1veedo

Oops you're right. I was basing this here (in another thread), http://scienceforums.net/forum/showthread.php?p=344440#post344440: And then it turned out lucaspa had a phd in Biochemistry latter in that thread. So that would make two, but that was only for that thread. I'm not sure how many there actually are, but I would guess more are "amateurs."

Lots of us aren't scientists. In fact I only think there are two actual "scientists" on these forums, and a couple others in line to get their phds as well.

No jackson33 everything's perfectly ok. Nothing's wrong with debating or grammar it was just this from a page ago, Forgive me if I ask you to proof-read before you post because I really didn't understand this, especially the first paragraph. Don't worry about it though. Well current cycles indicate the Earth should be getting cooler right now, not warmer. And this has in fact been occurring for about 8 thousand years. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Holocene_Temperature_Variations.png Cycles are usually driven by the sun and research indicates that the sun hasn't been warming up any. Some studies actually show a decrease in solar activity after 1950, and a slight decrease from 1976 to today (though an increase up to the 50s). http://scienceforums.net/forum/showthread.php?t=27453

I was not arguing against your post on the basis of grammar. The first two paragraphs just make no sense, except some of the second one about doing more research but I still don't know what you were trying to say. Nothing personal though it's just light-hearted literary word play (we are in fact on the Internet ). Lots of people never seem to proof-read their posts and on most forums you'll get torn apart by bad spelling and grammar mistakes (meaning the post is hard to follow). At most I pointed out that it was off-topic. So is the post above by Pangloss. I wish you could ignore Pangloss but the forums wont let you. I figure I can consciously ignore his posts though anyway; they never seem to add anything constructive and he seems to have some sort of girlish vendetta against me. I think you are slightly mistaken here. Read about the CO2-temperature feedback system. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Co2#In_the_Earth.27s_atmosphere One of the reasons CO2 is so powerful is because of it's effects on other factors in the climate, including water vapour. Specifically more CO2 = more water vapour. This then causes temperatures to go up which causes more CO2 to accumulate in the atmosphere, causing even more of a temperature rise. Negative feedbacks or sinks tend to keep this in line but these sinks can and do overflow.

He's right abskebabs. I learned to take this into account a long time ago If you don't it can get you into some serious trouble.

You belong in a political forum, not a science forum. Try to stay on topic. And please, please learn proper English. Your grammar is horrible. I know kids can drop out of school at age 16 but I strongly recommend you stay in school, and more importantly pay attention while you're there.

Yeah but remember in the 70's scientists were going crazy about global cooling OMFG the scientists cant make up their minds!!1!?!!

Iranian women need their husbands with them to be on the Internet.

His ends in ³.

Pangloss is a girl. Or at least he acts like one [Flamebait] Girls are stupid and cant understand science. Maybe this will bring some of them out of "hiding."

And why did temepratures rise in the first place? Greenhouse gases! There's actually a little feedback relation between vator vapour and climate forcing (like greenhouse gases) and specifically CO2 known surprisingly as the CO2-temperature feedback system. One of the reasons CO2 is so powerful in our atmosphere (while making up such a small porition of it) is because of it's effects on other factors in the climate, including water vapour. Namely more CO2 = more water vapour = higher global temperatures. http://books.nap.edu/catalog.php?record_id=10850 Well noone is denying this. Current warming seems to be faster, actually more than 100 times faster than any other time in the history of this planet that we have evidence for, but there are theories about "snowball Earth" and the like (which don't have any evidence btw, but this is beside the point). I don't see what you can deduce form saying that climate change in the past was natural though. If we just accept this premise the only logical conclusion that you can come up with is that current warming could be natural in origin, which is something we already have an answer for (read: we already know that current warming is primarily caused by humans). And this is further supported by the fact that, as the epa says, "While abrupt climate changes have occurred throughout the Earth's history, human civilization arose during a period of relative climate stability." Some people like to claim that sense the climate has changed in the past, current warming shouldn't be that big of a deal. Ergo, what is natural is necessarily good. But there are plenty of natural things which are bad, examples being floods and plagues. As humans we can cause plagues with the same order of magnitude as previous plagues but I don't think any logically thinking human would claim that sense plagues are natural we shouldn't worry about this. No, governments across the world actively protect stores that contain potential biological weapons from groups like terrorists. Similarly many societies try to prevent flooding. Examples being the dams all around the planet and the Netherlands who are preventing sea level rise from flooding the entire country. Global warming in this regard is very similar.

This is what I was talking about above. Call it atheism or don't, the position is still the same.

Just like many feel at one point in the past there was a great flood and Noah put all the little animals on a giant boat to save them.

Of course this doesn't have to be the absolute beginning of the universe. The big bang is only the beginning of the current expansion of the [known]* universe. *Depending on how you define universe.

I must admit, after reading this post I nearly deleted this site from my bookmarks.

What so it's weird that someone quotes something you said and instead of debating it actually agrees with you? I was just expanding on what you said. Yes, the old testament definitely but the new testament not so much. Early Christians didn't even believe in a historical Jesus. Christianity back then was a lot different than it is today. Of course this is true if you compare Christianity of the Middle Ages as well but a big difference is that now Christians believe there was a walking talking Jesus in Jerusalem. The original Christians believed in a Jesus but it was all metaphorical to what Paul was talking about -- the plains of existence or Logos, which was a belief common during that time period. According to Paul Jesus was crucified not on Earth, but in a higher realm of Logos. The writers of the Gospel believed in this Jesus of the Logos, not a Jesus that was Earthly.

