Fossils Best Quotes

...people's lives don't get preserved like fossils. The best you can hope for is that time will have hardened around someone's memory, preserving a void in their shape. [Hadley Baxter]

Virtually everyone in the world believes that climate change is real and is caused by human beings, except Republicans in the United States. Especially the people who would know best: 97 percent of climate scientists agree that climate change is real and caused by human activity, and I suspect the other 3 percent are being paid by the fossil fuel industry”.

And it means snapshots, because that's what all stories I write come down to; each is a snapshot of who I was during however many days and weeks it was written. A fictional reflection of my mind fossilized, set in paper and ink, instead of stone. Memorialized, for better or worse. This is who I was, and this, and this, and this, and that, and most times I look back and wince. I'm rarely kind to who I was. But other times, looking back is bittersweet. Sometimes, I'm even grateful to the me of then who left a snapshot for the me of now. Maybe I should let go and join those who pretend the past is past, but it's a falsehood I've never learned to spin.

THIS book is radioactive. And so are you. Unless you are dead, in which case we can tell how long ago you died by how much of your radioactivity is left. That’s what radiocarbon dating is—the measurement of the reduction of radioactivity of old bones to deduce the time of death. Alcohol is radioactive too—at least the kind we drink. Rubbing alcohol usually isn’t, unless it was made organically—that is, from wood. In fact, the US Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives tests wine, gin, whiskey, and vodka for radioactivity. A fifth of whiskey must emit at least 400 beta rays every minute or the drink is considered unfit for human consumption. Biofuels are radioactive. Fossil fuels are not. Of those killed by the Hiroshima atomic bomb, the best estimate is that fewer than 2% died of radiation-induced cancer. These statements are all true. They are not even disputed, at least by experts. Yet they surprise most people.

All writing is by the grace of God. People do not deserve to have good writing, they are so pleased with bad. In these sentences that you show me, I can find no beauty, for I see death in every clause and every word. There is a fossil or a mummy character which pervades this book. The best sepulchers, the vastest catacombs, Thebes and Cairo, Pyramids, are sepulchers to me. I like gardens and nurseries. Give me initiative, spermatic, prophesying, man-making words.

Annual global demand for fossil carbon is now just above 10 billion tons a year—a mass nearly five times more than the recent annual harvest of all staple grains feeding humanity, and more than twice the total mass of water drunk annually by the world’s nearly 8 billion inhabitants—and it should be obvious that displacing and replacing such a mass is not something best handled by government targets for years ending in zero or five. Both the high relative share and the scale of our dependence on fossil carbon make any rapid substitutions impossible: this is not a biased personal impression stemming from a poor understanding of the global energy system – but a realistic conclusion based on engineering and economic realities.

We often talk about Mother Nature as if it is really our mother—a being that deliberately nurtures us and has our best interests at heart. But it isn’t, and doesn’t. Nature, including the climate, is a wondrous background that gives us the potential for an amazing life—if we transform it.

If we pursue the environmental goal not of “protecting the environment” or “saving the planet” from human beings but of “improving our environment” or “improving our world” for human beings, we can have it all—the best of what exists naturally and the best of what we can create—including the time and ability to enjoy what exists naturally.

drawer next to the kitchen, where a child in search of scratch paper might end up pulling out the applications used by would-be customers of the Women’s Full Employment Network. The issue of paper was central to Heloise’s life long before various companies began begging its customers to go paperless and save the environment—along with their overhead. (Heloise has always been amused by the good causes that capitalism will embrace in order to save money. Paperless billing! No daily laundry in hotels! Adjusting thermostats! But ask them to reduce their actual dependence on fossil fuel? Impossible.) Heloise, like the best madams, keeps an enormous amount of information in her head, but

It was the start of a remarkable career. Anning would spend the next thirty-five years gathering fossils, which she sold to visitors. (She is commonly held to be the source for the famous tongue twister “She sells seashells on the seashore.”) She would also find the first plesiosaurus, another marine monster, and one of the first and best pterodactyls.

We are fossil fuel addicts. What happens when drug addicts detox? They can be rash, cranky, even psychotic and dangerous. It would be good for the environment if the entire economy abruptly quit fossil fuels, but that's not realistic. I wouldn't want to be around if it ever happened. Perhaps it's best to think of natural gas like methadone. It's a way for an energy addicted society to get off dirtier fuels and smooth out the detox bumps.

