Industrial Revolution and Climate Change Quiz

The Industrial Revolution and Climate Change

• The Industrial Revolution began around 1750, significantly increasing human CO2 emissions.
• Prior to the revolution, atmospheric CO2 levels were always below 300 ppm.
• Advances in agriculture enhanced food supply and living standards.
• New technologies offered cheaper goods and services, largely powered by fossil fuels, especially coal.
• Burning fossil fuels has led to a dramatic rise in CO2 concentrations since the 1900s.
• Historical records indicate that increased atmospheric CO2 correlates with rising average temperatures.

Glacier Recession and Sea Level Rise

• Glacier National Park in Montana has seen a significant reduction in glacier size, termed glacier recession.
• In 1850, the park housed around 150 glaciers; by 2010, only 24 remained larger than 25 acres.
• Grinnell Glacier, one notable glacier, shrank by 40% between 1966 and 2005.
• Greenland experienced annual ice loss of 150-250 km from 2002 to 2006.
• The Arctic Sea ice is also thinning, contributing to global sea level rise.
• Sea levels rise at an average of 1.8 mm per year; between 1993 and 2010, this rate increased to 2.9-3.4 mm per year.
• Melting glaciers and polar ice caps release significant amounts of previously frozen water into oceans.

Ecological Impact of Climate Change

• Temperature and precipitation shifts affect the geographic distribution and life cycles of plants and animals.
• Darwin's concept of blending inheritance faced skepticism, leading to alternative evolution theories that emphasized mutations.
• Darwin's evolution theory lost traction by the end of the 19th century due to competing models that did not account for inheritance.

Natural Selection and Inheritance

• Natural selection involves phenotypic selection and genetic response; heritable phenotypes influence reproductive success.
• For evolution by natural selection to occur, phenotypic differences must be heritable.
• Blending inheritance theory states that offspring are a mix of their parents' characteristics, complicating the acceptance of Darwin's theory.

Mendelian Genetics

• Mendel conducted monohybrid crosses, leading to rules of inheritance: each parent contributes one allele per offspring.
• Results from these crosses demonstrated a 3:1 ratio of phenotypes in offspring.
• Probability theory applies to Mendel’s results, where event probability is calculated by outcomes over total possibilities.

Inductive and Deductive Reasoning

• Inductive reasoning analyzes data to formulate generalizations, commonly used in studying the human brain.
• Observational shifts in species distributions due to climate change support predictions about ecological impacts.

Importance of Replication in Science

• Replication ensures accuracy and reliability in scientific studies, allowing independent verification.
• Randomized experiments are crucial for establishing causation by minimizing systematic differences between treatment groups.

Scientific Inquiry and Methodology

• Science includes diverse methods beyond experimentation, such as observational studies and natural experiments.
• The scientific method relies on testing ideas against observations and adjusting theories as new evidence arises.
• A collaborative scientific community fosters accuracy through diverse perspectives and shared discoveries.
• Scientific thinking is accessible and applicable to everyday life, emphasizing that anyone can engage in scientific investigation.

Inheritance and Evolutionary Theories

• Parents passing unique phenotypes is crucial for population evolution; blending inheritance cannot support variation.
• In Darwin's era, blending inheritance suggested offspring were an intermediate trait between parents, e.g., height or skin color.
• Blending inheritance implies that over generations, traits would homogenize, akin to mixing black and white paint ultimately becoming gray.
• The idea was logical at the time as many traits visually blended; Darwin's breeding experiments indicated awareness of this concept.
• Other models, despite blending inheritance, attempted to explain species diversity through mutation.
• By the late 19th century, Darwin's natural selection model lost favor, requiring proof of persistent genetic variation for revival.

Lamarckian Inheritance

• Jean-Baptiste Lamarck proposed that acquired traits during an organism's lifetime could be inherited, but his ideas faced ridicule.
• Synapsis refers to the close pairing of homologous chromosomes during meiosis, allowing for crossing over and genetic recombination.

Mendelian Genetics

• Gregor Mendel's 1865 experiments with garden peas led to foundational principles of heredity, focusing on seven traits with distinct phenotypes.
• Mendel demonstrated that crossing purple and white flowered plants produced only purple flowers in the F1 generation, refuting blending inheritance.
• The disappearance of the white phenotype suggested a more complex inheritance model, indicating dominance among traits.
• X-linked recessive traits appear more frequently in males due to female carrier status, whereas in birds, sex-linked traits may appear more often in females.

DNA Replication and Mutations

• DNA replication ensures genetic material is accurately copied prior to cell division, though mutations can occur through errors such as wrong nucleotide insertion.
• DNA polymerase corrects most replication errors via proofreading; remaining mistakes may be fixed later through mismatch repair.
• In prokaryotes, enzymes recognize the template strand via methylation; eukaryotic mechanisms remain less understood.
• Mutations can create new alleles, with some beneficial and others deleterious, affecting an organism's survival and reproduction chances.
• Mutation rates evolve according to environmental factors and the balance between variation benefit and repair costs.

Evolutionary Insights

• False belief: Natural selection minimizes mutation chance; mutations are essential for genetic diversity.
• Lamarck's inheritance of acquired characteristics predicted that environmental adaptations, such as giraffe neck stretching, would be passed to offspring—later disproven.
• James Hutton argued for gradual geological change through small changes over time, conflicting with the catastrophic paradigm, influencing Darwin's thinking.
• Charles Lyell further popularized Hutton’s ideas, reinforcing Darwin's understanding of an ancient Earth critical for evolutionary concepts.