Author Archives: David Mandil

Posts by David Mandil

Fracking from the point of view of the gas companies

Posted on December 4, 2012 by David Mandil

As someone representing the Gas companies I have to say that although Hydraulic Fracking has some negative effects to the water supply for certain people, all in all it is more beneficial to the environment and the world than detrimental.  Fracking is helpful to the US in both an economic standpoint as well as an environmental standpoint.

Regarding the economic standpoint, it created an influence in the price of gases and it also creates jobs as well. President Obama said that he believes in the near future, fracking could provide about six hundred thousand jobs to citizens of the United States. Fracking increased gas reserves in the US over the past seven years and this influx of natural gas caused the price of gas to be a third the price of oil in the US. Furthermore, at this rate the US will have a surplus of gas and they will be able to sell the extra gas to Europe and Asia, which will then lower the price of gas there and stimulate global economy.

Natural gas caused by fracking also has a positive effect on the environment as a whole, in the US alone Carbon Dioxide emissions decreased by almost 15% which is good for the global environment because it is limiting the amount of greenhouse gases which is a step in the right direction regarding climate change. Also, quite surprisingly, natural gas has more of an effect on the reducing of megatonnes of Carbon dioxide, it even prevents more than solar panels and wind turbines.

However, there is a problem with this point of view regarding how fracking has detrimental effects on the water supply. However, gas companies are saying that the wells are encased in cement and it is seems unlikely that the chemicals travel through the casing since it is supposed to be durable especially since it has to endure the pressure from the fracking. So, to conclude fracking is helpful for the economic as well as the environmental factor of the US and the wells’ casings should protect the water supply from harmful chemicals.

Works Cited:

Clarke, Chad. 2012. Fracking Politics: A case study of Policy in New York and Pennsylvania from 2008-2011. Colorado State University.

Pierce, Richard. Natural Gas Fracking Addresses All of Our Major Problems. George Washington University Law School.

Lomborg, Bjørn. 2012. A Fracking Good Story. Project-Syndicate. September 13.

Questions for Marris

Posted on October 30, 2012 by David Mandil

1) I know it sounds a little sci-fi but if humans end up killing themselves with nuclear wars or whatever what do you think will end up happening to nature? Will nature just take over or will the radiation be too much for nature and destroy it?

2) If money wasn’t a problem which of the two policies that you brought up in the book (Rewilding or Designer Ecosystems) do you think would better the environment?

3) At what point do you think (if this point exists) should we stop caring about a certain type of invasive species and just let it do what it wants?

4) Is “The Rambunctious Garden” your favorite topic in Urban Ecology or are there other topics that interest you more? And if this isn’t your favorite topic then why’d you write about “The Rambunctious Garden”?

Marris final chapter… The seven goals

Posted on October 5, 2012 by David Mandil

Marris starts off the last chapter by saying that when dealing with the preservation or care of nature no single goal will work out in every possible scenario. So, this means that for every piece of land out there we have to come together and create a common set of goals to help preserve it. Lucky for us she provides us with some sort of basis in the form of seven goals to go about creating a set of common goals amongst ourselves.

The first goal she mentions is, to protect the right of other species. I like the analogy she gave here about all of us species being a community it might be a little cliché but it kind of reminded me of the lion king and how every living thing has a purpose in the circle of life. Furthermore the quote she put there from Aldo Leopold fits in very well with this idea, “When we see land as a community to which we belong, we may begin to use it with love and respect” This basically means that people usually take care of their communities in a certain manner and treating the community with a certain degree of dedication and care is important for the survival of the community.

The second goal she mentions, in my opinion isn’t really a goal it’s more about kissing up to the people. This means that try and preserve certain species that people care about like Dolphins, Polar Bears, Tigers or Panda Bears, because if people like them they wont want to destroy them. Another reason that Ecologists say these animals have importance is that ecologists believe them to have a great effect on how the ecosystem works. Furthermore if the animal lives in a large amount of area it might help get people to agree to protect the whole area and not just the species.

The third goal that she mentions is the one of slowing the rate of extinctions. So, if a certain species is not doing too well for whatever reason you should keep some of the species elsewhere like a zoo. (She used in her example amphibians) Now she brought a very big problem with this goal in that lets say the environment changes so much that the amphibians can no longer survive there, should they forever be in the zoo? She brought a good point by saying keeping the amphibians in a box to save amphibian diversity is a lot like keeping Incan art in a museum to preserve their culture. But, I feel like her response is a good answer, we may not be able to save ecosystems, but at least we could save species.