Some religions say that the universe was started with a word, a song, a dance, a piece of music. The Listening Monks of the Ramtops have trained their hearing until they can tell the value of a playing card by listening to it, and have made it their task to listen intently to the subtle sounds of the universe to piece together, from the fossil echoes, the very first noises. There was certainly, they say, a very strange noise at the beginning of everything. But the keenest ears (the ones who win most at poker), who listen to the frozen echoes in ammonites and amber, swear they can detect some tiny sounds before that. It sounded, they say, like someone counting: One, Two, Three, Four. The very best one, who listened to basalt, said he thought he could make out, very faintly, some numbers that came even earlier. When they asked him what it was, he said: “It sounds like One, Two.” No one ever asked what, if there was a sound that called the universe into being, what happened to it afterward. It’s mythology. You’re not supposed to ask that kind of question.

Fourth avenue was a red dog road. Red dog is burned out trash coal. If the coal had too much slate, it was piled in a slag heap and burned. The coal burned up, but the slate didn't The heat turned it every shade of red and orange and lavender you could imagine. When the red on our road got buried under rutted dirt or mud, dump trucks would pour new loads of the sharp-edged rock. My best friend Sissy and I followed along after the truck, looking for fossils. We found ferns and shells and snails, and once I found a perfect imprint of a four-leaf clover.

Right now we’re enjoying first generation GE crops; soon we’ll have versions that can grow in drought conditions, in saline conditions, crops that are nutritionally fortified, that act as medicines, that increase yields and lower the use for pesticides, herbicides, and fossil fuels. The best designs will do many of these things at once. The Gates Foundation–led effort BioCassava Plus aims to take cassava, one of the world’s largest staple crops, fortify it with protein, vitamins A and E, iron, and zinc; lower its natural cyanide content, make it virus resistant, and storable for two weeks (instead of one day). By 2020, this one genetically modified crop could radically improve the health of the 250 million people for whom it is a daily meal.

All of us have to learn how to invent our lives, make them up, imagine them. We need to be taught these skills; we need guides to show is how. Without them, our lives get made up for us by other people. Human beings have always joined in groups to imagine how best to live and help one another carry out the plan. The essential function of human community is to arrive at some agreement on what we need, what life ought to be, what we want our children to learn, and then to collaborate in learning and teaching so that we and they can go on the way we think is the right way. Small communities with strong traditions are often clear about the way they want to go, and good at teaching it. But tradition may crystallize imagination to the point of fossilizing it as dogma and forbidding new ideas. Larger communities, such as cities, open up room for people to imagine alternatives, learn from people of different traditions, and invent their own ways to live. As alternatives proliferate, however, those who take the responsibility of teaching find little social and moral consensus on way they should be teaching -- what we need, what life ought to be. In our time of huge populations exposed continuously to reproduced voices, images, and words used for commercial and political profit, there are too many people who want to and can invent us, own us, shape and control us through seductive and powerful media. It's a lot to ask of a child to find a way through all that alone. Nobody can do anything very much, really, alone. What a child needs, what we all need, is to find some other people who have imagined life along lines that make sense to us and allow some freedom, and listen to them. Not hear passively, but listen.

The final misconception is that evolution is “just a theory.” I will boldly assume that readers who have gotten this far believe in evolution. Opponents inevitably bring up that irritating canard that evolution is unproven, because (following an unuseful convention in the field) it is a “theory” (like, say, germ theory). Evidence for the reality of evolution includes: Numerous examples where changing selective pressures have changed gene frequencies in populations within generations (e.g., bacteria evolving antibiotic resistance). Moreover, there are also examples (mostly insects, given their short generation times) of a species in the process of splitting into two. Voluminous fossil evidence of intermediate forms in numerous taxonomic lineages. Molecular evidence. We share ~98 percent of our genes with the other apes, ~96 percent with monkeys, ~75 percent with dogs, ~20 percent with fruit flies. This indicates that our last common ancestor with other apes lived more recently than our last common ancestor with monkeys, and so on. Geographic evidence. To use Richard Dawkins’s suggestion for dealing with a fundamentalist insisting that all species emerged in their current forms from Noah’s ark—how come all thirty-seven species of lemurs that made landfall on Mt. Ararat in the Armenian highlands hiked over to Madagascar, none dying and leaving fossils in transit? Unintelligent design—oddities explained only by evolution. Why do whales and dolphins have vestigial leg bones? Because they descend from a four-legged terrestrial mammal. Why should we have arrector pili muscles in our skin that produce thoroughly useless gooseflesh? Because of our recent speciation from other apes whose arrector pili muscles were attached to hair, and whose hair stands up during emotional arousal.

