Erle Ellis at MTSU

The author of The Anthropocene: A Very Short Introduction will be speaking on "Evolving Toward a Better Anthropocene" in the Student Union at 1 on Thursday (Feb 28). If any of you attends, please post a brief account here.

Here he is last year:

Staying with the Trouble: Making Kin in the Chthulucene by Donna Haraway

"Selfish-cene"by Tiara Ashley Brown

This book is yet another view into our epoch; the Anthropocene. It's clear that this term is a growing in popularity when it comes to the detrimental environmental issues today. Human impacts are increasing which is causing this to be such a serious issue.

If we analyze earth's situation at this point, we are currently destroying it, day by day; however, even though Haraway mentions this, she still has her opinions on the situation. From my understanding, she basically agrees with the fact that humans are causing climate change and other environmental factors that are dangerous, but our demise is basically meant to happen and there is no way that we can escape it. We can if we change most things we do. But, the main problem is our parasitic relationship with the environment.

She uses a spider to basically give a clear understanding of what she is trying to say. The term Chthulucene is a play on the species Pimoa chtulhu. She uses this as a figure of speech in order to bring forth the fact that humans are not separate from other organisms, we are all literally interwoven. i can totally agree with this. It;s not like humans have such a bigger niche in the environment. Each organism. living or non-living serve or served a purpose. There is no segregation when it comes to this.

I have stressed before the negative impacts that capitalist has pushed on our environment. It's clear that the "Chthulucene" is not clear to them. I think a slight change can be made if it was. We need to learn to establish a mutulistic symbiotic relationship with earth instead of being selfish.

With Haraway being proficient in feminine studies, this brings light to most feminists and those interested in hearing different opinions on our current epoch. This also brings along a hint of criticism because of her reasoning but she defends herself. Humans would always stay with trouble because we continuously destroy the environment and be intertwined with everything bad that happens. We need to know our role and stick with it; this role is not to damage the planet.

Environmental Ethics

February 25, 2019

Anthropocene: A Very Short Introduction by Erle Ellis

Surviving Humans

The world as we know it, is changing rapidly right before our eyes. Erle Ellis described it as a "great force of nature". Scientists believe that Earth has entered a new chapter in its history. The great force of nature is us humans and the new chapter is called the Anthropocene Epoch.

The impact that humans have had on Earth is detrimental. We humans have altered Earth’s climate, polluted Earth's atmosphere, oceans, freshwater, and soils, driven thousands of species extinct, and spread weeds, pests, and diseases around the world. I wonder what it will be like to visit the ocean in 2045. Will their be more plastic then fish in the sea? This question is valid because that is what our world is coming to.

Can humans make a change  in their life to reverse this tragedy for a better future? Will Anthropocene become the sad story of how us humans destroyed the Earth, or a story to awaken the people of the Earth to make a change to better the Earth?

Lets not forget the times when Earth shaped the way of life for humans, not the other way around. What happened to the times when humans depended on the Earth for shelter, warmth, nutrition, water, etc. We have lost site of how big of an impact the Earth has on our way of life. If we realized how vital it was to keep our planet in good graces, we wouldn't continue to destroy it.

The planet is getting warmer in catastrophic ways

Don't Panic!
Fear may be the only thing that saves us.

The age of climate panic is here. Last summer, a heat wave baked the entire Northern Hemisphere, killing dozens from Quebec to Japan. Some of the most destructive wildfires in California history turned more than a million acres to ash, along the way melting the tires and the sneakers of those trying to escape the flames. Pacific hurricanes forced three million people in China to flee and wiped away almost all of Hawaii’s East Island.

We are living today in a world that has warmed by just one degree Celsius (1.8 degrees Fahrenheit) since the late 1800s, when records began on a global scale. We are adding planet-warming carbon dioxide to the atmosphere at a rate faster than at any point in human history since the beginning of industrialization.

In October, the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change released what has become known as its “Doomsday” report — “a deafening, piercing smoke alarm going off in the kitchen,” as one United Nations official described it — detailing climate effects at 1.5 and two degrees Celsius of warming (2.7 and 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit). At the opening of a major United Nations conference two months later, David Attenborough, the mellifluous voice of the BBC’s “Planet Earth” and now an environmental conscience for the English-speaking world, put it even more bleakly: “If we don’t take action,” he said, “the collapse of our civilizations and the extinction of much of the natural world is on the horizon.”

