Quiz Sep17

Klein 1-2 (& Intro)

LISTEN: No Is Not Enough ch1 excerpt, read by the author...

Post your comments, questions, links, etc. [As of Monday 9 am, no one had yet posted any Discussion Questions. We'll take time in class to do that. It's important. AND, it's important to think about what makes a good conversation...

As we noted in class, Klein offers no pretense of impartiality or scholarly detachment: she is convinced that the election of a climate denier to the most powerful elective office in the world poses a grave threat to our prospects of arresting or reversing the worst consequences of anthropogenic climate change. In this book she tells us why, and begins to suggest what we (collectively, actively) can do about it. [NOTE: a widget I applied to my computer at the instigation of Cousin John Oliver back in 2016 changes the current White House occupant's brand-name back to his family's ancestral name. I've forgotten how to remove it.]

*1. What does Klein think is the goal of Trump and his top advisers?

2. What "frenzy" does Klein call a pillar of Trump's project?

3. What does Klein think "mov[ing] to a yes" may bring about?

4. What were Klein and her colleagues trying to build through the Leap Manifesto project?

5. What was the electoral college originally designed to protect?

6. What ground were we on before the election?

7. What simple fact does the Trump cabinet represent?

8. Trump's first secretary of state's company did what for decades?

9. What was happening before Trump's election upset that's easy to forget?

10. What was the model of the new kind of corporation pioneered by Nike and Apple?

11. What did the Trump brand have in common with Celebration, FLA?

12. How does Trump's presidency violate conflict-of-interest rules?

13. Trump's political career would have been impossible without the degradation of what?

Discussion Questions:

• Can an effective response to the climate crisis be mounted by a strictly private-sector, market-driven approacn?
• Do you agree that we need to phase out our dependence on fossil fuels, and make a steady transition to clean alternative sources like solar & wind-generated power, e-vehicles, more public transport, etc.? How quickly? How can we do it?
• Does thinking about the judgment of history, and what our descendants (if any) will say about us and the choices we made, motivate you to want to address the climate crisis?
• Do you agree that climate and social justice issues are inter-related, and should be confronted via a "cross-movement" of intersecting interests and concerns?
• Is there any continued, defensible rationale for the electoral college system? Is there any way to achieve fairer, more proportional representation of all voters other than to abolish it?
• Have you participated in any public actions or demonstrations to express your concern about the environment? Will you? Why or why not?
• What are the implications of Ivanka Trump's clothing line shutting down?  It did by the way.
• What do you think it meant to say "we wait while you do nothing?"
• How can we encourage more green building?
• Is the conflict of interest in Trump's administration really so different than that of his predecessors?
• Is it relevant that the president is or is not personally wealthy?
• If our ancestors could see our world, do you think they'd have any regrets or wish to have made other choices? 
• How do you think we got to this "surreal political moment"?
• Add your DQs please
• 
  

	Naomi Klein (@NaomiAKlein)
9/12/18, 7:49 PM Same. twitter.com/KateAronoff/st…

	Naomi Klein (@NaomiAKlein)
9/13/18, 1:32 PM So often hurricanes act as a brutal unveiling: all the tucked away sacrifice zones are suddenly exposed to the light. Industrial scale animal agriculture is a disaster every single day for the people who live nearby. When that industry collides with a climate disaster, look out. twitter.com/democracynow/s…

Watch this powerful short film where two indigenous women from opposite sides of the world share their poetic call for all people to #RiseForClimate Watch the full film and learn more about the journey: http://riseoneislandtoanother.com 

0:19

1,221 views

7:46 PM - 13 Sep 2018

Doomsday clock

now

This is why we need a long clock.

The short one we’ve already got keeps ticking closer to midnight, closer to doomsday. The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists calmly declares: it is 6 minutes to midnight.

The Doomsday Clock conveys how close humanity is to catastrophic destruction–the figurative midnight–and monitors the means humankind could use to obliterate itself. First and foremost, these include nuclear weapons, but they also encompass climate-changing technologies and new developments in the life sciences that could inflict irrevocable harm…

Such potential dangers are forcing scientists, institutions, and industry to develop self-governingmechanisms to prevent misuse. But developing a system to ensure the safe use of bioengineering, without impeding beneficial research and development, could pose the greatest international science and security challenge during the next 50 years.

The next 6 minutes.

“This is our life happening,” Michael Chabon has written, “and it’s happening right now.”

==

This is an old post. We're now actually two minutes to midnight...

Now, at last... Clockers... Cosmic connection (Sep 2010)

Where to?

Quiz Sep12

Ellis 7-8. LISTEN: ch7, "Politikos"... ch8, "Prometheus"

Post your alternate quiz questions, discussion questions, comments, links...

