Posted on 10/30/2003 5:04:39 PM PST by Dales
LIVERMORE, Calif. -- A trio of scientists including a researcher from the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory has found that humans may owe the relatively mild climate in which their ancestors evolved to tiny marine organisms with shells and skeletons made out of calcium carbonate.
In a paper titled "Carbonate Deposition, Climate Stability and Neoproterozoic Ice Ages" in the Oct. 31 edition of Science, UC Riverside researchers Andy Ridgwell and Martin Kennedy along with LLNL climate scientist Ken Caldeira, discovered that the increased stability in modern climate may be due in part to the evolution of marine plankton living in the open ocean with shells and skeletal material made out of calcium carbonate. They conclude that these marine organisms helped prevent the ice ages of the past few hundred thousand years from turning into a severe global deep freeze.
"The most recent ice ages were mild enough to allow and possibly even promote the evolution of modern humans," Caldeira said. "Without these tiny marine organisms, the ice sheets may have grown to cover the earth, like in the snowball glaciations of the ancient past, and our ancestors might not have survived."
The researchers used a computer model describing the ocean, atmosphere and land surface to look at how atmospheric carbon dioxide would change as a result of glacier growth. They found that, in the distant past, as glaciers started to grow, the oceans would suck the greenhouse gas -- carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere -- making the Earth colder, promoting an even deeper ice age. When marine plankton with carbonate shells and skeletons are added to the model, ocean chemistry is buffered and glacial growth does not cause the ocean to absorb large amounts of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.
But in Precambrian times (which lasted up until 544 million years ago), marine organisms in the open ocean did not produce carbonate skeletons -- and ancient rocks from the end of the Precambrian geological age indicate that huge glaciers deposited layers of crushed rock debris thousands of meters thick near the equator. If the land was frozen near the equator, then most of the surface of the planet was likely covered in ice, making Earth look like a giant snowball, the researchers said.
Around 200 million years ago, calcium carbonate organisms became critical to helping prevent the earth from freezing over. When the organisms die, their carbonate shells and skeletons settle to the ocean floor, where some dissolve and some are buried in sediments. These deposits help regulate the chemistry of the ocean and the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. However, in a related study published in Nature on Sept. 25, 2003, Caldeira and LLNL physicist Michael Wickett found that unrestrained release of fossil-fuel carbon dioxide to the atmosphere could threaten extinction for these climate-stabilizing marine organisms.
Glenn Morton may be well known at home at dinner time, but whatever he claims is not credible evidence. There are over 40 phyla that arose during the Cambrian - none, zero, nada after it. Just because someone has a website does not mean that whatever he writes is evidence of anything. The evidence comes from fossils and the fossils are all in the Cambrian. Further, the evidence keeps piling on against evolution in this regard, a couple of years ago fish with vertebras and eyes were found in the Cambrian. Knowing what we know nowadays about genetics it is absolutely impossible for in the short period covered by the Cambrian for all these phyla to have arisen from totally unrelated phyla. This has not been seen in the entire period after the Cambrian, not a single new phyla has arisen since. To ask us to believe that in 5-10 million years all these evolved from each other is asking for too much gullibility.
Well, I suspected but didn't know for sure.
Punk eek of course actually says that transitional fossils between closely related species should be rare, not necessarily nonexistent. This is because most speciation happens when small populations breakaway from the larger population & get isolated. Mutations have a much better chance of taking over a small gene pool than a large one. When the breakaway population evolves into something more suited to its new environmental niche, new mutations are less likely to be beneficial, because it's already adapted to the new surroundings, thank you just the same. Plus it starts growing, and so even beneficial mutations would have a harder time taking over.
Also notice I said "transitionals between closely related species are rare". Gould especially has taken pains to point out that transitional species between closely related families & other higher taxa are abundant.
But then you... :-)
What something is called is not nearly as relevant as what that something really is. It is obviously hard for the human mind to comprehend things beyond superficial appearances (i.e. a perceived flat world and earth centered universe).
Did the creator establish evil, death, disease, sin, etc. Was this done by an all-powerful, all-knowing, all-present, perfect and good supreme being? If so, one of two things must not be true, He must not be all good or He must not be all powerful. Evil appears to be just as powerful as good (plus or minus a little) - and who created evil anyway? If man can exercise free will to choose between two powers, good (God) or evil (the devil) then there are two gods, two forces in the universe, not one as the Bible says. Does that make sense to you? Is it really that simple?
The article is from Januay 2000, so they were going wherever almost four years ago now. It deals extensively with the freezing and killing effects of the glaciation, of course.
And both your statement above and what you posted evades completely my refutation above. There could have been no marine life - as we know there was (and as evolutionists themselves claim there was) if the oceans were covered with ice. So as I said, that article is ample proof of the depths of irrelevancy to which that journal has sunk while being guided by a raving evolutionist.
However, I am afraid you gave yourself away again. Creationism and creationist are words made up by evolutionists to attack the opponents of evolution. Those opponents most often call themselves Christians or ID'ers or just non-believers in evolution than creationists. If I were quickly looking for a thread opposing evolution for example I would look under intelligent design. This is just to show that it is quite hard to hide one's position. There are tell tale signs in most things one says.Jim, did you put one of those transmorgrifier/conflagrator thingies on his account? He sees things no one else can see. If you did, please remove it. It would probably give this story a happier ending.
The other thread is here
On the Talk.Origins USENET newsgroup, someone pointed out that the catchphrase "survival of the fittest" sometimes gave the wrong impression to laymen, and challenged the forum to come up with something about as short but more descriptive.
The winner was, "Every single one of your ancestors scored!"
How can you say this? Did you even read post 71? Let alone the article I asked you to comment on?
such as the law "if a retroposon, pseudogene, etc, is found in both cows and whales, it will also be found in hippos" See fig.5
Standard biology has an explanation as to why it's hippos and not, say, rhinos, in the above law of nature. Does any other theory or speculative hypothesis?
you forgot the third option: God is not the author of evil, but he allows it for His purposes and , has absolute control over it,
Yes, we all know that when a lake freezes over in the winter, all life in the lake dies. (sheesh!)
Read the thing before you announce you have refuted it! Much died, some lived. Life can exist under a lot of conditions.
Gould contradicted himself as much as Clinton. Fact is though that he fought against Darwinists most of his life and he insisted that the Cambrian species could not be explained by gradual evolution.
As to his theory, it is just an excuse for lack of evidence and part of the totally unscientific credo of evolutionists that 'lack of evidence is not evidence of lack'. Such may be okay in the Art Bell show, but it is not science, never was, never will be.
Read the thing before you announce you have refuted it!
You have it backwards. The post did not address my refutation. In an ice covered sea, the life we know existed before the Cambrian would have been impossible. Could not have lasted a year. The whole article by unScientific American is thus utter nonsense.
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