Author Archives: Joseph Pearl

Posts by Joseph Pearl

Response #2

Posted on September 20, 2012 by Joseph Pearl

The goal set for the last few class periods have been to leave the room smarter than I was upon entering; I can confidently say that mission was accomplished.  A piece of information that stood out to me that we discussed last Monday is that water pollutants travel not only through water, but permutated through land masses surrounding and framing bodies of water.  While the theory of this action is not new information to me, the actual affect in the ecosystem was fresh.  I had never applied my knowledge of water being capable of seeping through land to problems faced in bodies of water.  What raised my eyebrows was the image seen of the river that ran red from pollutants from a neighboring plant.  I did not consider the permutation of pollutants prior to seeing this image, but when faced with the tangible situation up front, it is hard to imagine that there are people in this world that cannot see how draining pollutants into one body of water can affect one that shares a small wall of dirt and rocks.

Another piece of information I thought outside of class about is the Gaia hypothesis.  The Gaia hypothesis is the belief that the Earth is a living organism.  James Locelock begged the question, what regulates the life of Earth?  Before discussing the answer I believed the answer to be boiled down to the most simplistic form, of molecular and chemical reactions that keep the Earth functioning. Lovelock stated, that “it must be life that is doing the regulating.”  This stuck out to me and for the reason that Lovelock took a much more environmentalist approach than I had expected.  The idea that species are interconnected, including the Earth as a species of itself.  The survivability of a species is connected with its usefulness to the survival of other species.  I liked that idea because it relates the chemical and physical aspects of the Earth, with an environmental sustainability outlook.

As I discuss what interested me in class discussions, I would be remiss to not mention the affect of PCB’s.  September 13, marks the day I left class with the biggest jump in intelligence.  Before I entered class that fateful day, I had never even heard of PCB’s.  After leaving I not only know that PCB’s are pentachlorobiphenyl molecular structures, but are also: Excellent insulators, oily liquids, non-flammable, chemically stable, with high boiling points and capable of making certain technologies possible at low costs.  I came out of this class as smart as I did in part of the factual chemical information, but mostly because I am now more aware of an environmental problem in the world I live in, as close as the Hudson river, than before I came to class.  I enjoyed learning about PCB’s because after having left the class, I felt a bit less ignorant of my own surroundings, which I have set as my own goal for the class.

Response #1

Posted on September 6, 2012 by Joseph Pearl

In our first week of Macaulay Seminar 3: Science and Technology, I took two things from the lesson.  One, the slow deterioration of our world is impacted by the actions of everyone in the world, individually as well as major corporations and capitalist organizations.  Two, scientists and environmentalists have been able to identify a myriad of environmental issues, and have developed means, plans and treaties to slow down our pollution as well as make better the damage that has already been done.  Prior to entering the classroom on the first day, I was aware of the impact the human people have made on the world, for the worse.  What I did not know was to what extent our populations have taken a toll on the world, nor how capable we are of rectifying our mistakes.  I would describe this class as informative or eye-opening right off the bat.

Walking into the class I knew about ozone pollution, as well as the slow extinction of species and especially the loss of the Amazon.  Although, despite knowing that these problems exist, I was never faced with the tangible statistics that we went over in class last week, nor did I understand its impact.  For instance, I was taught in school since I was a young, the ozone layer was developing a hole from the CO2 in the air we produce.  However, I never learned that we emit 34 billion tons of CO2 a year.  The most shocking thing we learned for me was not the physical weight of CO2 we emit, but the impact it has on our species.  The correlation of CO2 in the air, to acidity of the ocean was a scary fact to learn.  I had never taken into account the further implications of our actions now.  It frightens me to think that sooner rather than later the CO2 we emit every day will cause the acidity of the oceans to rise, which will affect the populations of fish, which affects our diets.  The startling realization I came to, in my first time being educated about the environment, is that we have such readily accessible information about the state of our planet, why it is happening, and the ways in which to fix it, yet still environmentalists struggle to find mass support to stop the destruction of our planet.

Beyond destruction for utilitarian means, the planet’s aesthetic is declining rapidly; from the destruction of the mountaintops in West Virginia, to 80% of coral reefs vanishing from the oceans.  The debate we discussed of utilitarian vs. purist value to the planet is also completely knew to me, and has many layers to each side.  Yet at the core of this debate is the idea of sustainability, and what I learned is that if we can sustain our stay on this Earth, while sustaining its own life, why are we not trying?

Comments by Joseph Pearl