1. Some worry that recognizing the Anthropocene might serve as the political equivalent of what statement and dismissal?

2. Failing to recognize the Anthropocene, according to Erik Swyngedouw and others, is to deny what?

3. What Titanic analogy is offered by James Scourse?

4. How has human agency with regard to the environment changed, according to Chakrabarty?

5. The human way of living on earth is shaped far more by what?

6. What are the comparative emissions rates of average Chinese and Americans, and of the wealthy/urban and rural/poor ?

7. According to Jason Moore and others, what caused Earth's transformation by producing massive social inequalities?

8. What is the Chthulucene?

9. What's the benefit of recognizing the Anthropocene, according to the editors of Nature?

10. What is the noosphere?

11. Why might Icarus be a better metaphor for the Anthropocene than Prometheus?

12. What are some things that "raise the prospect of a better planetary future"?

13. What does the Anthropocene call on us to do, and how is that symbolized by the Long Now clock project?

Discussion Questions

• Like native/indigenous traditions, the eco-pragmatist approach urges our adoption of long-term thinking about our relation to Earth and other species. Do you think the Long Now clock project holds promise for implanting such an ethos in this and future generations? How can we most effectively engender an active sense of "the long now"?
• "Who are we to name a new interval of geologic time after ourselves?"
• Which is worse, anthropocentric hubris or denialism?
• Would scientific recognition of the Anthropocene change public perceptions and actions?
• What's wrong with "enlightened species" narratives? 132
• Homo sapiens as a whole is not causing rapid global climate change, wealthy individuals and nations are. Does that make non-wealthy Americans equally complicit?
• Is this the Capitalocene, the Anthropocene, both, or neither?
• Do you agree with the authors of The Shock of the Anthropocene that anti-environmental elites have always been engaged in a cover-up of their activities? 136
• Is it better to solve fossil fuel emissions by removing carbon, invest in alternative energy sources like solar or nuclear, or both? 138
• Is global governance the key...? [& see the other questions posed on 139]
• Is individuality just an illusion? 140
• COMMENT: "Make kin, not babies."
• Do humans have any right to change Earth? 141
• COMMENT: "Humanity forms nature." 142
• COMMENT: "The Anthropocene demands action." 143
• [Note the brief list of Anthropocene books on 142... they're not works of fiction, but if 
• anyone would care to use one of them for your report(s) consider it an option.]
• What do you think it means to need "many different Anthropocene narratives"? 145
• On balance, do you think it's a good thing that humans have become "a force of nature"?
• Post your DQs

What unites America around clean energy...

Organizers hope a 2,000-foot-long unmanned boom will collect 150,000 pounds of plastic from the Great Pacific Garbage Patch in a year. Read More...

More Methane... 
In a victory for energy companies, the administration plans to roll back rules covering methane leaks and the “flaring,” or burning, of the potent greenhouse gas. • It was the third major step this year to reverse the United States’ previous efforts to rein in global warming. Read More...

Gaia

Some scientists think that James Lovelock’s Gaia theory is nuts, but the public love it. Could both sides be right?

The inventor James Lovelock was born in England in 1919. Early during the Second World War, armed with a degree in chemistry, he went to work for the British government on a variety of projects on the borderline between the physical and the biological sciences. He had an incredible ability to make gadgets from piles of old junk, often surplus to the military effort, and this continued after the war. His greatest triumph was to invent the electron capture detector, an instrument so accurate that if one spilt a solvent on a rag in Japan, one could detect it in Britain a week later. Naturally, a man with such talents attracted attention. Lovelock went freelance and in the early 1960s he was often in California aiding one of his clients, the American space agency NASA, which was just then trying to detect if there was life on Mars.

Lovelock approached the problem indirectly, arguing that there was no need to send rockets to the red planet, but this wasn’t necessarily a welcome conclusion for those invested in space travel. He argued that simply looking at the atmospheric composition of a planet would enable us to know whether that planet was likely to support life. Mars, Lovelock said, had no life, but Earth obviously was very different. This led to his great insight. The Earth is not just teeming with life. The Earth, in some sense, is life. Earth is an organism!

In the mid-1960s, Lovelock returned to the somewhat isolated village in the south of England, where he lived, undisturbed, with his family. Here he talked things over with his one close friend, the novelist William Golding, a man who likewise sought solitude, especially since the success of his first novel, The Lord of the Flies (1954). It was Golding who gave a name to Lovelock’s insight, suggesting that it be called Gaia, after the ancient Greek goddess of Earth. But Golding did more than just give the idea a name. For the next few years, as Lovelock extended his thinking on the subject, Golding encouraged and helped the scientist to explore his hypothesis. This came naturally. Since his youth, Golding had been an enthusiast for the thinking of the polymath and mystic Rudolf Steiner. Steiner, who is best known today as the founder of the Waldorf (or Steiner) school system, which emphasises the role of the imagination in learning, had some very odd ideas (many derived from the theosophists) about heavenly spirits and reincarnation, all bound up with an idealistic philosophy that sees life throbbing everywhere. Hence, absolutely central to Steiner’s thought, was the view that Earth is living, it is an organism... continues

Michael Ruse, Aeon 

False balance

The BBC, one of the world’s largest and most respected news organisations, has issued formal guidance to its journalists on how to report climate change.

