Scientist skeptical of global warming

In an article by CNN, recently published Oct 24, 2007, there is a reference to a scientist by the name of Dr. Patrick Michael's who is skeptical of the severity of global warming on Greenland's' ice sheet; indirectly this assumes that he is also skeptical of how damaging anthropogenic sources of carbon are on the global warming trend. Another researcher by the name of Willie Soon (Bio and selected works) is a climate change "skeptic" as well. He works for the Harvard Smithsonian Center in Astrophysics, and has for some years criticized the largely agreed upon anthropogenic origins of global warming. In an article by NewScienitst it is noted that Soon receives funding for his research from Exxon-Mobil, which is analogous to Professor Deese's comment on cancer research and the tobacco industry in the late twentieth century. I recommend any one who is interested in this topic of science, skeptics, and global warming see this website.

TVA

This movie is reminiscent of the nuclear fallout film we watched in class. While it is long, its message centers on how area famers in the 1930's were convinced of the benefits they could enjoy from technology. I can't find the button to make a hyperlink.

Duck, and Cover

I think Bert is a stupid name for a turtle, but he has a valid message, so we should all listen. We can all learn from this government propaganda turtle.

Death to Weeds (1947)

This film acts as propaganda by the Dow Chemical Company for the safe use of 2,4-Dow herbicides, highlighting the effectiveness of the herbicides and the ease of application. It also suggests that any golf course (obviously teeming with human activity) would greatly benefit from 2,4-D spraying. Rachel Carson wrote of the dangers of herbicide use in Silent Spring, and the Rachel Carson Council Inc. website has cited surprisingly recent complaints concerning the detrimental affects of 2,4-D specifically.

"The Animal Poison Control Center (APCC) received approximately 100 calls during the late 1980s on adverse effects in dogs associated with the phenoxy herbicide 2,4-D (Beasley, V.R. & H. Trammel)...In humans, symptoms of 2,4-D poisoning can be coughing, burning, dizziness, temporary loss of muscle coordination, fatigue, and weakness with or without nausea (Kamrin, M.A.), as well as vomiting, and severe, or migraine headache (personal communication, Haugen, C.)" (Rachel Carson Council Website).

Rain for the Earth Part I (1937)

This film produced by the U.S. Federal Works Agency in 1937 gives an account of the effects of the Dust Bowl in the American Great Plains; it gives a face to the name and history of this American environmental disaster.

"Atomic Energy: A Force for Good"

This film was produced by the Christophers in 1955 to promote atomic energy. Although the Christophers were a lay Catholic society that had been established just a decade earlier, they had a remarkable budget and resources to make this film. Produced by Jack Denove, whose credits included TV's Cavalcade of America, the film was written by bestselling author Eugene Vale, directed by Robert Stevenson, and starred Paul Young as the skeptical rancher who learns to embrace the Atomic Energy Commission's plan to construct a nuclear facility for "producing fissionable materials" in his small western town.

they pave paradise, they put up a parking lot!

as long as it wasn't on farmland, pinchot probably wouldn't have cared!

Rachel Carson

Here is a concise bio of Rachel Carson to supplement this week's reading.

A New Essay from Ted Nordhaus and Michael Shellenberger

It costs nothing to log on and read this essay, though you may have to view a short ad. Here's a short excerpt:

Stop your sobbing

Doomsayers like Al Gore and Jared Diamond aren't doing the environment much good. To save the earth, we need to stop blaming and start celebrating ourselves.

By Ted Nordhaus and Michael Shellenberger

Oct. 09, 2007 | Rachel Carson opened "Silent Spring," her 1962 polemic against chemical pesticides in general and DDT in particular, with a terrible prophecy: "Man has lost the capacity to foresee and to forestall. He will end by destroying the earth."

"Silent Spring" set the template for nearly a half century of environment writing: wrap the latest scientific research about an ecological calamity in a tragic narrative that conjures nostalgia for Nature while prophesying ever worse disasters to come unless human societies repent for their sins against Nature and work for a return to a harmonious relationship with the natural world.