The point is, you must show them how to live and not just teach them theory while contradicting yourself in practice, because cynicism, hypocrisy and insincerity are adult character traits that children have no way of appreciating. Children learn by imitating our behavior, and if it contradicts our thinking then at best they learn to simply ignore what we say and at worst become troubled by it. Suppose you teach them about the environmental devastation they will witness during their lives, and explain to them that it is being caused by burning fossil fuels, and that during their lives fossil fuels will disappear altogether with nothing to replace them … while continuing to burn hundreds of gallons of heating oil to heat an oversized house, driving all over creation in an oversized vehicle, jetting off to the tropics on brief winter holidays and going on shopping sprees to buy on a whim things you don’t need. Then what you would be teaching them is that you can’t be trusted. And this doesn’t help them; instead, it damages their spirit. It is better to have an ignorant fool for a parent than a well-informed hypocrite because being a fool is not a moral failing. Fools deserve pity and mercy; hypocrites—neither.

All of us have to learn how to invent our lives, make them up, imagine them. We need to be taught these skills; we need guides to show us how. Without them, our lives get made up for us by other people. Human beings have always joined in groups to imagine how best to live and help one another carry out the plan. The essential function of human community is to arrive at some agreement on what we need, what life ought to be, what we want our children to learn, and then to collaborate in learning and teaching so that we and they can go on the way we think is the right way. Small communities with strong traditions are often clear about the way they want to go, and good at teaching it. But tradition may crystallize imagination to the point of fossilizing it as dogma and forbidding new ideas. Larger communities, such as cities, open up room for people to imagine alternatives, learn from people of different traditions, and invent their own ways to live. As alternatives proliferate, however, those who take the responsibility of teaching find little social and moral consensus on what they should be teaching -- what we need, what life ought to be. In our time of huge populations exposed continuously to reproduced voices, images, and words used for commercial and political profit, there are too many people who want to and can invent us, own us, shape and control us through seductive and powerful media. It's a lot to ask of a child to find a way through all that alone. Nobody can do anything very much, really, alone. What a child needs, what we all need, is to find some other people who have imagined life along lines that make sense to us and allow some freedom, and listen to them. Not hear passively, but listen.

The early Church is no mystery, but I must say that, for me personally, it was a terrible challenge. I studied the writings of the four witnesses. I studied everything else I could find from the early Church. I looked and looked for something resembling my own faith, for something at least similar to the distinctives and practices of my own local church . . . and found only Catholicism. It was like something out of a dream, a nightmare. I had always believed, on the best authority I knew, that Roman Catholicism as it exists today is a rigid, clotted relic of the Middle Ages, the faded and fading memory of a Christianity distorted beyond all recognition by centuries of syncretism and superstition. Its organization and its officers were nothing but the christianized fossils of Emperor Constantine and his lieutenants; its transubstantiating Mass and its regenerating baptism, the ghosts of pagan mystery religion lingering over Vatican Hill. Catholicism represented to me the very opposite of primitive Christianity. The idea that anything remotely like it should be found in the first and second centuries was laughable, preposterous. I knew, like everyone else, that the early Church was a loose fraternity of simple, autonomous, spontaneous believers, with no rituals, no organization, who got their beliefs from the Bible only and who always, therefore, got it right . . . like me. I also knew that the object of the Christian game, here in the modern world, is to “put things back to the way they were in the early Church”. That, after all, was what our glorious Reformation had been all about. That, for crying out loud, was the whole meaning of Protestantism. So, as you might guess, finding apostolic succession in A.D. 96, or the Sacrifice of the Altar in 150, did my settled Evangelical way of life no good at all. Since that time I have learned that many other Evangelical Christians have experienced this same painful discovery.

This terrifying experiment has already been set in motion. Unlike nuclear war—which is a future potential—climate change is a present reality. There is a scientific consensus that human activities, in particular the emission of greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide, are causing the earth’s climate to change at a frightening rate.7 Nobody knows exactly how much carbon dioxide we can continue to pump into the atmosphere without triggering an irreversible cataclysm. But our best scientific estimates indicate that unless we dramatically cut the emission of greenhouse gases in the next twenty years, average global temperatures will increase by more than 3.6ºF, resulting in expanding deserts, disappearing ice caps, rising oceans and more frequent extreme weather events such as hurricanes and typhoons.8 These changes in turn will disrupt agricultural production, inundate cities, make much of the world uninhabitable, and send hundreds of millions of refugees in search of new homes.9 Moreover, we are rapidly approaching a number of tipping points, beyond which even a dramatic drop in greenhouse gas emissions will not be enough to reverse the trend and avoid a worldwide tragedy. For example, as global warming melts the polar ice sheets, less sunlight is reflected back from planet Earth to outer space. This means that the planet absorbs more heat, temperatures rise even higher, and the ice melts even faster. Once this feedback loop crosses a critical threshold it will gather an unstoppable momentum, and all the ice in the polar regions will melt even if humans stop burning coal, oil, and gas. Therefore it is not enough that we recognize the danger we face. It is critical that we actually do something about it now. Unfortunately, as of 2018, instead of a reduction in greenhouse gas emissions, the global emission rate is still increasing. Humanity has very little time left to wean itself from fossil fuels. We need to enter rehab today. Not next year or next month, but today. “Hello, I am Homo sapiens, and I am a fossil-fuel addict.

