LL-L "Evolution" 2010.08.19 (01) [EN]

Thu Aug 19 14:47:40 UTC 2010

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*L O W L A N D S - L - 19 August 2010 - Volume 01
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From: Mike Morgan <mwmbombay at gmail.com>

Subject: LL-L "Evolution" 2010.08.18 (02) [EN]

In response to my joking pomposity:

>>  ... and taught exactly that when I was at Addis Ababa U,with
>> ድንቅ ነሽ aka Lucy (or a reasonable facsimile) lying peacefully just down
>> the road a block.

Sandy opined:

> Expressing a strong opinion or being near an appropriate object doesn't
> lend credence to a scientific theory.

indeed it doesn't ... and wasn't intended to really ... sorry if it came off
that way ... opinions stand or fall based on how believable they are, in
light of, including other things, the evidence .... and plausibility of
conjecture

Unfortunately, for language acquisition (prehistorically in humans) there is
rather little direct hard evidence and lots of conjecture ... and I admit
that I am willing to accept the conjectured role of gesture (and, on the
basis of rather less evidence, sign language) in the origin of human
language as much because of my personal involvement with sign language as
with the facts of integrated neuromotor control of mouth and fingers ... but
I remain sceptical of reports of ape "language" ... which, it seems, are
more in the eye of the beholder than in the generally unpublished raw
data...

         U C > || Mike Morgan
==========================
                 linguist

    soon to be @ IGNOU-UCLan

Applied Sign Linguistics Programme

            New Delhi, India

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From: clarkedavid8 at aol.com

Subject: LL-L "Evolution" 2010.08.18 (02) [EN]

Global warming is not the problem - global cooling is. The geological
consensus seems to be that any man-made global warming will only delay the
inevitable return of the ice for a thousand years or so. It is misleading to
say "When the ice age ended" in relation to the current ice age, because it
has not yet ended. You could say "When the last cold period ended" or "At
the start of the current interstatial". When the current ice age finally
does come to an end some time in the indefinite future, the climate will get
warmer, lilke in the Eocene, for example. but we will quite likely already
be extinct or have changed into something new and strange by then.

David Clarke

From: Marcus Buck <list at marcusbuck.org>

Subject: LL-L "Evolution" 2010.08.18 (01) [EN]

From: clarkedavid8 at aol.com

Subject: LL-L "Evolution" 2010.08.17 (03) [EN]

All geologists agree that the current ice age never ended and that we are
still in it. The current interstatial (warm period) began around 12,000 BC
and will probably end soon (although not quite as suddenly as in the
blockbuster film made on the subject a few years ago). On past experience,
the ice will advance to just north of London and there will be a wide belt
of tundra to the south of it. Global warming is not the problem. I think the
north African countries should be welcomed into the European Union with open
arms.

In fact, ice ages are a quite unusual phenomenon in geological history
(there was another one in the Permian), it's just that we happen to be in
one and it's still going on. The earth has usually (outside occasional ice
ages) been quite a lot warmer than it is now.

What's "Global warming is not the problem." supposed to mean? ... When the
ice age ended ..

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From: Paul Finlow-Bates <wolf_thunder51 at yahoo.co.uk>

Subject: LL-L "Evolution" 2010.08.18 (01) [EN]

A bit of a question of definitions here, depending on whether you're looking
at geological or human time scales:

"All geologists agree that the current ice age never ended and that we are
still in it."

Quite true that the current glacial cycle, which began about 1.8 million
years ago, is almost certainly going to continue with advances and
retrreats.  But to say "we are still in it" only means something if you are
aware of that fact; if there's no ice, tundra or depressed temperatures
where you are, you aren't in an ice age. You might as well argue that, since
warmer periods are overall much more dominant, then the woolly mammoths etc
weren't in an ice age, because that was only a temporary blip in climate
history.

"Global warming is not the problem."

Because one day ice will come back? One day the Atlantic will close, you
still have to cope with crossing it at the moment.  The expected cooling
phase that would mark the ending of the current interglacial (it's rather
bigger than an "interstadial" which is a few thousand years at most) is, by
many models, overdue.  The fact that we aren't seeing it, in fact the
reverse, is part of the evidence that human activity is having an effect.
But global warming is an issue of decades or maybe centruries; glacial
cycles are over tens of thousands of years.  Over geological time, nothing
is a "problem", the term is meaningless; landmasses move, climates change,
species come and go. If you happen to be one of the species going extinct,
you've got a problem.  Until you *are* extinct: end of problem.

"I think the north African countries should be welcomed into the European
Union with open arms."

So should America, ahead of the day the Atlantic closes.

Paul

Derby

England

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