Posted on 10/30/2009 8:26:04 AM PDT by GodGunsGuts
Right back to junk science central, eh?
Acid rain killed the pond in my back yard on Cape Cod wether or not you care to believe in simple science or not. Lowered the pH, increased algae, increased algae toxins, the entire fish population died.....all species, bass, sunnies, pickeral, perch. Pond was later chemically re-claimed and restocked with the same fish species and has done well since.
The reason you don’t hear about it now is because regulating factory and power plant emissions reduced sulfur and nitrogen output, redugin acid rain and its effects.
....but I’m sure you know better.
“I’m curious whether there’s a period after which we can say that no new phyla have appeared?”
—I’m not sure what the most recent phylum is. But I’d say that, essentially, by definition, the beginning of a phylum is not something that can occur very recently - or that could occur tomorrow. It’s a label that would be put on a group of life forms only after many speciation events.
An analogy to a phylum and how it forms might be a language family (such as the “Romance Languages” of Latin, French, Romanian, etc).
At best, the witnesses to the time of the beginning of Latin probably wouldn’t have seen it as the beginning of a new language, but instead as merely a variation of another language (probably Greek?). And even if someone did see it as the beginning of a new language (which is highly unlikely) they certainly wouldn’t have seen it as the beginning of a whole new family type of languages. And thus the beginning of a language family is also something that, essentially by definition, is something that could only have occurred long ago. It won’t happen today. And the time that we call the beginning of a language will always be a case of “retrospective coronation”. Anyone living at the time of the beginning of Latin would have looking at that start as just a population of people speaking barely any differently than other populations - we can look back and call that time the beginning of a new language (and new language family) only because of our position far in the future and knowing what occurred later.
An analogy to a phylum and how it forms might be a language family ...So, by analogy, there might be a question or two about the Babel Explosion ...
Tx for the post : )
I don’t think anyone has ever addressed the scare campaigns about global cooling. Around the time that fears of “man-made” global cooling reached their peak, cooling ceased and then warming began. Why? The best answer I can give is that climate has always changed. Man has little impact. We don’t know enough to explain past warmings and coolings, or to predict future changes. But fear campaigns sell government. So such campaigns are popular among those with a socialist inclination.
Been to Italy a couple of times in the mid 70’s...and it amazes me they’re not communist by now. I mean officially, fully.
I don’t know what’s kept them afloat all this time...God’s will, the Catholic church, a combination of things, but it’s so sad for such a beautiful place with a rich history, etc.
If the Earth is only 6,000 years old there was no Cambrian period, remember? /sarc
Thanks for the ping!
Cause for the explosion of life: God said, “Let there be...”
I see ElectricStrawberry played the “uneducated” card. (yawn)
Funny, his calling card usually begins with BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAH. He must have been tired or something :o)
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