Evolutionary biologist Alice Roberts was denounced by a very silly Christian as a "fanatical evolutionist" who peddles "vacuous subjective claims that our ape-like ancestors apparently miraculously (something in which perhaps only a minority at the BBC would believe) decided to walk upright in search of food".

This is from Atheism on Facebook, author currently unknown:

 

Evolutionary biologist Alice Roberts was denounced by a very silly Christian as a "fanatical evolutionist" who peddles "vacuous subjective claims that our ape-like ancestors apparently miraculously (something in which perhaps only a minority at the BBC would believe) decided to walk upright in search of food".

She has written an eloquent rebuttal, which to date (quelle surprise) has not met with a response:

//I wanted to register my disquiet at the paragraph in which I am d...escribed as a "fanatical evolutionist". Like most biologists, I think that evolution through natural selection best explains the diversity of life on this planet; this is not a minority view and not necessarily incompatible with religious belief: many Christians accept evolution.

However, I felt moved to respond to the criticisms of the series Origins of Us, and set the record straight. Firstly, the criticisms do BBC Science an injustice. Even if I wanted to present my own opinions and speculation (in any other way than clearly flagging them as such) the BBC would not allow me to do this in a science programme. Secondly, the criticism levelled at me brings my own academic integrity into question. Every hypothesis and fact discussed or presented in the programme is already "out there", in peer reviewed scientific publications. BBC Science (and I myself) are very careful about the factual basis of such programmes, and extremely careful to differentiate between fact and opinion.

The "vacuous subjective claims" to which Mr Stephen Green alludes are facts based on peer-reviewed scientific research. I am also surprised that Mr Green suggests I presented the extremely outdated "savannah hypothesis" as current science - this is something that was critically appraised and research suggesting, instead, an arboreal origin for bipedalism was put forward. The idea that tool-using and tool-making may have influenced the shape of our hands is, again, not idle speculation but based on published research. Any change in anatomy which leads to a survival advantage (whether that's an adaptation helping survival in a particular natural environment or an adaptation which makes you better at making technology which helps you to survive) is likely to be selected for.

I realise that few readers of this website will read my response objectively, but I object strongly to the criticism that my programmes with the BBC have lacked objectivity and include "idle speculation". That can only be true if you believe that the numerous academic papers which form the backbone of such a series are also "idle speculation".

Regards, Professor Alice Roberts

John Hobbs
Shared publicly  -  Dec 5, 2013

Columbus discovers Hispaniola (12-5-1492)
Arawak men and women, naked, tawny, and full of wonder, emerged from their villages onto the island's beaches and swam out to get a closer look at the strange big boat. When Columbus and his sailors came ashore, carrying swords, speaking oddly, the Arawaks ran to greet them, brought them food, water, gifts.....
....The Indians had been given an impossible task. The only gold around was bits of dust garnered from the streams. So they fled, were hunted down with dogs, and were killed.
...From his base on Haiti, Columbus sent expedition after expedition into the interior. They found no gold fields, but had to fill up the ships returning to Spain with some kind of dividend. In the year 1495, they went on a great slave raid, rounded up fifteen hundred Arawak men, women, and children, put them in pens guarded by Spaniards and dogs, then picked the five hundred best specimens to load onto ships. Of those five hundred, two hundred died en route. The rest arrived alive in Spain and were put up for sale by the archdeacon of the town, who reported that, although the slaves were "naked as the day they were born," they showed "no more embarrassment than animals." Columbus later wrote: "Let us in the name of the Holy Trinity go on sending all the slaves that can be sold."
What Columbus did to the Arawaks of the Bahamas, Cortes did to the Aztecs of Mexico, Pizarro to the Incas of Peru, and the English settlers of Virginia and Massachusetts to the Powhatans and the Pequots.
* A People's History of the United States by Howard Zinn

A “Buddy Bench” Makes Recess More Inclusive

Posted by Rohmteen Mokhtari, December 06, 2013

 

