Sci/256 Week 1
Course Name: SCI/256
WEEK ONE:
Question #1: Provide a brief summary of the history of the environmental movement?
Answer #1: The environmental movement started around the end of the 1700’s. However, most people did not join in to or even know about the environmental movement until many decades later. You could say that there was at first a sharp increase in the awareness of the environmental problems and the environmental movement to stop these problems around the mid 1950’s. This is the time in which people began to jump on the environmentally friendly and cautious band wagon because there were several catastrophic environmental disasters that occurred during this time period as well as a large increase in the popularity of televisions and radio as well as the media as a whole. Because of the increase in American’s access to media coverage on the news on television at the time, many people were able to see as well as hear what was going on at the time. Some events that were covered by the news media included oil spills, and the effects on ocean life due to those oil spills, as well as nuclear bombs, also known as atomic bombs, being tested in the state of New Mexico. These events were not only occurring and being witnessed by the citizens of the United States, but were happening across the world and that led to many people becoming involved in the environmental movement, which today is larger than it has ever been. However, that is in part because the world continues to have oil spills and other horrible disasters at an ever increasing rate every year. …show more content…
Question #2: Explain the main point concerning exponential growth and whether it is good or bad.
Compare exponential growth to a logistic growth curve and explain how these might apply to human population growth. What promotes exponential growth? What constrains population
growth?
Answer #2: There are many problems concerning exponential growth of human life on planet earth. The main problem is a rather huge one, and it is that eventually our population will be so large that we will not have enough supplies to sustain human life on this planet. Without humans on planet earth there will be many other forms of life wiped off the face of the earth as the result of our extinction. Obviously exponential growth on planet earth is not desirable. Instead, a more balanced and extremely slow as well as steady population increase would definitely be better for all of earth’s life forms. If we had plenty of resources to last an infinite amount of time then exponential population growth would not be frowned upon by most scientists and educated human beings, but unfortunately all resources are scarce and they always will be until the end of days, so we must control our planet’s human population trend.
Question #3: Compare predictions for human population growth in developed countries versus developing countries. Why is it difficult to predict the growth of Earth’s human population?
Answer #3: First of all, the human population trend has been increasing extremely rapidly for quite some time now. One exception to that would be the majority of countries in Europe, especially Central and Eastern European countries, which have seen their population trends decline gradually as well as steadily in recent history. This European population decline has been predicted by many educated people to continue at least for the next several decades if not much longer than that. There are several countries across the globe, including the United States of America which have been seeing sharp increases in their unemployment numbers, which tyo my amazement does a have a strong correlation with the population trends of the involved countries. The United States has been predicted to see either a very small population trend increase, or else a very small population decrease over the next several decades. However, there are many parts of the globe which will have a huge impact on the environment and the planet as a whole due to their widely expected sharp and continuous population trend increases such as Asia and Central America, as well as Africa. These parts of the globe have recently had large increases in their productivity trends and therefore are expected to in turn be hit with large increases in their populations as well.
Question #4: Explain how principles of system theory apply to the Earth as a living system.
Answer #4: From what I learned during the reading of chapters one through four, I am fairly certain that the systems theory is primarily used to understand the many occurrences that are happening at all times in a related extremely detailed system. The system theory puts all these happenings into a category with entirely constantly altering variables. The systems theory can be applied to the helping in understanding our planet as a whole. The system theory helps us to be able to use one happening and relate that to another occurrence we want to learn more about. Basically, the systems theory helps us to use a control group and an experimental group and use the scientific method to find what we are searching for, or at least try to find the answer we are attempting to locate.
WEEK ONE:
Question #1: Provide a brief summary of the history of the environmental movement?
Answer #1: The environmental movement started around the end of the 1700’s. However, most people did not join in to or even know about the environmental movement until many decades later. You could say that there was at first a sharp increase in the awareness of the environmental problems and the environmental movement to stop these problems around the mid 1950’s. This is the time in which people began to jump on the environmentally friendly and cautious band wagon because there were several catastrophic environmental disasters that occurred during this time period as well as a large increase in the popularity of televisions and radio as well as the media as a whole. Because of the increase in American’s access to media coverage on the news on television at the time, many people were able to see as well as hear what was going on at the time. Some events that were covered by the news media included oil spills, and the effects on ocean life due to those oil spills, as well as nuclear bombs, also known as atomic bombs, being tested in the state of New Mexico. These events were not only occurring and being witnessed by the citizens of the United States, but were happening across the world and that led to many people becoming involved in the environmental movement, which today is larger than it has ever been. However, that is in part because the world continues to have oil spills and other horrible disasters at an ever increasing rate every year. …show more content…
Question #2: Explain the main point concerning exponential growth and whether it is good or bad.
Compare exponential growth to a logistic growth curve and explain how these might apply to human population growth. What promotes exponential growth? What constrains population
growth?
Answer #2: There are many problems concerning exponential growth of human life on planet earth. The main problem is a rather huge one, and it is that eventually our population will be so large that we will not have enough supplies to sustain human life on this planet. Without humans on planet earth there will be many other forms of life wiped off the face of the earth as the result of our extinction. Obviously exponential growth on planet earth is not desirable. Instead, a more balanced and extremely slow as well as steady population increase would definitely be better for all of earth’s life forms. If we had plenty of resources to last an infinite amount of time then exponential population growth would not be frowned upon by most scientists and educated human beings, but unfortunately all resources are scarce and they always will be until the end of days, so we must control our planet’s human population trend.
Question #3: Compare predictions for human population growth in developed countries versus developing countries. Why is it difficult to predict the growth of Earth’s human population?
Answer #3: First of all, the human population trend has been increasing extremely rapidly for quite some time now. One exception to that would be the majority of countries in Europe, especially Central and Eastern European countries, which have seen their population trends decline gradually as well as steadily in recent history. This European population decline has been predicted by many educated people to continue at least for the next several decades if not much longer than that. There are several countries across the globe, including the United States of America which have been seeing sharp increases in their unemployment numbers, which tyo my amazement does a have a strong correlation with the population trends of the involved countries. The United States has been predicted to see either a very small population trend increase, or else a very small population decrease over the next several decades. However, there are many parts of the globe which will have a huge impact on the environment and the planet as a whole due to their widely expected sharp and continuous population trend increases such as Asia and Central America, as well as Africa. These parts of the globe have recently had large increases in their productivity trends and therefore are expected to in turn be hit with large increases in their populations as well.
Question #4: Explain how principles of system theory apply to the Earth as a living system.
Answer #4: From what I learned during the reading of chapters one through four, I am fairly certain that the systems theory is primarily used to understand the many occurrences that are happening at all times in a related extremely detailed system. The system theory puts all these happenings into a category with entirely constantly altering variables. The systems theory can be applied to the helping in understanding our planet as a whole. The system theory helps us to be able to use one happening and relate that to another occurrence we want to learn more about. Basically, the systems theory helps us to use a control group and an experimental group and use the scientific method to find what we are searching for, or at least try to find the answer we are attempting to locate.