Killing America

This from James Doogue

A well written and researched piece by Charles Thorington on the killing of Democracy through an alliance between elitists and the Left. Is the the West's road to serfdom?

Are American Elites Killing Democracy?

Tim adds:

One quibble; we aren't a democracy but a federated republic. Democracy was rightly despised by our Founding Fathers as mob rule leading to dictatorship..

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Dying "Concensus" Science

Warner Todd Huston

Even government reports prove global warming is nothing to worry about.

The Climate Headline the Media won't Dare Write

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The Real Fake News

Timothy Birdnow

The Babylon Bee satire site sent this out in an e-mail blast:

In a just-published article about Facebook's difficulty in dealing with satire, The New York Times points to The Babylon Bee as an example of a "far-right misinformation site" that "sometimes trafficked in misinformation under the guise of satire." They said we dishonestly "claim" to be satire to protect our presence on the platform.

-----

This shows considerable ignorance on NYT's part. The Babylon Bee uses satire to express political opinions. They are an example of opinion journalism.

As such, the term "misinformation " is inappropriate. "Misinformation " is what is presented as "news" or "accepted fact" when it is actually either opinion or blatantly false news.

The material Babylon Bee expresses is presented as opinion, not news. Thus the NYT characterizatio n is invalid.

Where you WILL find an awful lot of actual misinformation is in fact in places like the New York Times. It is routine these days for them to express opinions (generally highly ignorant ones) right within news articles, as if they were actually news.

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The Abject Failure of Emissions Trading and Carbon Taxation

By Stephen Heins

Both, a carbon tax and cap and trade, have yet to provide a single good example of working. In fact, the EU ETS has been an abject failure since its inception in 1997 and its implementation in 2009.

Also, CA's trading scheme is just another hidden tax that gets rolled into CA's general revenues or state subsidies; and, RGGI has just increased the cost of electricity without providing any real market signals, plus, it makes New England less competitive than other regions of the U.S.

As for a carbon tax, there are so many questions. Here are some of them:

1. Who is the controlling political body?
2. Who writes the rules?
3. Who determines the price point?
4. What qualifies for the tax?
5. Who decides the definition of "renewables?
6. Where is the mechanism for scientifically measuring and verifying emissions throughout the entire supply chain?
7. Who collects the money?
8. Where does the money go after it is collected?

Then, there is the political science in the noisy world of over 200 nations without a legitimate ruling body, just think of the corruption of the United Nations or World Health Organization or totalitarian rulers and to a lesser extent democracies or parliaments. Then, there is the problem of Carbon free-ridership.

Finally, the actual implementation of technology of all things energy and its integration into the global environment is unsettled and uncertain, especially as 1/3 of the globe still lives in relative energy poverty.

https://climatechangedispatch.com/eco-activists-well-funded-war-on-pennsylvanias-energy-industry/?fbclid=IwAR2xCI_bhm9FsncFG0hQ0gabfgvQrDKz362KtS_sQo_ClR8uYDA_FlLRcnU

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Why Biden Won't Act Now on Gun Control

Timothy Birdnow

Biden knows a gun control executive order has no constitutional leg to stand on. He wouldn't do this now if he can possibly get a law passed by Congress. He'll do it if he sees no other choice. And he knows this will upset the Democratic effort to avoid talking about Islamic terrorism in favor of hyperbole about "domestic terrorism". This is a fly in their domestic terrorist ointment. So Biden has to avoid using this particular episode. No doubt there will be more (and if there aren't more they can always manufacture one.)

Kamala Harris Refuses to Call Atlanta Shooting a 'Hate Crime'

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Wu Who?

This from Jim Church

A Biden Appointee's Troubling Views On The First Amendment

From the article:

Tim adds:

"Fake News" is ultimately a result of the leftist media refusing to do their jobs, giving fake news themselves and filibustering alternative opinions. If it weren't for the slant of the media we wouldn't have any sort of problem. If Wu is concerned with this, the answer is NOT to limit speech but to empower other speech. The fact is the Russians and Chinese need only put stories and facts out that are not covered by the mainstream media. What they are doing is not so much "fake news" as providing hungry minds with truths the media choose to ignore because they have an agenda.

