2007

This map is the result of 8 scientists poring over satellite data for 18 months. It shows how plant growth (NPP or net primary productivity) around the world has changed in the past 20 years of global warming and CO2 buildup in the atmosphere. The result is a 6% increase when all the globe’s vegetation is tallied up and averaged. The research appeared in Science. The article I got the picture from is at NASA titled Global Garden. Why is it that we don’t hear about this in the popular press? We are inundated with conjecture based on computer models of CO2 induced warming and the supposed ill effects of it. Yet when the facts are allowed to speak we Read More ›

In this essay, psychologists Paul Bloom and Deena Weisberg assert:

The developmental data suggest that resistance to science will arise in children when scientific claims clash with early emerging, intuitive expectations. This resistance will persist through adulthood if the scientific claims are contested within a society, and will be especially strong if there is a non-scientific alternative that is rooted in common sense and championed by people who are taken as reliable and trustworthy.

I’m not quite sure what the “developmental data” are, but I do know something about science, and I am certainly not resistant to it, which is precisely why I am an intelligent-design proponent.

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I was reading the 2007 IPCC report’s 2007 Physical Science Basis and it came as a surprise how much variance there is from year to year in how atmospheric CO2 increases. CO2 emissions from burning fossil fuels remains relatively constant but the amount of that CO2 that actually stays in the atmosphere varies by over 100% from one year to the next. The mechanisms behind this variance are only partially understood. One thing we do know however is that old growth forest locks up huge amounts of CO2 in wood. Plant and animal use of CO2 is one of the mechanisms behind the variance. It seems like it might be much more economically viable and beneficially desirable to pursue reforestation instead of reducing CO2 emissions. A long-lived tree will lock up CO2 in wood for 50 to 100 years or more while it’s alive. If it’s harvested for lumber to build homes and other wooden structures that will keep the CO2 locked up in wood for another 50 – 100 years or more. By the time the wooden structures release the stored CO2 from rotting or burning we’ll have used up all the fossil fuel reserves and won’t have excess CO2 to dispose of anymore. Read More ›

When I first turned to read Edward Rothstein’s account in the New York Times’ Arts section of the just-opened creation museum at Petersburg, Kentucky, I gritted my teeth in advance.

I have little use for creation museums, but way, way less use for self-regarding, overaged art twerps who pretend superiority to millions of people who do real jobs for a living. So, I thought, Die. Twerp. Die. Before the cat gets you.

Well, I was overreacting, I am glad to say! Rothstein’s review is thoughtful and his reflections are of genuine use to those who want some idea of what they might see at a creation museum – and how it differs from a Church of Darwin museum: Read More ›

In a nutshell – cosmic rays induce particle formation in the atmosphere. Water droplets coalesce around these particles producing clouds. Clouds reflect sunlight back into space. The more clouds the cooler it is and the fewer clouds the hotter it is. The sun’s magnetic field deflects more or fewer cosmic rays depending on its intensity. Its magnetic field waxes and wanes substantially over time. But that’s not the whole story. A larger variable than how much or little deflection the sun provides is the strength of the cosmic rays coming from outside the solar system. As the sun orbits the galactic center it passes through regions of higher and lower cosmic ray density. Moreover exploding stars (supernovas) unpredictably increase the Read More ›

Here’s columnist Ken Connor (Terry Schiavo lawyer) on the Gonzalez tenure denial:

It seems that many scientists and academicians who hold views contrary to Dr. Gonzalez have concluded that the best way to avoid debate about the evidence for intelligent design is to simply deny jobs to those who will not affirm their atheistic worldview. The fact that these scientists, who are supposedly open to following the evidence wherever it leads, have resorted to blatant discrimination to avoid having this conversation speaks volumes about the weakness of their position. They realize their arguments are not sufficient to defeat the intelligent design movement and they must, therefore, shut their opponents out of the conversation. All the evidence suggests that it is unjust that Dr. Gonzalez was denied tenure and that this ruling should be overturned on appeal. Nevertheless, what happened to Dr. Gonzalez is a reflection of the growing strength of the intelligent design movement, not its weakness.

My sense is that he is right about Gonzalez’ tenure denial demonstrating strength, not weakness. The one thing that the materialist CANNOT abide right now is a frank assessment of the evidence.

Connor’s byline describes him as

Ken Connor is Chairman of the Center for a Just Society in Washington, DC and a nationally recognized trial lawyer who represented Governor Jeb Bush in the Terri Schiavo case.

