Thursday, January 31, 2013

Ancient Atmosphere: (cont.)











Early Atmosphere: LARGE Error Factors

 Often you'll hear Evolutionists speak as if we knew all kinds of amazing things,
like the chemical composition and proportions of the elemental gases
in the Earth's Atmosphere
stretching back hundreds of millions of years.

These projections are often used to support one theory or another
about how and when and why gargantuan anomalies in the fossil record,
as reconstructed by themselves, 'must have' occurred.


Thus for instance, it is acknowledged that there was no significant evolution
after the plentiful presence of bacteria and protozoa for at least
2.5 BILLION years.

But this is 'explained' by the fact that 'there was no oxygen in the air',
until suddenly about the beginning of the Phanerozoic Era
the oxygen levels jumped from less than 1% to a whopping 21%.

This is supposed to have 'kicked off' the rapid Evolution and speciation
we are told happened in this Era.



Oxygen Levels are coordinated with proposed "Geological Ice-Ages" and other
geophysical phenomena speculated to have occurred and usually dated using
an interdependent web of 'mutually corroborating' data and theory.





The charts always look professional, and it is natural to assume,
(having been trained in school to provide error estimates),
that the error-estimation in these graphs are included or unremarkable.

What the typical readers (young students) are not often privy to,
is the incredibly large ERROR FACTOR in these hypothetical reconstructions,
which in effect render such calculations and charts extremely suspect and
open to many contradictory interpretations.



CO2 Error Estimates




Take for instance, CO2 content in the Atmosphere,
a critical component for control of rapid oxidation (fire),
and the support of ecosystems:



The typical chart looks very impressive, 
 and based on the way the data is displayed,
the assumption is that this chart will be accurate
 (+- some small % error), in what it is displaying.

Helpful is the source of the data, included in the chart.
However, we fully expect that 99 / 100 readers will
not follow up and check the data or margin of error.

In fact the work is based on a combination of two
theoretical models,  the first is called GEOCARB II,
(an earlier projection) and the final is GEOCARB III (2001).
This model was constructed by a team of geophysical scientists,
whose purpose was to come up with a model of the CO2 content
based upon various assumptions (explained in the original text).

The ORIGINAL Graph is shown below,
and includes quite clearly the estimated margins of error
believed to be true by the scientific team that created the chart.

 

Here we have colourized the ERROR Margins for easier viewing,
showing the whopping range the actual values might take,
with better data or better modelling.




What the scientists are telling us, are several important points:

(1)  The Estimated Margins of Error overwhelm any smaller variations between the models.

(2)  Neither model (GeoCarb II or III) can offer a more reliable graph.

(3)  Neither model offers reliable results closer than +- 5% for the more recent half of the period.

(4)  Neither model offers results closer than +- 20-80% (!) for the first half of the period.

(5)  The scientists themselves have no confidence in the results at all
for the period between 600 and 300 million years ago, beyond a general
presumption that the CO2 level was higher than 3%.

It should be obvious that the scientists themselves have been quite honest,
in soberly assessing the poor reliability of their own models.

Evolutionists however, have presented such studies as if they
actually reflected our true knowledge about the composition
of the Earth's Atmosphere millions of years ago, when in fact,
we don't know squat about it.



Speciation: Trilobites

In spite of the best efforts at creating 'convincing' Evolutionary 'tree'
for Trilobites as found in the geological record,
its obvious that the results come up rather short:

(1) There are as many identified 'species' in each previous time period (or more) than in the last.

(2) The number of 'species' actually doesn't appreciably vary, except in the negative.


Here is the 'best' tree that can be assembled out of fossils found 'in-strata':




It should be recalled also that no DNA is available for analysis,
and therefore the ONLY 'tree' that can be constructed is based upon
geological layering and its interpretation, rather than actual 'phyogenetic trees',
as is done with modern animals utilizing DNA samples.


On the other hand, this part of the fossil record is extensive,
and ought to be more reliable even than attempts at atomic dating methods,
since the location in the strata of each fossil is exactly known.

While the vertical placement in the column is quite certain,
the 'branches' and tree-like connections are all completely speculative,
and based only on the visible morphology available.
Looking at the fossils themselves leaves the viewer in a good position to
question both the groupings and the alleged descent of all the members shown.

Cambrian: 14-15 different types are found.

Ordovician: 14-15 different types are found.

Silurian: 8 different types are found.

Devonian: 6 different types are found.

Carb. Period: NONE....

Permian: 1 type found.


Just as in the insect world, we see apparently an 'explosive speciation',
followed by later decline in the number of types.

This makes even less sense when Darwinian Natural Selection
is considered, because these are Ocean species all in the same 'area'
(i.e., vertical column of mud and silt). So its quite difficult to
speak of 'isolated continents' and other factors, which on LAND,
seem to make sense according to Darwinian principles of

Isolation --> mutation --> distinct populations --> species bifurcation.

Here of course any alleged detection of 'speciation' is
entirely based on physical differences in individual fossils,
which MAY represent different species, but also may
in part be attributed to stages of growth within a species,
or local variation of the same species.

Extinction: yes.
Evolution: no solid evidence.







Thursday, January 17, 2013

Wednesday, January 16, 2013

Explosive Speciation and Transitional Fossils missing

 

This is what a typical coal forest would have looked like – warm, humid and swampy. However, it is important to keep in mind that this was not so everywhere on the globe.

This type of biome was present in tropical areas, but further out were temperate forests. However, due to swampy areas having a much higher preservation potential (the mud pits are anoxic!), much more is known about them.

In the Carboniferous, we have the very sudden appearance of a high diversity of flying insects. In fact, many of the insect orders known today were already living in the Carboniferous forests, as well as many now-extinct orders.



This is apparently an explosive radiation, but it may be another case of a Romer’s gap, as we don’t really have any transitional fossils showing the stem-groups of these very diverse insect orders. Unlike the Cambrian Radiation, where the stem-group fossils are there, here we really are dealing with a gappy fossil record and only an apparent burst of diversity, not a real one – although this conclusion can be disputed as well!

In this diagram, the still-living orders that originated in the Carboniferous are: the mayflies (Ephemeroptera), dragon- and damselflies (Odonata), grasshoppers, crickets and their ilk (Orthoptera) …



… roaches (Blattodea) and plant bugs (Hemiptera).

Diagrams source: Labandeira, C. C. & Eble, G. J. 2005. The fossil record of insect diversity and disparity. In: Anderson, J., Thackeray, F., van Wyk, B. & de Wit, M. (Eds.). Gondwana Alive: Biodiversity and the Evolving Biosphere. Witwatersrand University Press.
 

Sunday, January 13, 2013

The Absurd Claims about Cellular Evolution



Quote:
The typical neo-Darwinian mechanism of mutation, chance, and time cannot generate new information. The failure of evolutionary models to explain how a single cell could have evolved more complex information by additive mutations challenges the entire concept.
Here's the explanation, feel free to explain how it fails.





Well the first thing that fails is the link, and the drawing is too wide to properly
view online, so we took the liberty of redoing it taller and less wide.
You can click on it to enlarge:



 




Thursday, January 10, 2013