An Anti-Scientific Screed

by a supposed climate “scientist.” Even ignoring the “denier” lunacy, this is wrong headed on multiple levels. No, science is not “an expert trust-based system.”

And then there’s this:

You cannot decide that you believe in penicillin or the principles of flight while at the same time disbelieve humans evolved from apes or that greenhouse gases can cause climate change.

I hope he understands climate better than he does evolution. I suspect he doesn’t.

Feynman wept.

65 thoughts on “An Anti-Scientific Screed”

  1. I don’t follow – are you suggesting that the last common ancestor of humans and chimpanzees was not an ape?

    1. That is my understanding, yes. It’s misleading to say it was, at least an existing ape. Most people think of apes as the ones they know. Which is at least part of the resistance to the notion by some.

      1. That is the correct understanding. The progenitor of apes and humans was not an ape, any more than it was a human. It is really jarring to see Bob-1 confused on this matter. If you don’t even understand the argument, how can you believe in it?

      2. Look at the classification trees here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hominidae
        The last common ancestor of a chimpanzee and a human would have all of the characteristics of a great ape, and would be classified as such.

        If you are interested in evolutionary biology enough to blog about it, it is a mistake to think of “ape” or “great ape” as referring only to extant species.

          1. I agree that it is a side issue. But if anyone continues to think I’m wrong, I’d really appreciate the opportunity to set them straight.

          2. Bart, you said ” The progenitor of apes and humans was not an ape, any more than it was a human” but that’s not the question. The question is whether humans evolved from apes. Ape (Hominoidea) is a category that includes humans and chimps within it, other extant apes, and also includes a great many extinct species. The species that humans evolved from most recently were apes , apes which are now extinct. Similarly, the species that other extant apes evolved from most recently were apes which are now extinct. If you disagree, then please explain why. Ideally, you would tell me what taxonomic terms you would use to describe the most recent common ancestor of the genus homo and the genus pan. My answer is that it was a member of Hominoidea, and I really can’t see how it could have been anything else.

          3. I guess you’re trying to say “People didn’t evolve from chimpanzees or any other living ape”. Or perhaps you’re saying “The last common ancestor of chimpanzees and humans was not a chimpanzee.” And that’s true enough. But that is no justification to be snarky toward an author who says “humans evolved from apes” instead of “humans evolved from apes who have since gone extinct”.

          4. You continue to miss the point, which is that the simplistic statement is misleading (and unscientific, even though the idiot is pointing out how unscientific people are). “Humans evolved from apes” implies either that humans are not apes, or that our ancestors were modern apes. Neither is true.

          5. No, Bob. Precise language matters in science. Just because you choose to be casual with it does not mean it does not matter.

          6. Rand, I think “Humans evolved from apes” implies modern apes only to peple who aren’t familiar with physical anthropology / evolutionary biology.

            When a biologist talks about a particular taxonomic rank, there is no presumption that the species (plural) in question are extant. It looks to me like you are complaining that the author isn’t familiar with evolution because he was writing exactly the way someone familiar with evolution would write.

          7. I think “Humans evolved from apes” implies modern apes only to peple who aren’t familiar with physical anthropology / evolutionary biology.

            Which is most people, which was (presumably, if he’s trying to write a convincing piece) his audience.

          8. But if humans evolved from apes, then we’re no longer an ape, because if we’re apes then you’re saying “apes evolved from apes” and doesn’t really get you anywhere. But if we’re not apes, then looking at the skeletons, modern apes weren’t around back then either – so we had to evolve sideways along the tree of life instead of descending from our ancestors – who gave rise to all the great apes, including us.

          9. “Humans evolved from apes” implies either that humans are not apes, or that our ancestors were modern apes. Neither is true.

            Nothing in the original statement implies that the meaning was that our ancestors were “modern apes”. Apes as a category is both past and present. What a surprise, the apes we evolved from occurred in the past. The group we belong to presently is stilled called “apes”.

        1. Technically speaking, both humans and chimpanzees are modern apes with a proto-ape common ancestor.

          1. Yes, but we can also talk about more recent common ancestors. Some proto-apes evolved into apes, and one particular group of apes kept diverging until the final divergence between chimpanzees and humans.