Carbon Brief has obtained the internal four-page “crib sheet” sent yesterday to BBC journalists via an email from Fran Unsworth, the BBC’s director of news and current affairs. The crib sheet includes the BBC’s “editorial policy” and “position” on climate change...

Be aware of ‘false balance’: As climate change is accepted as happening, you do not need a ‘denier’ to balance the debate. Although there are those who disagree with the IPCC’s position, very few of them now go so far as to deny that climate change is happening. To achieve impartiality, you do not need to include outright deniers of climate change in BBC coverage, in the same way you would not have someone denying that Manchester United won 2-0 last Saturday. The referee has spoken. However, the BBC does not exclude any shade of opinion from its output, and with appropriate challenge from a knowledgeable interviewer, there may be occasions to hear from a denier.

carbonbrief 

The Sixth Extinction

“If warming were held to a minimum, the team estimated that between 22 and 31 percent of the species would be “committed to extinction” by 2050. If warming were to reach what was at that point considered a likely maximum—a figure that now looks too low—by the middle of this century, between 38 and 52 percent of the species would be fated to disappear.” 

“Though it might be nice to imagine there once was a time when man lived in harmony with nature, it’s not clear that he ever really did.” 

“The anthropologist Richard Leakey has warned that “Homo sapiens might not only be the agent of the sixth extinction, but also risks being one of its victims.” A sign in the Hall of Biodiversity offers a quote from the Stanford ecologist Paul Ehrlich: IN PUSHING OTHER SPECIES TO EXTINCTION, HUMANITY IS BUSY SAWING OFF THE LIMB ON WHICH IT PERCHES.” 

“By burning through coal and oil deposits, humans are putting carbon back into the air that has been sequestered for tens—in most cases hundreds—of millions of years. In the process, we are running geologic history not only in reverse but at warp speed.” 

“One of the defining features of the Anthropocene is that the world is changing in ways that compel species to move, and another is that it’s changing in ways that create barriers—roads, clear-cuts, cities—that prevent them from doing so.” 

“With the capacity to represent the world in signs and symbols comes the capacity to change it, which, as it happens, is also the capacity to destroy it. A tiny set of genetic variations divides us from the Neanderthals, but that has made all the difference.” 

“One of the many unintended consequences of the Anthropocene has been the pruning of our own family tree. Having cut down our sister species—the Neanderthals and the Denisovans—many generations ago, we’re now working on our first and second cousins. By the time we’re done, it’s quite possible that there will be among the great apes not a single representative left, except, that is, for us.” 

“having freed ourselves from the constraints of evolution, humans nevertheless remain dependent on the earth’s biological and geochemical systems. By disrupting these systems—cutting down tropical rainforests, altering the composition of the atmosphere, acidifying the oceans—we’re putting our own survival in danger.” 

“If climate change drove the megafauna extinct, then this presents yet another reason to worry about what we are doing to global temperatures. If, on the other hand, people were to blame—and it seems increasingly likely that they were—then the import is almost more disturbing. It would mean that the current extinction event began all the way back in the middle of the last ice age. It would mean that man was a killer—to use the term of art an “overkiller”—pretty much right from the start.” 

"although there are several severe episodes of ocean acidification in the record, “no past event perfectly parallels” what is happening right now, owing to “the unprecedented rapidity of CO2 release currently taking place.” It turns out there just aren’t many ways to inject billions of tons of carbon into the air very quickly.”  g'reads

A Summer of Megafire

...and Trump’s Non-Rules on Climate Change

Against an infernal backdrop of widespread wildfires, the Administration announced its plan to roll back rules limiting greenhouse-gas emissions from power plants.

The Ranch Fire broke out sometime on the morning of Friday, July 27th, east of Ukiah, California, in Mendocino County. Extreme heat and windy weather made the blaze difficult to fight; by early Sunday, it had spread to thirteen thousand acres, and by the end of the following week it had burned a hundred and fifteen thousand acres. That weekend, it jumped four streams, a major road, and a fire line that had been cut by a bulldozer, and in the process it spread to another hundred thousand acres. By August 12th, it had become the largest wildfire in California’s history, and by the time it was mostly contained, last week, it had charred more than six hundred square miles, an area twice the size of New York City.