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The Useful Wildfires

James Doogue

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A 'Sovereign Level Crime'

Timothy Birdnow

"Expert criminal profilers who work for insurance companies looked at the 2020 election and saw a "sovereign level crime”. A crime so big that parts of the government must have been "a participant, active or passive, enabling vote fraud.”'

https://joannenova.com.au/2021/03/expert-criminal-profilers-talk-about-sovereign-scale-vote-fraud-in-the-us/?fbclid=IwAR3B1o9vPQGFrMLyN3cN1wCsD-uDinthIn5iqGlThIpb2ZeofQNC2L-gnZo

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Mass Shooter in Boulder Identified

Timothy Birdnow

A man walked into a Boulder grocery store and shot ten people dead.

He has been identified by police as ...Ahmed al-Aliwi Alyssa.

You thought I was going to say he was John Jones or some other white redneck Trump supporter, didn't you!

According to Fox News:

No motive was given by police.

This will be used by the Democrats to justify gun control, no doubt.

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Declining Infrared

Timothy Birdnow

Global warming, the eternal boogeyman of the modern Left, seems to be petering out in the midwest.

According to this paper there has been a decrease in downwelling of infrared. That is the fundamental core of the whole AGW argument for catastrophic warming, that there would be heat trapped in the lower atmosphere because of extra carbon dioxide would prevent long wave radiation from upwelling into space. In short, sunlight would fall but not bounce back up. This research suggests it isn't happening. There is less infrared downwelling from the atmosphere after the surface had reradiated it.

One more nail in the global warming coffin. Not that it matters to the media or the Democrats.

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Four Tenths of One Percent

Willis Eschenbach observes:

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Environmental Activists Have Maximised Destruction Of Wildlife And Habitat By Fires And Floods

James Doogue

Environmentalis ts opposed controlled cool burning which was done on a 5 to 8 year rotational basis two or three decades ago. This was similar to the rational burning practiced by indigenous Australians over thousands of years.

The environmentalis ts say the forrest's should be locked up in their natural state, that controlled burning destroys the natural habitat of flora and fauna.

When fires are started by lightening, or intentionally or accidentally by humans, they burn hotter and more destructively compared to forests where the fuel on the ground has been controlled.

In cooler burning fires, animals, reptiles and insects survive in the tops of trees, in rock crevices, underneath bark, in creek beds and open areas. In the environmentally enforced high fuel fires, most creatures and much of the flora is decimated.

Cooler burning fires can be stopped and property and wildlife protected by cutting fire breaks, back burning and water bombing. Fires where fuel litter has been uncontrolled burn too hot and move too fast for any human intervention to control them.

Environmentalis ts have consistently argued against the building or extending of dams for water storage and flood mitigation. There is not a single dam in existence which environmentalis ts have supported. Consequently Australia has not built a substantial dam in the last couple of decades despite massive population growth.

In times of drought we have insufficient water storage to provide for agriculture or to maintain the flows of rivers. Entire river ecosystems die.

In times of exceptionally heavy rains we have insufficient flood mitigation leading to the destruction of natural habitat, buildings and infrastructure and the death of wildlife, farm animals and sometime humans.

It's about time our politicians grew a back-bone and stood up the the noisy, aggressive, environmental activists, and did what's best for the community and the environment in the long term.

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Arguing with Idiots Socialism Edition

Timothy Birdnow

Recently I posted this quote from Lawrence W. Reed about socialism. On Facebook I got some pushback, including from our old friend and labor union thug Marty McClimens.

Here we go:

Eric Nelson:

This is a hard truth going for every socialist movement going back to the French Revolution. The leadership always justifies taking the majority of the resources for themselves in order to govern effectively and then do whatever it takes to hold on to power because they don't want to live in the system they created. This is one reason I am in favor of term limits. Lawmakers would be less radical if they had o go back and live under the systems they created.

Tim replies:

Well said Eric Nelson and I totally agree. And how do we get a good system with the same people chewing the same abc gum? The Founding Fathers clearly thought politicians would be temporary workers who would serve a term or two and go home. They never dreamed we would have liftetime career guys. But then, the original U.S. government was supposed to be limited and relatively weak. It was the state level that was supposed to matter. Those days are LONG gone!