The fourth goal is to preserve genetic diversity for example, even though a polar bear may be closely related to a brown bear even more so than other brown bears, this does not mean we should let it go extinct. So, while species diversity is important Genetic diversity is just as important. The quote she brings from Nick Isaac sums it up pretty well, “You are in a spaceship leaving Earth with three paintings. Do you take three Rembrandts, or do you take one Rembrandt, one Leonardo and one Picasso?”

The fifth goal is to preserve biodiversity, you don’t just want to save every species and have them in zoos on display. The point is for them to be able to exist in nature in the way that they evolved to exist.

The sixth goal is to maximize ecosystem services in other words the grass is making oxygen for us for free. Marris then proposes that in that case we should just take the plant that does this the best and to just use that one. An answer Marris gave to this is that there is existence value, where knowing that other species exists has value.

The Seventh goal and in my opinion, the most important is how nature is aesthetically pleasing to us, it gives us a sense of relaxation and every once in a while people use nature to get away from it all and refresh themselves, therefore we should preserve it.

Marris ends off by saying one goal isn’t going to cut it in every situation and sometimes your going to have to put in more effort to preserve the land. But, she also mentions how “we have forever altered the Earth, and so now we cannot abandon it to a random fate. It is our duty to manage it.”

Marris Chapter 8&9

Posted on October 5, 2012 by David Mandil

When I was reading chapter eight and chapter nine the main thing I understood from it is how Marris is trying to take us into a new path in dealing with nature, more specifically one that involves the future of nature. The first thing I found important while I was doing the reading is this concept that Marris introduced to me known as the Designer Ecosystem. For one thing it caught me off guard because earlier in her book she talked about the concept of Rewilding and this is the exact opposite. Rewilding is a way of reverting nature from how it is now to its former pristine form. Basically this means that conservationists would take a piece of land and try to return it to how it was a few thousand years ago before the influence of man took hold. Designer Ecosystems from what I understood is a way of organizing the ecosystem around a certain place or in a certain manner that will be beneficial in some way. One example that Marris provides is how they are fixing certain parts of the ecosystem to remove Nitrogen from the water. To be more specific she explains how in one place they tried to design a stream but after adding a certain amount of boulders into the ecosystem she says herself it “looks more like a wet land than a stream”. But, to emphasize her point she is showing how by manipulating the ecosystem it can prove to be beneficial. Furthermore, in my opinion this is a much better approach to conservation than rewilding. For one thing even without human interaction nature would have changed, so reverting the ecosystem to how it ‘used to be’ doesn’t make sense, I mean some of the changes would have occurred without our interference, so this form of conservation whereby we design the ecosystem to have a beneficial purpose seems to make more sense. I mean why try and fix a broken past, when instead we could look towards a better future. As for chapter nine again in my opinion she is telling us to watch for the future. The way she does this could clearly be seen in the beginning of the chapter when she brings a story about when she was kayaking in a river in Seattle, Washington and she witnessed a Salmon do an impressive jump a few feet from her kayak. She then proceeds to try and make us guess where she was; she starts off by asking us to guess if she was in the Sol Duc River or even if she was in a rainforest in British Columbia. Then she juxtaposes those two by saying she witnessed this in the middle of Seattle. In my opinion she is showing us how nature is everywhere, like in the heart of a city and since the title of the chapter is called “Conservation Everywhere” she is telling us to conserve all the nature, literally everywhere. So to reiterate my initial claim I truly believe in these two chapters where Marris is trying to tell us to care for the future of nature.

