where the organisms were intermediate to animal, and lived by eating others like themselves or by eating plant equivalents. All kinds of intermediate forms would have existed. Thus, it is not possible to say the first animals were carnivores or herbivores. They were both, or equivalents to both.

To iNow You gotta do better than that! The first sentence of paragraph 2 in your reference says ... "The uncertainties in the impacts of rising greenhouse gases on multiple systems are significant" In other words, even Realclimate admits that computer models of global climate are not accurate. And the reason, as I have said so many times before, is that they cannot take into account all the unknown variables. Freeman Dyson puts it this way ... "The models solve the equations of fluid dynamics, and they do a very good job of describing the fluid motions of the atmosphere and the oceans. They do a very poor job of describing the clouds, the dust, the chemistry and the biology of fields and farms and forests. They do not begin to describe the real world that we live in. The real world is muddy and messy and full of things that we do not yet understand." You are fighting a losing battle, iNow. I doubt that anyone else participating in, or merely reading, this thread believes, as you seem to, that these computer models are some kind of gospel.

To Bascule On this you are correct. But I am building up a pile of references which, together, show that GCMs are neither reliable or accurate. Any reasonable person, having seen the ones so far posted, would agree with me. I have no doubt that I will find, and post, more in future. I realise that refering to authority is not solid debate. However, sometimes it is good to see what the great are saying and thinking. Just came across a reference from the great Freeman Dyson. http://www.edge.org/documents/archive/edge219.html#dysonf I quote : "My first heresy says that all the fuss about global warming is grossly exaggerated. Here I am opposing the holy brotherhood of climate model experts and the crowd of deluded citizens who believe the numbers predicted by the computer models. Of course, they say, I have no degree in meteorology and I am therefore not qualified to speak. But I have studied the climate models and I know what they can do. The models solve the equations of fluid dynamics, and they do a very good job of describing the fluid motions of the atmosphere and the oceans. They do a very poor job of describing the clouds, the dust, the chemistry and the biology of fields and farms and forests. They do not begin to describe the real world that we live in. The real world is muddy and messy and full of things that we do not yet understand. It is much easier for a scientist to sit in an air-conditioned building and run computer models, than to put on winter clothes and measure what is really happening outside in the swamps and the clouds. That is why the climate model experts end up believing their own models." There is a lot more to this article - none of which indicates confidence in these computer models that attempt to simulate a complex world that is beyond current ability to simulate.

Here is another reference to the inaccuracy and lack of reliability of computer climate models. This particular note refers to the fact that the computer models cannot predict regional or local climate change. http://environment.newscientist.com/channel/earth/mg19826543.700?DCMP=NLC-nletter&nsref=mg19826543.700 "Poor forecasting undermines climate debate 01 May 2008 Fred Pearce Magazine issue 2654 "POLITICIANS seem to think that the science is a done deal," says Tim Palmer. "I don't want to undermine the IPCC, but the forecasts, especially for regional climate change, are immensely uncertain." Palmer is a leading climate modeller at the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts in Reading, UK, and he does not doubt that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has done a good job alerting the world to the problem of global climate change. But he and his fellow climate scientists are acutely aware that the IPCC's predictions of how the global change will affect local climates are little more than guesswork. They fear that if the IPCC's predictions turn out to be wrong, it will provoke a crisis in confidence that undermines the whole climate change debate. On top of this, some climate scientists believe that even the IPCC's global forecasts leave much to be desired. ..."

To iNow Let me re-quote from Dr. Frank's article, relating to lousy prediction of cloud formation. " The result is a little embarrassing. The physical uncertainty accumulates rapidly and is so large at 100 years that accommodating it has almost flattened the steep SRES A2 projection of Figure 1. The ±4.4°C uncertainty at year 4 already exceeds the entire 3.7°C temperature increase at 100 years. By 50 years, the uncertainty in projected temperature is ±55°. At 100 years, the accumulated physical cloud uncertainty in temperature is ±111 degrees. Recall that this huge uncertainty stems from a minimal estimate of GCM physical cloud error." Another example I already gave is the predictions of warming in the Arctic, which were seriously inaccurate. As I pointed out by quoting New Scientist, this may be due to a previously unknown oceanic current carrying warm water north. The problem with climate predictions, as I have said repeatedly, is the large number of climate unknowns. Oceanic currents, cloud formation, astronomical phenomena, unpredictable volcanic eruptions etc. I doubt there is anything wrong with the maths or the programming of climate models. Just an awful lot of unknowns and poorly understood 'knowns' preventing accurate prediction. My congratulations to swansont, who actually looked at the reference I posted. You set a good example for intelligent debating. I was not aware of the 3 scenario nature of Hansen's 1988 model, so you have made a good point. However, may I quote from your reference : "for example, during the late 1980s and the 1990s there is a tendency for greater than average warming in the southeastern United States" Correct me if I am wrong, but I do not believe this happened.