      3. That is my understanding, yes. It’s misleading to say it was, at least an existing ape. Most people think of apes as the ones they know. Which is at least part of the resistance to the notion by some.

        People who think about evolution only in terms of the species encountered today are rather missing point. Humans are apes, just as they’re primates, just as they’re mammals.

    2. Well. The taxonomy of apes (hominoidea) includes the great apes (hominidae ) which includes humans. For whatever reason some people find that insulting but I don’t. It is just a classification scheme used in biology. Biology usually classifies existing organisms by physical appearance or traits. Now that we have genetic theory some people have been adjusting the classifications to be done on an actual genome basis. This has resulted in the reclassification of a lot of species mostly in the vegetable and insect world.

      To the best of our knowledge humans and chimpanzees have the same ancestors. So it is like chimpanzees are our distant cousins.

      I disagree with the UCL guy because humans haven’t evolved from apes. We ARE apes man.

      1. Most if not all evolutionary biologists will agree that humans are great apes. Godzilla, humans evolved from australopiths, and austropiths were great apes, therefore humans evolved from great apes. See, a very simple proof.

        There is a more interesting discussion to be had if you don’t reject evolution but do reject the idea that modern humans are apes.

          1. Ok, that’s fine. Lets agree that humans are not apes, and now lets see if that helps us think about the species which humans evolved from.

            Here is an exercise: Make a list of the characteristics a “great ape” has that a human does not have. Call the list “List A”. The characteristics on “List A” should define why a chimp is a great ape while a human is not. Now consider the expected characteristics of the last common ancestor of humans and chimpanzees. Does this ancestor have *every single one* of the characteristics on “List A”?

          2. Completely wrong. Bison are called buffalo for obscure historical reasons, and American bison are not all that closely related to buffalo; they are at best as closely related to African or Asian water buffalo (the only true buffalo) as they are to sheep, which is to say not very.

            On the other hand, the great apes and humans are fairly closely related, particularly bonobos and humans – which split off from each other in the evolutionary tree rather recently (about 2 million years, IIRC).

            If a zoologist could take a look at the common ancestor of all the great apes without preknowledge, I have little doubt that he would say said creature was an ape. A similar statement is very far from being the case for bison and buffalo.

            Just to confuse the discussion even more, the American “buffalo” was probably called that because it looks rather like the European animal commonly called a buffalo – which also isn’t related to buffalo.

        1. I believe that most, if not all, evolutionary biologists would not classify humans as great apes. At best, they would classify humans as pretty good apes.

        2. So the great apes evolved from the great apes. Were the great apes the result of an act of original creation, or what? If I had a science teacher who told me that turtles evolved from turtles, I would assume he hasn’t read the book.

          1. George,

            Your criticism, if it is indeed crticism and not just musing in comic fashion about taxonomy, can be applied to any taxonomic rank for humans (or any other animal). For example: humans are mammals, and humans evolved from mammals, so mammals evolved from mammals! Yikes!

            Your science teacher probably did teach you about the evolution of horses: you’ve surely seen the diagram showing how the modern horse had smaller ancestors. So: horses evolved from horses! OMG!

            Lets try to make this concrete: Instead of “humans evolved from apes”, what do you think the author *should* have said?

            I’m going to guess what you’re going to answer: “ape-like ancestor”. Popular science authors sometimes say “humans evolved from an ape-like ancestor”, which is true enough, but “ape-like” is rather vague, and moreover, it doesn’t describe the most recent ancestor of chimpanzees and humans as well as “ape” does. Nor does it describe the most recent ancestor of humans, chimpanzees, and gorillas (which branched off earlier). Do you disagree? If so, what do you think is the best taxonomic description of the most recent ancestor of humans and chimpanzees?

          2. By the way, the reason to focus on the most recent common ancestor of humans and chimpanzees is that this is the transition that seems so wonderful and controversial. We could try to describe where apes diverged from general primates, and that seems to be what you are looking for, George, but somehow people don’t get as worked up about the divergence of catarrhini from other primates as they do about the divergence of humans from other apes.

          3. Sorry Rand, but that shows a significant ignorance of evolution. Evolution is not a process of “advancement”. Maybe you should’t be so quick to throw stones.