A blaze that consumes more than a hundred thousand acres is known as a megafire. It used to be rare for fires to reach this threshold. Now it’s routine. “We seem to have multiple megafires each year,” the Web site Wildfire Today noted recently. While the Ranch Fire raged, three other hundred-thousand-acre-plus fires were “active” in the United States: the Carr Fire, also in Northern California; the South Sugarloaf Fire, in northern Nevada; and the Spring Creek Fire, in southern Colorado. Meanwhile, in Canada, the province of British Columbia declared a state of emergency in response to more than five hundred active blazes. As smoke from these and other conflagrations drifted across the Pacific Northwest, the air quality in Seattle declined to a level considered “unhealthy for all,” and the city’s mayor urged residents to stay indoors.

It was against this infernal backdrop that the Trump Administration recently unveiled its plan to roll back rules limiting greenhouse-gas emissions from power plants. The fires, according to Donald Trump, had nothing to do with global warming, and instead were the result of “bad environmental laws,” which, he claimed, were preventing “readily available water” from being used to fight the blazes. Under the headline “TRUMP TWEETS WHILE CALIFORNIA BURNS,” the Los Angeles Times editorial board dismissed the President’s theory as “wingnut drivel.” Somewhat less colorfully, Newsweek observed that it had “little basis in fact.”

The power-plant rules that Trump wants to scrap have a long and delay-filled history. All the way back in 2007, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that carbon dioxide qualifies as a pollutant that should be regulated under the Clean Air Act. Instead of complying with that ruling, George W. Bush’s Environmental Protection Agency ran out the clock. When Barack Obama took office, he, too, dawdled; it wasn’t until his second term that the E.P.A. finally proposed the so-called Clean Power Plan. The plan, which was supposed to reduce CO₂ emissions from generating stations by roughly a third, was finalized in 2015, but it never went into effect. In early 2016, the Supreme Court, in a 5–4 decision, took the extraordinary step of blocking its implementation, pending the outcome of a lawsuit brought by two dozen states—almost all of them led by Republicans—along with a host of coal and utility companies. (The states accused the E.P.A. of exceeding its authority.) Two and a half years later, there is still no decision in that suit, because, under President Trump, the E.P.A. has been asking for, and receiving, postponements.

Finally, in June, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit indicated that it was tired of the Administration’s stalling. Then, late last month, the E.P.A. published what it calls the Affordable Clean Energy rules, or ACE. The new rules, which would replace the Clean Power Plan, are rules in name only. They’d allow states to set their own standards; these, in many cases, would amount to a carte blanche for utility companies. Compared with the Clean Power Plan, ACE could, over the next few decades, allow hundreds of millions of tons of additional carbon emissions. Meanwhile, by the E.P.A.’s own admission, the new “rules” could result in as many as fourteen hundred premature deaths annually, owing to the increased pollution from coal plants. The non-rule rules still have to be finalized, and then they, too, doubtless will be challenged in court. By the time that challenge is heard, there may be a new Administration in the White House—at least, so it is devoutly to be wished.

As it happens, a few days after the E.P.A.’s announcement of the rules a group of state agencies in Sacramento released a report detailing how climate change will affect California. If emissions are not reined in, by the end of the century maximum daily temperatures could rise by a horrific 8.8 degrees. Two-thirds of Southern California’s beaches could be lost to sea-level rise, and the area burned by wildfires could nearly triple.

The California report points up the essential hazard of delay. Many pollutants dissipate or break down over time. Carbon dioxide hangs around and accumulates. What our power plants put into the air today will still be contributing to warming and melting, fires and floods, more than a hundred years from now. And what’s added tomorrow (and tomorrow and tomorrow) will make the situation that much worse.

This fiery summer has given us a glimpse of what climate change will look like. In addition to the blazes in the West, forest fires raged in Sweden above the Arctic Circle. More than ninety people were killed by wildfires that broke out during an extreme heat wave in Greece. In Japan, a heat wave resulted in at least eighty deaths, and in South Korea record-breaking temperatures were blamed for twenty-nine deaths. (Last month, during South Korea’s heat wave, the Prime Minister ordered all work on public construction sites halted during daytime hours.)

But perhaps what’s most scary about this scorching summer is how little concerned Americans seem to be. So far, climate change has barely registered as an issue in the midterm elections, and, where it has, the optics couldn’t be worse: “Trump Digs Coal” was a slogan that appeared on placards at a West Virginia rally with the President, staged on the day that the new power-plant rules were published. As a country, we remain committed to denial and delay, even as the world, in an ever more literal sense, goes up in flames. ♦

Elizabeth Kolbert New Yorker September 10, 2018 Issue

Quiz Sep10

Post your alternate quiz questions, discussion questions, comments, & links...  LISTEN: Elizabeth Kolbert on megafires and the 6th Extinction, James Lovelock's Gaia, etc.

1.  What's the archaeological perspective on when to mark the onset of the Anthropocene?

2. Why are humans the "ultimate ecosystem engineers"?

3. What's another name for knowledge gained by social learning?

4. Why were American and Australian megafauna "not so lucky"?

5. What are increasingly recognized as the bio-cultural legacies of long histories of prior human land use?

6. What controversial hypothesis by Ruddiman remains under serious consideration, and is supported by multiple lines of evidence?

