Blog #6

The “National Geographic: Six Degrees Could Change the World” was a shocking eye opener to me!  Global warming is here and we need to ask ourselves what could happen to the earth that we all live on?  Scientists have data showing that the temperatures are rising which can cause serious complications to all.   The scientists believe in 3 decades it will be worse.  The rising temperatures cause changes to the earth that changes the way the whole system operates.  Scientists fear that the temperatures will rise up to 11 degrees in the next 100 years!!  Watching this video – even 1 degree is cause for alarm. 

Scientist, Sam Hansen was the first to set the alarm of the issues we face with global warming.  If the temperatures rise just 1 degree the artic will be free of ice, hurricanes will hit where they didn’t before and droughts will happen where there was never an issue.  We talk of our carbon footsteps and every activity we do in every day, every, hour, every minute affects that carbon footstep!

If the temperatures rise 2 degrees the Greenland glaciers will begin to melt at a faster rate, in turn causes the animals to disappear.  Islands will be lost due to the rising waters all around.  The oceans will experience changes to the coral reefs.  The waters become warmer and the algae needed to keep things alive will become sparse. 2+ degrees cause serious flooding in the terms of oceans rising 3 to 4 feet. 

Rising temperatures of 3 degrees will cause the Artic to be ice free throughout the summer, and the Amazon rainforest to dry out.  Summer “heat” waves are the norm, violent storms as we have never seen, and oceans becoming hotter and hotter.  All these changes will create a different planet in which people have never seen before.  3 degrees can cause the oceans to rise to kill billions of people, wipe out total land, cause glaciers to slowly disappear, and the Arctic Ice sheet to collapse. 

Are we prepared for this?  Scientists feel that we have some solutions in place already, and some in discussion stages.  It won’t be an easy fix but it can be fixed.  However, remember that the warmer the earth becomes the faster the warming occurs.  Earth will become something totally different than what it is today if we don’t make changes now. 

Blog #7

Cognitive Dissonance – What is it?  It is conflicts with individuals that usually occur when the beliefs or expectations are contradicted by new founded information.  When an individual has this type of discomfort that individual will find a reasoning to reduce the discomfort.  They will reject, explain away or totally will avoid the new information.  The individual will convince themselves that no conflict exists, settles any differences, or any other type of defensive measures to preserve steadiness in their idea of things.  Individuals need to keep their confidence, their stability of a positive person so they will begin thinking in a way that is considered rationalizing.  Usually the individuals who will rationalize are convincing themselves that they are and always have been correct.  Frequently these individuals will behave irrationally just to make sure they “believe”.

Upon reading the examples of what cognitive dissonance is, I have to agree that frequently is this “method” used by a majority of individuals.  For instance, if you are big into exercise you have heard and practiced stretching prior to and after any type of workout is what you should do to keep muscle injuries fewer.  Then all of a sudden advice comes out that stretching isn’t important.  An individual who has been doing this for a long time will fight the issue as it couldn’t be true.  This individual has believed that stretching is healthy for so long it cannot be anything but fact. 

Another example is the cartoon posted with the blog.  An individual is wondering why he doesn’t have a girlfriend!  His friend tells him maybe he doesn’t have a girlfriend because he is too good and there isn’t a girl out there that would deserve such a great guy.  He starts to believe what his friend says because that is what he needs to keep his confidence at being a positive and stable individual.  In his own mind he is rationalizing the direction of why he doesn’t have a girlfriend.  Interestingly, if his friend would have told him it was because he was doing something incorrect, he would have rejected that claim because all along he thought he was great.   

Blog #5

In reading the passage from “Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed” by Jared Diamond, it came to mind that no matter how rich we think our small area of the world is, it can come falling down with the misuse of the resources it provides.  Diamond pointed out that suspicions have arose that the ruins that once were healthy and beautiful had ecological issues such as individuals unknowingly destroying the environmental resources that the people depended upon. 

Interestingly Diamond stated, “Managing environmental resources sustainably has always been difficult.”  He states it began when Homo sapiens developed modern inventiveness, efficiency, and hunting skills. The people in one area can easily overexploit environmental resources even though they thought there was an everlasting resource.   After reading I would agree that it has always been an issue – just a bit different as the times evolve. 