          4. Again, good enough for a general audience. While evolution is not in general a process of advancement, most sane people nonetheless consider humans the most advanced species.

          5. Obviously, the author should have said “humans and apes evolved from the same ancestor.”

            Why is this so hard for you? You were wrong. Just admit it, and we can move on.

          6. Bart, Rand’s assertion was “I hope he understands climate better than he does evolution”. I don’t know how well he understand the climate, but I’m sure that he didn’t say anything that revealed an ignorance of evolution. Your comments might reveal that ignorance though. Let me ask you as directly as I can: was the last common ancestor of humans and chimpanzees an ape? If you don’t think so, please explain why it wasn’t an ape.

          7. “most sane people nonetheless consider humans the most advanced species.”

            They can have any religious beliefs they want, but such beliefs aren’t considered when doing biology or anthropology.

            Rand, I think you know the following, which makes this conversation puzzling to me, but maybe the following will be helpful to someone else:
            http://evolution.berkeley.edu/evolibrary/misconceptions_faq.php#c2
            http://evolution.berkeley.edu/evolibrary/misconceptions_faq.php#a3

          8. They can have any religious beliefs they want, but such beliefs aren’t considered when doing biology or anthropology.

            So? Who cares? Most people aren’t biologists or anthropologists. We’re talking about communicating with lay people.

            Does “less complex primates” make you happy?

          9. >”1. Did we evolve from monkeys?
            Humans did not evolve from monkeys. Humans are more closely related to modern apes than to monkeys, but we didn’t evolve from apes, either. Humans share a common ancestor with modern African apes, like gorillas and chimpanzees. Scientists believe this common ancestor existed 5 to 8 million years ago. Shortly thereafter, the species diverged into two separate lineages. One of these lineages ultimately evolved into gorillas and chimps, and the other evolved into early human ancestors called hominids. “

            “Humans did not evolve from apes, gorillas or chimps. We are all modern species that have followed different evolutionary paths, though humans share a common ancestor with some primates, such as the African ape.

            You can find many such citations via a web search. It is important to be precise. The notion that humans evolved from apes is more commonly proffered by detractors as ‘proof’ of the absurdity of the proposition. Someone who truly understood the theory would not play into that.

            ‘One of the most persistent myths, however, concerns the relationship of humans to great apes, a group of primates that includes the gorilla, orangutan and chimpanzee. Someone who believes the myth will say, “If evolution exists, then humans must be descended directly from apes. Apes must have changed, step by step, into humans.” This same person will often follow up with this observation: “If apes ‘turned into’ humans, then apes should no longer exist.” Although there are several ways to attack this assertion, the bottom-line rebuttal is simple — humans didn’t descend from apes. That’s not to say humans and apes aren’t related, but the relationship can’t be traced backward along a direct line of descent, one form morphing into another. It must be traced along two independent lines, far back into time until the two lines merge.

            The intersection of the two lines represents something special, what biologists refer to as a common ancestor. This apelike ancestor, which probably lived 5 to 11 million years ago in Africa, gave rise to two distinct lineages, one resulting in hominids — humanlike species — and the other resulting in the great ape species living today. Or, to use a family tree analogy, the common ancestor occupied a trunk, which then divided into two branches. Hominids developed along one branch, while the great ape species developed along another branch.’

          10. Does “less complex primates” make you happy

            Not happy at all. Your wording is eschewed by mainstream biologists (although it does get used by creationists). A bacteria can be said to be less complex than a primate, but not only does evolution have no drive toward greater complexity (which I hope you already know), the diversification among primates that we’re talking about over such a short time frame means that greater or lesser complexity doesn’t enter into it, with one exception. The one exception to that is the human brain, where obviously something interesting and complex is going on. But the most recent common ancestor of the chimpanzee and the human was not necessarily “less complex” than the chimpanzee. Whether that ancestor could be said to be “less complex” than a human is hotly debated, and the argument is going to have to delve into neuroscience, not traditional evolutionary biology. For that matter, whether a modern chimp brain can be said to be less complex than a modern human brain is hotly debated, despite your common sense intuitions on that subject. Look at how someone described as “one of the world’s leading neuroscientists” tackles the subject:
            http://edge.org/conversation/are-human-brains-unique
            (I suggest scrolling down to the word “chimpanzee” – he takes awhile warming to the subject!)