7. What "discovery" created the first truly global system of exchange?

8. From an archaeological point of view how long has the human world been anthropogenic?

9. What's the etymology of ecology?

10. What is the Pristine Myth?

11. Current extinction rates exceed the historical baseline by what factor-range?

12. What is the Homogocene?

13. What are anthromes?



Discussion Questions:

• Should any particular disciplinary perspective be privileged, in assessing the impact of human activity on natural systems and proposing solutions to the problems engendered by it?
• Is it good, bad, or simply a fact, that humans are capable of altering ecosystems? Can you relate your response to Stewart Brand's statement about our being "as gods" and needing to get better at it?
• Do you think humans are mostly co-evolving with other species now, or over-running them? 
• Does it matter when humans began to impact natural systems, or should our focus be more on the future ("fruits, not roots," as the pragmatists say) and how we should monitor and correct our potentially deleterious impacts going forward?
• What purpose is served by distinguishing original from "civilized" nature?
• Add your discussion questions
• 
  

Brand's Whole Earth Discipline (originally subtitled "An Eco-pragmatist Manifesto")...

Environmental podcasts

Here are some. Let us know if you find others, and share the link.

© Clipart.com

Here you'll find informative and interesting podcasts recommended by SEJ members and others. Know of a great podcast we should include on this page? Send the link and a short description to SEJ's web content manager Cindy MacDonald.

Behind the Schemes
Does a great job covering issues related to wildlife trafficking.

Costing the Earth
BBC Radio's program looks at how humans affect the environment and how the environment reacts, questions accepted truths, challenges those in charge and reports on progress towards improving the world.

Green Divas Radio Show
A one-hour radio show featuring interviews with high-profile celebrities and leaders in the green living movement (including Green Dudes).

The Energy Gang
Greentech Media's podcast covers renewables/clean tech.

The Environment Report
Mostly Great Lakes and Michigan focused.

Generation Anthropocene
A science podcast featuring stories and conversations about planetary change.

The GroundTruth Podcast
GroundTruth is a podcast about global reporting on issues ranging from terrorism to global warming to income inequality.

Living on Earth
PRI, hosted by Steve Curwood.

Living Planet
Deutsche Welle combines elements of a televised news magazine with a podcast on their website.

Mongabay Newscast
Mongabay is a non-profit provider of conservation and environmental science news. The podcast can be found here as well as on Stitcher, TuneIn, iTunes, Google Play and other places you get audio.

NPR's Environment Podcast
Breaking news on the environment, climate change, pollution and endangered species.

Pulse of the Planet
Two-minute science vignettes with Jim Metzner.

Radiolab
"Radiolab is a show about curiosity. Where sound illuminates ideas, and the boundaries blur between science, philosophy, and human experience."

Science Friday
Stories about science, technology and more, from the "outer reaches of space to the tiniest microbes in our bodies."

Scientific American's Podcasts
"Sixty-second science" on a variety of topics.

Terrestrial
Ashley Ahearn hosts a national podcast produced out of KUOW in Seattle, exploring the choices we make in a world we have changed.

Drumpf on Earth
Produced by The Allegheny Front, an environmental reporting project based in Pittsburgh, this podcast explores the environment in the Drumpf era. Each episode sorts through how changes to environmental policy affect people around the world — with deep analysis, clear information and real talk from the critics, scientists and thinkers who know the issues.

Warm Regards
Climate conversations between Eric Holthaus, reporter Andrew Revkin and Jacquelyn Gill, a paleoecologist.

Yale Climate Connections
An online news service providing daily radio broadcasts and original online reporting, commentary and analysis on the issue of climate change. An initiative of the Yale Center for Environmental Communication.

Useful Links

Society of Environmental Journalists

September 8

350.org is organizing a day for climate action on September 8. More info here...

Midterm reports

This semester we're following a "Cli-fi" theme, viewing environmental issues through the lens of fiction. In addition to reading Bill McKibben's novel Radio Free Vermont, we'll each select a different work of fiction to report on. You'll need to procure your choice either through the library or online, or you can ask our bookstore to special-order it if necessary. You need to make your selection by the end of September. You may suggest your own or select one of the recommended titles under "Texts" in the sidebar.

Soon as you know what text you want to report on, stake your claim in comments below. When a few of you have done so, we'll take a little class time to fill out the list on this page. 