For many elementary students, recess can be a highlight of the school day. A chance to run and play after hours of sitting still behind a desk.
But it can also be an isolating experience for students who feel left out.
At Roundtown Elementary School in York, PA one 2nd grader is doing his part to make sure all students are included in the fun.
With his family considering a temporary move to Germany, Christian began researching German schools. That’s when he noticed that one German school had a “buddy bench” for students who felt lonely or excluded during recess.
With this idea in mind he took action to support the students at his school who he noticed were being left out recess. He went to his principal and got a “buddy bench” at his school.
Now when students feel alone or excluded they can go to the bench where they’ll be invited by other students to talk or play.
This “buddy bench” allows more students to share in the joys of recess.
But just as importantly, it helps create a school culture of caring and inclusion. It challenges students to support their fellow classmates and empowers them to be a part of the solution.
As Christian puts it, “we show we care about others when we ask others to play.”
Christian and the “buddy bench” teach us a lot about what it takes to make schools more safe and welcoming for all students.
Christian exemplifies the power of upstanders willing to take action when they see students being excluded or teased.
In order to become upstanders, students need to know there are many ways to constructively support a classmate who is being bullied or teased. Options include talking to an adult when they see a student being teased, speaking up in the moment, supporting a student who has been bullied and causing a distraction in the moment that takes the attention away from a student who is being targeted.
Welcoming School’s new film, What Can We Do? Bias, Bullying and Bystanders shows how two schools are using Welcoming Schools materials to help students be upstanders. Learn more about the film and find many more resources to stop name-calling and bullying.

The Problem of Antimatter

    When in contact, matter and antimatter can annihilate one another to produce pure energy―that’s why there is extremely little naturally occurring antimatter in the world around us. — Brian Greene (1999) Mass is made of certain kinds of particles. The Standard Model lists them all. In its scheme each particle is paired up with an antiparticle. One way to think about an antiparticle is that it is the particle but travels back in time. Another is its charge is opposite. When a particle meets its antiparticle they annihilate immediately. They make two photons whose energies are equal to the masses in accordance with: E = mc2. So the Problem of Antimatter’s not: Why is so little of it left? It’s: Why is there any matter left? Which is to say: It seems that the original proportion wasn’t half and half. How come? Physics has a symmetry it calls CP. It says exactly 50-50 is the way it has to be. Physical cosmology contrives an answer to the Problem. It says CP Symmetry was violated when particles were born in the Big Bang. There are some suggestions as to how this happened but they look like little more than stirring up the same old Problem, like the beat cop saying to the beach bum: Move along. More recently it turns out that the weak force doesn’t follow CP Symmetry. At last, there is a way to have more particles than antis. The celebration is a short one. CP violation, as it’s called, covers just a trillionth of the matter that we see. Back to square one: Why were there more particles than antiparticles? - See more at: http://www.timeone.ca/clues/the-problem-of-antimatter/#sthash.RXq5zA1z.qQ7nzyX8.dpuf

Fossils Yield Oldest Known Human DNA

By Gemma Tarlach | December 4, 2013 12:00 pm

Researchers have successfully sequenced the oldest known human DNA, and it points to unexpected relationships between hominid populations scattered across the length of Eurasia.
The genetic material came from a 400,000-year-old femur of Homo heidelbergensis, an early hominid considered to be the ancestor of both Neanderthals and modern humans. The achievement pushes back the age of the oldest hominid DNA sequencing by 200,000 years.
The site of the fossil’s discovery, Sima de los Huesos (“pit of bones”) in northern Spain, has yielded remains of more than two dozen individuals dated to older than 300,000 years. The skeletons found at Sima de los Huesos exhibit Neanderthal-derived traits, leading researchers to anticipate a strong relation to Homo neanderthalensis.

Denisovan Connection

But after sequencing an almost complete mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) genome from the femur, researchers discovered the individual was more closely related to Denisovans, eastern Eurasian hominids known only from a few fragments found at sites in Siberia. Although related to Neanderthals, Denisovans are considered genetically distinct, and are thought to have dispersed from Siberia to southeast Asia. By way of comparison, Neanderthals and modern humans are more closely related in their mitochondrial makeup than are Neanderthals and Denisovans.
Ancient DNA that can still be sequenced is usually found only in permafrost conditions; it typically degrades much faster in temperate and tropical zones, where early hominids lived. But the Sima de los Huesos cave site’s humidity and naturally controlled temperature created an environment conducive to mtDNA preservation of both early hominids and their contemporaries, including a cave bear, which researchers successfully sequenced earlier this year.

Mixing Populations

The team obtained about two grams of bone samples — less than a tenth of an ounce — from the femur and performed a number of tests to rule out contamination with modern genetic material. They then sequenced the mitochondrial DNA, because retrieving usable mtDNA is easier than collecting nuclear DNA from such an old specimen because several hundred copies of mtDNA exist in each cell. This makes it possible to piece together the mitochondrial genome even if many of the copies are degraded. Mitchondrial DNA is passed down from the individual’s mother, however, and does not provide as complete an evolutionary picture as nuclear DNA.
In light of the individual’s unexpected relatedness to Denisovans, the team proposed a number of possible scenarios for how the genes from a population known only in Siberia ended up in Spain. One of the most plausible, researchers suggested, was gene flow from another, as-yet-unknown but Denisovan-like hominid into the Sima de los Huesos group.
To support this theory, the team noted in their paper published today in Nature that a number of early hominid fossils found from the same time period across Asia, Europe and Africa have been classified as H. heidelbergensis, in many ways a catch-all lacking precise definition. It’s possible that some or all of these individuals may be an early hominid population as yet unclassified by science.

