A world without the smell of flowers

There is much beauty in the world. Yet, this beauty may not endure. The world of my youth, is not the world of today - and so it shall be for my children, too. The natural world is slowly fading away.

Researchers at the University of Virginia have uncovered a startling and rather disturbing phenomenon: flowers are losing their smell.

All of us have, at one time or another, enjoyed the enchanting aroma of flowers on a summer's day. We may have walked in fields amidst their multi-coloured splendour - yet, a walk in such a field today is not what it once was. These researchers have calculated that the scent of flowers would have wafted some 1,000 to 1,200 metres in the 1800s. Today, in the modern world, flower scent has a range of just 200 to 300 metres in the vicinity of cities.

What is happening? Well the scent molecules are interacting with air pollutants such as ozone and being neutralized: they literally no longer smell anymore.

Why should we be concerned? Well, apart from dulling one of the sensory experiences of the beauty of nature - this does something more: it makes it difficult for bees to find their food. When flowers no longer smell as they used to, bees must search longer and further to find them, relying more on sight. This is not easy - and so they starve. Bee populations in places as far apart as California and the Netherlands are in decline.

Why does this matter? Well, bees are pollinators of flowers. If they can't find the flowers, they won't find food - but also the flowers won't be pollinated - result: no more flowers.

Here we can see how pollution has effects far beyond what we might expect. It leads directly to the decline of bees and flowers alike. We are suffocating the natural world.

I usually write about giftedness - but I feel, at times, a need to write about the environment. It is not really off-topic for one clear reason: anyone who has young children needs to think about the future world they will live in. What kind of world will they have to enjoy or endure? The signs are not looking good.

Do what you can, when you can, to preserve the environment: make it one of your regular considerations. If enough people think about it, perhaps we can do something collectively, to improve it.

As for the flowers: it seems sad that children now live in a world in which not even the flowers smell as they used to. They will not have the sensory memories that prior generations enjoyed of simply witnessing the natural world in its multi-sensory splendour: it is fading and dying all around us.

I only hope that there is time to intervene, before it is too late. I only hope that there is time for nature to recover from what we are doing to it.

(If you would like to learn more of Ainan Celeste Cawley, a scientific child prodigy, aged eight years and one month, or his gifted brothers, Fintan, four years and seven months, and Tiarnan, two years exactly, please go to: http://scientific-child-prodigy.blogspot.com/2006/10/scientific-child-prodigy-guide.html I also write of gifted education, IQ, intelligence, the Irish, the Malays, Singapore, College, University, Chemistry, Science, genetics, left-handedness, precocity, child prodigy, child genius, baby genius, adult genius, savant, gifted adults and gifted children in general. Thanks.)

The mystery of the disappearing lettuce.

This post won't mean much unless you have read the post on Children and Pet Animals first.

On the morning after my sons had made their own snail colony, Ainan came to me:

"It's gone."

"What?"

"The leaf we left out for the snails. It is gone."

Sure enough the rather large leaf we had left in the stairwell with the snails had disappeared - not just a little gone - but as if it had never been there.

The detective on the Case of the Missing Lettuce, that is, me, is looking for a small, slippery customer, strong enough to carry his own house on his back, escaping from the scene at about 0.05 mph. Shouldn't be too difficult to catch.

Seriously, though - letting the children play with garden animals like this does, I feel, teach them a lot about life. It also has a very subtle, important, and vital implicit lesson: a respect for the environment, for nature and for life. A child brought up with that value is a lot more likely to do the right things for this world, than one who misses out on that lesson.

As for us, we have three children who like animals - and play with them with respect. I feel pleased about that.

(If you would like to read more of the Cawley children, including Ainan Celeste Cawley, a scientific child prodigy, aged seven years and eight months, Fintan, four years and one month, and Tiarnan, eighteen months, please go to: http://scientific-child-prodigy.blogspot.com/2006/10/scientific-child-prodigy-guide.html I also write of gifted education, IQ, intelligence, genetics, left-handedness, College, University, Chemistry, Science, child prodigy, child genius, baby genius, adult genius, savant, the creatively gifted, gifted adults and gifted children. Thanks.)

The Environmentalist: a solution to Earth's problems

Ainan, as many of you know, is just seven years and three months, yet he has clearly observed the destruction of the Earth's environment, with growing puzzlement at Man.

Ainan is not impressed with an adult world that so casually destroys the only Earth we have. So, on the 23rd of February, 2007, Ainan quietly drew up a solution to the situation which, rather sadly, told me his view of the future of Earth.

He drew up a recipe for a new Earth.

In six pages, he noted what materials you would need and what you would need to do with them, to recreate the Earth and its' atmosphere. He drew the formation of the Earth in the manner he suggested and the multilayered atmosphere he wanted to make on top. He labelled the properties of each layer. It was quite a touching document to read.

Why is it that a seven year old can see that the Earth is in trouble - but all the world's leaders persist in being blind to it? Why does a seven year old understand that Man does not have the resolve to do anything en masse to protect the only Earth we have - so he proposes that another may have to be made, one day?

I would rather we were led by a child like Ainan, than a man like certain world leaders that could be mentioned. Although a child might be young in years, that does not mean they will also be short in vision - which so many leaders are.

I will keep his "Recipe for a New Earth"...and show him it when he is an adult. I only hope that by the time he becomes an adult, he can laugh loudly that he had ever thought such a thing was necessary. God forbid that he should receive it in sadness in a time when his prediction had already become true.

Let us leave a living, vibrant world for our children and grandchildren. Not a dead one that needs a child's replacement.

(If you would like to read more of Ainan Celeste Cawley, a scientific child prodigy, aged seven years and three months, please go to: http://scientific-child-prodigy.blogspot.com/2006/10/scientific-child-prodigy-guide.html I also write of gifted education, IQ, intelligence, child prodigy, child genius, adult genius, baby genius, savant, the creatively gifted, gifted adults and gifted children in general. Thanks.)