re: #22 Charles

Before you dismiss the mustard seed example, please read the whole article because there’s quite a bit more evidence than that.

I have. As someone was quoted in the article species

have started evolving due to global warming.

My guess is that species have never stopped evolving to deal with local climate change. All reputable data indicates that while we are at a high end of normal climate temperatures, that the variability (standard deviation) over the last 40,000 years exceeds the short term changes we are experiencing now. What strikes me as why anyone would be surprised that species wouldn’t already have mechanisms, whether they be plasticity or genetic, built in by long term evolution, that would allow them to respond quickly to changing conditions. The mustard seeds have had 12 generations to respond. Some studies have shown that whole populations of humans can change racial characteristics like skin color in 500 years which would be somewhere between 15 to 20 generations.

I think the experiment is a wonderful affirmation of evolution. I am less certain it is an affirmation of global warming.