Power generation through renewable energy has to be increased from 5 per cent to 28 per cent. Dependence on fossil fuels as primary energy source needs to be brought under 50 per cent from the present 75 per cent. Mandating the use of ethanol from 10 per cent to 20 per cent and the associated public policy for ethanol development by the sugarcane industry is also required. There is also a need for a sustainable biofuel policy for generating 60 million tonnes of biofuel, along with the use of alternate sources such as emulsification, bio-algae and hydrogen fuel.

Earlier yet, in 1917, an amateur geologist named Albert E. Knapp claimed to have found a fossilized human footprint from the Triassic period—the imprint of a shoe made of stitched dinosaur hide. This led him to believe that humans and dinosaurs had coexisted in Nevada’s Great Basin 200 million years ago. The New York Times took Knapp’s finding somewhat seriously, as did Nobel Prize-winning Oxford scientist Frederick Soddy, who used it to support his pet theory of a superior race of prehistoric humans that destroyed itself after achieving scientific mastery over atomic energy.

Such creativity with statistics is by no means an isolated incident, as revealed by The Climate Change Performance Index[20] published by Germanwatch and Climate Action Network Europe in 2014. Again, the wrong countries were at risk of becoming the top performers, and again, the situation was fixed with creative carbon accounting for nuclear. This particular index went even further than WWF did and declared nuclear electricity to have the same emissions as the dirtiest mainstream electricity, coal power. Given that this was an especially climate oriented index, it is interesting to note that a country could improve its score by replacing nearly emission-free nuclear with practically any mix of fossil fuels. One really cannot make this stuff up. We are sure that similar creative ”indices” are already in preparation somewhere. Using deliberately falsified indices and reports for actual, sensible real world policy is of course impossible, as they simply seek to distort the reality to conform to an ideologically preconceived position. We believe that environmental organizations are in fact never going to tell us which countries have historically cut their carbon emissions the fastest and the most. The leaders in this game are those countries that built a lot of nuclear in the 1980s, like France and Sweden. It is worth noting that these cuts were accomplished with technology from the 1970s, and were achieved completely by accident, as a by-product of energy policy enacted for completely different reasons. There was no active climate policy, but the results were many times better than what Germany has managed with its Energiewende since the early 2000s. It is worth imagining what an active and evidence-based climate policy that pushed aggressively for renewables, energy savings and nuclear could therefore achieve. Image 10 - The best ten years of emissions reductions in four countries. A major part of Germany’s reductions, called “Wallfall”, are due to the country’s unification and the following closure of many of ineffective power plants and industry in eastern Germany. In addition to these countries, also Belgium and Finland have cut their emissions markedly with nuclear power.

Entrances and Exits Between 4 million and 2 million years ago, at least 11 different hominid species existed in central, eastern, and southern Africa. These species fall into three genera: Australopithecus, Paranthropus, and Kenyanthropus. At any given time during this era, from four to seven different species existed simultaneously.8 Paleoanthropologists surmise that at least six of the hominids were Australopithecus. Like earlier hominids, australopithecines can be thought of as bipedal apes, distinct from chimpanzees.9 The brain size of australopithecines (380 to 450 cm3) was slightly larger than that of chimpanzees (300 to 400 cm3). Though the cranium, facial features, and dental anatomy were apelike, they were distinct from the corresponding chimpanzee features. The australopithecines stood about four feet tall and matured rapidly, like the great apes. Skull, pelvis, and lower limbs all display features that indicate these hominids walked erect. Still, the bipedalism, called facultative, was distinct from the obligatory bipedalism employed by Homo hominids. Some paleoanthropologists think the australopithecines could also climb and move effectively through trees. This idea is based on their relatively long upper arms, short lower limbs, and funnel-shaped torsos. Work published in 2000 indicates that some australopithecines might have knuckle-walked like the great apes.10 The earliest australopithecines lived either in a woodland environment or in a mixed habitat of trees and open savannas. Later australopithecines lived only on the grassy plains. Their capacity to climb and move through trees, as well as walk erect, gave these hominids easy mobility in their varied environment. The oldest member of Australopithecus, Australopithecus anamensis, existed between 4.2 and 3.8 million years ago, based on fossils recovered near Lake Turkana in Kenya. Australopithecus afarensis fossils have been recovered in eastern Africa and date to between 4 and 3 million years old. “Lucy” (discovered in the early 1970s by Donald Johanson) is one of the best-known specimens. She is nearly 40 percent complete, with much of the postcranial skeleton intact.11 Remains of Australopithecus bahrelghazali, dated at 3.2 million years ago, have been recovered in Chad. Some paleoanthropologists think, however, that A. bahrelghazali is properly classified as an A. afarensis. Australopithecus africanus lived in South Africa between 3.0 and 2.2 million years ago, based on the fossil record. One of the best-known A. africanus specimens is the “Taung child” discovered in 1924 by Dart. The Taung child was the first australopithecine found.12

