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Adaptation and Evolution
By Alan Hood | August 8, 2007
As an environmental science teacher I should be open minded enough to recognize that not every scientific theory is absolutely correct no matter the amount of evidence that has been gathered to prove the theory. I would suggest to the student that their belief system which they rely on can coexist with scientific theory and then proceed to give the student the evidence that points to evolution as the beginning of life on our planet. First I would explain that evidence shows that life formed in two phases on earth beginning about 4.6-4.7 billion years ago. The first phase was according to Miller Jr. (Miller Jr., 2005, 88) “The first phase was chemical evolution of the organic molecules, biopolymers, and systems of chemical reactions needed to form the first cells. This took about 1 billion years.” The chemical evolution was responsible for the formation of the earth’s early crust and atmosphere and over the course of those billion years led to the formation of protocells in the world’s oceans. Then I would explain the second phase as biological evolution and explain that biological evolution has lasted for approximately 3.6-3.7 billion years and continues today. The beginning of biological evolution started with Single-cell prokaryotes then went on to Single-cell eukaryotes and later to a Variety of multi-cellular organisms which formed first in the seas and later on land. I would then explain to the student that according to Miller Jr. (Miller Jr., 88) “Most of what we know of the earth’s life history comes from fossils: mineralized or petrified replicas of skeletons, bones, teeth, shells, leaves, and seeds, or impressions of such items. Fossils give us physical evidence of organisms that lived long ago and reveal what their internal structures looked like.” These fossils represent about 1% of all of the species that have lived on earth and from this evidence we conclude that life formed through an evolutionary process. Lastly I would ask the student to bring their copy of Living in the Environment with them to class tomorrow for a chemistry lesson.
To this young republican I would first ask why they wouldn’t want to have clean air to breath during their lifetime. Then I explain the process of evolution and why the destruction of our environment far outpaces evolution. Miller states that evolution is a series of mutations and that (Miller Jr., 2005, 90) “Some mutations are harmless but most are lethal. Every so often, a mutation is beneficial. The result is new genetic traits that give the bearer and its offspring better chances for survival and reproduction under existing environmental conditions or when conditions change.” Now that being said the reason we cannot adapt to environmental changes according to Miller is that (Miller Jr., 93)“First, a change in environmental conditions can lead to adaptation only for genetic traits already present in the gene pool of a population. You must have dice to play the genetic dice game.” If humans did have that trait in them already then we should be able to adapt right, well no because according to miller Jr. (Miller Jr., 2005, 93) “Populations of genetically diverse species that reproduce quickly—such as weeds, mosquitoes, rats, bacteria, or cockroaches—often adapt to a change in environmental conditions in a short time. In contrast, species that cannot produce large numbers of offspring rapidly, such as elephants, tigers, sharks, and humans, take a long time (typically thousands or even millions of years).” Thousands of years from now there won’t be any humans left to adapt to a polluted environment, but the good news is that without humans over the course of thousands of years the earth will no longer be polluted and we can start again from scratch. Then I would ask the student to bring their copy of Living in the Environment with them to class tomorrow for a chemistry lesson.
Welcome to Environmental Science 275 today we are going to do a short experiment with fire. The questions you asked yesterday were excellent and I thought you should get the truth. The truth is that despite all of the evidence that evolution is that way that life started on earth we don’t really know for sure. I asked you to bring your books with you to class today to prove that point. Everyone please turn to page 87 in your books and follow along, Miller Jr. states that (Miller Jr., 2005, 87) “If the atmosphere’s oxygen content dropped to about 15%, this would be lethal for most forms of life. If it increased to about 25%, oxygen in the atmosphere would probably ignite into a giant fireball.” Now everyone please tear page 87 from your books and bring them to the front of the class. Thank you now sit down basic chemistry teaches us that in order to have fire you must have two things a fuel and an oxidizer without one or the other you can’t have fire. I would then proceed to split the pages in half and place each half under separate glass canopies, in the first I would pump a volume of pure oxygen in until the oxygen level was above 25% and continue pumping oxygen into it until the experiment was over. The second container would be sealed at atmospheric conditions. I would then trigger the automatic igniter in the first and watch until all of the pages had been burned and the fire went out. We would then trigger the igniter on the second cylinder and watch until all of the oxygen was depleted but some of the pages remained. I would then reinforce that despite evidence sometimes science gets it wrong, even the book we are reading.
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