So you’ve been reading the “Why I am an atheist” series here. In an interesting twist, Ian Cromwell has started a complementary series, “Because I am an atheist…” and is looking for submissions. What are you doing now that you’re happily godless?
No, dinosaurs did not fart themselves to death. This is what happens when you get your information from Fox News.
Dinosaurs may have farted themselves to extinction, according to a new study from British scientists.
The researchers calculated that the prehistoric beasts pumped out more than 520 million tons (472 million tonnes) of methane a year — enough to warm the planet and hasten their own eventual demise.
Until now, an asteroid strike and volcanic activity around 65 million years ago had seemed the most likely cause of their extinction.
So I read the paper. The researchers didn’t say that at all. There is nothing about extinction in the paper; it would have been ridiculous and I was prepared to dismiss such a claim without even reading the paper (the Jurassic lasted 55 million years, the Cretaceous 80 million, with dinosaurs farting away throughout). But the paper makes no such claim, instead suggesting that the mass of herbivores during the Mesozoic would have made a substantial, but stable, contribution of greenhouse gases to the atmosphere that may have been partially responsible for the warmer, moister climate of the era and the greater primary production.
Take together, our calculations suggest that sauropod dinosaurs could potentially have played a significant role in influencing climate through their methane emissions. Even if our 520 Tg estimate is overstated by a factor of 2, it suggests that global methane emission from Mesozoic sauropods alone was capable of sustaining an atmospheric methane mixing ratio of 1 to 2 ppm. Equally, our estimate may be understated by a similar factor, (i.e. possibly supporting 4 ppm methane). In the warm wet Mesozoic world, wetlands, forest fires, and leaking gasfields may have added around another 4 ppm methane to the air. Thus, a Mesozoic methane mixing ratio of 6–8 ppm seems very plausible.
The Mesozoic trend to sauropod gigantism led to the evolution of immense microbial vats unequalled in modern land animals. Methane was probably important in Mesozoic greenhouse warming. Our simple proof-of-concept model suggests greenhouse warming by sauropod megaherbivores could have been significant in sustaining warm climates. Although dinosaurs are unique in the large body sizes they achieved, there may have been other occasions in the past where animal-produced methane contributed substantially to global environmental gas composition: for example, it has been speculated that the extinction of megafauna coincident with human colonisation of the Americas may be related to a reduction of atmospheric methane levels.
See? A reasonable conclusion, not Fox News sensationalism.
But here’s the information you really wanted to know: they estimate that a medium-sized sauropod would have farted out 2675 liters of gas a day. Happy now? Impressed?
Wilkinson DM, Nisbet EG, Ruxton GD (2012) Could methane produced by sauropod dinosaurs have helped drive Mesozoic climate warmth? Current Biology 22(9):292-293.
Vertebrates are modified segmented worms; that is, their body plan is made up of sequentially repeated units, most apparent in skeletal structures like the vertebrae.
Arthropods are also modified segmented worms. Look at a larval fly, for instance, and you can see they are made up of rings stacked together.
So here’s a simple and obvious question: can we infer that the last common ancestor of vertebrates and arthropods was also a segmented worm? That is, is segmentation a common ancestral trait, or did arthropods and vertebrates invent it independently? At first thought, you might assume they are: it’s a complex trait shared by two taxa, so the simplest assumption is that both groups inherited it from their common ancestor (making it a synapomorphy), but there are also substantial differences in the mechanism of segmentation, so it’s possible that this trait wasn’t present in the common ancestor (making it a homoplasy).
The March Molly nominations have been tallied, and the newest member of the club is…
Pteryxx
All will bow down and worship. And then you’ll leave the name of the next deserving awardee for the month of April in the comments here.
I grew up Catholic, and had argued myself to the “correct” conclusion, that the Church’s teachings and morality were soundly defensible via logic. During college, however, my views on morality, especially but not limited to sexual morality, changed, forcing me to re-evaluate the logical connections I had previously accepted. (I remember vividly one time, while riding a horse into Damascus, reading a speech of Douglas Adams where he forcefully argues that calling masturbation wrong on the grounds that it does harm is not only false but unconscionably cruel.) I became convinced that humans have the power and the right to decide on what is just and moral together — that no god worthy of the name would give moral edicts at all, and certainly not ones merely reinforcing old, old prejudices.
I am an atheist because I became convinced that god was a story we invented. But I call myself an atheist because I do believe in something: I believe that we can do better.
Matthew Smedberg
United States
I’m just going to have to put the latest xkcd in front of the incoming students: as it says, Every Major's Terrible. I notice, though, that the only reasons he can give for biology sucking are ones of personal distaste.
Of course, rejecting the pragmatic rationalizations for every major is wonderfully liberating. If they all suck, then you should just major in what you love.
They’re doing a story on how the internet has affected religious belief, and are looking for someone who left faith because of the net.
We would like to interview an atheist who had grown up in a faith community, but chose to leave religion because of the internet. We would be very grateful if they would share their story with us and how they think their lives may have been different if they didn’t have a means to access the wealth of online information or communicate with other atheists.
Oh, boy. Do they realize what kind of deluge they’re inviting? If you fit that description, contact information is available at the link.
Just so I could keep Republicans in it!