In ordinary times—times here understood to mean whole geologic epochs—extinction takes place only very rarely, more rarely even than speciation, and it occurs at what’s known as the background extinction rate. This rate varies from one group of organisms to another; often it’s expressed in terms of extinctions per million species-years. Calculating the background extinction rate is a laborious task that entails combing through whole databases’ worth of fossils. For what’s probably the best-studied group, which is mammals, it’s been reckoned to be roughly .25 million species-years. This means that, since there are about fifty-five hundred mammal species wandering around today, at the background extinction rate you’d expect—once again very roughly—one species to disappear every seven hundred years.

The Younger Dryas impacts, and subsequent sustained cataclysm, changed the face of the earth completely and wrought particularly significant havoc across North America. We have considered the question of huge volumes of meltwater released into the Arctic and Atlantic Oceans from the destabilized ice sheet and looked at the effects on global climate. But keep in mind that those enormous floods also devastated the rich North American mainland to the south, perhaps the best and most bounteous real estate then available anywhere. This immense and extraordinary deluge, 'possibly the largest flood in the history of the world,' swept away and utterly demolished everything that lay in its path. Jostling with icebergs, choked by whole forests ripped up by their roots, turbulent with mud and boulders swirling in the depths of the current, what the deluge left behind can still be seen in something of its raw form in the Channeled Scablands of the state of Washington today--a devastated blank slate [...] littered with 10,000-ton 'glacial erratics,' immense fossilized waterfalls, and 'current ripples' hundreds of feet long and dozens of feet high. If there were cities there, before the deluge, they would be gone. If there was any evidence of anything that we would recognize as technology there, before the deluge, it would be gone.

We should limit how much beef we eat, because the amount of water, fossil fuel, and grain it takes to procure one pound of beef is nearly unimaginable. We should recycle. And precycle—buy things that have as little packaging as possible. We should do our best to walk and take public transportation and offset our fuel by giving generously to those who are helping plant trees around the world through organizations such as the Eden Project. But perhaps the most important thing we can do immediately to positively impact the health of the planet is to begin to take a Sabbath. If we work six days a week, it very well may be that we can limit one-seventh of our carbon footprint because we are not commuting on that day.

[Lucas] was most famous for his short, best-selling book on fossils, "Animals of the Past: An Account of Some of the Creatures of the Ancient World", in which he showed his gift for enlivening the driest science. Apologizing for using Latin scientific names, he wrote: 'The reader may perhaps sympathize with the old lady who said the discovery of all these strange animals did not surprise her so much as the fact that anyone should know their names when they were found.

Agatha tilted her head. “That is democracy.” “That is its fatal error, that everyone can turn their opinion into power. It is not common sense that matters, but who tells the best and loudest story. This cannot have a future. It must not have a future.

That is its fatal error, that everyone can turn their opinion into power. It is not common sense that matters, but who tells the best and loudest story. This cannot have a future. It must not have a future.

I’m a believer in capitalism—I think it’s the best way we’ve found so far to structure a society. But I don’t buy the laissez-faire idea. I think we need regulations. I’m in favor of a superego to control the market’s id. I’m in favor of long-range thinking to balance stockholders’ lust for immediate profits. I think we need infrastructure to help us get the pencil and coffee safely into our hands. And I think we also need high-level coordination to keep us from playing with lead-paint-coated toys, eating salmonella steaks, and baking ourselves into oblivion with overreliance on fossil fuels.

