Bob Doyle, Columnist
The environment has been a political battleground in the last few years; as a result there has been more confusion than ever among Americans about what should or shouldn’t be done.
The well known skeptics have gotten much attention through their newspaper columns, television and radio shows where selected stories, fear of government, name calling, ridicule and personal attacks are their main mode of operation.
Scientists and those with a holistic view of the environment present their views in books, specials on public broadcasting television, a few documentaries on DVDs, some cable channels specials and magazine articles to get their ideas across using evidence and reasoning. (These views have quite a smaller audience than the ‘entertainers’ mentioned above, who quickly label anything contrary to their views as muddled, wishy-washy thinking.)
Scientists are disadvantaged in the popular media as they have been trained to state their findings carefully while the ‘entertainers’ on the other side are totally certain of their beliefs and express no reservations.
There are two different ways of dealing with the environment that avoid irrational emoting and misinformation. The environmental history approach is to consider how the environment has developed in two stages:
Stage one, from the origin of the Earth billions of years ago to the onset of humans many thousands of years ago; Stage two, our human impact on the environment mainly due to agriculture and industrialization. Stage two is a small fraction of the time that humans have dwelt on the Earth. We are the only species in Earth’s history that has hugely reshaped the environment for our own needs.
There are some excellent books in this vein. For a new course that I will be teaching next spring at Frostburg State, I have selected “Big History” by Cynthia Stokes Brown, A New Press Paperback, 2007.
This book won the American Book Award. The early chapters cover the Earth’s origin, the development of life on Earth and the emergence of one human species. Following chapters treat hunter-gathering, early agriculture and the early cities.
Then follows the African-Eurasian trade network, the early American civilizations and increasing trade across the three joined continents. Soon after the colonization of the Americas came Industrialization and now the rapid drawing down of resources (especially water and fossil fuels) all over the world.
Our prospects and future possibilities will be continued with a second paperback text, “Plan B, Version 4.0” by Lester Brown, (no relation to Cynthia Brown), the President of the Earth Policy Institute and a winner of the United Nation’s Environment Prize. “Plan B, 4.0” is a Norton 2009 paperback. (Plan A is business as usual, which the ‘entertainers’ champion.) This new course is “Civilization at the Crossroads: Sustainability or Collapse?” one of the Junior level Interdisciplinary courses.
The other rational approach to dealing with the environment is to consider the key laws of nature and how they apply to the environment.
Last year, “The Physics of the Environment” by A.W. Brinkman was published by the Imperial College Press. Dr. Brinkman teaches an environmental honors course at Dunham University in Great Britain. This text act as a bridge to allow students in different areas of natural science to understand the basic physical principles that govern the Earth’s biosphere (layer of life).
The first major area is the structure and dynamics of the atmosphere which leads into a treatment of global climate. Following is a review of the sun’s ultraviolet radiation and the thinning of the ozone shield (to absorb this radiation).
Brinkman treats heat transfer, especially for trapping solar radiation in homes and reducing heat loss though walls and windows. The realities of fossil fuel power generation are next developed. Nuclear fission power generation, the varieties of reactors, nuclear safety and waste products are examined.
The renewable energy section starts with photovoltaic cells, solar thermal power, wind power, biomass power and geothermal energy. The transportation chapter proceeds from the internal combustion engine, to hydrogen powered vehicle and all electric vehicles. The last significant area treated is the transport and diffusion of pollution through the atmosphere and groundwater.
I will be teaching a special topics in physics that uses “Physics of the Environment” as our main text this spring. I hope to eventually have this course approved as a regular junior level elective course for our physics and engineering students and other science majors and offered each year.
Continuing at the Frostburg State Planetarium today is “Sky Gazing with Telescopes,” offered free to the public at 4 p.m. and 7 p.m. in Tawes 302. On display are telescopes approved for beginners by the International Year of Astronomy (IYA 2009).
It has been 400 years since Galileo turned his telescope on the heavens and documented his great discoveries (moon like shapes of Venus, the moons of Jupiter, and the moon’s craters).
Tawes Hall faces the Compton Science Center and is north of the Clock Tower.
Bob Doyle’s phone number is (301) 687-7799 and his email is rdoyle@frostburg.edu .