Diamond contributes 5 factors which contribute to environmental damages.  The 5 factors are environmental damage, climate change, hostile neighbors, and friendly trade partners, and society’s responses to the problems.  The first factor is the damage that people unintentionally perpetrate.  The second is the changes that climate conditions inflict upon each different society.  The third is enemy neighbors that can wear down a fighting society to ruin.  The fourth is the loss of support from the friendly neighbors.  The fifth is the responses that society has to the issues of the environment.

Diamond’s passage makes total sense in the reasoning that the people create a society in a healthy environmental area.  Increase of the population slowly depletes the resources which can ruin the society the people created.  If people don’t replenish and conserve there will be nothing to continue on with. 

Blog #4

I loved reading the worthy things individuals have done for our environment and the species that live in it.  The passages from “Hope for Animals and Their World” by Jane Goodall, Gail Hudson, and Thane Maynard were happy stories of a few individuals who had a vision for our environment and worked hard to achieve that vision.  I have been saddened to learn what we have and are doing to our environment; however I am pleased to see that there are individuals who do care to put all their efforts to change it for the better.  Interesting, the passage states with time, money, and determination the landscape that has been destroyed by humans can recover.  This is really good to know that the positive changes can occur.

Forest areas have been developed for humans to the possible extinction of some species.   Such a species is the chimpanzees in Gombe Tanzania.  Individuals are now working hard to create restoration of the forest and the continued protection of these areas.  They have created “corridors” for the chimpanzees to travel that will allow them to create habitats in other areas to continue the creation of the species.  These passages speak a lot of survival of the species; however, it is also done thru vegetation.  Without vegetation, everything such as animals, insects, and humans would not be able to survive.  That is a pretty sobering thought.

Rod Sayler stated, “We are treading too harshly on the earth and consuming and degrading too much of the planet.  If we allow extinctions to happen through ignorance or greed, then with the loss of each endangered species and unique population, our world becomes less diverse and strikingly less beautiful and mysterious.  Our oceans, grasslands, and forests will echo with silence, and the human heart will know that something is missing – but it will be too late.” 

Wow – I have to agree with what Sayler has stated.  I think each individual should be required to be involved in protecting and possibly restoring our environment in some way.  If you tear up a tree to add a home, you should be required to replace a tree for the animals, the insects, the environment.  Every small thing done can aid in some way. 

Blog #3

Vandana Shiva’s ‘What is Biodiversity and Why is it so Important?’ is an selection that gave me something to think on.  According to this passage biodiversity is described as the diversity of life.  There are many life forms that are the “very fabric of life.”  Biodiversity shows the many ways in which life is expressed in our world.  Biodiversity is considered to provide the life’s development and can be genes to species to the ecosystems that work in coordination to create and maintain life. 

I’ve never thought of biodiversity because to me this is such a complex system that is far broader than thinking on average day.  The environment has always just been “there”, just “is”.    It does make sense that if we destruct a part of the environment in which we live it will basically be the destruction of the diversity in which we all live as each change we make changes something surrounding it.  Sadly, the extinction of some species, such as some birds, fish, predator animals, doesn’t just affect that species it also is a threat to all the other species that are supported by it in some way by the ecological process.  Large dams, pesticides and chemicals, manufacturing, highways, and the development of our communities have caused much harm to all species survival. 

There are millions of life forms that have a value in our world in which each life form has a right to develop however they want or need to.   Due to the development, Shiva points out that biodiversity has been destructed to such an accelerated pace that plant and animals that have always been popular have totally disappeared with the last few years.  This doesn’t just affect the plants and the animals but also affects the human race.  We must have each aspect, from genes to species to the ecosystem to work together in order to have a healthy environment.  Broken down this seems much simpler to understand in this complex environment we all live in. 

Thoughts & Reflections

Interestingly enough, before this class started I hadn’t paid too much attention to our eco system and the true harm that we are doing with all the developments, the killing, the pesticides, and the advancements individuals want or think they need.  I do quite a bit of reading for my classes, in the researching I’m doing for them and even for my job in a thoughtful and necessary way.  I enjoy reading suspense romance novels as something that doesn’t require too much thought as a way to relax.  A book I started and finished this weekend, The Final Mission by Rachel Lee is just one of these books I started for enjoyment.  I was surprised, mainly because I’ve never really noticed if a book talked about the eco system as this book did.  Or maybe because I'm in this class I'm already becoming more aware. 

