Who says understanding Earth’s Evolution is irrelevant?

Sadly all too many.  

I often hear people, not just the religious with their paper thin understanding, but educated rational people who superficially accept the notion of evolution, but who have never spent anytime really absorbing what Earth's pageant of evolution has been all about, dismissing the need to learn anything about it.  

Its all led to a general apathy that I can't for the life of me comprehend.  Especially considering what an amazingly beautiful, complex, mysterious and absolutely relevant story it is.

This general apathy terrifies me, and compels me to share some of the building blocks that have shaped my own developing basic understanding.  I have a head-start since I've been fascinated by this Creation I was born into since my earliest days.  The wonder of it, and the things I've learned makes me want to share some of my experience and perspectives during what time remains for my own, oh so splendid, journey on this wonderful planet.

Tragically, people who never pondered the reality, (that all we have today is the direct product of four and a half billion years of evolution, unfolding one magnificent day after another), lack the foundation to understand what we are doing to our planet and life support system these days.  It explains why we have so many profoundly ignorant, self-deluded and disconnected politicians and 'masters of the universe' these days.

When I toss out a concept such as, our "Global Heat and Moisture Distribution Engine," it's blank faces all around.  Why?   I'm fearing listeners have no fundamental conception for the intricate interconnections between our evolving Earth, oceans and land masses.  Without that awareness, of course they'll never get it. 

After all, our atmosphere is the direct product of a fantastic evolutionary process that married geology and biology and took billions of years to unfold.  Without understanding how it got here, there's no way one can comprehend what we have,... and what we are doing to "it",... that is, the only life, and economy, support system we have.

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January 6, 2016

{1} Our Global Heat and Moisture Distribution Engine

http://whatsupwiththatwatts.blogspot.com/2016/01/earths-heat-moisture-engine.html

January 9, 2016

{2} Co-evolution of Minerals and Life | Dr Robert Hazen

http://whatsupwiththatwatts.blogspot.com/2016/01/2-coevolution-of-minerals-and-life.html

January 14, 2016

{3} Evolution of Carbon and our biosphere - Professor Hazen focuses on the element Carbon

http://whatsupwiththatwatts.blogspot.com/2016/01/3-evolution-carbon-biosphere-hazen.html

January 23, 2016

{4} Evolution-Considering Deep Time and a Couple Big Breaks

http://whatsupwiththatwatts.blogspot.com/2016/01/4-evolution-deeptime-moon-geomagnetic.html

February 6, 2016

{5a} The Most Beautiful Graph on Earth - A. Hessler

http://whatsupwiththatwatts.blogspot.com/2016/02/most-beautiful-graph-on-earth.html

February 7, 2016

{5b} Earth's Earliest Climate - By Angela Hessler

http://whatsupwiththatwatts.blogspot.com/2016/02/earths-earliest-climate-by-hessler.html

February 14, 2016

{6} Evolution of Earth's Atmosphere - easy version

http://whatsupwiththatwatts.blogspot.com/2016/02/6-evolution-earths-atmosphere-easy.html

February 18, 2016

{7} Our Global Heat and Moisture Distribution Engine, visualized

http://whatsupwiththatwatts.blogspot.com/2016/02/7-global-heat-moisture-distribution.html

February 19, 2016

{8} Atmospheric Insulation Explained - appreciating our climate engine

http://whatsupwiththatwatts.blogspot.com/2016/02/8-atmospheric-insulation-explained.html

providence willing, more to follow.

You mean Dr. Mann didn't invent Manmade Global Warming?

A walk down memory lane in honor of the Paris Climate Conference, (well and also for my pal AL with his hate-on for Dr. Mann and rejection of climate proxy work in general as described in the comments thread at Prof Ivar Giaever's pathetic YouTube PseudoScience talk), I'm going to reprint a few posts I'd originally written for my Citizenschallenge Blog a couple years back since the information they hold is a valid and relevant today as it was then.
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This morning I awoke to an interesting article over at HotWhopper.com, it's a reproduction of a 1884 newspaper article in the Australian newspaper "Border Watch" titled "Cold And Heat Near The Poles."  In it the author discusses the discovery of fossil traces of tropical flora in the Arctic and the implication that Earth's climate was variable.

Then continuing with a discuss of Earth's early atmosphere, it's interaction with the lithosphere, and the ability of certain gases to retain heat trying to escape into the cold vacuum of space.  The article ends with:

"... Many ingenious hypotheses have been proposed to account for the warmer climate of earlier times, but are at best unsatisfactory; and it appears to me that the true solution of the problem may be found in the constitution of the early atmosphere, when considered in the light of Dr. Tyndall's beautiful researches on radiant heat.  

He has found that the presence of a few hundredths of carbonic acid gas in the atmosphere, while offering almost no obstacle to the passage of the solar rays, would suffice to prevent almost entirely the loss by radiation of obscure heat, so that the surface of the land beneath such an atmosphere would become like a vast orchid house, in which the conditions of climate necessary to a luxuriant vegetation would be extended even to the polar regions."

ALBERT K. VARLEY, F.R.S. Mount Gambier, June 12, 1884."

http://blog.hotwhopper.com/2013/12/flashback-to-1884-few-hundredths-of.html

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After the article there's a reference to "more flashbacks relating to climate and Earth science from the National Library of Australia," it leads to a section of her blog that links to a collection of articles going back in time.  These articles do a good job of putting the developing science of climate change into a historical perspective.  While also exposing the lie that all this global warming talk is some sort of conspiracy intend on undermining our freedoms.  That list is followed with another one of her posts looking at the mischief making of Anthony Watts and friends.

I'm happy to do my part to help spread this information, so with a big shout out to Sou for all the hard work she puts into her blog, here's a reproduction of her collection of historic newspaper articles that shine a light on the early history of the science of climate change.

http://blog.hotwhopper.com/p/blog-page_19.html

Climate history as gleaned from old Australian newspapers 

Flashback to 1884: A few hundredths of carbonic acid gas in the atmosphere...the surface...would become like a vast orchid house

Flashback to 1906 - another ice age coming.. featuring Sir Robert Ball

Flashback to 1909: Professor Skeats on CO2 and water vapour acting as "a kind of a blanket"

From 1913 - A perspective on volcanoes and ice ages from Prof WJ Humphreys

Flashback to 1910 - the Indian Monsoon and ENSO - featuring Sir Gilbert Thomas Walker

Flashback to 1922 - World Growing Warmer - featuring The Weather Optimist from London's Daily Mail

Flashback to 1940: Gradually rising earth's temperature and Kirtley Fletcher Mather

Flash back to 1949 - Global Warming, Dronning Maud Land, Antarctica and a Young Australian

featuring Gordon de Quetteville Robin

Flashback to 1947 - Arctic Climate's Alarming Change featuring Hans W:son Ahlmann

Flashback to 1957 - CO2 from Industry May be Warming Earth

Flashback to 1967: The Weather and Air Pollution featuring J Murray Mitchell Jr, Robert A McCormick and John H Ludwig

Flashback to 1972 - Scientists Fear for Arctic Sea Ice - melt may bring irreversible climatic change