Dart initially echoed Darwin’s theory that bipedalism freed the hands of early hominins to make and use hunting tools, which in turn selected for big brains, hence better hunting abilities. Then, in a famous 1953 paper, clearly influenced by his war experiences, Dart proposed that the first humans were not just hunters but also murderous predators.18 Dart’s words are so astonishing, you have to read them: The loathsome cruelty of mankind to man forms one of his inescapable characteristics and differentiative features; and it is explicable only in terms of his carnivorous, and cannibalistic origin. The blood-bespattered, slaughter-gutted archives of human history from the earliest Egyptian and Sumerian records to the most recent atrocities of the Second World War accord with early universal cannibalism, with animal and human sacrificial practices of their substitutes in formalized religions and with the world-wide scalping, head-hunting, body-mutilating and necrophilic practices of mankind in proclaiming this common bloodlust differentiator, this predaceous habit, this mark of Cain that separates man dietetically from his anthropoidal relatives and allies him rather with the deadliest of Carnivora. Dart’s killer-ape hypothesis, as it came to be known, was popularized by the journalist Robert Ardrey in a best-selling book, African Genesis, that found a ready audience in a generation disillusioned by two world wars, the Cold War, the Korean and Vietnam Wars, political assassinations, and widespread political unrest.19 The killer-ape hypothesis left an indelible stamp on popular culture including movies like Planet of the Apes, 2001: A Space Odyssey, and A Clockwork Orange. But the Rousseauians weren’t dead yet. Reanalyses of bones in the limestone pits from which fossils like the Taung Baby came showed they were killed by leopards, not early humans.20 Further studies revealed these early hominins were mostly vegetarians. And as a reaction to decades of bellicosity, many scientists in the 1970s embraced evidence for humans’ nicer side, especially gathering, food sharing, and women’s roles. The most widely discussed and audacious hypothesis, proposed by Owen Lovejoy, was that the first hominins were selected to become bipeds to be more cooperative and less aggressive.21 According to Lovejoy, early hominin females favored males who were better at walking upright and thus better able to carry food with which to provision them. To entice these tottering males to keep coming back with food, females encouraged exclusive long-term monogamous relationships by concealing their menstrual cycles and having permanently large breasts (female chimps advertise when they ovulate with eye-catching swellings, and their breasts shrink when they are not nursing). Put crudely, females selected for cooperative males by exchanging sex for food. If so, then selection against reactive aggression and frequent fighting is as old as the hominin lineage.22

The early discoveries from Lake Turkana included remarkable fossils, including a skull then thought to be the earliest specimen of Homo from anywhere in the world. Scientists today identify it as the best example of the species Homo rudolfensis, a contemporary of habilis. In 1984, the hominid gang’s most accomplished fossil hunter, Kamoya Kimeu, found the first pieces of a skeleton that would eventually become the most complete Homo erectus yet discovered. Known as Turkana Boy, it is a young male, aged at approximately 1.5 million years old, with many humanlike body structures but key differences in the brain, skull, and teeth.

But just across the U.S. border, up in the tar sands of Alberta, there is another equally horrific image. A gaping pit, an abyss on its way to becoming the size of Florida, exists where Imperial Oil -- the largest company in the world -- is using the wild Athabasca River to pressure-wash underground sand formations that they gouge up like honeycombs, using huge amounts of energy and clean fresh water to steam the oil from those sands. Native people in the area are dying from drastically abnormal incidences of rare cancers, and Imperial Oil is seeking to transport more giant mining equipment -- on trucks over two hundred feet long and three stories high-- up the Snake River to Lewiston, Idaho, along the same route where the Nez Perce tribe rescued Lewis and Clark and directed them to the Pacific, shortly before the U.S. betrayed the Nez Perce and chased them toward Canada before killing them. (Rick Bass)

The one thing a human-focused response to a major climate danger would not do is try to save ourselves by pursuing solar, wind, and biofuels. These are the worst-performing sources of energy we have, and if we were truly in desperate straits, we would go with something that works; we wouldn’t force everyone to use the worst and hope for the best.

As citizens, we hate to see even one coal mine accident, one spill of hazardous liquids, one example of industry corruption, but we must use that feeling to advocate for proper laws and best practices, not to drive us to outlaw crucial technologies.

Thanks to their hardness, teeth are often the best-preserved animal part we find in the fossil record for many time periods.

the difficulties of making temperature experiments [on fully grown alligators] would be great and can be best left to the imagination.”)

You better not bother the Chickcharnies while you're out here. Best to stay on their good side." The moonlight cast shadows on his face, but it was easy to see his teasing grin. She raised her eyebrows. "The Chickcharnies?" He pointed up into the palms and distant pines. "They're kind of like birds. They live up in the treetops --only on Andros Island and nowhere else in the world." Cyn scanned the darkness among the high branches. "What do you mean 'kind of like birds'?" He shrugged one shoulder. "Like owls. But they have three fingers, three toes, and they hang from the trees by their tails. You can spot their red eyes when they catch the light." Cyn clenched her teeth and squinted up into the trees, scanning for a pair of red eyes aimed her way. "They sound a little creepy." "If you see one, and you show it respect," Trent said, "you'll have good luck for the rest of your life." Cyn could use some good luck, for sure. She concentrated harder on finding those red eyes. None in sight, she furrowed her brow and set her gaze on Trent. "What do they do if you bother them?" His grin widened into that stop-your-heart smile that Cyn was finding harder to resist. "They turn your head around backward." "What?" "It's probably really painful," Trent said. Cyn swatted his arm, coming up against tight muscle. "You made that up." "Not really. It's island lore. People think the Chickcharnies descended from a big flightless owl they've found in fossils." "Have you ever seen one?" she asked skeptically. "Not yet. But you never know if one's around. I'd like to keep my head on straight, so I don't tease about them.".... Suddenly a huge screeching bird swooped down out of the trees, flew several feet over their heads, and veered up into a nearby copse of palms. Cyn yelped and ducked low. Trent pulled her close, tucking her against his chest. "Holy crap!" she said, "That was one pissed-off Chickcharnie. Hold on to your head.

