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Chapter One:
Understanding our
Environment
Principles of Environmental
Science - Inquiry and Applications
2nd ed. 2004
by William and Mary Ann Cunningham
2
Chapter One Readings
Required Reading
Cunningham & Cunningham, Chapter One:
Understanding Our Environment
3
Chapter One Objectives
• define the term environment and identify some important
environmental concerns that we face today
• explain the scientific method and why it refutes or supports
theories, but never proves them beyond any doubt
• apply the scientific method to problem solving
• explain how statistics can help evaluate the accuracy and
significance of results
• summarize four stages in the history of conservation
• distinguish among analytical, creative, logical, critical, and
reflective thinking
• summarize some major environmental dilemmas and
issues that shape our current environmental agenda
• discuss the implications of sustainability and sustainable
development
4
Chapter One Key Terms
McGraw-Hill Course Glossary
 analytical thinking
 biocentric preservation
 blind experiments
 controlled studies
 creative thinking
 critical thinking
 deductive reasoning
 double-blind design
 environment
 environmental science
 global environmentalism
 hypothesis
 inductive reasoning
 logical thinking
 mean
 modern environmentalism
 paradigms
 parsimony
 probability
 reflective thinking
 reproducibility
 sample
 scientific theory
 significant numbers
 statistics
 sustainability
 sustainable development
 utilitarian conservation
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Chapter 1 - Topics
•
•
•
•
•
Understanding Our Environment
Science as a Way of Knowing
Investigating our Environment
Thinking About Thinking
A Brief History of Conservation &
Environmentalism
• Current Environmental Conditions
• Human Dimensions of environmental science
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Part 1: Understanding Our
Environment
The
Planet Earth
• Unique in the universe (?)
• Mild, relatively constant
temperatures
• Biogeochemical cycles
• Millions of species
• Diverse, self-sustaining
communities
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Environmental Science
Environment is the
circumstances and conditions
that surround an organism or a
group of organisms.
Environmental science is the
systematic study of our
environment and our place in it.
Ecology is the study of an
organism or organisms, the
impact of the environment on
them, and their impact on the
environment.
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Part 2: Science as a Way of Knowing
• Modern science has its
roots in antiquity
• Greek philosophers
• Arabic mathematicians
and astronomers
• Chinese naturalists
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Scientific
Investigation
• Deductive vs.
inductive reasoning
• Hypothesis - a
conditional
explanation that can
be verified or falsified
• Scientific theory an explanation that is
supported by an
overwhelming body of
data and experience
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Models and Natural Experiments
Models
• Simulate real environmental systems;
• Can be physical or mathematical;
• Provide heuristic information (suggestions of how
things MIGHT be); and
• Are influenced by researchers' assumptions.
Natural Experiments
• Gathering of historic evidence; and
• Conducted by scientists who can't test their
hypotheses directly.
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Open Minds are Learning Minds
• In some ways, children
are the “ultimate”
practical scientists…no
pre-conceived bias in
their investigations.
• However, Society uses
numbers, called
“statistics” to let you
evaluate and compare
things. Information
known by one person
isn’t useful to Society.
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Scientific Design
• Blind Experiment
– Conducted so investigators do not know
which is the control and which is the
experimental group, until after data have
been gathered and analyzed.
• Double-Blind
– Neither the subject nor the investigators
know which participants are receiving an
experimental treatment.
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Statistics and Probability
Quantitative data
• Precise and easily compared; and
• Good benchmarks for measuring change.
Probability
• Measure of how likely something is; and
• High degree of scientific certainty: 95% probability.
Statistics
• Important tool in both planning and evaluating
scientific studies; and
• Sample size, number of replications important.
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Paradigms and Scientific
Consensus
Paradigms
• Overarching models of the world that guide our
interpretation of events
• Examples: tectonic plate movement, Einstein's theory of
relativity
Paradigm shift
• Occurs when a majority of scientists accept that the old
explanation no longer explains new observations very
well
• Paradigm shifts are sometimes contentious and
political.
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Part 3: Thinking About Thinking
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Table 1.3 Steps in Critical
Thinking
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Applying Critical Thinking
• Identify and evaluate premises and
conclusions in an argument;
• Acknowledge and clarify uncertainties,
vagueness, equivocation, and contradictions;
• Distinguish between facts and values;
• Recognize and assess assumptions;
• Distinguish source reliability or unreliability;
and
• Recognize and understand conceptual
frameworks.
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Steps in Critical Thinking
• Identify and evaluate premises and conclusions
in an argument.
• Acknowledge and clarify uncertainties,
vagueness, equivocation, and contradictions.
• Distinguish between facts and values.
