Re: Creationists Don't Like Other Sciences, Either

On Tue, 16 Jan 2007 19:44:34 GMT, Mark Isaak <eciton@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
>
wrote:

>On Mon, 15 Jan 2007 22:48:30 +0000, Luminoso wrote:
>
>>>Sure, after a few thousand years our environment may settle into a new
>>>balance - but the question is "can man survive the change?" Maybe, but
I
>>>doubt civilization will.
>> 
>>    Both will survive quite nicely, although I doubt there will be the
>>    same line-up of nations after a few thousand years. 'Eternal
empires'
>>    have risen and crumbled in less time than that.
>> 
>>    People can survive tropical temperatures just fine. The main concern
>>    is the food. 'Traditional' foods may have to be forgotten in favor
of
>>    tropical varieties.
>[snip more along the same lines]
>
>A common theme in flood myths around the world (and in other disaster
>myths, too) is that when one person warns of the coming catastrophe,
>almsot nobody listens.  Or they say, "Oh, we can just run to higher
ground
>when it happens."  Those people invariably die in the flood.

   Well, this 'flood' is ru****ng at us at about one or two
   millimeters per year. If you can't run to higher ground
   that fast, well, Darwin isn't very forgiving. 

>This happens not only in myth.  People had been warning New Orleans of
>their coming flood for decades.  A very few people listened and moved
>away; others had their homes, if not their lives, destroyed.  The same
>scenario is currenly being replayed around the Sacramento delta.

   Actually, MOST people left New Orleans before the storm hit.
   Most of the remaining 50-odd thousand might have evacuated
   had city and state authorities heeded the warnings from the
   hurricane center a couple of days sooner. Of course big storms
   so rarely hit 'just right' that officials hesitated to disrupt
   everything over yet another false alarm ... 

   The doofi who live on flood plains or muddy hillsides are
   a mix of cases. Some clearly ARE doofi in denial, stubborn
   idiots who think they can wish nature away. Many are simply
   poor and cannot relocate. Identified as a flood plain, even
   their land isn't worth much. So they stay ...

>Now the people in a position to know are unanimous in warning of
>catastrophe.

   Actually, that makes me suspicious rather than confident.
   Has the smell of mass hysteria and political correctness.

>Sea levels will rise to displace hundreds of millions of
>people (most of whom, following the pattern described above, will not
>leave in time).

   They will be 'displaced', but VERY slowly. Modern structures
   aren't even built to last that long - 50 years or so before
   someone tears them down, often less. We'll just build-back
   from the sea as the sea, very very slowly, rises. 

>Hurricanes will very likely increase in severity.

   No proof of that. Hurricanes are heat engines, needing
   both a heat source and heat sink in order to function.
   uniformly increasing air and sea temperatures yeilds
   no net change in the thermodynamic equation. 

>Climates will change rapidly enough to cause mass extinctions. 

   Nothing new there. We've had those many times 'recently',
   every time an ice-age starts or ends. Large-scale extinctions
   happen all of the time on relatively small timescales because
   of random alterations in microhabitats, screwing-over the
   life that optimized itself to exploit those habitats. The
   term is 'overspecialization'. Note that rats and roaches
   were never affected. They're unspecialized, just like us.

>Extremes
>of both hot and cold, wet and dry, will increase.  Climate patterns which
>farmers depend on will change in ways that they will not predict, and
>people will starve.

   Gee, you act as if it's all going to descend with a big bang.

   Nope. Not even close. Indeed, individually, we'll bareely
   notice a difference even over a lifetime. 

>Now here you are saying the equivalent of, "Oh, we can just run to higher
>ground when it happens."  Well, suit yourself.  I happen to agree with
you
>that some people, and some civilization will survive.  The survivors will
>be the ones who begin preparing now.  You will not be one of them.

   If you want to join the sheep, go ahead. Personally
   I'll refrain from following you all over any cliffs ...