Plate Tectonics and Life - What Scientists Sound Like

Although I can't find quite the right video for this section, I do have a couple of excellent presentations by scientists to their colleagues.  It's more nitty-gritty than I usual share over here, but it is on the topic - along with being more wonderful examples of What Serious Scientists Sound Like.

I've also included three articles touching:

video - Origins: Earth’s Journey Toward Life - Carnegie Science

Plate tectonics may have driven the evolution of life on Earth

   Ross Large, John Long, July 15, 2015

Linking the rise of atmospheric oxygen to growth in the continental phosphorus inventory  -  Cox et al.  2018

Did Plate Tectonics Set the Stage for Life on Earth?

   Lisa Kaspin-Powell - Jun 7, 2018

video - Life with and Life without Plate Tectonics, AGU 2014

Recall geophysicist William Jason Morgan words:

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Origins: Earth’s Journey Toward Life
    

Carnegie Science,  Published on Jan 7, 2019

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cM-XYcHI_uo

Paul Hoffman - Snowball Earth explained - What a scientist sounds like.

The second and third paragraphs in my second Pageant of Evolution column seem too discombobulated in hindsight.  It’s a great example of writing before having one's proverbial ducks in a row.  But hey, I was distracted and rushed and we learn from our mistakes.

In any event, that’s why I chose Paul F. Hoffman to feature in this “What a scientist sounds like” - Tectonic and Sedimentary Field Geologist in the Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences at Harvard University, currently he is their Sturgis Hooper Professor Emeritus. 

His honors go back to 1977 and his published work on Snowball Earth goes back to 1998.  He is considered a foremost expert in Snowball Earth research and he gave a wonderful series of lectures for Earth Dynamics Research Group at Curtin University of Technology in 2016.  

Unless you’re a serious student or scientist much of this will be over your head, however much won’t be!  The outlines are easy to follow, and the complexities are fascinating to hear about, even if the nuances are beyond our comprehension.  At least one becomes aware of unimagined complexities, along with unimagined levels of scientific understanding.

I’m starting by embedding a shorter simpler overview that he gave at Mount Royal University, as the 2018 keynote speaker for the Faculty of Science and Technology Research Days.  Then I share links and poster highlights of his more extensive Earth Dynamics Research Group lectures, enjoy.

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Also, check out this treasure trove:

 http://www.snowballearth.org/people.html 

Paul Hoffman | Joe Kirschvink | Lynn Margulis | Douglas Mawson | Mark A. S. McMenamin.

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(click on image for clearer view)

Paul Hoffman

Snowball Earth Lecture 1 - Snowball geology

Curtin University of Technology

Earth Dynamics Research Group, August 3, 2016

Pageant of Evolution (2), geological rearranging.

Here's my second Pageant of Evolution column, of course as I've said before I never finish projects I simply meet deadlines.  So it is that the version I'm sharing has gone through some more edits since the one that appeared at the Four Corners Free Press.  I'll be following this post with more highlighted video lectures by real sciences who will supply real substance behind this enthusiast's overview of Earth's magnificent Evolution.

(click image for better view)

Last month’s Four Corners Free Press column left off with Earth looking like a snowball roughly seven hundred million years ago.  In fact, there were a number of snowball epochs in Earth’s past, though most didn’t actually have glaciers growing all the way to the equator.  For this column those specifics make little difference since my point is mainly to introduce folks to the marvelous dynamics of Earth’s Evolution.  More exacting details are easy to find on the internet.

Diary August 11, 2019 - Defeated? What's that mean?

I received the following comment in response to my "Diary July 31, 2019" which was an introduction of sorts to why I've dedicated this month to Earth's Pageant of Evolution.  Since it's clear that “Defeat” is something we rationalists will be forced to deal with more and more, I’ve decided to offer this challenging response as a stand alone post.  

Thanks, it's nice to know some can relate to what I'm trying to write about. 

"Defeated" is such an ugly word.  How about righteously pissed off, heartbreakingly disappointed, fatalistic resignation as I watch the tipping points sneak past an apathetic willfully ignorant public thanks to ruthlessly dishonest propaganda media empires.  Sure, I’ve felt profound defeats that have floored me, but if you're alive you can’t stay on the floor for long.

You know in our own life's delicate dance we're required to be 'Present' to something - what will it be?  I can't watch Trump news, too much 'crazy making' going on, the normalization of their unAmerican dysfunctionality and their hideous disconnect from physical reality is too much.  Add to that continued Democratic Party ineptness, massive voter disinterest and it's simply horrifying for me to keep watching since it's beyond my ability to do anything about - when so few actually care or are aware.  All that's left for me is to continue striving to better enunciate rational fundamental principles and to continue living my life with dignity best I can.

My inner spirit is alive and well - supported by appreciation for down to Earth reality along with my place in the flow of Evolution, (rather than dependence on self-delusion and angry insecurity).  I've lived a life that the young me would be as proud of as the old me is.  No horror can take that away.  Besides, I'm aware that I'm a passionate empathetic guy and I learned long ago getting my heart kicked in and torn up now and then, is part of living an engaged life, then we get up, dust off and cowboy up.  

Michael Russell - Emergence, serpentinization engine, electron exchange - What a scientist sounds like.

If you enjoyed Robert Hazen and Jack Szostak, then you’ll want to add Michael Russell since his talks compliments what Dr. Szostak was explaining.  Of course, what you get out of these lectures is proportional to how well you already know the topic.  That said, any intelligent curious person can still get plenty of fascinating insights and better appreciation for the complexities scientists have come to understand by listening and then doing a little side research for themselves.  It's not like the fundamentals themselves are that difficult, it is the details that get impossibly complex and difficult to grasp.

