Weekday Reads: Why Scientists Battle To Understand The Natural World
Welcome to Crime and Punishment: Why the Poor Stay Poor in America. I’m thrilled that you signed up to read my newsletter, and I hope that together, we can make a difference. Although I frequently stroll through local metro parks and have taken a few long and beautiful hikes in my past, I’m glad there are others willing to spend weeks and even years, trekking in far flung, dangerous locales searching for “the origin” of our and other species. I am grateful to the prize-winning paleontologists and myriad other scientists who spend their time observing our natural world and digging, sifting, scraping and collecting the earth and water to test in their laboratories, so we can can better understand, and so preserve, our planet. I’d like to share a few, long and winding articles that show that although we are probably past the tipping point vis-a-vis climate change, it is likely not technology alone that will pull us back from the edge of destruction, but the deeper understanding of how all species have been created and then changed in response to their environment. New or improved green energy technologies won’t hurt either, but they might well be based on these evolutionary discoveries. — First up is a CNN profile of evolutionary biologist, Dolph Schluter, which discusses his decades of research in the Galápagos Islands and his British Columbia research center. He has been able to document how a species evolves in response to change of some kind; for example, the case of a specific species of Finch in the Galapagos which evolved the size and shape of their beaks in response to competition for food. The assessment of this research shows us how different species might adapt to climate change.
https://www.cnn.com/2023/01/30/world/dolph-schluter-profile-crafoord-prize-scn/index.html — A New Yorker profile of paleobotanist, Else Marie Friis takes us on her lifelong search to document the earth’s earliest “fossilized flowering plants”. Again, decades of both field and lab work come together to give us a new perspective on evolution. Friis’ work used both a new scientific approach and a different way of seeing the same evidence to demonstrate that flowering plants followed the same, slow, meticulous path of evolution as later species. In fact, these ancient plants laid the groundwork for the species of the modern world to evolve and thrive from its “increasingly abundant pollen, fruits, and seeds”.
— Finally for this evening, a wild, New York Times story of a 17 year old girl’s survival, alone in the Amazon, and the lasting legacy of biological research she and her parents collected in their workstations deep in the Peruvian jungle. Their research, among many others, shows the near endless biodiversity of the rainforests, and how that knowledge can help the world learn the importance of preserving it.
—————————————————————————— I’d love to hear your thoughts on these articles, and the scientists who led decades of research which guide us today. Please leave a comment below! As always, I appreciate your interest and thoughtful ideas that make our Crime and Punishment community a welcoming space to visit and chat. There’s no time like the present to become a free or paid subscriber…and there’s no time like the New Year to Upgrade your free subscription to paid — it’s easy, and will allow me to continue and expand Crime and Punishment. Thanks in advance for your support! You’re on the free list for Crime and Punishment: Why the Poor Stay Poor In America. All posts are free for now, but if you’d like to get ahead of the crowd, feel free to support my work by becoming a paid subscriber. |
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