Actually most Christians at the time viewed Rome as the evil empire or the "Beast". It's been a while sense I was acquainted with all the metaphors but anytime something is purple velvet/scarlet, usually a woman, it refers to Rome the city. Someone who is enticed by this woman is actually enticed by the greed of Rome (like the emperor). This isn't limited to Biblical texts either. There's this historical cultural depiction of a [dressed in purple] whore resting on the beast -- the whore being Rome and the beast being the Roman empire. Emperors and citizens worshiped this whore out of greed. Jesus was supposed to come back and wage war in Armageddon (an actual place) to defeat the Roman army (the Beast) and lead Christians to victory (in the old testiment Jesus was actually supposed to be a general -- the Jews hatted Roman rule and waited for the day they could gain independence). Something like that anyway. I cant find what I'm talking about on google but I've read it in books and saw it on the History channel before. Babylon of the old testament becomes Rome of the new testament -- they're supposed to be allegorical together, both are evil. In one case in Revelations, Babylon is described as resting on 7 hills, just like Rome. But as a metaphor Revelations is supposed to an actual prophesied event. Some people think this has already happened and others think all the professes are fulfilled except the second coming of Christ (and therefore we don't have to wait long for Jesus to come back). It's interesting if you read the New Testament though how many of the metaphors are present. It's like a vision into the past of oppressed people of the Roman empire. Anybody who is unacquainted with this ancient culture really cant appreciated the Bible for what it is. The New Testament in fact isn't even supposed to be a description of a historical event as most Christians think. The authors (mark mathew luke and john) weren't witting what they believed to be actual history -- they were witting a gospel, with much hatred towards the Roman Empire.

Actually the models predict past climate change very accurately. They can even predict the future fairly well -- an example would be the 1988 GISS NASA / Columbia University model, one of and probably the very first computer simulation that is today, 20 years latter in Nasa's own words "right on the money." (http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&ct=res&cd=2&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.columbia.edu%2F~jeh1%2Fhansen_re-crichton.pdf&ei=GRyqRrn_IovcgwSA1Z3uAw&usg=AFQjCNF4hCipW_HzJLxQFBfChVoeHnd4Qg&sig2=TmNysc2SKbfMRxvzhEhieA) There are dificulties with predicting the future though. These arise from the fact that we cant predict how much CO2 / particulaes and everything else humans are going to emit. So climate models make range estimates bassed on low CO2 outputs and high CO2 outputs so you can look at the simulations and see "if we continue to produce at current levels temperatures will rise 2.5C, if we keep increasing at the same rate 4C, if we stop completely 1C, etc." Whichever path humanity ultimately takes determines if it's as low as 1C or if it's as high as 4C. Lol we're talking about averages here over the entire planet. I don't think most climate scientists are concerned about the butterfly effect. Not everything about global warming is bad. Economists used to be saying that by 2020 or even as soon as 2010 we wouldn't be able to feed everyone of the planet but now that they're looking at global warming they've pushed it back to around 2050 (if you're not acquainted with this issue there IS enough food to feed everyone we just cant transport it to all corners of the globe so people still do starve). Of course more plant growth isn't always a good thing in and of itself. And warmer temperatures also means more parasites and bugs.

I agree with john5746.

It answers this but that isn't the goal of evolution. Evolution is an observed phenomenon in much the same way the sun rises every day. The goal of natural selection is to explain evolution. That's how all science works -- you have observations (commonly known as laws, eg the law of evolution) then you have models that explain these observations (the actual theories or models eg the theory of evolution via natural selection). This is of course a side-track from your point but I figured I'd point this out. I'm not necessarily disagreeing with you, I'm only disagreeing about this specific quote.

And this prove that most Biblical scholars think Genesis is metaphoric how? It doesn't matter what they think though, you can believe whatever you want, I'm just pointing out that you really have no justification that it's metaphoric other than your own personal faith. You're equivocating here. Just because someone thinks the authors intended it to be literal doesn't mean you have to believe in the literal reading. Maybe in reality they don't. And beyond this we were talking about Biblical scholars here, not the masses. It may be that most Biblical scholars are also literalists. Yes I meant the person who actually wrote it down. What did you think I meant?

Nobody denies this and it doesn't prove that global warming isn't caused by humans. I'm not sure about Greenland because I thought it was melting. There was actually a news story saying that Greenland was melting much faster than previously thought so it could be that your information is a little old. But with Antarctica the reason it's probably gaining mass (we're not completely certain) is because of increased precipitation, which over Antarctica is in the form of snow. Global warming effects more things that just global temperatures -- precipitation patterns being one of them. We actually don't have any good data proving that Antarctica is gaining mass -- the reason we think it's gaining mass is because on top of what little data we have to indicate this, climate models predicted it to happen in the first place, though in the future Antarctica is supposed to lose mass. I don't think this is what most scientists (or any of them, actually) think.

We all like semantics but what if you said "I lack belief that (favorite local team) is a good team and I lack belief that they're a bad team." And an atheist.

Not so: http://scienceforums.net/forum/showthread.php?p=349440#post349440 Actually most Biblical scholars do seem to think the authors intended it to be literal history (and the same authors wrote a couple other books of the Bible too), though it is up to personal belief if it is or not, or if it's even real in the first place.

I personally like statistics. Take for instance that in a group of over 22 people there is a 50% chance that two or more of them share the same birthday. Hint:work backwards from the probability that two of them don't share the same birthday. But more to the point statistics are definitely good science. We're not talking about politicians here; just basic science, and most statistics that you find in science are good statistics.