Marris Chapter Six and Seven

Posted on September 27, 2012 by David Mandil

The first thing which I understood from reading chapters six and seven in, “Rambunctious Garden: Saving Nature in a Post Wild World” is how Marris wants to elaborate on when a species is introduced to an environment the species can either be an invasive species or an exotic species. Furthermore the introduction of species into a new environment is the main cause of modern species extinction. Although they may be the leading cause of modern extinction, invasive species tend to lead to an increase in the local biodiversity, while also causing a decrease in the global biodiversity. The main thing that one has to think about when talking about introducing species to an environment is how there were natural filters that have to be kept in mind. The first filter which is what humans bypass when they add a new species into the environment is the Geographical filter. This filter refers to Rivers or Oceans, in other words something thats preventing that Species X from moving from Location A to Location B. The next filter is the survivability filter, in other words can the species survive in the environment it has been placed in, is the temperature too hot? The third filter is the competition filter, in other words can it adapt well to this environment or will the native species just be too much competition for the new species to handle.

Regarding the case of exotic species, this is what normally occurs when a species is introduced to an environment. Basically what this means is that the species will live in the environment and no drastic changes will occur to the environment. It will just live peacefully in the environment. In fact it might live so well that in some cases they may just be surrogates for old species which may have previously gone extinct.

However, invasive species are the ones that everyone hears about. This is when a species is introduced and it leads to great changes in the environment. For one thing the invasive species tend to have a faster growth rate and a higher fertility rate. This allows them to reproduce faster and thereby increase their population exponentially. Furthermore they are also used to having to compete so they’re good at it. Also, these new species don’t have any of their predators around to hinder there growth and if they are predators themselves the native population doesn’t know that they should fear this new species, not at first anyway.

Marris brings an example regarding brown tree snakes as an invasive species, she says “The brown tree snake, native to Australia and nearby countries, has killed off ten of twelve native forest-dwelling birds on the island of Guam after arriving as a stowaway in cargo ships.” She is clearly showing here how it had a huge negative effect on the environment. However, she also provides us with an example of where invasive species helped the environment such as on Rodrigues Island where two species of birds and a species of bat were dying off due to deforestation. But, they replanted the forest with an invasive tree that helped these species avoid extinction. In fact, if the trees they had planted were native they would have grown too slow to save these species, so here the invasive species played a beneficial role in helping the environment.

So, regarding invasive species they are not always bad for the environment, however due to certain prejudices that people have about ‘invasive species’ they are often not looked at with such a positive outlook. So, when it comes down to it, you really just have to see if the new species is hurting the environment, helping the environment or not effecting the environment. The problem with this view however is that if it does end up hurting the environment, it might be too late to do something about it.

Stalter and NYC HighLine

Posted on September 26, 2012 by David Mandil

The last time I was forced to go to the High Line was last year for my first Macaulay seminar class and I didn’t think too much of it. Now, a year later I return again to this place because of my Macaulay seminar class and I still don’t think too much of it.

However, I’d be lying if I said that I don’t appreciate it. I mean honestly it is a nice place to take a walk and admire the view. In fact, when I used to go to the Highline it was because of the view and how nice it looks. In all honesty, I have to thank the Rail banking program since because of their determination the highline wasn’t destroyed.

According to what I understood from the Stalter paper the primary succession (which according to his paper is initiated on sites where vegetation has not existed previously) that occurred here was different than in other places and for that reason the environment developed differently.

The main cause for the environment developing differently was human involvement (even though it was minimal).Some human involvement includes trash disposal (littering), the inadvertent invasion of species and pollution. By pollution I’m referring to the fact that there was an excess of sulfur dioxide in the environment, which then hindered the growth of lichens.

 

One thing I have to say which surprised me the most from this paper was how of all the parks they did research in the New York Highline was the park with the most diverse amount of species. Some of the parks where this research was conducted include, Ellis Island, Liberty Island, Hoffman Island (also known as Swinburn Island) and Bayswater State Park. In all honesty, I expected either Ellis Island or Liberty Island to have more species richness. So, even though Ellis Island and Bayswater State Park have more Species, The New York City Highline still has the most species richness with 38.8 species per ten thousand square meters (hectares).

 

Anyway, when I went to the Highline with Isadore and a few other classmates we happened to come across on the way there we were told to look around for pollinators. But, in all honesty most of what I was able to get on camera were bumblebees or honeybees (at least I think they were those type of bees I’m no zoologist and I’m not the greatest at differentiating bees.) Furthermore, there were also other types of insects like flies and other types of insects, which I couldn’t identify but they were insistent on not letting me get them on photo.