          11. Whether that ancestor could be said to be “less complex” than a human is hotly debated, and the argument is going to have to delve into neuroscience, not traditional evolutionary biology.

            So? What’s wrong with delving into neuroscience? You’re simply getting into arcane scientific disputes that few care about, in order to defend what he said. And, as a bonus, avoid discussing the primary topic of the post.

          12. Bart,

            Your google searching is great, and it shows the need for popular science authors to contort themselves to combat misconceptions about evolution, which is a fine reason to do it.

            Now step away from the controversy and do this one easy thing: Type “Miocene Apes” into google. You’ll find a mix of popular and academic sources discussing ancient apes.
            Here is an example:
            http://bio.sunyorange.edu/updated2/pl%20new/71%20APES.htm
            Here is another:
            http://anthro.palomar.edu/earlyprimates/early_2.htm

            See how they use the word “ape” to describe the ancestors to modern day apes (and humans)? Your preferred use of the word ape doesn’t account for that usage.

          13. It seems you cannot even read your own links. I weary of your desperate salvage operation. Good day.

          14. I will quote from the second link. As a bonus, there is a reference to climate change. I’m adding emphasis to one sentence fragment.


            Among the numerous Miocene primate species were the ancestors of all modern apes and humans. By 14 million years ago, the group of apes that included our ancestors was apparently in the process of adapting to life on the edges of the expanding savannas in Southern Europe. They were very likely members of the genus Dryopithecus , which were generally similar in appearance to modern African apes. These apes evolved mostly during a relatively short global heat wave that began around 15 million years ago. This caused enough polar ice to melt so that sea levels once again rose 80-130 feet.

          15. The first link was very careful in its language. The second is from a community college in San Diego.

            Really. I’m done. You would have been better off if you had admitted your mistake and moved on.

          16. The first link has an entire section called “POSSIBLE HOMINID ANCESTORS AMONG MIOCENE APES”.
            In that section, many apes are discussed in terms of their likelihood for being our ancestors. For example,
            Kenyapithecus is described as an ape. Morotopithecus is described as an ape.
            Look them up. They are human ancestor candidates.

          17. What is it you did not understand about:

            In recent years, more complete skeletons of Dryopithecus and Kenyapithecus have been found which demonstrate closer affinities to the hominids than had previously been described.

            Previously classified as apes, now considered might be hominid precursors.

          18. Previously classified as apes, now considered might be hominid precursors.

            Hominid precursors which are being called apes. No one is saying that Kenyapithecus isn’t an ape. No one is saying Dryopithecus isn’t an ape.

            In the particular link I supplied, the author says
            “Kenyapithecus was more adapted to terrestrial locomotion than other Miocene apes ” and “Kenyapithecus africanus, a 27 kg ape from 15 mya, has been renamed Equatorius africanus.” Change its name, but it is still a 27 kg ape.

            Look up “Kenyapithecus”, look up Dryopithecus, they are widely called apes. And then there is Morotopithecus, described in the link as “an ape that lived 20 million years ago.”

            And you know why these creatures are being discussed in the section on “Myocene Apes”? Because they are called apes.

            By the way, you know that “pithecus” means “ape”?

          19. I presume you’ll accept this guy’s credentials:
            http://www.anthropology.utoronto.ca/Faculty/Begun

            Here is a quote from the conclusion to the quite detailed http://www.anthropology.utoronto.ca/Faculty/Begun/handbook.pdf

            ” Human ancestors retain the imprint of their Eurasia and African ape ancestors, and were very probably similar to extant African apes, particularly chimpanzees. That is, the fossil record of hominoid evolution suggests that humans evolved from a knuckle‐walking, forest‐dwelling soft fruit frugivore/ omnivore.”

            Begun has tons of publications, you can pick through them. I picked one of them at random and found this quote:

            “The unique cognitive adaptations of hominins evolved in response to the more severe challenges (for an ape) of more open forested or grassland ecological set- tings, and are mere elaborations of the cognitive adap tations of their great ape ancestors.”
            From http://anthropology.utoronto.ca/Faculty/Begun/evol%20origins%20g%20ape%20intell.pdf

          20. “When you find yourself in a hole, stop digging. ”

            When you have only empty bluster like that instead of anything substantial to say, you’ve probably lost the argument. I’m surprised you took the time to reply but didn’t have any reaction to my links to David Begun’s work.

