| Selectivity: the problem that a paleo-mathemagician will always avoid |
- The only issue a paleontologist has to resolve
The key issue that a paleontologist has to resolve is selectivity: How does Mother Nature select a single species
for extinction in the midst of so many others that are subjected to the same environmental constraints? It is the
only issue that paleontologists have not resolved in the last 200 years since their field came into being. It is the
only issue which will give them the answer to extinction. Without it they have not discovered how extinction
works. Let's state the 'law' of extinction for the record...
- "He who cannot explain selectivity has not explained extinction!"
So how do the paleo-mathemagicians get around this nagging issue?
What the theorist does is include as many causes as he can brainstorm in order to cover all the bases. He then
tries to tie them all together in a string of successive disasters. By doing so he eludes the only issue he has to
explain: selectivity. An example is the Permian Extinction...
- 1. The volcano erupts and pelts local animals with stones. Flowing lava steamrolls the rest.
How are the same species wiped out on the other side of the planet?
- 2. Gases pollute the atmosphere all over the planet. Plants and animals can't breathe.
- How do the sea creatures become extinct?
- 3. Sulfur mixes with water and produces acid rain. The waters turn acid.
Why do some fish survive?
- 4. They don't! The eruption and its sequences end up killing EVERYTHING -- EVERY plant and animal
in the air on land and sea. Nothing survives, absolutely NOTHING!
- At this point the narrator simply tells the crowd that 'life is miraculously resilient', that somehow those 'better
adapted' survived. These hardy species continued on to the next geologic period.
The Cretaceous extinction is another good example of how the paleontologists load the board to cover all the
species and in different regions and habitats of the planet.
- 1. The asteroid makes a dent in the Earth, sufficiently big to produce the golf hole in the lawn, but not
too big to shatter the Earth for else the theorist would have to explain how God put Humpty Dumpty
back together again. It's got to be a Goldilocks kind of asteroid. The asteroid cannot be too big nor
too small.
- 2. The collision kills the animals in the vicinity, in a given radius.
How did T-Rex's cousin in Mongolia die?
- 3. The asteroid triggers tsunamis that flood the entire planet. We have Waterworld. ALL land plants
and animals are drowned. To make sure that NOTHING survives, the theorist follows this up with
fire and brimstone raining from the skies. The asteroid shattered in the explosion and the heated
rocks and pebbles that bounced to the air now fall by the tons on the flying reptiles and enormous
dinosaurs. ALL species of plants and animals die.
- How did the mosasaurs and the ammonites and the forams in the seas die?
4. Sulfuric acid! Always sulfuric acid! You can't do a catastrophic extinction without that dear chemical.
It turns out that by shear coincidence the asteroid fell on a pile of sulfur that some careless animal
left lying around at the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico. The explosion triggered a chemical reaction
that created sulfuric acid. The acid rain in the atmosphere and the acidity of the seas did the rest.
ALL species of plants and animals on the planet drowned or were burned to death or were pelted by
hot rocks or were sprayed by acid rain or were chemically intoxicated. NOTHING survived!
How did the birds and the mammals and the flowering plants make it to the Cenozoic?
- 5. Due to a biblical miracle, the flowering plants, the birds and the mammals and the fish in the seas
survived because they were better adapted. The mammals, the crocs, the turtles, the snakes...
they all survived by eating detritus until God made plants again a few years later.
- So there you have it! Of course, if I'm allowed to use a knife to kill the sea monsters, a spear to kill the giants
on land and a bow and arrow to bring down the flying reptiles without touching a single bird... well, yes, anyone
can do extinction like that... And if in addition I cast the magic spell 'better adapted'...
| Mother Nature sifting the species she's going to exterminate |
- As many as you can
After brainstorming agents and mechanisms, the next task of a genuine researcher is to remove those from
the list which have no chance of explaining selectivity. The paleo-mathematician does it in reverse. He places
as many as he can to cover every base. Indeed, he absolutely needs them. He cannot explain why such and
such order or family of plant or animal disappeared and has to go to the lab and find out what could have
killed it. He runs an experiment of some kind and convinces himself that acid rain or heat or cold or impact
could have done away with the ammonites, for example. So he rushes his manuscript to the 'science' mag
and talks about how he tested sulfuric acid on a distant relative of the ammonites. Bingo! He solved the
extinction problem...... for the ammonites at least... Is this what killed the flying reptiles and the cycads?
I mean, how did the tiny mammals and the crocs manage to elude the deadly acid?
This nonsense goes on and on, journal after journal, documentary after documentary. Why do the peer
reviewers authorize such rubbish to be published? This is the question that rational people should ask
themselves. The Paleo-Mathemagical Establishment has included so many agents, there is so much noise
in there, that it would be a miracle if any of its members ever discovered the mechanism of extinction.
Chronological Selectivity
Extinction is a complex issue and the mechanisms for background and mass extinctions are not self-evident .
Any simple solution someone proclaims as truth is certainly missing the target, especially, if it's the first thing
that comes to mind, and especially if it is an extrinsic agent. Asteroid impacts, volcanic eruptions, diseases,
climate change are all extrinsic agents, and the problem here is that extrinsic agents should affect all species
to the same degree. An extrinsic agent has no possibility to discriminate between land animals and sea
animals or between small insects and giant dinosaurs, not to mention among plants. Specifically, an
extrinsic agent has no chance to explain chronological selectivity. How does an asteroid remove the ancient
dinosaur species -- those that have evolved over millions of years and grown to enormous sizes -- and leave the
tiny new species such as the mammals intact ? How does an asteroid wipe out the old ferns and cycads and
forgive the upwardly mobile flowering plants? How does an asteroid kill the elderly large plankton, the
ammonites, and the aquatic reptiles that had existed for millions of years and pardon the fish and the sharks
and the small, new plankton that Mother Nature had just recently brought into being?
The most glaring problem that asteroidists, volcanists and climate changers cannot answer and will never
be able to answer is not selectivity, but chronological selectivity. What mechanism gets rid of the old and
spare the new. It's got to be a very intelligent asteroid to do that! That's the only question catastrophists and
environmentalists ever needed to answer. The only way to explain chronological selectivity is through intrinsic
mechanisms. There are but a handful of those, including: aging, the food a species eats, density dependent
birth rates, loss of genetic diversity... Not a single animal -- including Man -- can do anything about these
factors. Not a single paleo-mathemagician has ever mentioned them in a theory.
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| The History of Life on Earth |
"Well, yeah, anyone can do extinction like that!" |