Scientists have felt this way for a while. But they have not often talked like it. For decades, there were few things with a worse reputation than “alarmism” among those studying climate change...
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More environment news...

The Vegetarian Myth: Food, Justice, and Sustainability by Lierre Keith

Do you really care?by Tiara Ashley Brown

I have always been against vegetarianism because it's been sort of a contradiction for me. I understand that there are many other source where they can get most nutrients from other than animals, but have they ever considered the facts that plants are also living organisms?

If this lifestyle is not followed properly, they can  suffer deficiencies in Vitamin D, protien, B12, calcium and all sorts of other nutrients needed for your body to function properly. I can agree that some meats are unclean to eat, but they provide some stuff that prevents our body from shutting down. Being a vegetarian can in fact decrease a number of diseases, but I highly doubt that every vegetarian does this diet the right way.

After reading, another important view came to my attention that I want to discuss, its sustainability. Keith ended her vegan diet after being 20 years into this lifestyle. She still has love and care animals that she had before ending her journey, but she came to realize it causes and effects it has on sustainability. We would have to destroy our environment in order to make space for the large scale farming that would be required to plant. Most vegetarians wouldn't think this deep into it. They would prefer to encourage deforestation in order to not kill animals.

If we are destroying most of earth's natural resources for vegetarians, we would have to think about habitats for the animals that lives in these places. Most vegetarians are all for PETA. They care for the safety of animals all agree they shouldn't be eaten, so it isnt clear to me why they should tear down their homes, this isnt protection. This goes to prove my point that humans really only do most thing in order to make themselves happy.

In my opinion, this book was not made to detour anybody from being a vegetarian, I felt as if it was made to give a more in depth view of this lifestyle and Keith is very credible with because she was a vegetarian for such a long time. I don't feel as if they should cut meat out completely, but vegetarians should limit the amount they eat and they can use limitations as their platform. They're possible destroying the environmental promoting their way of life.

I would recommend this book to anyone who has thoughts of becoming a vegetarian so they could look more into it than only the killing of animals but they should also that about the adverse effect on the planet.

“The Uninhabitable Earth”

“The Uninhabitable Earth” by David Wallace-Wells is the most terrifying book I have ever read. Its subject is climate change, and its method is scientific, but its mode is Old Testament. The book is a meticulously documented, white-knuckled tour through the cascading catastrophes that will soon engulf our warming planet: death by water, death by heat, death by hunger, death by thirst, death by disease, death by asphyxiation, death by political and civilizational collapse.

And should they escape death, your children and grandchildren might subsist instead through proto-apocalyptic ruin. There is a strong chance that warming will reduce global economic output by more than 20 percent and a chance that output could fall by half — a toll you might better describe as at least one, and possibly two or three, Great Depressions. War will not merely break out; a continuing, all-out resource war might be the steady-state of the next chapter of human civilization.

In 2017, when Mr. Wallace-Wells, a writer at New York Magazine, published similarly dire projections in a blockbuster article, he was criticized even by some climate scientists for reveling in the bleakest case. But his piece was one of the first articles I’d read that honestly drew out the most horrific possibilities of climate change, and in the two years since — years of hurricane and monsoon, fire and flood, mud slides, heat waves, the polar vortex — Mr. Wallace-Wells’s imagine-the-worst approach has become prescient... (continues)

How to Cut U.S. Emissions Faster?

Do What These Countries Are Doing.

The United States is reducing its greenhouse gas emissions far too slowly to help avert the worst effects of global warming. But what would happen if the country adopted seven of the most ambitious climate policies already in place around the world? (continues)

The Sixth Extinction

Friday January 30, 2019

The Sixth Extinction by Elizabeth Kolbert 

Do You Agree or Disagree?

As I was reading "The Sixth Extinction" by Elizabeth Kolbert, I found it really hard for me to stop reading the book. I was so intrigued on her research that I finished the book in two days.

Throughout her book, Kolbert researched and studied the effects that humans have on extinction. She believes that humans are on the brink of causing "the sixth extinction". Different species are going extinct due to the decline in availability of land and a rise in temperatures.