The setting for this book was a ranch, the surrounding land and mountains.  This rancher had large amounts of land; however, not all of it was fenced due to what was called the migration corridor.  This was for the seasonal migration of elk and deer for them to have the best grazing and to keep nature flowing.  Again, I was surprised because it had some areas concerning the wolves from the Yellowstone Nation Park.  A quote, “Wolves may have adopted people and not the other way around.”  Some thought as to having large predators so near a ranch setting.  The book had another part in which this rancher didn’t want to keep wolves away because they are part of the ecology.  Some of the plants were almost gone due the grazing of deer and elk and because the wolves were brought in the plants were coming back. 

“Restoring the apex predator has been beneficial overall for ecology.”  I was interested in this statement in this book because just in the little time I’ve been in the class I have come to the same conclusion. 

We need to learn to make compromises in our time, such as the wolf, to allow our eco system to continue to flourish for the generations to come.  By respecting and caring for nature, nature will care for all of us and hopefully when we are gone we will only leave a small footprint. 

Blog #2

In the National Geographic Strange Days on Planet Earth, Investigators have found that global changes are happening faster than any human being has ever experienced.  Over 150 years ago, large predators such as mountain lions, wolves, and bison roamed Yellowstone National Park.  The vegetation was in abundance.  Researchers found that in the 1930’s the vegetation stopped producing and the large predators were disappearing.  The reasoning was the last wolf was dead; as 100,000 were being killed in Montana and Wyoming alone during 1883 and 1917.  In the 1970’s the wolf became an endanger species in the US.  Biologist Doug Smith studied wolves and believes this could count for Yellowstone’s eroding river banks, missing forests, and reduction of animals.  As a test 31 wolves were brought into the National Park.  Over the years the wolves have increased to approximately 150 wolves in which they travel in 14 packs.  He found that the large predators mean a lot to the eco system and it begins with the wolves kills. Off of the wolves kills it can serve 100’s.   Due to the kill of an elk, it is even reshaping the landscape.  Where the elk were eating all the aspens, willows and vegetation, the natural kill of the elk has allowed the vegetation to replenish itself. 

Researchers have found that it is a revolving situation in which not only land is affected but so is the ocean.  Ghana has become a land in which is devoid of life.  Ghana had a reduction of large predators such as the leopards, hyenas, giant warthogs and lions. The oceans off of Ghana have been reduced of their fish.  The Olive Baboons were becoming a vicious and aggressive animal often terrorizing farms and stock and the villagers. Fish that were available were much smaller in size than those years prior.  Researchers found that there is a direct relationship.  If fish is plentiful in supply then it is usually sold cheaply.  If fish is scarce in supply then it is more expensive.  When this happens the people of Ghana would resort to killing the wildlife to survive.  This has affected all of coastal Africa. 

          National Geographic Strange Days on Planet Earth wants to know can we live with the large predators such as the wolf.  However, can we live without them?  That is a question we all need to ask ourselves. 

Blog #1

I was unsure what “sense of place” actually meant and researched it on Answers.com.  The sense of place meaning can describe a place in which has character or has a meaning to you, as an individual.  Reflection on the “sense of place” for me was fairly stress-free because a couple places and feelings came to mind rather quickly.   I think of a “sense of place” as an area that I feel happy and at peace.  I’ve always had a “sense of place” when it comes to the home(s) in which I have lived and do live.  My home inside has a feeling of belonging; surrounded by things with happy memories and for me, the most important sense of place is with my children.  The outdoors surrounding my home is a place that there are colorful flowers growing in pots all around, green grass in which to place our bare feet, and trees to provide homes for birds and shade to sit under while reading a good book or playing cards.  My family loves to be outdoors, roaming around a Preserve near our home, going to a “wilderness” park, swinging on the swings at a nearby park or relaxing on the sandy beach.  I believe to really have an educational experience in the outdoors an individual must feel that “sense of place” in both the outdoors and with learning new things.  The individual needs to understand and absorb what our enjoyment of our surroundings and our daily living has done and is doing to our environment.  This is truly the only way to begin to have a real understanding on what is happening in our world.