Marty McClimens chimes in:

I believe we can and do have many socialistic programs in our society. (Social Security, Fire Departments, National Parks, Military and the list goes on and on) and that is a good thing. True socialism as a form of government has never worked and never will. Just remember that exploitation is a capitalist virtue.

I retort:

Marty McClimens your argument muddies the definition of socialism. Social welfare programs are NOT socialism. Socialism is the ownership and/or control of the means of production and distribution. Social Security is not that, but it IS a strongarm system that takes money from the public and dolls it back in a niggardly fashion. As such it is theft, because it steals from some to give to others. It gives no dividend on anyone's savings. Politicians simply loot the fund when they wish. Were it not there most people would save money of their own accord and not rely on it. That system worked fine before social security was implemented, I might add. SS was Roosevelt's scheme to confiscate money for the treasury at the time.

BTW I wouldn't use that as an example if your purpose is to promote the idea; social security is going to bust in the next few decades, for the very reason all socialistic schemes fail - they run out of other people's money.

Marty, you clearly don't understand the definitional differences between capitalism and socialism. Capitalism is ultimately not a system at all but the free and voluntary exchange of goods and services by private individuals. Nobody is compelled to do business with you or vice versa. Your complaint is with corporatism, which is quite different. National Socialism was corporatism; the Nazis were socialists, but they didn't favor direct ownership of business but rather were content to run them by fiat with a private owner. (The Bolsheviks had a slogan in favor of Fascism at first - "First Brown then Red" showing they saw Fascism as a stage on the road to Communism.) That's the system we largely have now, with mega corporations squashing the smaller businesses that threaten them - often using the force of law.

Exploitation is not a "capitalist" virtue but a corporatist one (and a socialist one). I would point out that the brilliant G.K. Chesterton once said of corporatists "the difference between a socialist and a (corporatist) capitalist is a bigger paycheck". In the end both are sailing in the same direction. BTW why do you suppose everyone keeps trying socialism as a form of government even though it doesn't work?

The problem is that governments grow and seek more power, and always have these kinds of programs you mention "for the public welfare" and eventually you wind up with a socialist system. That is called Fabian Socialism (named after England's Fabian Society which advocated creeping socialism rather than revolution.) The way advocated by many Democrats in this country promotes Fabian Socialism under the guise of helping the poor or whatnot. In the final analysis you are taking money and property and labor from one person at gunpoint to give to another - we would call that robbery if done by a private individual. The welfare state is inherently immoral. The Founding Fathers understood that, which is why they sought a very limited federal government. In the end a powerful central government uses force to coerce people into things. It's what was known as the Forgotten Man. FDR coopted that phrase, but originally the forgotten man was the guy forced to pay for someone's bright idea that benefited someone else.

And I do mean force. If you withhold your tax money they will come to arrest you and if you resist they will kill you.

Not saying there aren't things that can and should be done by government, but every idea should be looked at through the prism of "do we have a right to do this". Now it's "how can we get away with doing this." Eventually we are going to run out of other people's money.

Remember the Commandment "thou shalt not steal"; that is the root of the argument against big government and socialism.

Sally Weekley also chimes in:

The continual conflating of socialism with communism (or the assumption that there is only one type of 'socialism' and that it is essentially 'communism', incognito) is not only wearying, it is simply incorrect.
And causes continual, unnecessary conflict in this country. Certainly there are some who are for straight-up communism ('old-school' communism, I'm sure) just as there are die-hards who are such extreme capitalists that they refuse to have any societal financial oversight whatsoever. They don't need police, or roads, or fire protection...th

I also retort:

