Author: jacob

At first while reading this I believed that Masdar is a city too good to be true. It is a great ending to our course because it combines all of the issues we were talking about all semester and incorporates the solutions for them. Although at the end it may not be totally feasible and is very expensive to build, it is a start in changing the mindset and raising awareness for the younger generation.

Although the city ended up a failure or the plans not going through, I don’t see it as a failure. I don’t think the planners actually thought that this would be feasible for other cities to follow. However, this project was a success because it proved that this sort of planning and solutions are possible and it raised awareness so future planners can look back and use the same methods.

This article really surprised me with the data and studies that have been done on the biking issue. It is obvious the various health benefits that biking would have on the person and the surrounding environment. Growing up I have biked quite often since that was the best method of transport as a kid. However, as I got older and started driving, I have thought biking to places to be more time consuming and dangerous. Why bike to meet up with friends when you can get there with a push of a pedal?

This article though has showed me that biking is not really all that dangerous with a very low rate of crashes. Also, I now see that even if biking may take slightly longer than driving, the pros of the health benefits and breathing fresh air far outweighs the time period.

Hey guys this is my article on waste management in NYC, New York’s Waste Management plans don’t address throwaway culture by Sadhbh Walshe.

http://www.theguardian.com/sustainable-business/new-york-waste-management-plans-conflict

It was cool to see that this article was written in June of this year. This means that is an actual current solution to the problems that we have been speaking about in the classroom. They  are literally constructing, “a giant sponge” which I found to be very creative and innovative.

I was surprised to see that this entire renovation only cost one million dollars which may sound like a lot but if one would see how much is spent on construction after major flooding then a million is a great investment.

I’m glad to see that these projects are being done now and what we are saying in class is not all abstract and can be attainable. I am hoping to see that more and more projects will be done in the near future to benefit the environment.

This article was so easy to read and broke down the information to nice visual graphs. Noise pollution can be very hard to see as an issue when most New Yorkers have grown up in a noisy environment and don’t know what it is like to not live with the constant noise. However, noise pollution can be very damaging psychologically and physically on your ears.

The main issue with solving the noise pollution in NYC is mentioned at the end of the article. From all the graphs and charts throughout the article, it proves that there must be a diverse set of solutions to solve the issue. There is no one magic solution to resolve the barking dogs, construction work, and loud parties. The agencies must look at the different neighborhoods and customize their solution to that area specifically, which can often be very challenging.

The article spoke about the egocentric mindset and attitude that humans have about our planet. One explanation gave is the disassociation of humans to their environment. He gave the warning of the woodpecker as a species that is on the verge of extinction. This article made it seem so crucial and horrifying that this species would disappear. It got me thinking, what if all the animals on earth had vanished?

What is the need of the different species on Earth? There are approximately 120,000 species of flies around the world. Different species evolve to occupy different niches. Why can’t there just be one species of every animal?

The argument can then be furthered that why do we need so many kinds of animals to begin with? If all the animals except the ones essential for human survival such as decomposers, farm animals, and plants are left then the planet would still be able to thrive. We have built an entire self-fulfilling  ecosystem in a bottle. So why can’t we just expand that to a global scale?

 

It was great to read an article that was optimistic and went through many barriers and solutions to the issue. In NYC, there are huge buildings and these sizes require a tremendous amount of oil to heat water and energy consumption. The biggest barriers must be the cost and awareness. First people must be aware of this program going on and this can only be done with time. As more and more apply solar panels, then it’ll be widely popular. Major companies must take the risk first since small houses or businesses will not want to take the leap of faith in solar panels. The second biggest barrier is the cost. As we have seen in class with many issues, short term gains are often the most popular. It is hard to see the long-term benefits. With the cost to install being too high, one would not see how much they are saving in the long run. This program seems to be combating these barriers really well and we will hopefully see more solar panels installed in the near future.

1. Sinuous: Having many curves and turns.
2. Half-graben: a geological structure bounded by a fault along one side of its boundaries

The East Berlin Formation is an astonishing combination of sandstone, mudstone, and shale. Its importance lies in the fact that it contains an abundance of preserved dinosaur footprints. The photo with the large slab of sandstone containing dinosaur footprints is amazing. It is unbelievable that we were able to find footprints of those that once roamed the earth all that many years ago. In the black shale layers were fossil fish.

In the Connecticut Valley fossils and footprints were found dating back to the Triassic and Jurassic periods. Several dinosaurs are thought to have lived there including Anchisaurus, Coelophysis, Ammosaurus, and Yaleosuarus. The size of the prints is crucial to archaeologists since from there they can determine other physical properties such as height, posture and weight. Footprints may tell us a lot but questions such as how they hunted or how their bodies function, may never be answered.

 

This article has been written after Hurricane Irene which came 2 months before Hurricane Sandy. It is coming as a wake up call New York City as a precaution if anything catastrophic were to happen. Then Hurricane Sandy came and proved just how accurate the article was.

One issue the article mentioned is that the flood maps are not being updated. This means that buildings that were built recently have not been up to the right standards. This has been proven when Hurricane Sandy struck and those building were in fact flooded. Also, the maps did not put climate change in the equation. I believe that buildings should not just be built upon floods in the past but on future projections of flood maps.

Another main shock to me was that $18.3 billion worth of infrastructure is located in the mandatory evacuation flood area. That seems ridiculous that we let it go up that high. Now since it is already built, we are forced to just protect it and find new technology to keep it intact.

This chapter was chosen to be the ending chapter in this book. The chapter was structured differently and didn’t take the route of discussing the differences between the Europeans and Indians. Instead it spoke about climate change and the drastic consequences that the weather can have on our living environments.

In all the other chapters, there was a sliver of hope and how changes can reverse the outcomes and destruction. However, with the weather, all the technology we have can not change it. No matter how powerful humans think they are and having control over their environment, nature can always overcome it. We live with this false sense of security that whenever a problem will arise, the scientists will think of solutions but that is not always the case. There have been a plethora of movies showing the destruction of this planet through nature. We just have to imagine, what if one of these movies actually became true?