CLIMATE CHANGE WEEKLY #112

Southern Hemisphere polar ice extent set new records this week, combining with fairly average Northern Hemisphere polar ice extent to set the final stages of a year marked by above-average global polar ice extent. Polar ice caps, apparently, are global warming deniers, attacking the science of alarmist global warming predictions.
Average Southern Hemisphere polar sea ice extent during November 2013 was nearly 1 million square kilometers above the long-term average.
When polar ice happens to be below average in a given year, global warming alarmists cite the annual departure from the long-term mean as proof of a human-induced global warming crisis. During years like 2013, when polar ice extent is above the long-term average, global warming alarmists are largely silent on the topic.
Importantly, even if the years with below-average polar ice extent began to form a meaningful trend, this in itself would not constitute a global warming crisis. Polar ice retreat would merely reflect warming temperatures, even if the warming is modest and benign. During recent years when global polar ice extent has been below normal, it has been Northern Hemisphere polar ice – floating in the Arctic Ocean – driving the global trend. When floating sea ice melts, it does nothing to raise global sea levels.
Southern Hemisphere polar ice, resting primarily on the Antarctic continent, has been consistently expanding during the 30-plus years since NASA/NOAA satellites first began precisely measuring polar ice extent.

If you really care about the environment you should love fracking. Here's why

by Guy Bentley

December 6, 2013, 2:33pm

A report released on Friday by the Centre for Policy Studies (CPS) has found that increasing use of shale gas can massively reduce some of the world's deadliest air pollution.
As well as slashing carbon emissions and providing enticing economic prospects the findings of the report should present a compelling case for those who value the environment to embrace fracking.
Reduce deadly PM2.5
PM2.5 are microscopic dust particles created from burning fuel. These tiny particles can penetrate the lungs where they are absorbed into the blood and lead to cardiorespiratory disease and are one of the major contributors to air pollution.
The US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) estimates that PM2.5 is responsible for about 75,000 premature deaths per year in the US. The use of coal for energy is a major source of rising levels of PM.25.
In the US, shale gas production has grown by a factor of 17 over the past 13 years. Shale now supplies 35 per cent of US natural gas. Compared to coal, shale gas results in a 400-fold reduction of PM2.5, a 4,000-fold reduction in sulphur dioxide, a 70-fold reduction in nitrous oxides, and more than a 30-fold reduction in mercury. Air pollution is still major killer globally with the Health Effects Institute estimating that air pollution led to 3.2m deaths in the year 2010.
Slash CO2 emissions
While shale gas is a fossil fuel, most of the increases in CO2 are coming from increasing coal use in developing countries. The CPS report estimates if their increased energy needs could be met from natural gas instead of coal, global warming could be slowed by a factor of two to three.
This would mean that instead of having 30 to 50 years before the world reaches twice the preindustrial carbon dioxide levels the we may have 60 to 100 years. If developing countries continue to use coal their PM2.5 and greenhouse emissions will also continue to grow.
The authors also highlight the need for energy conservation, especially in China. However, they emphasise that this will be far from sufficient to tackle the enormous environmental challenges facing the planet.
Affordable
Europe and China both pay a high price for imported natural gas, typically paying $10m (£6m) British Thermal Unit. With such high prices Europe and China are in a strong position to exploit vast deposits of shale gas at greatly reduced cost compared to natural gas imports.
The report suggests that Europe could be the testing and proving ground where innovative technology can be trialled and improved while still profitable. If the same technology and expertise is brought to developing countries they can also enjoy a more environmentally friendly energy mix.
The report also addresses many of the objections to fracking such as the increased frequency of earthquakes and the dangers to water supply. It documents how these concerns have been wildly exaggerated and in some cases are wholly spurious.
The report was written by Richard Muller, professor of physics at the University of California Berkeley since 1980 and Elizabeth Muller, co-founder of Berkeley Earth a non-profit working on environmental issues. 

- See more at: http://www.cityam.com/blog/1386342437/if-you-really-care-about-environment-you-should-love-fracking-heres-why#sthash.zkvHYfuD.dpuf