Kindly explain the fundamental difference between communism and socialism Sally Weekley. I rather suspect you cannot actually give a definitional difference. In point of fact you are correct but only insofar as communism is the goal as opposed to the system. All communist countries called themselves socialist, and for a good reason. In all cases Socialism is defined as state ownership or control of the means of production and distribution. The Nazis were socialist. The Bolsheviks were socialist. Sweden and Norway are NOT socialist, but rather strongly capitalistic (even though they have a powerful social welfare system.) Sweden experiemented briefly with socialism during the '70's and discontinued the experiment as a failure. Now the Scandinavian countries are more capitalistic than the U.S.; they have lower corporate tax rates, fewer regulations, etc. They can afford their social welfare schemes because they have low populations, little military spending, and import a lot of foreigners to run businesses and do work. That scheme is starting to unravel though as they are finding these immigrants aren't all they were cracked up to be. There are places in Sweden where Swedish girls don't dare go now. Be that as it may, I don't think you can defend much of your comment. In the final analysis it is an immoral system that legalizes theft, the taking of goods, property, and labor from a productive individual and gives it to another, while the politically connected skim off the top. That is theft - a violation of the Seventh Commandment and Natural Law. Capitalism is the natural order, whereby people freely, voluntarily exchange goods and services. Socialism is economics at the barrel of a gun. It only works because a socialistic society forces individuals to hand over their money. If a private individual did that we would call them a criminal.

Bob Clasen chimes in:

Sally WeekleyWhether a committee of Communists or a majority of my fellow citizens votes to take my money to spend on things they think in the public interest makes not much difference to me. None actually.

I reply:

Well said Bob Clasen Socialists are basically mobsters inside government. It's theft, whether anyone wants to admit that or not. In the end if you refuse to play along with the socialist they come to kill you, or break your kneecaps in some prison..

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Corrupt St. Louis Mayoral Candidate Tishuara Jones

This woman might be the next Mayor of St. Louis.

From Jeff Howe:

Tishaura Jones said she knew Walker was at IFS and was aware of his past criminal convictions, when the treasurer’s office hired the firm as one of three investment firms in 2014. "No company is squeaky clean,” Jones said. "And Mr. Walker has paid his debt to society.”

Three years worth.

Banker Convicted of Felonies in 1995 Now Doing Business with St. Louis Treasurer

Bankruptcy was "Tumultuous Time" St. Louis Mayoral Candidate Tishaura Jones Says

Tim adds:

She was a BLM activist and Soros funded candidate who may not head up the City of St. Louis. Great, just flippin' great. I live in the city.

No doubt Jones will try to use this as a springboard to run for the U.S. Senate seat being vacated by worthless RINO Roy Blunt.

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Dumb and Silent

"If Men are to be precluded from offering their sentiments on a matter which may involve the most serious and alarming consequences, {then} reason is of no use to us — the freedom of Speech may be taken away — and, dumb & silent we may be led, like sheep, to the Slaughter.”
—- George Washington’s Newburgh Address (1783)

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What Killed the Global Oil Market

This from Richard Cronin:

Hey "fact checkers”, check this.

Biden DID cause the runaway cost in oil and gas prices, but not the way your stupid fact checkers think.

Other than the breach of contract lawsuit by the Premier of Alberta Canada over cancellation of the Keystone XL, the pipeline cancellation was a blip on the radar screen.

What really hit the global oil market was Biden’s unnecessary insult of the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia. Biden campaigned on the accusation of the Crown Prince calling for the assassination of double-dealing Jamal Khashogi. Biden declassified the intel report fingering the Crown Prince. The Crown Prince responded by turning back the spigot on oil production.

Then Biden reversed course and decided not to do anything about the Crown Prince. Biden merely p*ssed off everyone.

Biden single-handedly knee capped a global economic recovery from the Covid recession.

Guess who gets hurt the most ? The citizens of the developing nations. Thanks, you stumbling Old Hair Sniffer.

Fact check to your best.

Tim adds:

Also the fact Biden is putting us back in the Paris Accord was guaranteed to spook futures investors. And his plans for reigniting the Iran deal wouldn't help much with investor confidence.

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Simple Is as Simple Does

Richard Cronin

For purposes of his calculations, Arrhenius assumed the effects of clouds as constant and took grossly inflated assumptions about the emissivity of ground level LWIR.

