TagsTagsCarl Zimmer has a great post at The Loom on the historic announcement this week of the discovery of Ardipithecus: We Meet At Last. At first, Ardipithecus ramidus was yet another scrappy pre-Lucy fossil. The first report offered details about part of a 4.4 million-year-old jaw bone–a remarkable jaw bone, ...
Evolution, Science, Natural Selection, Biology, Anthropology, Common Ancestor, Carl Zimmer, Ardipithecus
Evolutionary biologists have long wondered whether it was possible for evolution to reverse direction; in other words, whether the proteins that make up an organism could “devolve” back to a previous shape or purpose. Carl Zimmer has an interesting piece on new research that strongly suggests evolution is a one-way ...
A fascinating piece by science writer Carl Zimmer looks at the evidence that climate change is forcing surprisingly rapid evolutionary changes in some species of plants and animals: First Comes Global Warming, Then An Evolutionary Explosion. In 1997, Arthur Weis found himself with an extra bucket of seeds. Weis, who ...
Evolution, Science, Natural Selection, Biology, Carl Zimmer, Climate Change, Global Warming
Science writer Carl Zimmer is calling out George Will again, this time for misrepresenting climate change statistics published by the World Meteorological Organization: George Will, Now With Misleading Links! One of the more egregious lines from George Will’s recent columns on global warming is the claim that real data shows ...
Time for the next round in the controversy over George Will’s recent column for the Washington Post on climate change, and results reported/disputed by the University of Illinois’ Arctic Climate Research Center. Here’s the relevant section from Will’s new column: As for the anonymous scientists’ unspecified claims about the column’s ...
Global Warming, Climate Change, George Will, Carl Zimmer, Washington Post, Fact Checking
Carl Zimmer has posted an interesting response to the points that were raised repeatedly in yesterday’s comment thread on George Will’s climate change column: A Wrinkle In Ice (or Not). In his reply to me, Chapman explained that the two research centers, NSIDC and ACRC, both use the SSMI satellite ...
Global Warming, Climate Change, George Will, Carl Zimmer, Washington Post, Fact Checking
No matter where you stand on the issue of anthropogenic climate change, surely we can all agree that misrepresenting facts isn’t going to help anyone understand the subject—and calls into question the motives of those who do it: The Sea Ice Affair, Continued. Monday I bemoaned the lack of fact-checking ...
Global Warming, Climate Change, George Will, Carl Zimmer, Washington Post, Fact Checking