Love it or Lose it

I really liked the point made in this excerpt about how we who live in today’s society do not or cannot integrate ourselves into nature as those that lived in centuries past.  I believe this to be very true.  With all the technology and different gadgets we have today it is almost impossible to get away from it all.  Even if we do manage to get away from it other people view us as weird, or we ourselves feel as if a part of us is missing.  I found it interesting to see that we as humans must choose between biophobia and biophilia.  I have never thought about it like that but because we are smart enough and capable of understanding the consequences of each it seems to fit well.  In today’s society we see all these types of shows about OCD’s and some of us see it on a regular basis or be consumed by one ourselves.  These types of compulsions can be serious and the people with them if taken to an extreme must seek professional help; we need to understand that these types of things are not okay or normal.  While I do not think I have seen anyone who has a severe biophobia, I do see people becoming less interested in nature and more interested in how to get rid of it; especially here in South West Florida.  I found it educational to be able to relate this excerpt to common and interesting things that are “popular” to say the least in today’s world. 

 

The Land Ethic

The main idea I got from reading this excerpt is similar to one we saw in the beginning of the semester.  This idea is that society and nature work together in life, not separately.  We may be different but we live together and share the earth.  We need to think of ourselves as a community; working together and respecting one another.  I really like the idea this excerpt presented about using ethics.  I have never thought to look at ethic from an ecologic perspective when you do it does make sense because we do have a relationship between ourselves and the plants, land, and oceans.  We are a team and we as humans are just one part of it and in order for a team to succeed it needs to work together.   The points made about how even though we are conserving areas through the government are something I find a little too eccentric.  Yes I believe we need to live in harmony with nature and protect our planet but we do need to have room to live.  By letting the government have control over the refuges and other properties it helps to create a safe haven for the wildlife and also gives us our space.  I believe that we need to have love, respect, and admiration for our land just as this excerpt stays to make sure that everyone is in working together to make this planet successful.  I found this excerpt to be the most interesting one so far.

60 minutes

Nothing bothers me more than not being able to say what I feel and it seems like James Hansen of NASA institute of climate is in that very same situation.  Not being able to freely communicate with others and informing us on what is going on in the world is extremely shady and unfair to us.  We all know that global warming has become an issue within our society but the actual facts about it are sometimes edited to the point that an issue that needs to be addressed is not because there is not much emphasis put on it.  We as a country have a right to know what is going on with the climate.  The fact that someone under both President Clinton and President Bush was unable to get the Our Changing Planet report threw congress without an extreme number of edits in unfortunate.  It seem to me from this video that any politician whether democrat or republican seem to only acknowledge the idea of global warming.  We know that ice sheaths are melt, that the burning fossil fuels impacts global warming, and that 2005 was the warmest year reported.  We are aware that things are happening but shown how to resolve it.  If action is not taken soon scientist  believe our world will not be able to keep the earth from warming below one degree Celsius and that we will hit and surpass the tipping points have become so very aware of within the past few assignments.  If scientists have ideas or new information about global warming and its effects I feel as though we as a country are entitled to know about them when discovered, not when a president deems it needed.

Global Dimming

Global dimming is the reduction of sunlight shining directly on the earth.  This is due to the air pollution and green house gases in the clouds that reflect the sunlight back into space, not letting it enter.  We would think that because the temperature of the earth is getting hotter studies would show this as well but through this video we found that temperature was not as much of a factor as actual sunlight is.  There are two effects going on within the world, the cooling effect and the heating effect.  The heating effect is something we have heard of much more than the cooling effect.  This heating effect deals with the amount of carbon dioxide and other green house gases that are being release into the earth’s atmosphere.  Studies have shown that the cooing effect has had a dropping off in that the earth is not cooling itself down as much as it has in the previous decades and centuries.  With this decrease and the increase of green house gasses we are looking at a "double wammy" as one scientist put it.  The most disastrous aspect of this continued increase is the potential for frozen methane gasses from the bottom of the ocean to be release.  They become destabilized by the warming of the planet are eight times stronger than carbon dioxide.  Some scientist believed that the heating of the earth by 2-5 degrees Fahrenheit will become a reality by the end of the century, while others now believe this could happen by midcentury because of our increased emissions of green house gases. Without the decrease in these emissions our path to disaster is inevitable.  

As The World Burns...

From this article the main idea I concluded too was that there was not enough involvement from the person who was promising all the change, President Obama.  I love when the article says “Obama had served the dessert before the children even promised to eat their spinach,” because that is exactly what had happened.  Obama pretty much gave away everything the “three amigos” were negotiating with.  If president Obama had been more involved in what was going on than the bill may have come together faster and with more support, but instead it seemed to be falling apart right in front of them.  I feel that if the issues of health- care reform and climate change were being dealt with at different times than this unfortunate circumstance would not have occurred.  Towards the end of the article I feel it best put as this “Obama grew timid and gave up, leaving the dysfunctional Senate to figure out the issue on its own.” 

Being able to work together with people of opposite political views is hard and we saw the heat that all three participants took because of that, especially Graham.   It is a shame that with so much support by both green companies and those that were the biggest polluters, and democrats and republicans that the bill did not pass then.  This just goes to show how important communication and honesty really are.  If you want to get something accomplished you need to be open and honest about everything you are doing, something that did not happen in this article.  

Untold Stories of Fort. Myers

I had no idea that Fort Myers was once called Fort Harvey.   Fort Harvey was build because of the Indian uprising and the second and third Seminole wars and then became a northern fort during the wars between the states. I found it really neat that the name Fort Myers was after a man in love.  Captain Myers was engaged to the general’s daughter, and so the fort was build for him.  I never knew that the United states colored troops build Fort Myers or that it was founded so long ago in 1866 from travelers coming from Key west.  The town of Fort Myers was so small back then but even so they had problems just as we do today.  For example they built their first school but then some student burnt it down.  I always thought Lee County was named after some random family that really didn’t mean much so it was interesting to see that it was actually named after Robert E. Lee.  The idea that Hendry and Collier Counties were part of Lee County until the 1920s shows how remote it was back then, but how quickly it grew.  In 1904 railroads became the main way of transportation and made city double.  Even famous people such as Thomas Edison and Henry Ford came here to live and vacation and now people come just to visit what they have left.  It is kind of funny to see that Southwest Florida has always been a place for tourist.   It’s sad to see that the segregation of blacks and whites took longer than most other places.  You hear and see things about racial segregation elsewhere but it’s unfortunate to see that it was at one point real in our own city.  Seeing how FGCU is now a part of Fort Myers history is a huge accomplishment for the entire area of Southwest Florida.  These videos helped to understand and have an appreciation of where we live.