Tim adds:

That pretty much encapsulates the entire problem with the climate change argument. They have oversimplified a chaotic, complex system. I remember reading the book Flatland when I was young and it was interesting; the main character was trying to explain our three dimensional universe to his two dimensional friends and was at a loss for words. The concept was too much for them to wrap their heads around. It's rather like that here; the climate change alarmists aka the Gang Green want this to be simple and easily understood but in reality climate is a horrendously complex thing. In fact, chaos theory was developed because a weather program would produce completely different predictions with the same data because of the complexity. The slightest variation made for a completely different result. But the alarmists want it oversimplified and then they say "it's basic science" when in fact it is one variable in countless variables.

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Capitalism and Socialism in a Nutshell

Chester McAteer sends this our way:

Tim adds:

Bingo! I've been saying that for years; capitalism is not an ism at all, but the natural behavior of human beings. People make stuff or find stuff and then trade it for stuff they don't have. It's as simple as that. All of the economic voodoo is just a lot of hot air to explain this basic principle. Socialism, on the other hand, is simply empowering a cadre of a few people to direct those who have stuff or make stuff and force them to give it to others who don't have or make stuff and the leaders skim off the top. It's what they provide; the service whereby those without can steal from those with.

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CO2 Obsession Unscientific

James Doogue

I've picked up fossilised rocks with tropical fern imprints on the rocky beaches in Antarctica, (and then replaced them where found as required under the treaty). On a continent where not even grass grows now, it's quite amazing to imagine rainforests once existed.

Continental drift, poles flipping, axis tilting, Earth's orbital shifts, gravitational pull of the solar system and far off galaxies continually adjusting, volcanic activity, volcanic warming including subsea volcanic activity, vents and cracks in the crust, the Sun's solar activity varying dramatically, cosmic radiation from close and deep space continually altering ozone layer and cloud formation, deep sea ocean currents, el nino, la nina, Arctic oscillations, all of these things impact global and regional climate.

Carbon dioxide in the atmosphere can have a small effect on climate, but hundreds of thousands of years of Antarctic ice core data prove that global atmospheric CO2 levels lag global temperatures.

Atmospheric CO2 is not the cause of global temperature change, it is mostly a reaction to global temperature. As temperatures increase, more CO2 is released from the Earth's oceans. As the globe cools, atmospheric CO2 can decrease as it is dissolved into the oceans.

That has not always been the case during the Earth's evolution over billions of years because the chemical make up of the atmosphere and oceans was still evolving. But that's the scientific fact over recent hundreds of thousands of years.

What we also know for sure is that the Earth's most common state over recent millions of years is long cold periods of 'ice ages', interspersed with relatively short periods of warmth, like the Roman and Medieval Warm Periods, and today's Modern Warm Period.

During warm periods, all life thrives. Animals, plants and human. Cold periods are disasterous for most life on the planet.

The idea the world's scientific community and politician's, at least in the West, are focussed on human CO2 emissions is preposterous.

CO2 represents just 0.04% of the Earth's atmosphere, or just 400 parts per million. Human CO2 emissions represent less than 10% of total CO2 emissions into the atmosphere. CO2 is extracted from the atmosphere naturally into the oceans, into rocks and by plants through photosynthesis. The latter has been responsible for an increased greening of the planet in recent decades.

Despite all of this, the useful idiots determined to de-industrialis e Western economies and cause a dramatic increase in poverty, would have us believe human CO2 emissions will catastrophic climate change.

It's sad that this narrative has been not only accepted by major mainstream and social media outlets, it is now being enforced through omission, fake fact-checking, and outright censorship of any dissenting views.

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Dissing Darwin

Timothy Birdnow

E. Calvin Beisner says:

I like this line "Its beauty is important. Beauty is often a telltale sign of truth." Now why should that be? In my estimation that supports Intelligent Design. We often see that in Science, where a theory is elegant or beautiful. How do we have such a standard of beauty in such things? Isn't beauty in the eye of the beholder? No; it's something built into the Universe, and we know it when we see it. Such beauty bespeaks Truth, but what Truth? Ultimately that there is a God.

I would add that we have no theory of Evolution, but rather a vague hypothesis that SOUNDS good but in fact explains little Darwinian Natural Selection (which is what differentiates Darwin from earlier theories of evolution, like those of Lamarck) argues in circles; it says evolution proceeds based on survivability, and when asked why a given trait was selected for survivability it is said "because the creature survived". We never get a why. Why was it beneficial to whales to go back into the sea? Why was it beneficial for some birds to be flightless? It's basically a tautology. And one without the evidence Darwin himself expected to find (like the transitions between fossils).

