Ophiolite

I would go much further. Asking for proof or supporting evidence are integral aspects of the process of being open minded. Thus open mindedness is not simply a condition, but it is a process. It is a readiness to explore the validity of alternative views by considering the arguments for and against it.Too often the cranks understand open mindedness to mean only considering the arguments for.

Will people who should know better stop speaking about a molten mantle. The mantle is not molten, except in small isolated pockets. This kind of inaccurate statement just plays into the hands of the pseudoscience extremists.

Not necessary. I have demonstrated the point being made by SwansonT, Mr Skeptic, insane_alien and (implicitly) snail.

I do understand the difficulties you face in expressing yourself in a foreign language, but you cannot define a word- in this case theory - by using that word, or a variation of it - in this case theoretical - in the definition. That is just wrong. You don't understand what a hypothesis is. I suspect that I shall be wasting my time to read further. I am not a working scientist. Please re-read what I wrote. If it is still not clear I shall try to put it in different words.

Really? By whose definition? I maintain I was using it precisely and correctly. [i would also point out that I carefully said you [i]appeared[/i] to be closed minded, not that you were, and included a little smilie to take the sting out of the remark.] But because you were unwilling to offer up your definition at the outset, but warbled on about how it's a well understood definition, we find ourselves here arguing over what the word means. And if the meaning of the word is so well understood, requiring no definition, can you explain how an intelligent, socially active, experienced, literate, well educated individual such as myself could get the meaning so wrong? I can't imagine anything productive emerging from this thread anytime soon, largely due to your stubborness, so I'll leave you to it. Good luck with the poll.

Pete. Greetings. As you can see the thread has become derailed into a discussion on semantics. I'm joining that derailment (from one of the rear coaches), but I hope you will take my remarks positively - with an open mind - even though they may seem a bit acerbic. Who is one? I can link you to discussions on other sites where it is clear that there is more than one one. Frequently, if not always. Then tell us what you think that is. If yu had done so when first asked we could have avoided the derailment. I hope you now see that the definition is necessary to remove pre-existing ambiguity. At defining it in terms of what you understand it to mean. I have to say Pete, on this thread, in regard to the need for defining open mindedness, you appear to have a closed mind.

There are several fallacies in your opening post. No, we don't. (I assume by 'we' you mean working scientists, representing the rest of us.) Working scientists spend their time testing, modifying and elaborating, and confirming existing theories. They very occassionaly disprove an existing theory or introduce a new one. While this is true, you completely miss the point. There is no accurate, precise mechanism by which theories are produced. And the mechanisms do involve, to varying degrees imagination, logic, accumulation of evidence, blind luck, combination of contrasting ideas, combination of similar ideas in novel ways, etc. An opinion and a theory are a Universe apart. A theory may have begun life as an idea, a suspicion, but before it transforms into a theory it will have been tried and tested by many hands and minds in many ways and will have come throught that testing changed, but unscathed. Not so. The testing of the idea is where the science comes in. The way the idea that forms the basis of the theory emerges is incidental. We know how theories are developed from ideas. We know exactly how this is done. This is the scientific method. That is how science works. All findings are provisional. Nothing is proven, only disproven. I echo DH's remarks/question. I think you have an incorrect notion of what a theory is. What do you think?

Let us add genuine hallucination. You do not need to be insane to have a hallucination: exhaustion, suggestion, brain injury, drugs, etc can all induce the appearance of a ghost. The existence of all these readily demonstrable causes for ghosts leads me to the conclusion that we do not require the hypothesis that they are the souls of the departed, or any other currently undescribed phenomenom.

That is incorrect. You are quite ignoring the effects of crustal shortening associated with orogeny. The net effects of crustal shortening, mid-ocean ridge crust generation and crustal destruction by subduction have to balance over a periods of centuries. They do not need to balance over a period of years. Plates move a centimetres a year. Consider how much movement occured when the Christmas tsunami struck Indonesia and newrby nations. That was the release of compression of several metres that had been ongoing for decades.

This is true, but it is worth noting that marnix, although a complete neophyte on this forum, is active on other science forums, making valuable contributions to discussion. Therefore, the impression Marnix has formed is well worth taking into account and I'm pleased Phi for All has done so.

I see most of you reside in a world where the glass isn't even half full. How depressing. I celebrate the renaissance for da Vinci and Galileo, not for a gross of lazy sheepherders, or a score of thieving vagabonds. The behaviour you describe and decry is part of a process of establishing identity and finding a place within the 'tribe'. Expecting well judged, rational decisions from a bunch of confused, youthful naked apes is expecting rather too much.