Eco-tragedies are premised on the notion that humankind's survival depends on understanding that ecological crises are a consequence of human intrusions on Nature, and that humans must let go of their consumer, religious, and ideological fantasies and recognize where their true self-interest lies.

Grounded in a tradition of eco-tragedy begun by Carson and motivated by the lack of progress on the ecological crisis, environmental writers have produced a flood of high-profile books that take the tragic narrative of humankind's fall from Nature to new heights: Sir Martin Rees's 2003 "Our Final Hour," Richard Posner's 2004 "Catastrophe," Paul and Anne Ehrlich's 2004 "One with Nineveh," James Kunstler's 2005 "The Long Emergency," James Lovelock's 2006 "The Revenge of Gaia," and Al Gore's 2006 "An Inconvenient Truth," to name just a few.

For the most part, these environmentalist cautionary tales have had the opposite of their intended effect, provoking fatalism, conservatism, and survivalism among readers and the lay public, not the rational embrace of environmental policies. Constantly surprised and angered when people fail to behave as environmentalists would like them to, environment writers complain that the public is irrational, in denial, or just plain foolish. They presume that the failure of the public to heed their warnings says something meaningful about human nature itself, attributing humanity's disregard for Nature to desires like the lust for power and concluding that, in the end, we are all little more than reactive apes, insufficiently evolved to take the long view and understand the complexity and interconnectedness of the natural systems on which we depend.

Kunstler begins "The Long Emergency" by quoting Carl Jung as saying, "People cannot stand too much reality." In fact, it was T.S. Eliot, not Jung, who said "Humankind cannot bear very much reality." But the attitude of such doomsayers recalls something Jung actually did say: "If one does not understand a person, one tends to regard him as a fool."

Environmental tales of tragedy begin with Nature in harmony and almost always end in a quasi-authoritarian politics. Eco-tragic narratives diagnose human desire, aspiration, and striving to overcome the constraints of our world as illnesses to be cured or sins to be punished. They aim to short-circuit democratic values by establishing Nature as it is understood and interpreted by scientists as the ultimate authority that human societies must obey. And they insist that humanity's future is a zero-sum proposition -- that there is only so much prosperity, material comfort, and modernity to go around. The story told by these eco-tragedies is not that humankind cannot stand too much reality but rather that Nature cannot stand too much humanity.

Carson begins "Silent Spring" by narrating a "Fable for Tomorrow," describing a bucolic American town "where all life seemed to live in harmony with its surroundings." She imagines Nature to be something essentially harmonious and in balance. But long before there were humans, volcanoes erupted, asteroids hit Earth, and great extinctions occurred. Throughout the animal kingdom there is murder and gang rape, even among the much beloved and anthropomorphized dolphin. Indigenous peoples, for their part, cleared forests, set massive fires, and overhunted, massively altering their environments. They engaged in agriculture, war, cannibalism, and torture.

To imagine Nature as essentially harmonious is to ignore the obvious and overwhelming evidence of Nature's disharmony. To posit that human societies should model themselves after living systems that are characterized as Nature, as environmentalists often do, begs the question: which living systems? Even if the Earth heats up to such an extent that every last vestige of humankind disappears, there may still exist living systems, just not ones that can sustain us. ...

FOX News on Global Warming

This report describes global warming as a positive trend, because it will make arctic oil reserves more accessible. To provide some relevant background information, Brave New Films produced this retrospective on FOX coverage of this issue.

Environmental History Movies

Here is a website address for a listing of movies related to environmental history. It is provided by the history cooperative; it is journal article from the journal Environmental History.

http://www.historycooperative.org/journals/eh/12.2/marson.html

Arctic Sea Ice: 2003 to 2007

This interactive map tracks rapid changes in the Arctic over the previous four years. Also, here is a website from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign dedicated to monitoring changes in the cryosphere.

reminder

The book (or film) review is due during our specially scheduled class meeting on Friday, Oct. 5th. It should be 3-5 pages, or approx. 750 to 1250 words. As you critique your subject, you are encouraged to describe your personal response to it (the use of "I" is o.k. here) and to assess its relationship to some of the broader trends in the history of U.S. Environmentalism that we've surveyed class discussions and readings.