The beginning to the Cognitive Dissonance article when it describes the way the joggers who stretched all the time before they ran found out that stretching does not doing anything for them they came back saying that it was a lie just the scientist could have a “finding.” This reminded me of the summer before my Junior year in high school when I had to read “A State of Fear” by Michael Crichton and watch “The Inconvenient Truth” done by Al Gore for my AP Biology class I was to take. Both men were on opposite sides on the issue of Global Warming, we had to write an essay stating which man we sided with and why we chose this side. Most of the entire class sided with Michael Crichton. At the end of his book he had many charts and graphs that had not skipped dates or skewed information such as Al Gore’s presentation. He also had all of his resources listed which we were allowed to look up and see what the article was truly about. Cognitive Dissonance to me sounds like when a person finds out a startling piece of information like stretching before running does not prevent you from future injuries, they can either take it in three ways which is accept it and change accordingly, change one of your cognitions or stay and add to the consonant cognitions. When watching these videos every person has this option to change and help out our economy, environment, and way of living. We should act and make a change but unfortunately not everyone feels the same way and they will continue going about their business as if nothing will happen, nothing will go wrong. 

If the world were to change by three degrees it does not seem as that would do too much to the way we live today but after watching the video Six Degrees Could Change the World by National Geographic I know that this is not true. We are already seeing affects of this global change and it is definitely not for the better of human kind. The occurrences of bushfires in Australia are increasing as well as spreading to new areas interfering with citizens. The mid West in the United States will change into desert land as if it were the 1930’s all over again with the giant dust storms. England on the other hand is somewhat benefitting from this change well at least for now. Wine country is helping the citizens of England to make a living and to succeed in this mysterious time.  Sled dogs are now being abandoned in Greenland because now it is possible to get around the land with other means of transportation and sled dogs are no longer needed for transportation. It was shocking to hear that with a decrease of six degrees the world experienced an ice age. The number six does not seem to be that big of a number but yet it is very threatening. What if the world experienced a global heat wave like the heat wave that hit France in 2003? To hear that multiple of thousand people died year after year from the heat wave and all of the other weird phenomenon that seems to be occurring is very upsetting. To know that if we stay down this same road we will ruin any hope we have for a future. We need to begin and promote a change that will slow down this temperature rise for another thousand years.  

A Tale of Two Farms --- Jared Diamond

Stability is probably one of the most important aspects to a successful society. If a society was not stable and instead out of sync with one another it would be complete chaos. This in turn would cause some sort of collapse. In Jared Diamond’s excerpt “A Tale of Two Farms” he describes that a society’s collapse can be linked to its people’s unintentional ecological suicide which has been changed into one word Ecocide. When Diamond refers to a society’s collapse he is referring to “a drastic decrease in human population size and / or political / economic / social complexity, over a considerable area, for an extended time.” Ecocide is then broken up into eight smaller categories: deforestation and habitat destruction, soil problems, water management problems, overhunting, overfishing, effects of introduced species on native species, human population growth, and increased per-capita impact of people. By reading just this part of the excerpt it seems as though it can relate to Jane Goodall’s excerpt “Healing Earth’s Scars: It’s Never Too Late” which was about restoring land that was once destroyed by human use. We build a population up to the point where it is just way too much for a specific area to handle and then we move on to a new area forgetting about the land we were previously inhabiting. This goes along with Diamond’s excerpt when he wrote about the builders abandoning the structures they created. When humans migrate to areas where humans have never been before and they begin to change the environment around them and then the entire ecosystem they are in begins to form a chain reaction slowly allowing the society in the future to either become successful or failure.  

"Healing Earth’s Scars: It’s Never Too Late" --- Jane Goodall, Gail Hudson, Thane Maynard

Human beings are very wasteful people. We do not seem to care about what our effects have on our land. We build buildings and let them rot and deteriorate until nothing is left and instead of restoring the area and bringing it back to the way it used to look before we conquered the land we leave and forget we were ever there. We leave scars on the land very well knowing the land shall never be the way it was before when it was created.

                Many rivers all over the world are polluted to the point that they are no longer useful as drinking and irrigation water.  Projects to restore the rivers bring back the water quality only half of what it used to be to the point that fish return to the areas but still not to the point that we can use to drink and water our crops.

Unfortunately there are only a select few who care to preserve and restore the land with the grass and plants it once had. They use their own money sweat and labor because no one seems to care as much as they do to sponsor or fund the projects they have in mind. It is a shame that we have turned out be like this. We are very industrialized and live solely in our mini concrete jungles and in our selfish bodies to not care what we are doing to the rest of the world. I give so much appreciation and credit to those who go out of their way to create and landscape beautiful valleys and forests to replenish the earth and the environments around them. 

“What Is Biodiversity and Why Is It So Important?” --- Vandana Shiva

Biodiversity is what makes every plant and animal different. It is used to describe all of the organisms in a specific area. In this case the entire world was taken into context. The world’s organisms have recently in the past one hundred years have become more genetically uniform and have caused a diverse amount problems for their local environments. Organisms have become more prone to disease and pests due to their recent domestication and have not been able to build up a resistance to outside forces.  They never had the chance to grow immune to the outside forces because of the farming techniques that are now used such as pesticides and manufactured fertilizers.