• Recognize and assess assumptions.
• Distinguish source reliability or unreliability.
• Recognize and understand conceptual
frameworks.
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Part 4. History of Conservation
and Environmentalism
Four Distinct Stages:
– Pragmatic Resource Conservation
– Moral and Aesthetic Nature Preservation
– Modern Environmentalism
– Global Environmental Citizenship
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Pragmatic Resource
Conservation
President Theodore Roosevelt and his chief
conservation advisor, Gifford Pinchot,
believed in utilitarian conservation.
– Forests should be saved so they can be
used to provide homes and jobs.
– Should be used for “the greatest good for
the greatest number, for the longest time.”
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Moral and Aesthetic Nature
Preservation
John Muir, first president of the Sierra Club,
opposed Pinchot’s utilitarian policies.
– Biocentric Preservation
– emphasizes the fundamental right of all
organisms to pursue their own interests
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Modern Environmentalism
Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring (1962) started
the modern environmental movement.
– awakened the public to threats of pollution
and toxic chemicals to humans as well as
other species
– modern environmentalism extends
concerns to include both natural resources
and environmental pollution.
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Global Concerns
Increased travel and communication enables
people to know about daily events in places
unknown in previous generations.
Global environmentalism is the recognition
that we share one environment that is common to
all humans.
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Part 5: Current
Environmental Conditions
• Half the world's wetlands were lost in the last 100
years.
• Land conversion and logging have shrunk the world's
forests by as much as 50%.
• Nearly three-quarters of the world's major marine fish
stocks are over-fished or are being harvested beyond
a sustainable rate.
• Soil degradation has affected two-thirds of the world's
agricultural lands in the last 50 years.
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Major Causes of Environmental
Degradation
(1) Population Growth
• More than 6 billion people now occupy the earth,
and we are adding about 85 million more each year.
• In the next decade, most population growth will be in
the poorer countries - countries where present
populations already strain resources and services
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Major Causes of Environmental
Degradation (cont’d)
(2) Resource Extraction and Use
• burning of fossil fuels
• destruction of tropical
rainforests and other
biologically rich
landscapes
• production of toxic wastes
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Major Causes of Environmental
Degradation (cont’d): Acid Deposition
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Part 6: Human Dimensions of
Environmental Science
• More than 1.3 billion people live in acute poverty,
with an income of less than $1 (US) per day. These
people generally lack access to an adequate diet,
decent housing, basic sanitation, clean water,
education, medical care, and other essentials.
• Four out of five people in the world live in what would
be considered poverty in industrialized countries.
• The world's poorest people are often forced to meet
short-term survival needs at the cost of long-term
sustainability.
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The American Lifestyle
To get an average American through the day takes
about 1,000 pounds of raw materials, including
• 40 pounds of fossil fuels
• 22 pounds of wood and paper
• 119 gallons of water.
Every year, Americans throw away some 160 million
tons of garbage, including
• 50 million tons of paper
• 67 billion cans and bottles
• 18 billion disposable diapers.
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If everyone in the world tried to live at consumption levels
approaching ours, the results would be disastrous.
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Sustainability
Sustainable development:
progress in human well-being that we can extend or prolong
over many generations, rather than just a few years.
How can the nations of the world produce the goods and
services needed to improve life for everyone without
overtaxing the environmental systems and natural
resources on which we all depend?
To be truly enduring, the benefits of sustainable
development must be available to all humans, not just to the
members of a privileged group.
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Indigenous Peoples
Indigenous peoples are generally among the least
powerful, most neglected groups.
– In many countries, traditional caste systems,
discriminatory laws, economics, or prejudices
repress indigenous peoples.
– In many places, indigenous people in traditional
homelands guard undisturbed habitats and rare
species.
– Recognizing native land rights may safeguard
ecological processes.
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Summary:
• Environmental Science
• Science As a Way of Knowing
– Scientific Design
– Reasoning
– Scientific Theory
• Approaches to Thinking
• History of Environmentalism
• Human Dimensions
– Rich and Poor Countries
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Test Your Understanding
Review of lesson objectives: After mastering the material in this lesson, you
should be able to
•
define the term “environment” and identify some important environmental
concerns that we face today
•
explain the scientific method and why it refutes or supports theories, but never
proves them beyond any doubt
•
apply the scientific method to problem solving
•
explain how statistics can help evaluate the accuracy and significance of results
•
summarize four stages in the history of conservation
•
distinguish among analytical, creative, logical, critical, and reflective thinking
•
summarize some major environmental dilemmas and issues that shape our
current environmental agenda
•
discuss the implications of sustainability and sustainable development
38
39