Week 13

This week of class we only had class on Tuesday due to the thanksgiving holiday. For class on Tuesday we began by going over the logistics for the remaining time that we have in the semester. I am excited for the people in my class who are going to Paris next week as I think that they will have a great experience and how lucky they are for having the opportunity to attend such an important meetings that is related to such an important issue. I look forward to checking in with my classmates while they are over there and learning second hand through them what is being said by whom at these meetings as well as simply discuss with my classmates how their experience is going overall. During class we discussed what everyone's paper topics were for the White papers that we submitted earlier in the day and I was greatly impressed with everyone's paper topics as I feel that based on the examples of summaries and explanations that everyone presented in class I would say that we as a class covered a vary wide variety of issues related to the concepts of climate change and they sounded like they all were very well researched as well. I personally choose to write my paper on how climate change impacts and was able to find a bunch of information related to the topic. We as a world need to come together and find a way to limit our emissions so that animal populations are not severely deteriorated or forced into extinction overall. I argue that due to the fact that humans have caused the vast majority the problems that are affecting animal populations, we have a moral obligation to help these animals so that they do not become extinct. I look forward to following this idea as the meetings continue to occur in Paris in the coming weeks.

Week 12

This week we had a couple of speakers come and speak with our class: Jeff Anderson and Matt Lindstrom and they had great information to share with our class. I found it especially interesting what Matt Lindstrom discussed with our class. The focus of Matt's speech was on the tragedy of the commons which I found to be very interesting points and ideas in which I had never thought of in such detail. He talked about problems with no technology solutions and discussed how some problems cant be solve by merely using science along, and how there are often times other factors that need to be considered to solve certain problems that could potentially affect groups of people. He defined the idea of the "traditional commons" as common land available to all for grazing animals, gathering wood etc and several other topics of commons in general were discussed which I really enjoyed learning about. He also made it clear that freedom must limited to three things. He said that freedom must be limited to regulation - top down regulations, bottom up regulations, and federalism. He also included that freedom must be limed by privatization and hybrid: cap and trade which can serve as climate markers. Finally to get a hands on approach Matt divided the class into groups in which each group was given a topic in which in theory we created all forms of regulation related to the topic and we were assigned the task of implementing a from of policies and regulations related to the issue which I found to be a great way to grasp the new concepts that we were learning about.

Week 11

We had a busy week of class this week with our resource guides being due on Thursday of this week. I am researching how the impacts of climate change impact animal populations. It is an interesting topic to me and I am curious to studying the idea of how with a changing climate and environment, how this impacts habitat and the landscape of areas throughout the world, and thus how these changes impact wildlife populations how are closely dependent on these areas and wild places as habitat to survive. We also had Troy Knight join us for class once again and he talked about some very interesting information regarding climate change. I found it very interesting to learn about topics regarding climate change from an expert such as Troy. He talked a great deal about geoengineering and I had not learned a lot about this in the past so I was interested to hear what Troy had to say about it. Troy talked about how there are two main components of geoengineering: CO2 removal and solar radiation management.  In terms of solar radiation there were several ways that Troy listed regarding how solar radiation management can be done. They are: reflectors in space, which Troy said were very hard to do, very expensive, and if the wrong amount of reflectors are installed, are very hard and expensive to remove. Also other solar radiation management methods include: stratospheric aerosols, increased cloud albedo and surface albedo: grasslands, deserts, cities, and cropland. Troy also talked about how to store carbon potentially in land sinks: forests, bio-chair, and Bio-energy, as well as ocean sink: solubility pump, ocean alkalinity, and biological pump. Troy's discussion was a great informative lecture about many issues about climate change and specifically how to limit the harm that that the sun and increased carbon in the air is causing to our environment.

RESOURCE GUIDE

Ben Rosburg

Annotated Bibliography

11/12/2015

 

@defenders. "Impacts of Climate Change." Last modified 2012-03-21, 2012. http://www.defenders.org/climate-change/impacts-climate-change.

-          This article gives very good information of climate change overall. Understanding climate change impacts is at the roots of understanding how climate change can and will impact animals so this will be of benefit on my paper.

 

@nwf. "Effects on Wildlife and Habitat - National Wildlife Federation." (2015).

-          This article from the national wildlife federation lists off several impacts on how climate change disrupts wildlife and especially how it disrupts their habitat. With a decreasing amount of habitat remaining, this puts a great deal of stress on animal populations.

 

"Arctic Climate Change: 5. How Will Animals Be Affected by Arctic Warming?". 2015. http://www.greenfacts.org/en/arctic-climate-change/l-2/5-arctic-animals.htm.

-          This website looks specifically at how animals in the artic are being affected by climate change. It has a series of links that will be of great benefit to my paper as it covers a wide array of information regarding how the artic is changing for the negative and this puts stresses on animal populations.

 

"Climate Change Effect on Animals." 2015. http://kanat.jsc.vsc.edu/student/swift/mainpage.htm.

-          This is another great link that looks at how climate change effects animal populations. This is a case study that goes in depth and looks at many different angles and factors on climate change and its impact on animals. I should study this article thoroughly and use in my paper significantly.

 

 

"Climate Change: The Effects on Ocean Animals." 2015. http://www.neaq.org/conservation_and_research/climate_change/effects_on_ocean_animals.php.

-          This is a unique article as it looks at how climate change effects animals in aquatic environments such as the oceans. It talks about how with rising temperatures globally, the water temperatures are also increasing and this once again adds stress to animal populations. Will be of value for my paper to show multiple areas of animal populations effected.

