The author completely misses the point. It's a given that living things are constrained by their chemical and physical surroundings. The author proclaims this as though it's a aurprise.
That said, it looks liki quite an achievement to relate the sequence of early evolution to basic chemical principles.
What's the Achievement? Breaking it down to chemical principles has already been done and analyzed on the Creationist front. In effect, it debunks evolution at the outset by showing that that which needs to be accomplished cannot happen - it's nothing new. That aside, The argument being made is assinine. In effect they are saying that radical chemical changes that would cause an extinction event do not and rather give rise to change in organisms through evolution. To which I would retort, that if you flood the planet and hold the heads of all dogs under water, they will not suddenly adapt and learn to breath water. That so-called scientists wish us to make a leap of faith that other life forms react differently given similar circumstance is ludicrous. And one should note that if evolution happened, why then do baby's get born addicted to the same drugs their mothers were addicted to when used all through pregnancy instead of seeing an adaptation. When mutation occurs it is destructive, not constructive. And it does not get passed on - which illustrates predictability(stunting formative cycles causes damage to the entity arising in malformation which can be deadly) and resistance to change (the baby becomes addicted rather than developing immunity). Life systems are predictable; but, in ways antithetical to evolution - the opposite of what evolutionists predict in evolution is observable in real life. Evolutionists can't argue the amount of time involved in a change because they don't know what amount of time that would take. They can only hypothesize. So the usual retort would be that it takes a long time so as to try and dodge any effort of demonstrating such things happening now. Not knowing they simply state this as a logical conclusion based on the lack of observables. This is begging the question - not to mention a poor excuse for science.
But let us not also forget how things work in the animal kingdom. Diversity within a species is frowned upon, not nurtured. At birth, defects are treated as weaklings and often die rather than living. An obvious and readily observeable example of this is the Panda. Mothers will only nurture one cub at a time and only the strongest of the litter. In other prides and packs, weeklings often die due to the fend for yourself nature of feeding and movement. If a deformity arises, it will either starve, be killed or eaten within the pack or will become prey from outside the pack. In essence, the ecosystem checks itself by dealing with deformity in drastic fashion.
Now ultimately, we will say, given, a deformity is allowed to live. This doesn't amount to evolutionary change as the deformity does not get passed necessarily to the next generation. Nor does having a male and female with the same deformity mean it will get passed on. Consider the human species. A male and female both inflicted of downs-syndrome may give birth to a perfectly normal and healthy child or may give birth to another downs-syndrome child. What's this telling us? Generation after generation, the same family lines continue producing down's syndrome children due to a predilection toward deformity. In absence of time based argumentation, logic would suggest that either the weakness would cause the family line to eventually cease, or it should adapt. In either case, the deformity should disappear. In 2000 years of recorded history, this is not seen.
Now one would argue that 2000 years isn't long enough a sample to really get a handle on things. To which I would respond that Enviro science is attempting to change the way we live based on 100 years worth of known data. So it doesn't really stand up to scrutiny. If evolution were true, then we should all adapt to the change in environment. Seems even they don't believe their theories enough to trust that they would hold true under circumstances they hypothesize about while hypothesizing over the changes that could hypothetically happen if hypothetical longshots were to roll in and all natural processes were suspended for a hypothetical amount of time for each deviation such that a freak change might be allowed to survive.
Evolution amounts to stacking these hypotheses 100s to 1000s deep and then responding to presumed consequences as fact when addressing everything under the sun. They teach it as theory, then walk to biological and archeological sciences and apply the theory as fact in making determinations and conclusions. If evolution were true, one would have to wonder when it will come about that when mitochondria runs into a dry spot on a slide under a microscope, it will not explode but rather tan itself a bit with some spf14 and roll on back into the surf. But since samples of it are frozen in ice around the body of Mammoths and other extinct beasts, one wonders why they haven't changed in all this time already. Either evolution isn't happening, or mitochondria are too stupid to mutate positively.
Last thing I want to note is that it's funny to me that monkeys are quadropeds that happen to have functional hands. This is so even for apes. They do not walk upright as a preferred mode of locomotion. Nor is there an example of an ape that prefers upright stance. Like bears, they can stand upright for some things when it's called for. It is an exception, not the dominant happenstance. And I'd note too that in a special that investigated how extinct forms of apes might have walked upright, it was found through computer modelling that the stresses on the frame did not allow it, they therefore conjectured a way to make it look natural vs. debating wether it was likely. That such a thing should be aired on public airwaves was I'm sure a most profound tipping of the hand toward inherant bias. Rather than deal with the facts, they preferred to hold to their theorizing. When people start thinking for themselves and being as critical on these things as they are on their finances, we might get some truth and accountability. Till then, we will hear government funded theorizing. Perhaps a good move would be to defund this stuff at the government level and hinge any future funding upon results. If you continue to hand in new theories, we defund you. If you prove your case in an observable fashion, you get funded. Anyone want to cosponsor it? LOL