News

Global warming: Scotland hit by blizzards, road closures and 8 inches of snow

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The Scotsman reports:

The summer solstice is only 28 days away, but in parts of Scotland yesterday, it was like winter had never left, as people awoke to a blanket of snow.

At a time of year when thoughts should be turning to sunscreen and barbeques, a blast of wintry weather swept in from the Arctic, bringing blizzards and icy temperatures to the North-east. Drifting snow closed two roads, and many more were only passable with care.

The Express reported on the comments of the pro-global warming Met Office:

A freezing blast from the Arctic today will bring icy gusts, blizzards and temperatures plunging to -5C (23F), forecasters said.

It comes as Met Office figures reveal this spring is likely to be the coldest for 30 years.

The period from March to mid-May show average temperatures have not risen above 6.1C making it the 6th coldest on record.

Forecaster Sarah Holland said: “This year’s particularly cold spring was heavily influenced by an exceptionally cold March which had a mean temperature 3.3 °C below the long-term average. April and May (so far) have been less cold, but have also registered slightly below average mean temperatures.

[…]Leon Brown, forecaster for The Weather Channel, said parts of Scotland were expecting up to eight inches of snow today.

Heavy wintery showers in Aberdeenshire brought parts of the region to a standstill this morning and caused chaos on the roads and transport networks.

Mr Brown said the entire county is going to be colder than average for the time of year with the mercury struggling to get into double figures.

This is all the fault of global warming! We have to let government regulate the private sector and control our consumption, or we’ll all burn up in flames for our eco-sins!

Podcasts

Casey Luskin and Stephen C. Meyer discuss the design inference

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This episode of ID the Future is 17 minutes long. It’s the third in a series – here are parts one and two.

Details:

On this episode of ID the Future, Casey Luskin and Stephen Meyer finish up their talk with a discussion of why intelligent design presents the best explanation for the Cambrian explosion.

Special limited time offer: Save 43% and get 4 free digital books when you pre-order Darwin’s Doubt.

You can grab the MP3 here.

Topics:

  •  What sort of reasoning did Darwin use in The Origin of Species?
  • Can this method of “inference to the best explanation” be applied to the Cambrian explosion
  • The importance of appealing to causes that we have experienced ourselves
  • Example: explaining from an effect (volcanic ash) to a cause that his adequate (volcanic eruption)
  • We have experience of how volcanoes cause the ash, so we should infer based on what we know
  • In the case where the effect is information in biology, we see that naturalistic mechanisms are inadequate
  • But we know from our own experience that intelligent agents can generate information
  • Many people think that science must confine itself to materialistic explanations
  • If so, then it is possible miss out on the true explanation by ruling it out before looking at evidence

If you haven’t yet read Meyer’s first book, “Signature in the Cell”, you should probably grab that one. It’s the best book on intelligent design that’s out right now. It talks about the origin of the first living cell, surveying all naturalistic explanations for it, and concluding that the best explanation – the one most consistent with what we know now – is intelligent design.

News

New study: 9 out of 10 children born to co-habiting couples this year will see parents split by the time they are 16

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Dina sent me this article from the UK Daily Mail.

Excerpt:

Nearly nine out of ten babies born to co-habiting parents this year will have seen their family break up by the time they reach the age of 16, says a study.

Half of all children born this year will not be living with both natural parents when they reach their mid-teens, and almost all those who suffer family breakdown will be the children of unmarried parents, added the report.

The study, based on figures from the national census and large-scale academic surveys, extrapolates from current trends and calculates that just 9 per cent of babies born to cohabiting couples today will still have their parents living together by the time they are 16.

The report adds that the declining popularity of marriage and the rise of co-habitation will damage the lives of increasing numbers of children.

The figures were produced by researcher Harry Benson, of the Marriage Foundation think tank, who said: ‘The report provides solid evidence that married parents are more stable than unmarried parents.

‘The contrast between married and unmarried parents who remain intact by the time their children reach their teenage years demonstrates that marital status plays a crucial role in family breakdown.

‘With family breakdown costing an estimated £46 billion a year – more than the entire defence budget – in addition to the immeasurable social damage, it is clearly in the interest of the Government and the taxpayer to work to counter this devastating trend.’

Here in the United States, the cost of family breakdown $112 billion per year, and rising as the illegitimacy rate rises.