Thus, from the wild speculation of 1967, Margulis’s idea is now accepted as the best possible explanation of the origin of eukaryotes and organelles. Lynn Margulis has even received the National Medal of Science for her groundbreaking and daringly original ideas.

The shoggoths are a living fossil, something virtually unchanged except in the scale since the early days of the world.

Suraj solar and allied industries, Wework galaxy, 43, Residency Road, Bangalore-560025. Mobile number : +91 808 850 7979 Understanding the idea of sun oriented streetlamps Sun powered streetlamps have arisen as a feasible and effective lighting arrangement, particularly in metropolitan regions like Bangalore. By bridling the force of the sun, these lighting apparatuses offer various benefits over customary matrix based frameworks. In this article, we dive into the universe of sun powered streetlamps, investigating their advantages, evaluating factors, provider determination best practices, and future innovation patterns. Whether you are a mortgage holder, entrepreneur, or city organizer in Bangalore, understanding the complexities of sunlight based streetlamps can assist you with pursuing informed choices towards a greener and more savvy lighting arrangement. ### 1. Prologue to Sun based Streetlamps #### Understanding the idea of sunlight based streetlamps Hi, brilliant personalities! How about we shed some light on sun oriented streetlamps. These clever creations bridle the force of the sun to enlighten our roads, making them eco-accommodating as well as financially savvy. ### 2. Advantages of Sun powered Streetlamps in Bangalore #### Natural benefits of sun oriented streetlamps By changing to, Solar Street Light Price in Bangalore we're giving contamination a dimmer switch. These lights decrease fossil fuel byproducts and assist with keeping our city's air cleaner and fresher. #### Monetary advantages for Bangalore inhabitants and organizations Who doesn't cherish saving a couple of bucks? Sunlight based streetlamps cut power bills as well as require negligible upkeep, saving the two occupants and organizations in Bangalore some well deserved cash. ### 3. Factors Influencing Sun oriented Streetlamp Costs #### Nature of sunlight based chargers and battery frameworks Very much like a decent sunscreen, quality matters with regards to sunlight based chargers and batteries. Putting resources into first class parts guarantees dependable execution and productivity. #### Establishment and support costs Introducing sunlight based streetlamps resembles sowing seeds for reserve funds. While beginning expenses might shift, the drawn out benefits offset them, with insignificant upkeep expected to keep those lights radiating brilliantly. ### 4. Correlation of Solar Street Light Price in Bangalore #### Cost range examination of sunlight based streetlamps in Bangalore From financial plan cordial choices to grand models, there's a sunlight based streetlamp for each wallet size in Bangalore. Contrasting costs and highlights can assist you with tracking down the ideal fit for your necessities. #### Deciding the best incentive for cash With regards to sun oriented streetlamps, it's about the sticker price as well as the profit from venture. Finding a harmony among cost and quality guarantees you get the best value for your money in Bangalore. In this way, that's essentially it - a focusing manual for sun powered streetlamps in Bangalore. We should light up the roads, each watt in turn! 5. Best Practices for Picking Sun based Streetlamp Providers Exploring trustworthy sun oriented streetlamp producers With regards to picking a sun oriented streetlamp provider, getting your work done is significant. Search for makers with a strong standing for quality items and dependable help. You need a provider that has insight in the business and a history of following through on their commitments. Inspecting client criticism and tributes Client input can give important experiences into the exhibition of a sun based streetlamp provider. Look at surveys and tributes from past clients to measure fulfillment levels. Positive criticism is a decent pointer that the provider is reliable and follows through on their responsibilities.

