Major evolutionary discovery.

1. This is certainly interesting news. I’ve been wondering if you’ve read this news that’s got Al Gore’s disciples very very nervous.

2. I don’t know who “Al Gore’s disciples” are, but anybody who is “nervous” about this is probably a bit off their rocker. No doubt we’ll need some more studies to determine if there’s anything to this. This certainly seems to make more obvious the importance of protecting the delicate balance of our upper atmosphere, which is apparently doing more than we knew to protect us from extra-planetary energy.

3. Sam, I take you haven’t actually watched “An Inconvenient Truth”. (My reimbursement offer still stands.) Cosmic rays are a natural phenomenon, influenced by two things: our own Sun, and the local interstellar environment. Both of these are natural and stable, and neither accounts for the industrial-era tandem uptick in CO2 and temperature levels above anything in the 6,000-year climate record. 900 out of 900 climate scientists agree: humans have a major influence on the climate, and we’re making it hotter.

   By the way, what does this have to do with fossil fish?

4. Okay probably a dumb question.. but how do we know it’s a fish and not a really teensy ancient whale? Don’t they breathe out of the top of their head? If it’s a fossil can one really tell if it layed eggs or suckled it’s young?

5. Well, for starters, the discovery of a 380M-year-old whale would be far, far more exciting. :) Cetaceans evolved from land mammals (they retain the bones for feet, tucked up inside their bodies), so they didn’t appear for many millions of years after this newly-discovered critter. Mammals did no exist at all at that point — eggs were still being laid outside of the body, rather than within.

   But none of that actually answers your question. In fact, a really remarkable amount of information can be gleaned from fossils. For example, the makeup of individual bones can tell us how quickly that they were formed (like tree rings), which tells us about the life cycle of that particular animal. The density tells us how medium that the creature occupied — birds require extremely light bones, but land-dwelling animals need heavy bones to have a more resilient body structure. Egg-laying creatures need enough pelvic space to release eggs, whereas mammals require enough space to house one or more embryos.

   Those are just some basic examples, but I hope that gives you an idea of how such information is gleaned from ancient bones.

6. Thanks for the information. Science isn’t currently a strength of mine.

7. The point is that the Danish findings, if true, have turned global warming conventional wisdom on its head, in that it is not human activity which is the primary contributor at all, but rather cosmic rays influencing cloud cover levels.

   The Inconvenient Truth for scientists so heavily invested in the alarmist GW theories currently being promulgated [perhaps even fraudulently foisted] is that it is becoming more and more evident that the Earth’s climate is beyond our present control. As many have suggested — for decades — it’s all cyclical and quite normal, even if we haven’t been sure exactly why.

   But then, Science, writ large, has always had a hard time admitting that it is not the Knower of All Things. Don’t get me wrong — I love science, and am thrilled with new discoveries, like the air-breathing fish, but it gets tiresome at times to hear the scientific community boldly proclaim, “We know!” when they really don’t, only to be proven wrong later. Wouldn’t it be so much better to say, “We really don’t know, but it might be…”?

8. The point is that the Danish findings, if true, have turned global warming conventional wisdom on its head, in that it is not human activity which is the primary contributor at all, but rather cosmic rays influencing cloud cover levels.

   That’s not true. The findings would simply indicate that there is yet another factor that influences global climate conditions. This study points only to the role of cloud formation, which is only a tiny part of global climate change. After all, the airline shutdown in September 2001 allowed climatologists to discover that contrails dampen daily temperature variation by 2°F by way of creating extra cloud coverage. So, there, now there are two variables that have a stark effect on cloud coverage and, in turn, our environment. Perhaps you’ll concede that there might be more than those two, and that others might also be caused by humans?

   I love science, and am thrilled with new discoveries, like the air-breathing fish, but it gets tiresome at times to hear the scientific community boldly proclaim, “We know!” when they really don’t, only to be proven wrong later. Wouldn’t it be so much better to say, “We really don’t know, but it might be…”?

   That’s true for all facts. There is really no fact that we know to be true. There are only things that we think very, very strongly are true, if what we believe about reality is accurate. One can’t go around acknowledging this all of the time without going mad. If my wife asks me if I love her, my response isn’t going to be “I think that’s extremely likely, if I properly understand the flow of information in my brain and the chemical response that you induce in it.” I’ll say “yes.”

9. Sam, the point is that unusual global warming is happening. Are you contesting the glacier core samples from Antarctica? That’s some pretty solid research. No matter what the cause is, we’re in trouble if the temperature rises too high. If the cause is us, we need to change our ways. If the cause isn’t us, we need to try and counteract that cause. Either way, it is our responsibility to do something about climate change.

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