1. Kari, We Are Unprepared-Meg Little-Reilly
2. Tanner SHarpe mountainman_tan, James Cameron "Avatar"

3. Shay Linell, "Wall-E"
4. selenaranney, Ecotopia by Ernest Callenbach

5. Sarah Wilson, "New York 2140" by Kim Stanley Robinson

6. Alex Tesar , Pacific Coast, by Kim Stanley Robinson

7.Amber Swindall, "Staying with the Trouble" by Donna J. Haraway

8. Max McConnell, "Man Cave: A One-Man Sci-Fi Climate Change Tragicomedy (Annotated)" by Timothy Mooney

9. Nicole Rondeau, Gold Fame Citrus by Claire Vaye Watkins
10. Rosemarie Kuenn, State of Fear by Michael Crichton

11. Baylee Burk, Odds Against Tomorrow by Nathaniel Rich
12. Abigail Redman, "The wind-up Girl" by Paolo Bacigalupi

13. Brandon Alston,"The Wastelanders" by Tim Hemlin

14.  Sarah Lowery, The Drowned World by J.G. Ballard

15. Anonymous, "Please Don't Paint Our Planet Pink: A Story for Children and Their Parents" by Gregg Kleiner

16. Patrick Nichols, "Interstellar"

17. tatern tucky, “Flight Behavior” by Barbara Kingsolver (post-20th)
18. [If you're not on the list, let me know ASAP]

Quiz Sep5

Ellis 3-4

Post your own comments, discussion questions, links etc. in the comments space below, and record them in your dated personal log-claim a base for each, and a run for every four bases on the scorecard. Happy Labor Day!

1. Who will ultimately decide the fate of the Anthropocene as an interval of earth history? 35

2. Who was William Smith? 36

3. What "allowed evolutionary changes in fossil organisms to be observed"? 37

4. What are the different chronostratigraphic units? What do they organize?39

5.What are "golden spikes"? 43

6. What's the difference between isochronous and diachronous units? 43

7. What's Earth's most recent period? When did it begin? 44

8. What does "Holoene" mean? 47

9. Name an instance of the "hyper-abundant" data on recent earth changes capable of leaving stratigraphic records. 49

10. Data showed a dramatic jump in the rate of human and environmental changes when? 52

11. How much of the terrestrial biosphere remains free of direct human impacts? 56

12. Name an environmental consequence of human use of land. 57

13. Earth is now hotter than it's been in how many years? 68

Discussion Questions:

• Why does it matter whether we call this the "Age of Man" or not, if "overwhelming scientific evidence already demonstrated that humans [have] alterend earth"? 34
• Why is geologic time critical to understanding our predicament? Do you think you understand it? How would you explain it to someone who does not?
• Why should mass extinction events bother us?
• Why is it "entirely pragmatic" that there are no geologic boundaries marking the origins of life"? 42 Why are pragmatic solutions to stratigraphic issues normally required? Are pragmatic approaches to difficult public concerns always necessary?
• Should we date the Anthropocene from the start of the Industrial Revolution in the late 18th century, from the mid-20th century, or from thousands of years ago with the start of widespread agriculture? Why? 51, 53
• Why should we care about plant and animal species extinctions due to human pressures? 58
• Post your DQs on ch3-4
•  

Climate & environment in nyt... Rx for the Anthropocene? A Dose of ‘Anthropophilia... An Anthropocene Journey (Andrew Revkin)... Anthropocene Magazine... Learning to Die in the Anthropocene (g'reads)...

Big Environmental Rollbacks Are Pending. Here’s How You Can Weigh In.

"Voices must be heard," indeed!
==
It’s one of the most consequential environmental rollbacks proposed by the Drumpf administration: an overhaul of fuel-efficiency standards for cars and light trucks that would significantly weaken one of former President Barack Obama’s signature policies to combat global warming.

Now, that proposed rollback is going to the American public — that could mean you, dear reader — for a period of public comment.

But do public comments make a difference? And how exactly do you get involved?

One former official with broad experience of the rule-making process, Margo T. Oge, who led the transportation and air quality office at the Environmental Protection Agency, said that hearings can leave a lasting impression on officials. That’s because they give the public a chance to interact with representatives from industry and other groups, like environmental organizations.

Ms. Oge recalled a public hearing that included the mother of a child with severe asthma sitting next to an oil executive. The proposal in question was to reduce sulfur in diesel oil, a measure designed to prevent respiratory and other illnesses, especially asthma in children.

The oil executive spoke first, and complained about the costs of meeting the standards.

Then the mother stepped up to speak. “She recounted how many times a year the child ended up at the hospital with asthma attacks, and was unable to play outdoors when air pollution was high,” Ms. Oge said. “You could see how uncomfortable the executive became.”

The government is legally required to respond to what it hears from the public — if not to individual comments, then to the main issues raised in them.

David Friedman, a former acting administrator of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, pointed out that if the Drumpf administration’s rollback is challenged in court, as expected, public comments — both for and against — will most likely become evidence in the case.

“If the courts determine that regulators didn’t take public comments into proper account,” Mr. Friedman said, “they could overturn the rule as arbitrary and capricious.”

There are two ways to make your voice heard. You can travel in person to a daylong public hearing in late September at one of three locations. The hearings start at 10 a.m. local time and continue until 5 p.m. or until everyone has had a chance to speak.