    3. Bear in mind, we do not know all of our common ancestors. People always act so certain in knowing the past of humanity but we are just scratching the surface. Archaeology has not been around very long. This is one of the reasons I am skeptical of AGW. The field is incredibly young and hasn’t jumped credibility hurdles that even Anthropology has.

      1. Indeed.

        Another reason is that the computer models that their proponents claim predict “global warming” actually don’t. To the extent that they make any testable prediction at all, all models thus far fail.

        Another reason is that in “climate science” there is no true peer review. There are journals in which “climate scientists” publish the results of computer simulations–but notably do NOT publish their input data, nor the source code of the simulation itself, which are held to be secret information, not for the eyes of the taxpayer peons who pay for it all. From the Climategate emails:

        “And don’t leave stuff lying around on ftp sites – you never know who is trawling them. The two MM*s have been after the CRU station data for years. If they ever hear there is a Freedom of Information Act now in the UK, I think I’ll delete the file rather than send to anyone. Does your similar act in the US force you to respond to enquiries within 20 days?—our does! The UK works on precedents, so the first request will test it. We also have a Data Protection Act, which I will hide behind…”

        * “MMs” seems to be

      2. Indeed.

        Anyone who’s read the Climategate emails knows that there are no credibility and no science here. It’s the usual politics from the usual suspects, Leftists who wish to destroy the West economically, to punish us all for the sin of refusing to live in caves and watch our grandchildren hunt rats by candlelight, forever.

        “And don’t leave stuff lying around on ftp sites – you never know who is trawling them. The two MMs have been after the CRU station data for years. If they ever hear there is a Freedom of Information Act now in the UK, I think I’ll delete the file rather than send to anyone. Does your similar act in the US force you to respond to enquiries within 20 days?—our does! The UK works on precedents, so the first request will test it. We also have a Data Protection Act, which I will hide behind…”

        Science is open. Science is transparent. Science publicizes its data, its models, its predictions, and its findings. Science doesn’t have secret data. “I found a neat trick to hide the decline.”

        If “scientists” working for a tobacco company were found to have sent similar emails back and forth while writing up papers purporting to support whatever position kept the grant money coming, would anyone anywhere believe a word they said, ever again? Would they have to find new careers, perhaps selling used cars? Mann and Jones were caught with their hands in the cookie jar. The emails aren’t just a smoking gun–they’re a mushroom cloud.

    4. Excellent, Bob-1! You’ve managed to derail the thread with your squirrel. You get two Lefty points.

    1. Speaking of the “expert trust based system”, who gets to decide who the “trustworthy experts” are? Let’s see if the local Progs here will demonstrate if they know what “science” is…

  2. Well. In practice the current scientific establishment does in fact behave a lot like an expert trust based system. Then again so does religion.
    Back when the Catholic Church had real power here in Europe, they regulated the press, and you could only publish something if you had their Imprimatur. i.e. if the Catholic Church censors did not object to the content. Todays scientific publishing industry behaves much in the same way…

    The difference is that science is grounded on the scientific method. If you want to you can conduct your own experiments and check the results to see if your predictions match reality. If they don’t then you have to restate your assumptions and redo the models. AGW, on the other hand, relies on broken statistical models that can predict nothing meaningful.

    It is just like economics. We can understand micro-economy just fine. It is when you get into macro-economy that the bullshit starts to happen. At best you can examine and redirect large flows but actual causes and effects of the flows, as well as their direction, are always foggy and poorly understood.

    In the case of AGW theory there are a couple of things that are non-controversial. That atmospheric CO2 increases global temperature (i.e. the greenhouse effect) and that human activity, along with a host of other things, generates CO2. The problem is with the tremendous leaps of logic they do to conclude that the CO2 we generate produces a meaningful effect on global temperature or, even more of a stretch, that it will cause catastrophic events.

