Word: ecologists
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...many scientists see Biosphere 2 as a kook's dream and a rich man's whim: John Allen, who used to call himself Johnny Dolphin, the engineer, ecologist and poet-playwright who hatched the scheme and heads the project, and Texas billionaire Edward Bass, who is financing the venture, have been described as onetime members of a cultlike commune. Biosphere participants have admitted that the degrees some of them received from the Institute of Ecotechnics in London are something of a sham; the institute was set up by Bass to confer legitimacy on the project...
Dunbar drops out of his executive position in a large, hierarchical organization engaged in morally questionable work in order to get closer to nature -- his own and Mother's. Once settled in the wilderness, he proves to be a sensitive and caring ecologist, tenderly nursing the land and its creatures. When, eventually, he encounters members of a culture that is alien to him, he is open to their ways, making no effort to impose his on them. Quite the opposite; he becomes an earnest convert to their life-style. When he finds a wife, he is exemplary in his gentle...
...meantime, researchers have been carefully studying the effects of ozone depletion on Antarctic life. Marine ecologist Sayed El-Sayed of Texas A& M University discovered two years ago at Palmer Station, a U.S. base on the Antarctic Peninsula, that high levels of ultraviolet damage the chlorophyll pigment vital for photosynthesis in phytoplankton, slowing the marine plants' growth rate by as much as 30%. That, in turn, could threaten krill, shrimplike creatures that feed on phytoplankton and are a key link in Antarctica's food chain. Says El-Sayed: "Fish, whales, penguins and winged birds all depend very heavily on krill...