Sept. 24 at The Grand, 1401 Fulton St. in Fresno, Calif.


Sept. 25 at The Dearborn Inn, 20301 Oakwood Blvd. in Dearborn, Mich.


Sept. 26 at the DoubleTree, 1 Bigelow Square in Pittsburgh

If you want to speak at these meetings, remember to register at least 10 days in advance by writing the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration’s point person for the meetings, Kil-Jae Hong, at kil-jae.hong@dot.gov. There’ll be a lot of speakers, so plan to limit your comments to about five minutes.

Alternatively, you can register your opinion by submitting a written comment. If you plan to do so, make sure you meet the Oct. 23 deadline. (For more information, you can revisit our extensive coverage of the emissions rules rollback.)

“It’s one of the hallmarks of our democracy that when we make regulations, we hear from the American people,” Mr. Friedman said. “It’s enshrined in law that public voices must be heard.”

(continues, nyt)

Quiz Aug29

LISTEN: Ellis 1-2

Write your answers down on a sheet of paper and bring it with you to class Wednesday. Claim a base for each correct answer (and a run on the scorecard for every four bases, up to 5 runs per class). Also claim a base for each posted alternate quiz question, discussion question, response to a discussion question, other comment, or relevant link, and claim a RUN (4 bases)  for posting a weekly 250+ word essay on the relevant topic of your choice. Keep track of everything you post in a dated personal log that will be collected later. 

Write your answers down on a sheet of paper and bring it with you to class.

1. (preface) What's the author's goal?

2. When did the term "anthropocene" first appear in print? 2

3. What is "the basis for marking new intervals of geologic time" (and thus the rationale for dubbing our time the anthropocene, the "age of humans")? 3

4. What was Archbishop Ussher's errant calculation? 5

5. How did Darwin birth a new origin story, and what did it imply about life? 9

6. When did homo sapiens appear, on the cosmic calendar? 11

7. What's the IPCC? 13

8. Who wrote The End of Nature? 14

9. Who was the first scientist to propose that the Earth's functioning as a system was transformed by the emergence of the biosphere? 18

10. What is the Gaia Hypothesis? 18

11. What changed everything? 21

12. What did Charles Keeling publish in 1960? 25

13. Who was Rachel Carson, and what did she document? 29
==
And here's a bonus quiz on the scorecard game, etc.

1. Name two of the ways you can earn a base in our class. (See "course requirements" & other info in the sidebar & on the syllabus)

2. How many bases must you earn, for each run you claim on the daily scorecard?

3. How do you earn your first base in each class?

4. Can you earn bases from the daily quiz if you're not present?

5. How can you earn bases on days when you're not present?

6. What should you write in your daily personal log?

7. Suppose you came to class one day, turned on the computer/projector and opened the CoPhi site, had 3 correct answers on the daily quiz, and had posted a comment, a discussion question,  and an alternate quiz question before class. How many runs would you claim in your personal log and on the scorecard that day?

8. How many bases do you get for posting a short, relevant weekly essay of at least 250 words?


9. What are Dr. Oliver's office hours? Where is his office? What is his email address?


Discussion Questions:

• Do you care about "a better future for the age of humans"? Why or why not?
• Is it accurate to interpret the legacy of Copernicus and Darwin as our demotion to "just another animal on just another planet..."? 1
• Does an Age of Humans necessarily mean the end of nature? 
• Is the Anthropocene a "2d Copernican revolution"? WouAdd ld that be a good thing?
• Do you accept science's "origin story" as the best we have? 6   Is it compatible with others? 
• COMMENT: What do you think of Stewart Brand's statement that "humans are gods and have to get good at it"?
• "Biology takes her time from geology." 9  What does that mean? 
• "What does nature even mean in an age of humans"? 15
• Should we take the Gaia Hypothesis literally? Or is it a metaphor? For what?
• (Add YOUR discussion questions...)
• 
  

Introductions

Let's introduce ourselves, Fall 2018 Environmental Ethics collaborators.

I invite you all to hit "comment" and reply with your own introductions, and (bearing in mind that this is an open site) your answers to two basic questions: Who are you? and Why are you here? (in this course, on this campus, in this state, on this planet...) 

And also, in keeping with this semester's course theme: what do you think you can do personally, and we can do collectively, to reverse or contain the long-term harm of anthropogenic climate change? Are you hopeful, despairing, fatalistic, indifferent, or whatever, with regard to the eventual prospects for life on Earth?

My philosophical hero William James said that's our one "really vital question." He also said that "shipwreck" is among our clear possibilities, though his pragmatic philosophy was an attempt to suggest alternatives. Our course is an attempt to decide whether the hopeful alternatives are still realistically possible. If you don't have a response to this question yet, I'll push you to come up with one by the time this semester ends. 

