[ExI] Peak wood? Overcoming energy crises

[Gregory Jones]

--- On Sun, 7/18/10, Tom Nowell <nebathenemi at yahoo.co.uk> wrote:

...


...What the article doesn't mention is the long-term environmental consequences...nicknames of London - "the big smoke" and Edinburgh - "Auld Reekie" (that's Old Smokey in English) ...Tom


Tom, the most important names in evolution theory were British: Darwin of course, Thomas Huxley, Robert Chambers, Alfred Wallace, all the early big names were Brits.  People who know, is this correct?  
 
Second, coal burning took off early in Britain, ja?  So the forests around the highly industrialized areas had a lot of black coal soot.  There is a cerain moth as I recall which is ordinarily brown mottled with white splotches, so that it blends in with it's normal background, the trees with their mossy white splotches.  But some of these moths are completely black, with only a few dark brown spots.
 
In those areas where there was a lot of coal burning, perhaps the soot turned the tree trunks black, which favored the black moths to the disadvantage of the white and brown, whereas in the countryside, far from the industrial coal burning areas, the unstained trees would favor hiding the motley white and brown moths, suggesting to the careful observer the notion of natural selection.  Since Britain had both countryside and highly industrialized London with forests immediately downwind, perhaps coal burning led British naturalists to discover evolution first.
 
Tom you British guys lead the world still in evolutionary theory.  {8-]
 
spike
 
 
 
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