Kolbert took a trip to Panama in pursuits of discovering why the golden frog , once impossible to avoid, was dwindling down to a few dozen. This discovery inspired her to learn more about extinction.

Kolbert argues that we are living in the Anthropocene period of planetary history—an epoch defined by human beings’ attempts to manipulate their environments, resulting in the extinction or near-extinction of many different species. Kolbert feels as if the Sixth Extinction will be unique because it will be the result of human behavior. By burning fossil fuels and cutting down forests, human beings have drastically increased the temperature and acidity of ocean water meaning that sea creatures will have to adapt to the changing environment, or die out.

Kolbert goes on another adventure to the Great Barrier Reef, where she learns from other scientists the impact that increased temperature and acidity has had on the coral reefs. She also visits the tropical rain forests of South America, where she sees the phenomenal diversity of life there.

It's obvious that Kolbert thinks that humans are playing the biggest role in the Sixth Extinction. What do you think? Do you agree or disagree with her? Well here's my take, I think that humans need to keep in mind that they have the power to change the environment, preserve, and protect. They need to realize that no matter what they do in the future, their actions have a big impact on the Sixth Extinction that will shape the world. 

But I also have to be opposed to this because Humans destroy habitats and build certain things in order to survive. The world is becoming overpopulated and humans are doing what is necessary to survive. So can you really blame them?

 Who's side are you on?

This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. The Climate

Change is ESSENTIAL!by: Tiara Ashley Brown

This is another book that caught my interest because of such valid arguments mentioned. Naomi Klein gave her input on ways to solve climate change. She gave numbers and hard on facts on how it would benefit the human race on the end. Throughout reading the book, I could do nothing but agree with the majority of her statements. Some may have been a bit debatable; however, most of her words were factual.

At first, I didn't understand capitalism prior to this book. With my understanding now, this will always being a growing problem as I mentioned before. Most of them wouldn't really pay attention to adverse effects because they see a way on how they can benefit from using fossil fuels. If we take a look at the oil project in Alberta, Canada, it is described as the largest in the world. Many people would leave their families to go there to work just to stack money and carry it back home. One employee made 1 million dollars in the range of 4-5 years of working. If this is the salary of a regular employee, What does the brains of this project is making annually?

Capitalism will always win before the climate does because of the money and people with high power involved. After watching the film based on the book, I learned that there are scientist that believe the Earth is a machine and we are only in charge of it. They believe that we can do whatever we want to Earth because humans are in control. Because people followed this theory for years, we have had so many catastrophic events. This is earth response to us thinking that we're in "control" of what happens. We have done so much damage, I believe it's best we let nature take its place and we start all over again and learn from our mistakes.

Scientist now believe that we can spray chemicals in the air to lower global temperatures because we can't let global temperatures rise about 2°C. This is frivolous. With some research behind this, it may be able to work. In contrast, I would prefer this not to happen because I don't think we should try fix global temperatures by polluting the air. It may not affect us now but it will later on.

We need to change the way we do things on earth, especially industry wise. We need to learn how to live for us and the environment. We need to expand our knowledge more on solar technology, wind power, hydroelectricity etc. Instead of destroying the environment while using it, let's have a mutualistic relationship with the Earth. The earth is not a machine we can control. It is a beautiful place we live and we have to try our best to keep it way instead of taking it for granted.

 
I would highly recommend this book to every but specifically to the major industrial companies so they can understand what going on and carefully consider ways to change their actions.

The Great Backyard Bird Count

It’s for the Birds (and Us, Too)

The Great Backyard Bird Count is citizen science on a global scale, and it’s more crucial than ever in the age of climate change.

NASHVILLE — It was 18 degrees in Nashville on Jan. 30, the day I made up my mind to participate this year in the Great Backyard Bird Count, which runs Feb. 15-18. By the time I got around to signing up, it was 70 degrees outside and raining torrentially, breaking a rainfall record that had stood since 1884. Tornado sirens were wailing for hours, setting back all my efforts to rehabilitate our traumatized little rescue dog by what I’m guessing will be weeks.

But right now I’m more concerned about the birds. North American birds evolved to withstand normal North American weather, and normal North American weather includes cold snaps, blizzards, floods and tornadoes. But tornadoes in February are not normal, even in the American South, and a truly severe cold snap can be devastating.