 

DeGregorio, Brett A., James D. Westervelt, Patrick J. Weatherhead, and Jinelle H. Sperry. "Indirect Effect of Climate Change: Shifts in Ratsnake Behavior Alter Intensity and Timing of Avian Nest Predation." Ecological Modelling 312 (2015): 239-46.

-          This article shows a unique perspective on climate change and its impacts on animals by looking at ratsnake behavior. This will be a way to multiple different ways that climate change impacts animals that might not be initially thought of.

 

"Effects of Climate Change | Threats | Wwf." 2015. http://www.worldwildlife.org/threats/effects-of-climate-change.

-          This article goes very in-depth on the topic of climate change and animal impacts from the world wildlife foundation. It gives a large amount of quality information on a wide variety of climate change issues related to animals. This will be a very valuable article to my paper.

 

Firn, Jennifer, Ramona Maggini, Iadine Chadès, Sam Nicol, Belinda Walters, Andy Reeson, Tara G. Martin, et al. "Priority Threat Management of Invasive Animals to Protect Biodiversity under Climate Change." Global Change Biology 21, no. 11 (2015): 3917-30.

-          This is a study that looks at a large amount of unique perspectives of climate change and invasive animals. Invasive animals may often times be an afterthought in terms of being harmed in climate change and this study address that issue.

 

Shafer, Craig L. "From Non-Static Vignettes to Unprecedented Change: The U.S. National Park System, Climate Impacts and Animal Dispersal." Environmental Science & Policy 40 (2014): 26-35.

-          In this article the US nat’l park system looks at the effects of climate change and dispersal of animal populations. It is important to look at how climate change impacts the ability of animals to live and thrive in certain areas and this article address how climate change may limit this.

 

"Species Threatened by Climate Change." 2015. http://wwf.panda.org/about_our_earth/aboutcc/problems/impacts/species/.

-          This article gives a list of species that are being impacted by climate change. In my paper it will be important to be able to give examples of animals that are being effected by climate change and this article will be of great aid for this.

 

Swim, Janet K., and Brittany Bloodhart. "Portraying the Perils to Polar Bears: The Role of Empathic and Objective Perspective-Taking toward Animals in Climate Change Communication." Environmental Communication 9, no. 4 (2015): 446-68.

-          This article looks at the classic example of the polar bear being effected by showing how climate change can make what were once perfectly able to live in an area, much more difficult to survive. This may be because it is too warm for certain animals to live in certain areas or because the climate change alters the landscape past points that can be suitable for certain animals to live.

 

US EPA, OAR, Climate Change Division. "Plants, Animals, and Ecosystems." http://www3.epa.gov/climatechange/kids/impacts/effects/ecosystems.html

-          This article is of value because it adds plants to the equation on how climate change can effect ecosystems. I want to be able to give a wide variety of information on how climate change impacts ecosystems and this article will help greatly. Climate change may limit the ability of a plant to grow that previously was a food source for a species and if a plant is no longer able to grow in an area, animals may no longer be able to survive in the area as a result.

Week 10

This week we talked a lot about challenges in climate change and what should be done to discourage climate change. We watched a very interesting video regarding climate change as well. In this movie there were several important and interesting facts and ideas about climate that were presented within this movie. An important fact that I knew occurred but was unfamiliar with the exact percentage was that tress absorb about 20% of total greenhouse gas emissions. This is crucial because without these trees, the effects and impacts of climate seen in our world would have the potential to be much worse and at much higher levels. Something that this fact advocates in my opinion is the idea  of how crucial it is to preserve our worlds forests and work extremely hard to eliminate or at least decrease the frequency and significance of clear cutting and deforestation. These processes remove a large amount of trees from a specific area in a short amount of time. A negative impact that this has is the fact that these trees are then no longer available to absorb the excess amount of carbon and other greenhouse gasses that are emitted into the area. These greenhouse gasses now are allowed to go into the atmosphere and this is a huge problem. Another interesting idea from the movie was the idea of pumping large amounts of fertilizers into the oceans in order to promote algal blooms and thus absorb large amounts of carbon. I believe that this is a very bad idea because eutrophication is a very serious problem in bodies of water and I don't believe that we should be intentionally eutrophicating lakes. It can disrupt many natural processes in bodies of water, decrease oxygen available in water, making it harder for fish to survive and many other negative processes. I believe the main and number one thing that we should do is to work towards reducing our overall consumption levels and working to lower these rates. I believe that this is the only way to successfully mitigate climate change is to first change ourselves before we can move forward to other ideas.

Week Nine

This week we had the pleasure of representatives from the sustainability office join us for our class time. I personally found it to be very interesting to hear both what is being done on campus as well as what is being attempted to be done on campus in relation to being a more "green" and sustainable community. I found it refreshing to hear about all the efforts that people are going towards being a more sustainable community. Something that I found of personal interest and something that I was unaware of was that many of the link busses are powered by propane. This is a much more sustainable option to use compared to other gasoline. My assumption was that all of the link busses would simply just be powered by diesel but this was not the case. Another interesting thing I learned about from our guest speakers was the explanation of why their are no trays at the CSB cafeteria. I had many times wondered why there would be trays at SJU but not as CSB and I found it interesting for the reason to an attempt to have us consume less. If you can only take a plate or two of food, rather than being able to pile on the food on top of a tray, in theory less food will be wasted because less food will be taken from the line in the first place. I think this is a great way to limit waste. Something else that I was unaware of that I found to be really cool was that all of the food waste that we do not eat and dispose of where we put our dirty plates goes to feed local hog populations on farms. I think that this is a brilliant idea along with several other ways that our two campus' are working to minimalize our waste products.