The key is an honest curiosity to become aware of the world we live in.

With that I present another another couple lectures about the physics of Life’s folds within folds of cumulative harmonic complexity flowing down the cascade of time.  Before getting to my next essay.

Jack Szostak - Origins, geochemistry to biochemistry - What a scientist sounds like.

Whereas Robert Hazen went after the origins problem from a mineralogist's perspective, Professor of chemistry and chemical biology, the 2009 Nobel Prize laureate Jack Szostak goes at it from his expertise, the biologist’s perspective.  

Both have found that they needed to combine their expertise and to reach out to other branches of science in order to constructively tackle the problem of understanding the transition from geochemistry to biochemistry and then to full blown life as we know it.

He is another excellent public speaker so his talks are a joy to listen to.  Here I share a collection of seven informative videos of his talks along with some bio information.

Jack Szostak: The Early Earth and the Origins of Cellular Life

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h1KqvoLEj7c

MoleCluesTV, Published on May 16, 2019  (32:11 min.)

Lecture by Dr Jack Szostak, 2009 Nobel laureate in Physiology or Medicine, at the Molecular Frontiers Symposium "Planet Earth: A Scientific Journey", at Stockholm University May 9-10, 2019.

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The Szostak Lab

https://molbio.mgh.harvard.edu/szostakweb/

Robert Hazen - Origins, mineral evolution - What a scientist sounds like.

In order to get a change of scenery I spent the summer of 2006 working north of Boulder and living in a Teepee.  My transportation was mainly my bike and Longmont was a better destination than crowded Boulder.  It also sported a very nice library with a big non-fiction audio book collection, which was very exciting considering I’d long run out of decent nonfictions at my home town fiction loving library.  Browsing through their rows of “The Great Courses” series, I spied something new "Origins of Life."

Origins of Life

Professor Robert M. Hazen, Ph.D.

George Mason University

The Great Courses.com - course 1515

https://www.thegreatcourses.com/professors/robert-m-hazen/

With a title like that, I couldn’t say no.  It turned out to deliver one astounding surprise after another, along with a few revelations to boot.  I needed to listened a second time before returning, despite its 12 hour length.  Since then I've made a point of listening to pretty near every YouTube lecture featuring him and there are many. 

I also liked that this new understanding also vindicates my own reflexive disgust at having read some serious scientists assume that for the first few billions of years nothing happened on Earth.  It seemed a ridiculous notion to me and so it was.  Just like junk DNA, or wasted brain matter, nonsense - it was simply that we hadn’t learned enough to know what it was doing yet.  Seems that conceit and short sightedness has been a predominate feature in human thinking going way back.

The beauty of science is that truth and honesty and evidence is valued - authoritative facts win in the end.  This is because scientists belong to a community of dedicated, competitive, informed, skeptical individuals who buy into the basic premise that: We Need Each Other To Keep Ourselves Honest.  

Also they work under a set of rules, that puts honest observation at the top of the list, because constructively learning about our planet, along with her ways and means, is the goal.  A place where geophysical facts rule over personal opinion and preferences. 

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According to Neal deGrasse Tyson this is how science operates:

(1) Question authority. No idea is true just because someone says so, including me. 

(2) Think for yourself. Question yourself. Don't believe anything just because you want to. Believing something doesn't make it so. 

(3) Test ideas by the evidence gained from observation and experiment. If a favorite idea fails a well-designed test, it's wrong. Get over it. 

(4) Follow the evidence wherever it leads. If you have no evidence, reserve judgment. 

And perhaps the most important rule of all...

(5) Remember: you could be wrong. Even the best scientists have been wrong about some things. Newton, Einstein, and every other great scientist in history -- they all made mistakes. Of course they did. They were human. 

Science is a way to keep from fooling ourselves, and each other.

{Mistakes are learning opportunities !}

Pageant of Evolution (1), the warm up.

(click for better view)

A couple month's ago I was feeling guilty for not submitted anything to the Four Corners Free Press in a while.  Also I'd been all involved in that filthy downer job of sorting through Jim Steele's "What's Natural?" deceptions and I needed something positive.

So, with days to go before deadline, I decided to write about the Pageant of Evolution.  I cheated by rewriting the evolution pitch off this blog.  I though it would be a cinch since I think about Evolution a lot anyways.

During those days (and since) I tapped into a wonderful vain of scientific lectures on YouTube regarding latest findings in "origins" research, as well as the Evolution process in general to help refresh my memory and to get my creative juices flowing.

Instead I wound up chagrined and annoyed by how out of date I'd allowed myself to get.  But as they say, the project is never finished you only meet deadlines.  So even as I was summiting this column, I knew I had to give it another shot.  I'm sharing this Pageant of Evolution #1 because I want to explore my own learning process and the development, dare I say evolution, of my understanding.  Sharing the agony of defeat, along with the joy of victory and constructive learning.

Besides being chagrined, I was thinking of times I'd referred to myself as a student of climate science and now feeling mighty silly about that conceit.  I may be a genuine "Student of Life" but I'm no scholar, no "Student" - I come to realize, to appreciate, that I'm a self-taught "Enthusiast," a lover, a poet, Earth and life are a stage and experiencing it is my game - with science being my clearest path to better understanding my observations.

A real student of science possesses a discipline, a focus and sticktoitiveness I can't muster.  I'm like a happy puppy dog were every new scent is a fascinating adventure.  Though at 64, a creakier puppy for sure, oh but what a collection of experiences and learning.