    Even more pathetic are their revisionist claims that temperatures were never as high as they are today. No saying its about weather and not climate does not cut it. Humans cover quite a significant fraction of the globe and if you have to ignore observations and replace them with bogus models claiming something is manipulating events off camera that you do not measure then that is just bogus. In fact if you cannot even measure its effects then how is this relevant to human activity at all? Ignoring actual accurate satellite data that disproves your AGW claims is also bad science.

    The reason why people’s opinions in this matter diverge so much is precisely because the arguments provided by the AGW researchers are not convincing at all.

    I guess I will have to add UCL to my list of dumbass colleges.

    1. It is just like economics. We can understand micro-economy just fine. It is when you get into macro-economy that the bullshit starts to happen. At best you can examine and redirect large flows but actual causes and effects of the flows, as well as their direction, are always foggy and poorly understood.

      There is also more people and more models trying to predict macro-economics, yet still getting it wrong.

      1. This is why some of us regard economics as a pseudoscience, along with sociology, psychology, and so on.

        One of the fundamental assumptions in these disciplines is that all human beings are interchangeable, fungible, and as identical as electrons. Empirically, this is not the case. Therefore attempting to model and predict human behavior mathematically is a fools’ errand, though an extremely lucrative one for the tenured.

        1. I regard pursuit of “self interest” as a practically universal human trait, driving among other matters economics. But I also recognize that self interest is somewhat subjective, and enlightenment guiding the pursuit varies immensely.

        2. Maybe so, but it seems the argument for Climate Change Science is interchangeable with the argument for Evolutionary Science, Aerospace Science, and Microbial Science. Perhaps someone can pose a hypothesis to support the interoperability, but I suspect any evidence to support the hypothesis would be subjective.

          1. Except that the latter make predictions which are borne out and used to design and manufacture useful products every single day, whereas the former makes predictions which are serially unfulfilled, and useful only for obtaining grants and justifying further taxation and regulation.

  3. It looks like he’s confusing regulation of the environment by humans and regulation of humans by governments. It’s possible to be in favor of the first and oppose the second.

  4. Some of what he says, I think is pretty obvious, political ideology does influence peoples views on AGW, but it’s also obvious that, with his weird claims on economics, he can be included in that number.

    1. Why is it news to anyone that people who tend to be skeptical of everything are skeptical of AGW, while people who tend to be dupes about everything tend to be dupes on AGW? The whole argument is strictly geared to tribal loyalty – it’s like saying, “Hey, he’s not one of us,” and the other one replying, “Damned straight!”

  5. It’s a complete straw-man, anyway, since I don’t know anyone who doesn’t agree that ‘greenhouse gases can cause climate change’.

    What we disagree about is the claim that a tiny amount of CO2 released from fossil fuels by humans is having any significant impact on the Earth’s climate. Which is a completely different matter.

    But, not so many years ago, they would have been arguing that you can’t believe in flight or evolution while also believing that continents move by themselves, or that stomach ulcers aren’t caused by stress.

  6. “By the way, the reason to focus on the most recent common ancestor of humans and chimpanzees”

    Their probably isn’t a common ancestor but rather ancestors. They diagram a tree but the reality is much more complex with populations interbreeding, then separating, and then a segment of that population interbreeding again, all over extremely long periods of time. More interesting, is how things were just before we were modern humans. You don’t have to go back that far, comparatively, to see modern humans breeding with Neanderthals, Denisovans, and possibly other humanoids. We are learning so much because there is so much we don’t know.

    No one alive knows the full story and things we think are the Truth today will be found wrong in the future. So why use evolution as a litmus test for being able to understand complex subjects or accuse people who don’t know every little detail about evolution as being incapable of understanding vaccines or the rocket equation?

    There is a supremacy argument being made that the people who buy into AGW are evolutionary more superior to the others and that the others are genetically incapable of thinking the same way as AGW supporters.

    But if AGW has shown us anything, is that smart people are still capable of believing in magical thinking and can still be motivated by the fads of the mob rather than rational thought.

    Humans are capable of holding more than one conflicting view or belief and just because they do, doesn’t mean they are a few rungs lower on the evolutionary ladder than people who have faith in the current consensus fad. This is especially true when you consider the fact that what we know about the climate will change and some of those changes will disprove current beliefs yet some people treat today’s imperfect knowledge as unquestionable gospel.

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