I would add that Darwin and Wallace arrived at the theory at the same time and for the same reason; they both read Thomas Malthus and adopted his economic theories to biology.

Personally I don't think Intelligent Design will work as a theory. I believe God did in fact use natural mechanisms to create all life - and probably a form of evolution. But I think Darwinian evolution is pure sophistry, but it is defended viciously by atheists who can't bear to give it up because it is a primary weapon in their arsenal against belief in God; they can say it's possible to explain everything without invoking God with Darwin and the Many Worlds hypothesis.

Darwinian Evolution cannot account for abiogenesis - the creation of life from non-life. It flies in the face of the  laws of entropy. Darwin cannot account for the fossil record. Life seems to spring from one form to the next almost immediately rather than slowly, leading Stephen J. Gould to postulate "punctuated equilibrium" in which there is a sudden burst of evolution. Of course, there is no mechanism offered to explain punctuated equilibrium. Darwin cannot explain how certain things came into existence that required complexity - such as the eye. The eye couldn't have formed in the way suggested, a clump of cells somehow figuring out how to perceive light and then forming into a highly complex organ that cannot function without everything working. (This is the concept of irreducible complexity.)

I've had a mouse infestation in my house. There are two kinds; gray mice and speckled brown mice. I see the brown ones always in pairs. Never have seen pairs of gray mice. Question; why are there two different kinds of mice in my house? They are both local mice, from the same enviromnent here in Missouri and as such should logically be the same. But they aren't. If environmental pressures kill off the less fit then one of these guys should be gone. Like Neanderthals, they should have given way long ago to the more successful species.

I would point out that Lamarckian evolution said there was something in a species that mutated under environmental pressure. Darwin said no, that the mutations were random but that there were beneficial mutations that survived and usually killed off the older species. Lamarckianism has been revived in recent years throug epigenetics - the theory that genes can be dormant but brought back "on line" at times. So there is at least two kinds of evolution? No, they say; Darwin's evolution changes the genes but they lie dormant.

It starts looking like the argument about how many angels can dance on the head of a pin.

And gene mutations are usually not good for the species. Again, that pesky law of entropy rears it's ugly head.

And then there is this from the article:

Mutations

How to make proteins is our first question. Proteins are chains: linear sequences of atom-groups, each bonded to the next. A protein molecule is based on a chain of amino acids; 150 elements is a "modest-sized” chain; the average is 250. Each link is chosen, ordinarily, from one of 20 amino acids. A chain of amino acids is a polypeptide—"peptide” being the type of chemical bond that joins one amino acid to the next. But this chain is only the starting point: chemical forces among the links make parts of the chain twist themselves into helices; others straighten out, and then, sometimes, jackknife repeatedly, like a carpenter’s rule, into flat sheets. Then the whole assemblage folds itself up like a complex sheet of origami paper. And the actual 3-D shape of the resulting molecule is (as I have said) important.

Imagine a 150-element protein as a chain of 150 beads, each bead chosen from 20 varieties. But: only certain chains will work. Only certain bead combinations will form themselves into stable, useful, well-shaped proteins.

So how hard is it to build a useful, well-shaped protein? Can you throw a bunch of amino acids together and assume that you will get something good? Or must you choose each element of the chain with painstaking care? It happens to be very hard to choose the right beads.

Inventing a new protein means inventing a new gene. (Enter, finally, genes, DNA etc., with suitable fanfare.) Genes spell out the links of a protein chain, amino acid by amino acid. Each gene is a segment of DNA, the world’s most admired macromolecule. DNA, of course, is the famous double helix or spiral staircase, where each step is a pair of nucleotides. As you read the nucleotides along one edge of the staircase (sitting on one step and bumping your way downwards to the next and the next), each group of three nucleotides along the way specifies an amino acid. Each three-nucleotide group is a codon, and the correspondence between codons and amino acids is the genetic code. (The four nucleotides in DNA are abbreviated T, A, C and G, and you can look up the code in a high school textbook: TTA and TTC stand for phenylalanine, TCT for serine, and so on.)