                Biodiversity has also become an economic issue for the poor and less fortunate. Resources that were once accessible to them are slowly yet drastically disappearing. It is a mean of livelihood in which the poor no longer have access to any means of production to live off of any more.  

                The amount of nutrients that used to be fixed and recycled are not as great as they used to and now the number one emitted gas is CO2 in which is changing our global climate and become a danger for all living organisms.

                The variety of different species is diminishing according to the reading in 1897 the US Department of Agriculture recorded 275 variety of apples and now there are less than a dozen sold. This is also so with the variety of commercialized agriculturally farmed crops. The crops that are grown are based on the use of the consumers and therefore not a whole variety of different crops are produced.

                Biodiversity is a very important factor to life on Earth because each individual plant and each individual animal produces something that helps another to survive and flourish such as the salmon, bear, and tree food-web example given in the reading. This world is one big food web and when too many links start to go missing disaster and unknown occurrences begin to happen.   

Strange Days on Earth

             It has been pondered why the lush green forests and the vibrant colors of the corals have been slowly yet surely coming to a disappearance. The number one culprit of this impact is due to the human impact on these environments.  After watching the National Geographic Strange Days on Planet Earth videos I gained knowledge on why and how much human impact has on the issue and found out about some of the experiments some researchers are trying to do to replenish the areas that are and were affected.

Lake Guri located in Venezuela used to be covered and surrounded by acres and acres of lush green trees where howler monkeys sat overlooking their territory and the massive felines who roamed the lower regions sneaking up on their prey. Now the area is covered in water and only little islands of what was before remain. The major predators in the region have left and leaving the prey in a paranoid state. The howler monkeys that remain have become anti social due to the dense population in the smaller areas. The young do not play and the adults no longer groom one another like they used to do.     

In the United States very own Yellowstone National Park the question that lies here is why are all the trees disappearing and why is the river acting differently than it used to? Scientist have done core sampling on the aspen trees to find how many have regenerated in recent years to find out that none of the trees have regenerated since the 1930s. Another event that happened in this time was that the last wolf known in Yellowstone was shot for economic use. Since recent years no wolf has touched the land. Researchers caught and tagged wolves from Canada and brought them down to release them in the park. The wolves made packs and began to hunt the elk. When a wolf kills it sends a chain reaction and many come to fest on the sacrifice after the wolf has had its choice of food. It was then noticed that with more elk hunts the willow began to flush which brought beavers back to building because the willow gave them the supplies they needed. Beaver dams then allow more water to flow through and provide more nutrients to the area. So far this experiment has been led in the right direction in regards to reviving the area.

Corals have been dying in the tropic regions of Jamaica due to the thick build up of algae found covering them. This issue is caused by the over fishing going on in the area and when one large predator goes the fishermen take whatever they can get and sell leaving the corals unprotected by the urchins that covered them like a disease and suffocating them.

In Ghana, Africa the large predators that roamed the land such as lions and elephants are no longer to be found. What is found is large massive amounts of aggressive baboons. One scientist has come to link this problem to fishing as well. When fish is in high supply it is cheap and therefore no or little poaching is involved but when fish is scarce there is an increase in poaching and more dried meat is bought at the local markets.

It is hard to hear about these issues and even harder to see them and what they are doing to the surrounding environment. I noticed through watching these videos that it is mostly taken place in third world countries with the exception of Yellowstone. With fisheries departing the US and collecting fish anywhere they can to supply are dinner tables with exotic and delicious fish we do not see firsthand the effects of what this is doing and soon we will not have the ability to do so. If this keeps up these days will no longer seem strange and we will probably turn into the howler monkeys by becoming anti social and only looking out for us instead of others. The days will become the Dark Days of Planet Earth where Man is the last to exist because they ate and destroyed everything else.  

Sense of Place

                I believe I have a strong connection to nature, more specifically when it comes to the humid, wet, and stormy weather that sunny Florida seems to attract. It rains and storms quite often here and throughout the years I have gained a sense of appreciation and admiration for the wet weather. Although others may be turned away from the storms, I however find an odd attraction to them. I find myself admiring the rain, thunder and lightning, even the smell of refreshing vapors after a spring storm has grabbed my attention. During harsh storms as a young girl I would find myself running to my mother for comfort, only to find nothing but an empty bed. She would be out on our front porch watching the storm as it passed overhead. “There’s nothing to be afraid of Danielle, it’s only a thunderstorm,” She would tell me. I remember one night after being awoken during a storm I walked out onto the front porch to find my Mom counting after a bright flash cracked through the sky. “Why are you counting?” I asked “It’s how you can tell how far away that lightning bolt struck.” She encouraged me to come outside and watch a storm by myself. “Listen to the rain, and if you’re ever scared just breathe deep and count in between the flashes and bangs.” I attribute this specific memory to my future fascination to thunderstorms and their ability to clear and cleanse the lands they pass over. I feel that thunderstorms have an overlooked beauty in this world. I believe that by having this experience and learning from it that I can apply these concepts to other aspects of nature.