I’ve seen woo on HuffPo before, but @EllenGraceJones takes the cake. Guess what? Darwin was wrong, and we need to update our model of evolution, she says. That’s a remarkable claim; you might be wondering who this person is who sees so far beyond what mere scientists have found.
She’s a fashion editor.
An interesting experiment and indeed correct in that we are still evolving, however to attribute it to the Victorian, matter-based, Darwinian model of evolution is backward-thinking and flawed given the recent leaps and bounds in metaphysical sciences and physical historical evidence disproving linear evolution. The ideology we randomly mutated from ocean slime to our knuckle-dragging neanderthal long-long lost cousins to our current incarnation is one that’s been dogmatically accepted into mainstream evolutionary hegemony without challenge until recent years.
“Linear evolution”? “Metaphysical sciences”? WTF? So she makes up a bizarre caricature of evolution and claims it’s been disproven (true; I don’t know anyone who believes that BS), and then credits metaphysics with providing evidence against it? Weird, but a typical egotistical creationist.
If you’re like me, you’re probably wondering how long it will take her to bring up Hitler. The answer is 5; it’s in the fifth paragraph.
“If you take Darwinian theory, make a ‘scientific’ principal out of it, put it into political action, then you have something like Nazi Germany” states the pioneering Dr Bruce Lipton, author of Spontaneous Evolution. Lipton believes it’s ‘cooperation not competition’ which are the hallmarks of most natural orders.
Who the hell is Bruce Lipton? A totally fruitloops goonybat: you can get a good overdose here, in an hour and a half on Coast to Coast, the radio show where reason goes to die. He believes that epigenetics is magic that will bring about a new age, and that it supplants the old paradigm of mere genes. Here’s a shorter summary; it’s all quantum, unsurprisingly.
But back to Ellen Grace Jones. If you read her piece, I should warn you that every link tosses you into a rabbit hole of pure lunacy, so forgive the brief detour.
The latest science suggests we are intelligently designed – not by some sentient humanistic being from on high – moreover a higher, energetic, source intelligence. Einstein’s Unified Field theory equation was completed in 2007. The breakthrough proves everything: matter (which derives from energy, which is what we’re made from) all natural laws and processes link to one underlying, unifying consciousness – aka, God, Source, Allah, Yaweh – pick your favourite.
I’m sure physicists will all be pleased and a little bit surprised to learn that we’ve had a unified field theory for the past 5 years. I’m sorry to disappoint you all, but it was discoverd by John Hagelin, “leading particle and quantum physicist” — yep, it’s another rabbit hole. Hagelin’s obsession is transcendental meditation. This “unifying consciousness” nonsense ain’t physics or math…it’s religion. Skip it.
There is no wooish bullshit that Ellen Grace Jones won’t mistake for creme brulee. Marrying Mayan numerology to Aquarian utopianism? You betcha.
One explicit way in which mankind is evolving for sure is in terms of our consciousness. From the Arab Spring, to #Occupy, to other measured dissent, there is a huge global shift and awakening to the corrupt, control system matrix we’ve been locked into for so long.
The Maya, who were acute astronomers, mathematicians and scientists knew this and their precise Long Count calendar not just tracked time, but evolution of consciousness. The much discussed end of it being December 21st 2012. Contrary to Hollywood fear-mongering, it doesn’t connote the ‘end of the world’, moreover the transition into a more enlightened, evolved age.
Vibrations and signals from space? Of course!
Everything is energy – including us. Life is the interaction of magnetic vibrational fields and our evolution is subject to the cosmos, not random selection. There have been peak sunspot emissions and coronal mass ejections in 2012 so it’s little surprise humankind is awakening.
Mangled history and crackpot archaeology? It’s all here!
Off the coast of Yonaguni Japan, India and Cuba there are giant sunken megalithic sites and pyramidal structures. In Bosnia Europe’s first pyramid was discovered and dated to 10,000 years plus. Geologist Dr Robert Schoch has accurately dated the Sphinx to be 7-9,000BC – throwing our mainstream historical timeline into chaos and in need of serious re-writing.
I’ve been saying it for a long time, but I’ll repeat it for you again: the Huffington Post is a mega-sleazy slushpile of credulous crap and unedited stream-of-consciousness burbling from idiots. It is evolving, though: it’s evolving to fill the niche left behind by the demise of Weekly World News.
Send Ellen Grace Jones back to the runway, where sometimes fatuous idiocy might get mistaken for creativity, and where pretense and arrogance can masquerade as taste.
This is a new argument to me. Representative Emanuel Cleaver (Democrat, Missouri) was discussing the possibility of atheists getting elected to office, and while saying he thinks we’d have a difficult time, he also says we don’t exist.
Actually, I don’t believe that there is such thing as an atheist because no respectable atheist would walk around with something in his pocket that said ‘In God We Trust.’
Oooh, ooh, I can do that, too!
I don’t believe there’s such a thing as a Christian, because no respectable follower of Jesus would have any money at all — he or she would have handed it all over to the poor.
Man, it’s going to be really hard to run for office in this country when we’re not allowed to have any money without being accused of hypocrisy. And couldn’t Rep. Cleaver’s argument be turned around to show that the inclusion of the religious motto is a clear violation of the separation of church and state? I presume he’s behind the campaign to have god references removed from our currency, then.