Your task is to invent a new gene by mutation—by the accidental change of one codon to a different codon. You have two possible starting points for this attempt. You could mutate an existing gene, or mutate gibberish. You have a choice because DNA actually consists of valid genes separated by long sequences of nonsense. Most biologists think that the nonsense sequences are the main source of new genes. If you tinker with a valid gene, you will almost certainly make it worse—to the point where its protein misfires and endangers (or kills) its organism—long before you start making it better. The gibberish sequences, on the other hand, sit on the sidelines without making proteins, and you can mutate them, so far as we know, without endangering anything. The mutated sequence can then be passed on to the next generation, where it can be mutated again. Thus mutations can accumulate on the sidelines without affecting the organism. But if you mutate your way to an actual, valid new gene, your new gene can create a new protein and thereby, potentially, play a role in evolution.

Mutations themselves enter the picture when DNA splits in half down the center of the staircase, thereby allowing the enclosing cell to split in half, and the encompassing organism to grow. Each half-staircase summons a matching set of nucleotides from the surrounding chemical soup; two complete new DNA molecules emerge. A mistake in this elegant replication process—the wrong nucleotide answering the call, a nucleotide typo—yields a mutation, either to a valid blueprint or a stretch of gibberish.

Building a Better Protein

Now at last we are ready to take Darwin out for a test drive. Starting with 150 links of gibberish, what are the chances that we can mutate our way to a useful new shape of protein? We can ask basically the same question in a more manageable way: what are the chances that a random 150-link sequence will create such a protein? Nonsense sequences are essentially random. Mutations are random. Make random changes to a random sequence and you get another random sequence. So, close your eyes, make 150 random choices from your 20 bead boxes and string up your beads in the order in which you chose them. What are the odds that you will come up with a useful new protein?

It’s easy to see that the total number of possible sequences is immense. It’s easy to believe (although non-chemists must take their colleagues’ word for it) that the subset of useful sequences—sequences that create real, usable proteins—is, in comparison, tiny. But we must know how immense and how tiny.

The total count of possible 150-link chains, where each link is chosen separately from 20 amino acids, is 20¹⁵⁰. In other words, many. 20¹⁵⁰ roughly equals 10¹⁹⁵, and there are only 10⁸⁰ atoms in the universe.

What proportion of these many polypeptides are useful proteins? Douglas Axe did a series of experiments to estimate how many 150-long chains are capable of stable folds—of reaching the final step in the protein-creation process (the folding) and of holding their shapes long enough to be useful. (Axe is a distinguished biologist with five-star breeding: he was a graduate student at Caltech, then joined the Centre for Protein Engineering at Cambridge. The biologists whose work Meyer discusses are mainly first-rate Establishment scientists.) He estimated that, of all 150-link amino acid sequences, 1 in 10⁷⁴ will be capable of folding into a stable protein. To say that your chances are 1 in 10⁷⁴is no different, in practice, from saying that they are zero. It’s not surprising that your chances of hitting a stable protein that performs some useful function, and might therefore play a part in evolution, are even smaller. Axe puts them at 1 in 10⁷⁷.

In other words: immense is so big, and tiny is so small, that neo-Darwinian evolution is—so far—a dead loss. Try to mutate your way from 150 links of gibberish to a working, useful protein and you are guaranteed to fail. Try it with ten mutations, a thousand, a million—you fail. The odds bury you. It can’t be done.

Molecular biology is pretty punishing to the theory.

Darwin is a theory that has more holes than swiss cheese, but it is clung to religiously to avoid religion. I fear we will never have a theory of evolution, since nodody wants to give this up and anybody challenging it is destroyed by angry mobs.

I used to write a bit about this but stopped because I grew tired of fighting with enraged numbskulls. It is an unwinnable argument because reason doesn't matter to the devotees of Darwin. This is a religious argument masquerading as a science debate.

BTW Two Scandinavian mathematicians recently published a paper mathematically testing Intelligent Design Theory and the claim of "fine tuning". They said it falls within the realm of scientific methodology.

Posted by: Timothy Birdnow at 10:20 AM | Comments (19) | Add Comment
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