As mankind evolves into a higher invertebrate form

by: Eric B.

Wed Mar 14, 2012 at 00:24:25 AM EDT

I read the Freep's editorial on evolution and really just came away from it feeling very, very tired.

It's been just 150 years since the publication of "On the Origin of Species," in which Charles Darwin outlined his argument that all life forms descended from a common ancestor. That is scarcely an eyeblink in the epic context of evolutionary time, so perhaps we ought not to get too bent out of shape over a Gallup Poll suggesting that less than half of American adults are willing to acknowledge Darwin was on to something.

Shouldn't get too bent out of shape that less than half of Americans, and this has been a continuing phenomenon on the American scene for the last several decades, believe that the fundamental theory of modern life sciences -- not just biology as it relates to animals and plants, but much of medicine -- is a load of horseshit? You might find enlightenment in this paragraph:

Indeed, the more education those polled in the Gallup survey reported, the more likely they were to subscribe to Darwin's theory. While just 24% of those who had completed high school or less said they believed in the theory, the percentage of believers doubled to 53 among college graduates and 74 among postgraduate degree-holders.

Unsurprisingly, evolution traditionally polls much more poorly among Republicans, who in this state also happen to be in charge of elected government and are currently "reforming" education. Anyone care to ponder a hot minute what a political party hostile to theories held in the highest regard the more education you have will do to the processes by which people come to appreciate them? The Freep simply sighed, and ambled on to this:

What is most worrisome, to those of us who struggle in the even more amorphous realm of public policy, is the absence of consensus about the validity of basic scientific method -- the process of testing hypotheses about how the world works against repeated and disciplined observations of the world. How can Americans find common ground on the subject of, say, global warming if most of us remain suspicious about a scientific consensus that has endured more than a century longer?

One has to ask ... since the same people who are suspicious about a scientific consensus that has endured more than a century longer are the same people who mostly believe that global warming is a Bolshevik plot, why would you want to find common ground with them?

Ironically, the editorial then concludes by getting the theory of evolution mostly wrong, saying that based on evolutionary theory, "nature favors adaptations that enhance a species' survival," which explains why today the dodo is one of our most beloved and populace birds. Actually, what the theory says is that species evolve through the selection of genes that make it better equipped to not just survive but thrive in its environment. If genetic selection leaves a species less equipped to adapt -- say, it becomes more ignorant of the world around it out of sheer willfulness -- then the odds increase that the species will soon find itself extinct.

P.S. ... Another example.

Wang said the decline in ice cover probably is due to several factors, including cyclical climate patterns like El Niño and La Niña (unusually high temperatures and unusually low temperatures, respectively, in the Pacific), changes in the Arctic Oscillation and broader climate change.

Does anyone make definitive statements anymore? Do any reporters do basic homework anymore? Does anyone care about sentence structure anymore? The story at the end of it concludes that the El Nino/La Nina cycle (roughly five years) as the primary reason for a 40-year trend in decreasing ice on the Great Lakes. I hate to sound like a God damned pendant, but this stuff is so obvious that there's no excuse for missing it: Here's a question ... which of those reasons is likely to have the greatest impact over 40 years? I'll give you one guess and it's also not the one that has to do with poorly-understood but immediate and short-term changes in Arctic Oscillation.