Brit global warming skeptics now outnumber believers

Re: Also

scientific consensus should be ignored. That's politics, not hard science.

Re: Also

@AC

"No, some of us are actually highly educated and our view is that science and creationism can coexist. Science increasingly proves the existence of a creative force, but some people choose to draw other, irrational conclusions, but each to his own."

And here you are wrong unfortunately. Believing in a god is not, in it's basis compatible with science.

The biggest and most sacrosanct question in science is: Why? (Or alternatively: "how the bleeping explative does that work?"). A scientist will always keep asking that question. No matter how well we understand the world and the universe we live in, there will be some edge were things are blurry, where we can't explain things. An edge where a scientist comes along and things: Wait, why is that?

Believing in a god means that at some point you feel you no longer need to ask that question. At some point you decide that you don't need to find an explanation, you simply accept (a) God did it. THAT is why science and religion, in their basis are not compatible. Science CANNOT prove a creative force and there is NO evidence to even begin to suggest there could be a "design" to the universe.

As a final note I will say this: I was raised as a Catholic. While I no longer attend a church and I no longer agree with the doctrine or dogma of the Roman Catholic Church I still believe in a god. A belief stemming from the more illogical and feeling based part of my brain, and a believe that I cannot explain rationally. It's probably a remnant of my upbringing.

I support everyone's right to their own religion and their religious freedom, but I believe religion should NOT be involved in schools. Teaching creationism to children is cutting it awful close to religious indoctrination on young and impressionable minds. Religion has no place in education. It doesn't add anything but could arguably get very much in the way

Re: Also

How does science increasingly show there is a creative force?

I do not believe any specific aspect of genuine scientific research either shows this or even has any meaningful way to attempt to.

Belief is seductive, it has to be, it is an emergent property of brain architecture and is necessary for us to operate. If we could not believe and connect up possible cause and effect, we couldn't learn. The flip side is we have the ability to learn and believe harmful or nonsensical ideas. Also, we are influenceable, we have to be, for social cohesion.

Hate the metaphor, but computer design means viruses can exist. Cell biology means viruses can exist. Mental base structures means memes can exist, these can be hooked easily into multiple levels of mental machinery including emotional ones. Making such ideas a potential part of identity, therefore an attack on these can be felt as an attack on the self.

Climate change was pushed as a real scenario, in panic and emotion much more than pure science. As such it has the duel evil of a cult like emotional hook and an apparent scientific reality. Faced with that, it is no wonder that it became a foundation of a scientific religion deep enough to effect politics.

James Lovelock admitted he was alarmist. What he forgot to add is emotion and cult tactics are best sellers.

Non of this disproves any real science here. Though I do believe our own sun will effect us far more deeply than nearly anything we can do. Except maybe nuclear war.

@Zombie Womble

(A denizen of SW19?)

Sorry, mate, the 2012 apocalypse has been deferred - recent discovery of a different Mayan calendar has scotched the 2012 "not with a bang but a whimper" exeunt omnes.

Tickets for the 2016 Olympics in the pocket.

Re: Genuine question about evolution

If you are genuine, then there are lots of resources on the web that explain how all this works in endless detail. Start with Wikipedia, but I have found Dawkin's books like the Selfish Gene very good, (although he can be a little pit-bullish against Creationist's, he does do a good job of explaining clearly how we know evolution is a fact and how it all works). There is also the rather good book, a little old now but a classic called 'Origin of Species'

To your question:

"If a species by definition cannot reproduce with other species, and it takes 1 male + 1 female of the same species to reproduce, how do new species come into existence and preserve themselves?"

First up species is not a very clear term. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Species

but

1) You may have missed that many species of life are asexual. Virus's for instance reproduce and mutate without sex, so we get new variations of the flu most years.

2) You don't create a new ‘species’ with one mutation overnight.

It is interesting to look an example of a highly visible mutation like that of the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sphynx_(cat) . These cases are relative rare as in the wild such a radical mutation would normally be expected to kill off the individual animals quickly. It is however possible that the individual animals (like this litter of cats) could have (and in fact did), survive and pass on the mutant gene by breeding with others in the population. A hairless cat breeding with ‘normal’ cats, would still produce some hairless kittens, in the same way that red-heads don’t have to breed with other red-heads to produce more gingers. If there was an advantage (or simply not a disadvantage), then the gene will continue on in the population.

Just needs Dr Evil (Larry?) to take a family of these cats to an isolated bunker for a few thousand generations and they might diverge enough from the main population of cats to become not just a new breed, but a new species of evil cat overlords.

Much more typically, you get tiny amounts of genetic variation that is selected for over time. An artificially accelerated case would be dogs breeds. They come in a range of sizes and skin colours as a result of gene expression, even within breeds. They all carry genes that produce the odd mutation (i.e. dwarf’s, albino’s) but most of the differences between breeds are because environmental factors (mainly dog breeders) _select_ characteristics, so over time you get large and small dog breeds, pure white dogs or red shaggy coats etc.

Domestic dog breeds can still interbreed (though good luck on a male Chihuahua trying to shag a female Great Dane), and can even be interbreed with wolves, but probably have accumulated enough genetic variation over time to be considered as a separate species to foxes, jackals, coyotes with which they share a common ancestor (I assume dogs can’t interbreed with foxes.. not sure about jackals and coyotes).

Point is there is no ‘new species’ of animal like a dog breed that pops up overnight and suddenly can’t interbreed with any of its parent species – as you say, that would die off. But you can and do get separate populations of animals like Chimpanzee’s and humans that share a common ancestor but can’t interbreed. Not that people don’t still try it on of course.. <yeek at that mental thought>

Gets way more complex when you start looking at details.. but there is no chicken and egg problem like your query suggests,

Re: Genuine question about evolution

Natural selection acts on *populations*, not on individuals.

Keep that in mind and everything falls into place. Please also disregard the stupidly named "Darwin Awards" when trying to understand how evolution works, because that is about individual misadventure. Genetics have very little to do with that.

Re: Genuine question about evolution

The idea of a species is, as you note, a matter of definition. If two populations of living things cannot interbreed, then by definition, they belong to different species. But reality is not so clear cut - there can be considerable variety even within a species. The scenario you present where an individual of an entirely new species suddeny appears (and cannot find a viable mate to continue the line) is very unlikely.

Speciation is a gradual process. Populations diverge over time, accumulating differences through mutation or selection until a point is crossed where they cannot interbreed any more due to those differences. Even then there can be a fuzzy borderline where organisms from divergent populations can, in principle, mate and conceive and produce offspring, though this offspring may be unviable, or unable to produce further offspring itself.