Dostoevsky's, The Brothers Karamazov, said it best, “Man, do not pride yourself on your superiority to the animals, for they are without sin, while you, with all your greatness, you defile the earth wherever you appear and leave an ignoble trail behind you -- and that is true, alas, for almost every one of us!” Between pollution and extracting fossil fuels, our daily use of water and electricity intrude on every part of our planet’s survival on a day-to-day basis. We are the locusts, and we are the storm. No matter what man seems to involve himself in on our planet, we leave an indelible mark. I suppose the same is true of our relationships good and bad. When we deal with each other we leave a mark either for good or for bad - From Fleeting Fabric of Time

but outdated facts are mental fossils that are best abandoned.

is intriguing to note that the same power-law regularities apply to the scaling of man-made objects: to the mechanical equivalents of organisms that “metabolize” (convert) fossil fuels or electricity into kinetic energy. Perhaps the best choice for examining these inanimate scalings is to look at internal combustion engines—the machines that, together with electric motors, are the dominant energy converters and mechanical sustainers of modern civilization.28 Their two main categories are reciprocating engines with fuel combustion taking place inside pistons, and gas turbines (jet engines) with fuel combustion taking place in a chamber supplied with compressed air.

Evidence against Darwinian Evolution Darwinism is unable to say how life could have emerged from non-life. The more we learn about the complexity of the cell, the deeper the problem becomes. If Darwinian evolution were true, we should find millions of transitional forms in the fossil record, but the missing links are still missing. Darwinists say natural selection is evidence of macroevolution. However, natural selection, which is basic science, simply demonstrates change within species. This is called microevolution. Critiquing Darwinism does not make a person anti-science. We all share the same scientific evidence. The question is, what theory or interpretive framework best explains the evidence?

There are five project types that are not fat-tailed. That means they may come in somewhat late or over budget but it’s very unlikely that they will go disastrously wrong. The fortunate five? They are solar power, wind power, fossil thermal power (power plants that generate electricity by burning fossil fuels), electricity transmission, and roads. In fact, the best-performing project types in my entire database, by a comfortable margin, are wind and solar power.

It is ironic but nonetheless true that for developing countries the best way to protect against the future effects of climate change is currently to burn more fossil fuels and thereby accelerate their economic development.

Contamination from plastic pollution is a terrestrial problem as much as it is a marine problem. Humans have altered the earth with roads, mines, buildings, ditches, dams, and dumps to the degree that our era deserves a name--the Anthropocene. Natural history is punctuated by changes in life, due either to rapid evolution or catastrophic extinction, and evidence of change is sometimes marked by well-preserved, widely distributed fossils. What is our fossil equivalent? Some suggest it's black carbon from the Industrial Revolution, which shows up in the seafloor and ice caps, or it's radioactive isotopes from the mid-twentieth-century nuclear tests. Now, with evidence of plastic, transported by wind and waves, blanketing Earth from the seafloor to the tops of mountains, it is arguable that plastic is the best index fossil that represents us. Even if we stop polluting the planet with plastic today, we will have to live with a layer of microplastics that will represent this moment in natural history, when a single species so deeply affected the planet for a short while.

It is commonly asked, when will the world’s supply of oil be exhausted?” wrote the MIT economist Morris Adelman. “The best one-word answer: never.” On its face, this seems ridiculous—how could a finite stock be inexhaustible, when a constantly renewed flow can run out? But more than a century of experience has shown it to be true. As a practical matter, we know only that there is more than enough for the foreseeable future. That is, fossil-fuel supplies have no known bounds. In strict technical terms, this means they are infinite. Hardly anyone who is not an economist believes this, though.

Wizard-style renewable advocates like the venture-capital-backed firm that built Crescent Dunes scoff at these ideas. Even in the best of circumstances, the process of replacing the present coal-and-gas grid with a new, renewable-energy grid—all the while keeping the old grid running—would be long, expensive, and risky even if it weren’t being sabotaged by the people who are supposed to support it. Insisting on using small-scale components to build in a world of 10 billion only multiplies the difficulty. Now add in the fact that fossil-fuel prices have been declining for decades. Thinking purely in terms of a reliable energy supply, one is hard-pressed to imagine why one would try to do

If an organised body is not in the situation and circumstances best adapted to its sustenance and propagation, then, in conceiving an indefinite variety among the individuals of that species, we must be assured, that, on the one hand, those which depart most from the best adapted constitution, will be most liable to perish, while, on the other hand, those organised bodies, which most approach to the best constitution for the present circumstances, will be best adapted to continue, in preserving themselves and multiplying the individuals of their race.

Penzias called Dicke. Dicke drove to Holmdel. The two teams got together and realized that what they were hearing was nothing less than the hiss of fossil radiation still echoing from the big bang. Furthermore, the temperature of the sound was 2.7 degrees, which was the same value predicted a decade earlier by George Gamow and his colleagues Ralph Alpher and Robert Herman. Penzias and Wilson won a Nobel Prize for their discovery of cosmic background radiation, which effectively launched the science of cosmology.19 In 1992, when scientists found cosmic ripples in that background radiation that matched up with their best guesses about how galaxies came to be, Berkeley astronomer George Smoot told reporters that it was “like looking at the face of God.”20