It’s too early to say what effect this year’s polar vortex and extreme flooding have had on bird populations, but in January 1977 an ongoing survey of the bird population in southern Illinois inadvertently became a case study in avian survival rates during brutal weather. Researchers conducting a bird census in the area were forced by heavy snowfall and extreme cold to stop collecting data. What they found when they were able to resume the count nearly a month later was astonishing: Whole species of birds had simply disappeared from the survey area. Carolina wrens, gone. Eastern bluebirds, gone. Hermit thrushes, gone. Two different species of kinglets, gone. Many other species were decimated, with populations reduced by up to 80 percent.

The Great Backyard Bird Count, a citizen-science project of the Cornell Lab of Ornithology and the National Audubon Society, relies on thousands of volunteers around the world to report the number of birds they see during the annual four-day event. It’s easy to participate, requiring very little time and no special expertise, though I’ve never paid much attention to the program before now. I love birds, but I’m not a real birder. I don’t keep a life list of the species I’ve encountered, and I can never tell the difference between a Cooper’s hawk and a sharp-shinned hawk without looking them up.

But during the recent polar vortex, I thought about the Great Backyard Bird Count because I remembered reading about that study from the winter of 1977. It was only an accident of timing that made it possible to identify the terrible songbird losses: The census was already underway when bad weather hit, providing an opportunity for researchers to compare bird counts immediately before and immediately after the blizzard. Otherwise, no one would have known how many birds died in the extreme cold.

“It’s really hard to see the big effects of anything on bird populations because they’re hard to keep track of,” Kevin McGowan, an ornithologist at the Cornell lab told me. “We’ve been looking for ways for a long time to try to monitor birds and get some idea of what’s happening because, let’s face it, most of the birds in the woods could disappear and you might not notice. They could literally all fall dead, and it would take you a while to figure out what’s going on.” With the Great Backyard Bird Count, volunteers become a vast data-gathering resource for ornithologists, reporting on which birds are where, and how many birds there are.

Growing evidence suggests that extreme weather events like the polar vortex will occur more often as a warming climate affects the jet stream. “Weather fluctuations have always occurred to some extent,” Dr. McGowan said, “but if things get to a point where this becomes the new normal, then it’s hard to know what to expect in the influence on animal populations.”

To give us that information, we can’t depend on accidents of timing like the bird census in 1977 that just happened to coincide with a major weather event. Getting thousands and thousands of backyard bird-watchers to count the birds they see during the same time period each year, over and over again across the years, can show patterns that no individual study is likely to detect. “The internet makes participation so easy — people just log in and put in their numbers,” said Dr. McGowan. “We can capture these data so much faster now and analyze them so much better.”

And it’s not just the data on birds. For nearly 30 years, volunteers have been counting the Western monarch butterfly population, which overwinters in California. Thanks to their efforts, we know that this year’s total — 28,429 butterflies, dramatically lower than the 1980s average of 4.5 million — has dipped below the critical number believed to be needed for the population to survive.

Many other crowdsourced citizen-science studies are underway. One tracks populations of indoor insects. One listens for frog calls. One monitors wildflowers in the Appalachians. One tracks light pollution in the night sky. There’s even one tracking how good people are at guessing the ancestors of mixed-breed dogs. All of them contribute crucial data that help scientists understand both how the world works and how it’s changing, especially now that it’s changing so much. It’s something ordinary people can do, even if they think they’re powerless to do anything.

I’ve never participated in the Great Backyard Bird Count before, so my count this year will tell me only what is happening in my backyard right now. But my numbers will be added to the numbers collected by 160,000 other volunteers, and over time perhaps they will help explain how climate change is affecting these singing, flying, enchanting creatures whose home we happen to share. nyt

By Margaret Renkl
Feb. 11, 2019

Margaret Renkl is a contributing opinion writer who covers flora, fauna, politics and culture in the American South. She is the author of the forthcoming book "Late Migrations: A Natural History of Love and Loss."

Why so cold?

For a Climate Reporter, a Dreaded Question: ‘Then Why Is It So Cold?’

When temperatures dip, we hear it over and over. Here’s the answer — and why it matters

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Green New Deal

A ‘Green New Deal’ Is Far From Reality, but Climate Action Is Picking Up in the States

The midterm elections brought in a new wave of governors with aggressive plans to cut emissions and expand low-carbon energy. Now, those plans are being implemented...

