Friday, February 22, 2008
New Species
As I browsed through science news, this article immediately caught my attention. I think it would be incredible to be one of these scientists on the hunt for new species. The deep sea has always been an interest of mine and the thought of what mysteries could lie there. There is no doubt in my mind that there are hundreds if not thousands of undiscovered species, waiting for us to discover them. It is also interesting how every science news story today seems to relate to global warming in some way. The article states that increases carbon dioxide levels in the water could cause problems with underwater species growing skeletons. It seems a long shot, but once again, it's another case of global warnings suspected detrimental impact on our world. The warning bells are ringing.
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9 comments:
The thing that interested me most about this article was that they intended to use a lot of the data and photographs as a reference point. I am doing a research project in the Department of Natural Resources that is similar. Although it does not relate to global warming so much as it does development and agriculture, we use photographs to monitor the land.
With the support of The Edward L. Rose Conservancy group, this project has developed a database of photographs over the past three years. Taking a relatively square county in Pennsylvania and splitting it into transects, we have essentially photographed the entire county. These photos are logged, labeled and set as a reference point. In the future someone can go to the exact transect point, take a photo and then compare it to the image in the database depicting environmental changes, development and agriculture effects. The next part of the project is to find all historic images that were taken in the county (along with some detective work) and duplicate those images.
This has been done in the past as well. I read a book which did the same in Yellowstone National Park. Old photos from the early twentieth century and even older were duplicated;the changes are astounding. It's an effective way of monitoring things like climate change. I'm sure you've all seen images of glaciers that have deteriorated over the years. Al Gore has a pretty big library.
I think that Lindsay brings up an interesting point about how information is much more easily communicated through pictures then other forms. Being able to see how a place changes from year to year, or over a period of decades allows you to visualize the effects, not just read about them. Pictures allow you to say with two images what countless charts and data tables can only begin to communicate.
I can agree that images can be great forms of communication, but I'm always very hesitant to use them as "evidence." It's natural to do just that, since when photography was invented it captured real life. These days with digital photography and Photoshop, I just can't help but carry a huge grain of salt with me. Can I really trust the image I'm looking at? Is it possible they altered the saturation? Does it distort the actual scene the photographer saw? Or did the alteration make the image more accurately represent the truth? It probably does not help to be quite interested in Photography and really understand what one can do with it. Also, you need to remember that a camera cannot capture the light as well as the human eye, so what you may have seen is not what you get in a picture. Taking COMM 130 further imbedded this skepticism in me.
"These days with digital photography and Photoshop, I just can't help but carry a huge grain of salt with me." I agree with JP. I am more skeptic of the use of images/video to enhance making something more "real" after learning that the video we had seen in class was actually not footage from the actual scene.
I found this article very interesting because I feel as if as a whole we as humans believe that their is nothing we do not know. To know that their are still organism out there that we have never seen and to know that they are changing constantly really puts life into perspective. The images that the article uses I think helps us as the reader enjoy this article much more cause we are able to see how the enviroments are changing for good or bad.
I'm surprised that no one has mentioned the clear display of interestedness that Martin Riddle (the head scientist leading the mission to scourge the ocean floor that the article presents) displays with his quotations. He seems so sure of FUTURE findings of new species. Of course, he responded, "I would be very surprised if there weren't." when a reporter asked him if he expected to find new species on his expedition. Very few scientists would respond to that question with a pessimistic or doubtful answer. These answers would weaken a scientist's claims, which would in turn, damage his or her personal image within the scientific community and within the general public. This quotation from the article brings up my point again:
"But he said once the entire catch was classified -- including sea worms and other smaller animals -- he expected about 10 percent to be previously unknown species."
Riddle seems so sure of his work. I really wish the article could present us with some evidence to support Riddle's claims.
Anthony said that the article did not have any 'evidence' to support Riddle's claims. I get the feeling that this was probably because the article isn't really a technical article. It was found on Yahoo! news, implying that the audience is a little less sophisticated, thus presenting data and the like, although increasing credibility of his claims, would sort of take away from the impact that the piece was trying to achieve.
I noticed though, that in this article there were no quotes from other sources. But then again, that might be because this article is just a news story- something new and thus interesting to readers. Its purpose may just be to communicate that there's something new going on.
I agree with Anthony in that the article should have had some evidence to support its claims- however, I otherwise really liked this article-mainly because it did manage to bring up global warming in an article where that was not the main subject. I find it really interesting that so many new species are being discovered, and I’m sure most of the article’s readers find this fact very intriguing as well. That’s why I think the choice to bring up the effects of global warming on discovering these new species was a wise one. The media had been doing a good job lately of enforcing knowledge of the effects global warming will have on every aspect of our lives. I recently found an article in the dining section of the New York Times that had a large portion dedicated to how many restaurants are “going green”. Forcing the subject of climate change into as many different news stories as possible is proving a great way to increase public knowledge on the subject. People who were simply web surfing for info. On deep sea fishing or species discovery are now slightly more knowledgeable on the topic of global warming than they were previously. However, I sometimes worry that many people find “going green” to be just a new fad that will die down over time, and I’m slightly conflicted as to whether mentioning it everywhere will only enforce the “fad” theory. I’m currently in the process of researching whether this is true and plan to post again when I’ve found more information the subject.
By reading this article, I was highly interested but at the same time very sckeptical of the source of information. Being that its a news article in Yahoo and not a good peer-reviewed journal in Science. I have no way of knowing the validity of this new knowledge. I wasn't really there when these scientists discovered the new species and neither was I there when they brought back and displayed the specimens. Two important knowledge we would have to know to verify this new knowledge is infact valid are firstly we must be familiar with the phylogenetic tree of the various species, which till today is highly debated and secondly, as a researcher, I would need to have the samples in my possession to study and classify them on my own to determine that they are infact organism which could be classified as a new species. Fun article to read but low reliability.
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