9-13 Readings

Posted on September 12, 2012 by David Mandil

Assisted Migration is basically an idea that developed mainly because of Global Warming. Since the world is gradually increasing in temperature eventually some animals and plants are going to die out because of the heat. Therefore some scientists proposed the idea of assisted migration, which says that since the Earth is going to get too hot for some species to survive let us now move them to a new habitat whereby even though the Earth is going to get hotter, they might have a chance to survive.

One example of such a species is the pikas. The pika is a small animal that lives on the west side of the United States and it is a herbivore which means it mainly eats all types of plants including grasses, shrubs, mosses, etc. The pika is one type of species, which as previously mentioned would not be able to survive in its current habitat if the heat were to rise; to be specific the pikas can’t last longer than a few hours in seventy eight degrees Fahrenheit, after that they will just curl up and die. In order for them to escape the heat they have to climb higher up the mountain. However, the problem with that is that some of the pikas are already at the peaks of their mountains and in order for them to get to the next mountain they’d first have to climb down this mountain and the trip of getting from their current mountain to the next one would most likely kill them. So here is a perfect scenario where a person could be of assistance to nature and take the pikas over to the next mountain or to a habitat better suited for their requirements for life. Another example of species that would be hurt by the raise in temperature would be the beeches down in Florida. Beeches don’t like temperatures higher than one hundred degrees and if the temperatures go any higher it wont be good for these trees and some of them might die.

I personally think that assisted migration is a bad idea for a few reasons. For one thing bureaucratically it doesn’t seem like something that’s feasible, since as Marris mentions, “Will squeamish scientists hang back while plants and animals (though probably fewer animals, as they are harder to mail and sometimes illegal to transport) are moved wholesale?   Or will scientists convince governments to regulate this sort of thing?” So, in other words how will scientists go about doing this will they do it on their own or ask the government for help? Furthermore logistically it doesn’t seem to make sense I mean are we supposed to save every species that will be affected by global warming and if not what species should be saved over another? Furthermore human beings are also going to be affected by global warming so lets help our own kind first. I mean “by 2050, ‘water stress’ is projected to affect 600 million people in 18 or more countries in Africa alone.” (http://www.dochas.ie/Shared/Files/2/Water.pdf) In conclusion, I’m all for saving lives, but you can’t save them all and if we’re going to try and save some lets help save our own first.

Marris Chapters 3 and 4

Posted on September 10, 2012 by David Mandil

In “Rambunctious Garden: Saving Nature in a Post Wild World” Marris talks quite a bit about the prospects of rewilding in chapters three and four, however before I get into what she said about it, first I’m going to give a small explanation as to what it is. Rewilding as I understood in the text, basically is the idea of taking a particular type of species from one environment and putting it in a new environment; more specifically an environment where an animal relating to the ‘new’ animal has gone extinct or is no longer around. The reason they want to do this is to keep a little bit of nature pure to make it ‘wild’ again; to the extent where it looks like it did before humans interacted with it.

Now technically rewilding is scientifically feasible for a few reasons. The first reason is because scientist don’t have to worry about the fact that nature has changed since a few thousand years ago and that it has been affected by man, since nature changes regardless of man’s presence or not. Furthermore in order for them to make a certain environment ‘wild’ again they would have to do what the book says and release top of the food chain predators. By releasing these types of predators into said environment it will cause greater competition amongst the other species. By this I mean there will be more intra-species competition that they will have to avoid being eaten and it will lead to survival of the fittest and better the species in general.  Furthermore, it will decrease the amount of food competition, which allows one certain type of species to consistently eat a plant it likes and it will lead to fewer species entirely. However, bureaucratically it is not possible for rewilding to occur. For one thing there is always people who are unwilling to give up land at could just become another debate of conservationism versus people who don’t care about nature. Secondly, there is another problem which the book mentioned regarding racism where sending African animals to the United States might prove problematic mainly because the citizens of the United States might not want to live with African animals and this might look like racism which isn’t a good thing.

Rewilding might also help nature in general by preventing extinction because if animals are dying out due to human interaction, by placing them in these secluded environments they may have a better chance of survival. However, in my opinion though, we should not do rewilding because for one thing it is almost like “we are playing god,” as the book says. The book answers this by saying we are influencing nature regardless so what the difference. The difference is that this approach of rewilding is much more direct. Furthermore by adding a species to a new environment we might be creating invasive species that might end up ruining the environment and it’s not like that hasn’t happened before. So, to conclude whilst rewilding does have its perks, all in all I think it is a bad idea.

