Josh has asked me to be kind. So I’ll merely quote some of the more insane items from that list:
oxygen quantity in atmosphere .1
The amount of oxygen in the atmosphere has, over time, varied from about 3% to more than 30%. That suggests there’s more than a 0.1 probability of it being at the right level to support life.
level of oxygen abundance in the galaxy .05
Even if we have the right amount of oxygen on Earth, we’re still not safe from global extinction - having the wrong amount of oxygen somewhere else will doom us. Unless this means that the amount of oxygen in the galaxy contributes to the amount found on Earth - but that leaves the question of how the amount on Earth is more likely to be appropriate than that in the galaxy. Go figure.
date for opening of the Drake Passage .01
The opening of the Drake passage within the last 60 million years isolated Antarctica and led to global climate change. If it hadn’t happened, goehistory would be different, and humans might not have evolved. But if it had happened at a different time, that doesn’t apply - it might only change when humans (or other intelligent species) evolved. There’s no reason to think we wouldn’t. Also note the 0.01 probability here. With a maximum window of 66my since the dinosaurs, a 0.01 probability means we can’t vary the opening time by more than 660,000 years. Unfortunately for Dr Ross, we don’t know exactly when it happened. It makes no sense to claim that the drake passage opening a million years earlier would have prevented the rise of humanity when for all we know it did open a million years earlier than our best estimate.
rate of leaf litter deposition upon soils .01
So there’s a sweet spot for leaf litter desposition rates and we’re in the right 1% - a bit more and there’d be too much, a bit less and there’d be too little. I wonder how much world deforestation has affected leaf litter deposition rates? But there’s also the spread off grasslands during the Cretaceous to consider - which surely altered the amount of leaf litter deposited enough to swing it outside that needed 1%. There’s also the invention of the lawnmower.
diversity of carnivore species .001
Only one chance in a thousand that we’ll have the right number of carnivore species to maintain a healthy ecosystem suitable for intelligent beings to evolve. It’s lucky that there are exactly 270 species of carnivore. If there were 271 we wouldn’t be here. Wait… did some-one just find a new species of olingo? Uh-oh…
level of upward stirring of ocean water by krill .001
variation in level of upward stirring of ocean water by krill .05
Only one chance in a thousand that there will be the right number of krill causing ocean mixing for intelligent life to appear? You might wonder whether this makes sense given the population variation, stabilisation and seasonal/predator-prey cycles, not to mention Malthusian population constraints. But the real problem here is that this factor is listed as necessary for the long-term survival of unicellular organisms. Dr Ross is claiming that single-celled organisms could not have survived for as long as they did if it hadn’t been for the presence of krill 400 million years later!
I’d ask if there was anyone who still thinks Dr Ross’s “probabilities” make sense now that they require time-travelling crustaceans, but unfortunately there’s no-one to ask. Humans don’t exist. They couldn’t have evolved, because cyanobacteria changed the amount of oxygen in the atmosphere too much. The spread of grasses reduced the amount of leaf litter too much. Even if the Drake passage opened at the right time, Pleistocene hunters killing all the megafauna made themselves extinct alongside the dire wolves, and we went extinct again when the last thylacine died in 1932. I wonder who’s writing this post?