I don't visit the forum much these days, so I am unaware of the current position on homework questions. This sure as heck looks like a homework question. (In fact I'd bet a year's salary on it.) Why don't you tell us how much you have found out already, or what you suspect? Then we can comment on the accuracy of your thoughts, or point you in the right direction. For example, how do we determine if interbreeding took place between, say, native Peruvians and Han Chinese? Would this approach be applicable to the Neanderthal problem.

blazarwolf, you place me in a difficult position. I am as convinced as you of the reality of climate change and of the need to take global action. However, my conviction arises from a careful study of the evidence. Can you then explain to me how you could have been engaged with the evidence yet not know that the IPCC is the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change - the very body that collated and considered the evidence and reached the conclusion that climate change is real and important? If I were arguing the counter postion here, I'd shred and dice you over that one. Edward, I have not yet read your link in full, but two things disturbed me about it - one stylistic, the other scientific. 1. You mentioned research that supported your position in the matter as having been published in proper refereed scientific journals with the implication (explication, if we look at the preceding sentence) that support for the global warming position has not been so published. That is a cheap debating trick which indirectly insults my intelligence. It does not encourage me to believe you will be honest and objective in the rest of your essay. I would urge you to remove such emotive language from your essay. Including it will turn off and turn away the very people you seek to convert. 2. You state absolutely that carbon dioxide has no effect on the Earth's climate. I could understand a chartered accountant making that errror, but a biologist! For the record, do you feel the carbon dioxide on Venus has no effect on its climate?

r617, you are really messed up here. 1. Fission is commonplace in the Universe. The reason the Earth has not cooled donw from its initially molten state is because of the fission (splitting apart) of radioactive elements within the mantle. 2. Hydrogen bombs work by the fusion, not by fission. They are triggered by a fission reaction - an atomic bomb - not by a fusion reaction. Given this basic misunderstanding I don't see the point in giving your hypothesis much further consideration. I don't want to sound patronising, but I would recommend investing more time in learning the basics, then let your imagination free.

Come now, it doesn't require a close reading to see that it is wrong, nor does it require a close reading of Darwin to know that he more than dabbled with Lamarkian mechanisms to generate the changes that would then be selected. It was the absence of a plausible mechanism that disturbed him and caused him to vaccilate on that point a great deal. It is a pity that he did not chance to meet and talk to Gregor Mendel when the latter was visiting London for the Great Exhibition. The development of evolutionary theory might then have been quite different.

It might be helpful if you substituted response/respond for answer.

Screwing up the planet by destructive mining techniques will be seen as a quaint anacrhonism in a century or two when we are efficiently mining asteroids.

I would argue, quite strongly, that the resource is not water, but freshwater and that is being used faster than it is being replaced. To me that constitutes running out, since the same applies to oil. More is being generated, just not fast enough. The difference between the two is quantitative, not qualitative.

I suggest water must be included in this list also. For a planet 2/3 of which is covered by water this may seem strange, but the issue is real and is imminent. If we can resolve our energy problems than desalination of sea water and appropriate transport mechanisms will provide the solution, but as we know that is a big if. Water tables have fallen dramatically in many industrialised countries yet we continue to deplete subterranean reservoirs at an increasing rate. Where governmental controls are absent or planning inept we have major ecological consequences. The Aral sea is a classic case. The problem has been recognised globally as critical issue for at least a decade or two, so I am surprised you did not include it.

The system I adopted four decades was not to drink. The money I didn't spend on alcohol funded my textbooks. (Today I still have my textbooks and a wine cellar.)

I can understand BS that your religious convictions make it impossible for you accept the fact of evolution. I have no problem with that - I may feel sorry for you, but that is neither here nor there. However, if you plan to express your religious convictions on a science forum when those convictions run counter to current scientific thinking, then I advise you to choose a more circumspect approach. Blatantly silly statements of the type above will simply cause you to be dismissed as a child and a fool. That makes your post the equivalent of a spoiled brat screaming in the corner of the room because it is not allowed to play with the antique vase: it is unpleasant for everyone involved and the child never gets its own way. Specifically you could have said that some aspects of the vast body of evidence for evolution are ambiguous, controversial or contradictory. Stating there is no evidence simply reveals you as wholly uneducated to pass an opinion on the matter. If you feel a compulsion to respond I trust you will do it via pm rather than contaminating these pages with yet another tranche of fourth rate creationist ranting.

I am surprised no one has mentioned the influence of his grandfather Erasmus. You are even more silent on it than was Darwin himself. Here is an extract from Erasmus's work Zoonomia, courtesy of wikipedia. Would it be too bold to imagine that, in the great length of time since the earth began to exist, perhaps millions of ages before the commencement of the history of mankind would it be too bold to imagine that all warm-blooded animals have arisen from one living filament, which the great First Cause endued with animality, with the power of acquiring new parts, attended with new propensities, directed by irritations, sensations, volitions and associations, and thus possessing the faculty of continuing to improve by its own inherent activity, and of delivering down these improvements by generation to its posterity, world without end! Charles Darwin clearly felt uncomfortable that his grandfather had anticipated him and concedes virtually nothing to him in any of his writings. The 'you' in the second paragraph refers to all who have posted so far.

The very absence of change would itself be an important environmental constraint. However, I suspect it may be several millenia before we can control our environment - if ever. What we do is to modify aspects of our environment to make those aspects more attractive/comfortable/preferable. We have an abyssmal record of predicting the side effects those modifications will have. (Before we get into an irrelevant discussion on global warming, lets restrict it to something more like stresses in the workplace caused by the structure of the wrokplace.)

A small diversion. I am a Anglo-Scot. My wife is Malay/Indonesian. When our first child was born I was curious to see what skin colouration she had acquired. I was not present at the birth since it was an emergency cesarian. The first I saw of my daughter she was in a cot, with only her feet showing. I was startled to see they were incredibly dark, almost black and certainly much darker than wife's skin. It took me a moment or two to realise I was seeing the remains of the ink with which she had been footprinted.

However, it is as much as we can expect in this section of the forum.