Our first class meeting on Monday will consist mainly of introductions and a heads-up that this is an unconventional course in ways I hope you'll find delightful, instructive, and rewarding. If you don't like to move, breathe, and converse in the open air on "nice" days, this may not be the course for you. But if you don't especially like the conventional lecture-style academic model in which I talk and you scribble silently in your seats, it may be just what you're looking for.

We'll not go over the syllabus or get bogged down in the nuts and bolts of course mechanics on Day #1, there's plenty of time for those details later.

Meanwhile, peruse the blogsite and syllabus (linked in the right margin) before next class and let me know what's unclear. And read your classmates' intros and post your own.

I'm Dr. Oliver. I live in Nashville with my wife, two dogs we "rescued" in May (Pita and Nell) and a cat (Zeus). Older Daughter lives in Illinois. Younger Daughter is a college sophomore.

My office is 300 James Union Building (JUB). My office hours are Monday and Wednesday 4-5, & by appointment. 

On nice days office hours may be outside, check my office door for details. I answer emails during office hours, but not at all on weekends. Surest way to get a quick response: come in or call during office hours.

I've been at MTSU since the early '00s, teaching philosophy courses on diverse subjects including atheism, childhood, happiness, the environment, the future, epistemology, metaphysics, Anglo-American philosophy, consciousness, evolution, and bioethics.

My Ph.D. is from Vanderbilt. I'm originally from Missouri, near St. Louis. I was indoctrinated as a Cardinals fan in early childhood, so I understand something about religious zeal. My undergrad degree is from the University of Missouri ("Mizzou") in Columbia MO. (I wish my schools weren't in the SEC-I don't approve of the inordinate emphasis on major collegiate sports culture or football brain injuries, as I'm sure to tell you again.)

My philosophical expertise, such as it is, centers on the American philosophical tradition of William James and John Dewey. A former student once asked me to respond to a questionnaire, if you're curious you can learn more about me there.

What you most need to know about me, though, is that I'm a peripatetic and will encourage you all to join me in that philosophical lifestyle as often as possible during discussion time. (If you're not sure what peripatetic means, scan the right sidebar or read the syllabus or ask me. Or look it up.)

I post my thoughts regularly to my blogs Up@dawn and Delight Springs, among others, and to Twitter (@osopher), and am continuing to experiment with podcasting as a classroom tool this semester. Follow me if you want to.

But of course, as Brian Cohen said, you don't have to follow anyone. (Extra credit if you get that reference... and real extra credit if you realize that my "extra credit" is usually rhetorical.) However, if a blog or podcast link turns up with the daily quiz (which will always be posted on this site no later than the night before class), you might find it helpful to read or listen.

Enough about me. Who are you? (Where are you from, where have you been, what do you like, who do you want to become,...?) Why are you here? (On Earth, in Tennessee, at MTSU, in philosophy class)? Hit "comments" below and post your introduction, then read your classmates'... and bear in mind that this is an open site. The world can read it. (The world's probably busy with other stuff, of course - Drumpf and Kardashians and cooking shows and other examples of what passes for "reality" these days.)

Searching for Language to Capture How Climate Change Has Altered Our World

A drowned world: It’s an ancient fear and a very old story. Noah and his biblical flood, a tale likely descended from the even older story of Utnapishtim in the “Epic of Gilgamesh,” but there is also Da Yu and the flood that supposedly inspired China’s imperial feats of hydraulic engineering, Brahma and Manu, and, perhaps oldest of all, the 10,000-year-old tales of certain indigenous peoples of Australia, who sing of homelands lost beneath the rising waves at the end of the last ice age. Most of these tales take the form of a warning and an elegy, and now Elizabeth Rush’s deeply felt “Rising” joins that long tradition.

This is a book about language, first and foremost, a literary approach to a real-world problem. So while facts and figures do find their way in, conveying how fast the waters will rise or how far the sea may ultimately intrude, they are not the main focus, unlike, say, in Cynthia Barnett’s illuminating and gorgeous “Rain: A Natural and Cultural History.” Instead, this book is interested in a new vocabulary — using words like “rampike” (a tree killed by saltwater intrusion) or the naturalist’s lingo of tupelo, catbrier and bull (rush, not animal). As Rush argues: “I believe that language can lessen the distance between humans and the world of which we are a part; I believe that it can foster interspecies intimacy and, as a result, care.”

Just as a wetland can adapt to rising sea levels through the process known as accretion — the slow buildup of organic material as the marsh lives and dies — so too does the accretion of detail here help make the case that the seas have already risen as a result of human-driven global warming, affecting Americans who confront this change on every coast with feelings of loss, fear and confusion. Even the maps have changed; in the most recent government surveys, Louisiana has shed the names of 31 bayous and other coastal features. Those bayous have slipped beneath the waves of living memory, along with some 1,900 square miles of land...

(review of RISING: Dispatches from the New American Shore, continues)