Liberal Democrats Formally Call for a ‘Green New Deal,’ Giving Substance to a Rallying Cry

House Democrats introduced a resolution calling for a sweeping environmental and economic mobilization that would make the United States carbon neutral by 2030...

Naomi Klein on the State of the Union

 Bill McKibben and 2 others liked

Naomi Klein‏Verified account @NaomiAKlein 4h4 hours ago

People claim Trump said not one word about climate change but that's false. He celebrated the US being the world's "No. 1" oil and gas producer. And the house cheered - they cheered for the knowing destabilization of the planet. Don't call them deniers, they are arsonists.

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The last five years were the five warmest on record.
I’ve experienced a week of wide-ranging weather. In New Jersey on Thursday, I woke up to 0 degrees Fahrenheit, roughly minus 23 Celsius, for my morning run. By Sunday, it was 50 Fahrenheit and I could grill outside in shorts. Now, I’m in Utah for a reporting trip and it’s snowing again.

Occasional bitter cold snaps don’t change the fact that the planet is warming over all. NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration have announced that 2018 was the fourth-warmest year in the history of accurate measurement, which goes back more than a century. The last five years have been the warmest five years, all part of a trend that is unmistakable, said Gavin A. Schmidt of NASA. “We’re no longer talking about a situation where global warming is something in the future,” he told me. “It’s here. It’s now.”

The changes are all around us, of course. You can see how your own city fared in 2018 with this feature; about 83 percent of the 3,800 cities measured experienced years that were warmer than normal. Then check out this piece from our colleague Nadja Popovich that shows what’s happening to northern lakes that used to reliably freeze in winter.

In other ice news, NASA found a big hole in the Thwaites Glacier in Antarctica about two-thirds as big as Manhattan and 1,000 feet tall. It could lead to more rapid melting of the glacier, which is about the size of Florida. Also, glaciers in the Himalayas are melting, with serious future consequences for those who depend on the current levels of melt for their water. (If you missed it, please feast your eyes on Henry Fountain’s close look at those issues from the dwindling glaciers of Kazakhstan.)

In Australia, such torrential rainfall and flooding hit Queensland that residents reported snakes and crocodiles in the streets. In Europe, students have been demonstrating over climate issues. And in other news, Kendra Pierre-Louis wrote about what’s killing off the sea stars. (Spoiler: Climate change is involved.) It’s all part of another busy week at Team Climate... (continues)

Anthropocene: A Very Short Introduction by Erle Ellis

A New Age by: Tiara Ashley Brown

It's books like this that makes me want search deeper into environmental issues. I have always argued that the World would not change environmentally if we do not educate our people. I say this because the new innovations bought to us by humanity has really left a big impact. If we were to educate more people on these growing problems, we may be able to see a slight change.

For instance, if we were to take a look of Earth's statistics before the industrial revolution, massive pollution, radioactive testings etc, we would see such a drastic change. However, one would expect this. Economies were in early development so most people didn't know the impact it would have in the future. We didn't have the technology or knowledge to know how it was destroy earth's atmosphere day by day.

As for the Anthropocene, I feel as if it's going to be never-ending because there are always new developments leading to more catastrophes. This epoch has a already left a major dent on Earth. For example, the Chernobyl Disaster. This left an entire town isolated because of a very dangerous nuclear accident. This caused updraft, over 100 deaths, many adults and children developed cancer because of the radiation and so much more. Also, because of the updrafts, the radioactive material were within the contents of clouds and this precipitated over countries in Europe. This fascinated me because this catastrophe took place in the 19th Century. There have been many more events that had happened before this. This simply means that we have been in Anthropocene from centuries ago.

Ellis gives his thoughts on this new epoch and how we can be affected in the near future. Anthropocene is an on-going epoch that is gaining so much more attention today. We see this by the many activist, environmental scientists and geologists spreading the world of environmental issues, and thinking on new innovative ways for humans to not affect Earth in a negative way.  Anthropocene, in my opinion, can be ended if we were to educate more people on adverse effects, and I will continue to stress this because its my belief.

This book gave me so much more knowledge on earth's history and it gave be in sight of earthly conditions before time. I hadn't known about Anthropocene until reading this book. It's definitely something I won't forget and would want to learn more about.