Other Gonzalez case news: Read More ›

Or something like that. This book looks WAY interesting…here’s the blurb from the University of California Press: The world is configured in ways that seem systematically hospitable to life forms, especially the human race. Is this the outcome of divine planning or simply of the laws of physics? Ancient Greeks and Romans famously disagreed on whether the cosmos was the product of intelligent design or accident. In this book, David Sedley examines this question and illuminates new historical perspectives on the pantheon of thinkers who laid the foundations of western philosophy and science. Versions of what we call the “creationist” option were widely favored by the major thinkers of classical antiquity, including Plato, whose ideas on the subject prepared the Read More ›

Many RNA-binding proteins have modular structures and are composed of multiple repeats of just a few basic domains that are arranged in various ways to satisfy their diverse functional requirements. Recent studies have investigated how different modules cooperate in regulating the RNA-binding specificity and the biological activity of these proteins. They have also investigated how multiple modules cooperate with enzymatic domains to regulate the catalytic activity of enzymes that act on RNA. These studies have shown how, for many RNA-binding proteins, multiple modules define the fundamental structural unit that is responsible for biological function. Bradley M. Lunde, Claire Moore & Gabriele Varani  Nature Reviews Molecular Cell Biology 8, 479-490 (June 2007) | doi:10.1038/nrm2178 http://www.nature.com/nrm/journal/v8/n6/abs/nrm2178.html This paper is yet another of Read More ›

Jonathan Wells, Senior Fellow at the Discovery Institute, will be speaking today (Friday, May 25), on the icons of neo-Darwinism and the role of DNA in living things, at the Autonomous University of Guadalajara. The full-size event poster is here.

The tenure denial of Guillermo Gonzalez by Iowa State University has been much discussed on this blog of late. The tenure of Hector Avalos, religious studies professor and militant atheist at Iowa State University, however, has yet to be broached here. So let’s do it. Avalos conducted a witch hunt of Guillermo Gonzalez back in 2005 (go here). He just posted on PZ Myers’ blog a response to the Discovery Institute (go here). Here is an interesting quote from it: I may not be an astronomer, but my article, “Heavenly Conflicts: The Bible and Astronomy,” passed the editorial review of Mercury: The Journal of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific 27 no. 2 (March/April, 1998), pages 20-24. There, I critiqued Read More ›

Last month I pointed out the unwitting admission by some Darwinists that Darwinism is useless to modern medicine (and for that matter modern science). [see: Darwin dissed by doctors, and a design revolution continues at MIT]. This month I’m pleased that world’s most prestigious scientific journal, Nature, has published a letter from a biophysicist who has (perhaps unwittingly) shown that the design revolution continues, and Darwinism is slipping into total irrelevance. Look at biological systems through an engineer’s eyes Physiologists have successfully analysed a large range of biological systems using this ‘device-oriented’ approach. For more than a century, medical students have used it to learn that the kidneys filter blood to make urine; the lungs transport oxygen from air to Read More ›

I just put up an alphabetized list of topics covered by British physicist David Tyler, who blogs on a number of issues raised in the science literature that impact the intelligent design controversy – along with some of my own compilations (animations of life inside the cell, columnists discussing the issues, et cetera.). This is a one-stop shop if you are trying to track down information in the growing controversy, that is written from a design perspective. Here are some examples of items you might want to look up: Animal evolution (Tyler) multicellular animals and need for complex information Cambrian era (Tyler) Ancestors largely missing Cambrian era(Tyler) Comb jellies well developed Cell development (Tyler) and complex specified information Chimpanzees(Tyler) Common Read More ›

Life’s capabilities continue to astound. Another assumption of mainstream science is overturned: Now we find that some kinds of fungi can grow very nicely, thank you, in very high radiation environments, and even appear to thrive, using radiation as an energy source.
I wonder; in what sort of environment did these organisms evolve to account for this remarkable ability?

From a report on a study by the Albert Einstein College of Medicine:

“Scientists have long assumed that fungi exist mainly to decompose matter into chemicals that other organisms can then use. But researchers at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine of Yeshiva University have found evidence that fungi possess a previously undiscovered talent with profound implications: the ability to use radioactivity as an energy source for making food and spurring their growth.
“The fungal kingdom comprises more species than any other plant or animal kingdom, so finding that they’re making food in addition to breaking it down means that Earth’s energetics—in particular, the amount of radiation energy being converted to biological energy—may need to be recalculated,” says Dr. Arturo Casadevall, chair of microbiology & immunology at Einstein and senior author of the study, published May 23 in PLoS ONE.”

It seems that certain fungi, specifically those containing melanin, the same stuff that give us those nice cancerous tans, thrive in high radiation environments. In their discussion the researchers note:
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Scientists have now found that the Hox genes necessary for tetrapod development is present in a primitive fish (a paddlefish). Here’s part of what they write: “Tetrapods have a second phase of Hox gene expression that happens later in development. During this second phase, hands and feet develop. Although this second phase is not known in zebrafish, the scientists found that it is present in paddlefish, which reveals that a pattern of gene activity long thought to be unique to vertebrates with hands and feet is in fact much more primitive. This is the first molecular support for the theory that the genes to help make fingers and toes have been around for a long time—well before the 375-million-year-old Tiktaalik Read More ›