September 4th – Marris chapt. 1 & 2

Posted on September 3, 2012 by David Mandil

Firstly, I have to say that I think the reason that Emma Marris wrote the book Rambunctious Garden: Saving nature in a post-wild world is to explain whether wilderness is pristine or not. Throughout the first chapter she saying that there is a problem with calling nature pristine, she goes so far as to say that, “This dream of pristine wilderness haunts us.” She says this because there is no place in nature that has does not have an effect on mankind. She even provides a date and says that specifically since 2011 there has been no pristine nature on planet Earth. She goes on to say, similar to our readings from last week that conservationism is the wrong way to deal with nature. Instead humans should try and work with nature instead of trying to seclude it. The way Marris describes it is probably the best way to say it, she says, “We are already running the whole Earth, whether we admit it or not. To run it consciously and effectively, we must admit our role and even embrace it.” In other words Marris is basically saying we basically control the Earth, we have been altering the environment around us for as long as we have been around. Now Marris is simply saying that we should take some responsibility to help Mother Nature out and embrace our roles as leaders of the Earth since we affect it the most. One example she gave was how because of humans the amount of Carbon Dioxide molecules in the air is thirty six percent more than it was in the seventeen hundreds. One point that Marris made which I thought was very interesting was the whole idea of baselines, meaning if we were going to try and revert nature back to how it used to be (as in a truly pristine environment) how would we go about doing that? What would be the “baseline”? Would it be from when before humans came to the environment or an earlier time because even without humans present the environment was still changing? I have to say when it comes down to it I thought she explained her points very well, in my opinion she was trying to explain what nature is and why it can not be considered pristine. She clearly explained what pristine means regarding nature and that it can no longer be found because human effects are everywhere in the environment. Truthfully one thing I have to say about the first two chapters is that I appreciated how she brought so much evidence to support her claim and even though at times it became a bit strenuous to read for this particular reason. I have to say that I think the fact that she put so many examples helped me understand the chapters better because if one of her examples did not cut it for me the rest would help me get a good idea of what it is she was trying to say.

David’s Weekly reading 8/30

Posted on August 28, 2012 by David Mandil

By reading the two articles I felt like they were taking different perspectives on how humans affect the Earth. Regarding the Vitousek article I have to say that I admire how they started off saying this, “This article provides an overview of human effects on Earth’s ecosystems. It is not intended as a litany of environmental disasters, though some disastrous situations are described; nor is it intended either to down- play or to celebrate environmental successes, of which there have been many. Rather, we explore how large humanity looms as a presence on the globe.” This is basically saying that the purpose of the article is not to bash humans or say they destroyed nature, rather the point of the article is to say that this is what we have discovered through our research, whether you think humans are ruining nature or not is your decision to make. Furthermore this article brought a good point near the end regarding extinctions and invasions. The article said that even without human involvement on Earth animals would still go extinct but at a much slower pace. The same could be said about invasions, these would also happen without human intrusion, however humans make the process a lot faster. As for the Kareiva article I liked the fact that the visage of nature being weak was broken. I mean when you think about it if mankind does in fact alter the earth so much, to the extent where humans can no longer live on Earth. We would really just be hurting ourselves, because if humans become extinct nature will remain and will adapt. Another reason I enjoyed the Kareiva article is because of the way that it described the problem with modern conservation. I personally think that it is a good idea to have set aside land for wildlife to have. I mean after all humans have to share the world with animals so why not give them their own little area where they can live without us bothering them. However, the article showed me that this thought process has flaws and instead of living in such a manner where we are separate with nature we should live in accordance with nature. So to finally answer the question as to whether or not the Earth is in a new era, I think the Kareiva article says it best, “The wilderness ideal presupposes that there are parts of the world untouched by human kind, but today it is impossible to find a place on Earth that is unmarked by human activity. The truth is humans have been impacting their natural environment for centuries. The wilderness so beloved by conservationists — places ‘untrammeled by man’ – never existed, at lest not in the last thousand years, and arguably even longer.” In other words the scientists were right when they claimed that we are entering a new world era, the age of humans, and as both articles clearly state humans do have a great influence on the world.

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