949 Clarification of the Survey

Message no. 949 Posted by Thomas Culhane (1311520071) on Friday, May 11, 2007 3:55pm Subject: Coming up with the survey

Hi Class,

Varshawn sent me an email asking for clarification on the surveys. Here is my answer:

Yes, you come up with your own surveys -- pick the questions from the eco and carbon footprint websites you find most useful and will use and add to them your own questions about lifestyle that can help explain why people have the footprints they have. You then plug the information into the footprint calculators to get values for your friends and then try to explain the similarities and differences by the answers you get to your other questions.

For example, I put my father's footprint information in, and I found out his lifestyle would take 3.5 planets if everybody else lived like him, and I put in my uncle's info and found that he would need 8 planets. Now I want to know what the underlying differences are that affect their different behaviors. Yes I know that my cousin drives a gas guzzler and has a huge house and eats steak everyday and my father has a hybrid car. Okay. That went into the calculator. But what explains why my cousin is such an energy hog? Is it their beliefs, their jobs, their incomes, what?

It turns out , for one thing, that my uncle lives in the Midwest where there is no public transportation, where there is a tradition of having big trucks, where beef cattle are raised, and where real estate is cheap enough for middle class people to have big houses. So even though their incomes are the same, location helps explain the differences in their consumption. Also, interestingly, though my Dad grew up in the Midwest, my Dad saw Bambi as a kid and decided he didn't want to kill animals, and he moved to New York to be a writer, while his brother became a hunter and likes that "everything big is better" macho tradition. These things describe a possible "psychology of behavior" and that is what this course is about. See what I mean?

You should speculate on these things based on the questions you ask in your survey. As Philip Ball says in Critical Mass (page 296) "Not even the most ardent supporter of individualism could reasonably claim that our choices are truly independent. How in a society flooded with mass advertising, can we hope to make decisions free from the influences of our environment."

You might ask the question "how much television do you watch a day" or "do you shop at Best Buy" and see if people who watch alot of television have a larger or smaller footprint, or if people who answer yes to shopping at Best Buy have a larger or smaller footprint.

How you EXPLAIN the data you get is where you can have fun and be creative!!!

Mark Twain said, "there are lies, damn lies, and then there are statistics!". You may find, in your tiny data set, that out of 10 people you survey, 8 have an above average footprint and they just also happen to all love Alanis Morrisette (if that was one of your questions!). Does that mean that listening to Alanis Morrisette makes you consume more? Yikes, Alanis would hate that, because she is on a "green" campaign. But your data might show that! How would you explain the psychology?

It may be that listening to Alanis has NOTHING to do with consumption, but it was a case of the roll of the dice that your data shows a correlation! Remember CORRELATIONS ARE NOT REGRESSIONS, i.e., they aren't statistically significant. For example, as our textbook says, people who ate ice cream in one study were found to be involved in violent crimes. Does that mean that ice cream causes violent crimes? No, it just turned out that the crimes were influenced by a heat wave, and the heat wave also made people eat ice cream.

The fun of environment and the psychology of behavior is trying to figure out what causes what!

You don't have to come up with the survey all by yourself by the way == you can share ideas and develop it with other class mates!

See what you come up with!

927 937 947 Responses to students

Message no. 927[Branch from no. 911] Posted by Thomas Culhane (1311520071) on Monday, May 7, 2007 5:02pm Subject: Re: Relational Summ...Varshawn

What is your theory about your co-workers -- what is making them anxious? And how does maintaining space help reduce that anxiety? Or is it that lack of personal space is what is making them anxious? What are the spatial characteristics of your work environment? How can you set up an experiment to test your theory?

Message no. 937[Branch from no. 932] Posted by Thomas Culhane (1311520071) on Thursday, May 10, 2007 2:29pm Subject: Re: Summary

Dana, can you elaborate on this summary? All -- Remember we need at least three quotes from the book with page numbers and three outside references, and the summary should relate to you and your life experience and observations. This is the criteria I have to use for evaluating now that grade time is coming up! Thanks!

Message no. 947[Branch from no. 941] Posted by Thomas Culhane (1311520071) on Friday, May 11, 2007 3:39pm Subject: Re: Varshawn...Part 1

Yeah, the Japanese calculator is pretty confusing and lousy == thanks to Michelle we have much better calculators to use now! But at least you got a sense, I hope, that people are doing this all over the world now -- one day soon responsible citizens may be asked to balance their carbon budget the way we now balance our checkbooks == trying to be carbon neutral or carbon negative may be the next status quest! ("How low can ya go!?" People may ask each other)

Message no. 948[Branch from no. 945] Posted by Thomas Culhane (1311520071) on Friday, May 11, 2007 3:41pm Subject: Re: Dana Boothroyd

Thanks for sharing the new climate calculator Dana -- much better than the Japan site I found. I think that one is best suited for the electrical appliances found in Toy Story and used by Buzz Lightyear: To infinity, and beyond! :)

925 926 Environmental Justice

Message no. 925[Branch from no. 914] Posted by Thomas Culhane (1311520071) on Monday, May 7, 2007 4:55pm Subject: Re: relational summary

Thanks for the links to hazards affecting rivers in New York! Hard to keep up with all the things criminal businesses and negligent people get away with that affects innocent unaware people.

I don't any longer agree that "we don't learn our lesson" though. I think what happens more often is that people do learn the lesson -- and move away from the places where disasters occur and many try to stop doing the things that are dangerous. I think what happens, however, is that population pressure, lack of alternatives and business incentives provide a never ending stream of newcomers who can be duped into living in bad and dangerous conditions and areas. The safe property is bought up by the rich and the dangerous areas are offered at low rates to anybody who is willing to trade the risk of dying in a disaster or through toxic exposre for the risk of dying of poverty. For this reason you will notice that, for example, when California had our earthquake in 1994 64 people died, while in Turkey many many thousands died. Disasters and poverty go hand in hand, and we tend to look at the poor as if they were a homogeneous mass. In fact individual poor families try desperately to get out of dangerous places and often succeed when they can find an opportunity. But there are so many poor people with even less opportunity that others immediately move in again. It is rarely the same people.

For this reason we have a movement in the world called "The Environmental Justice" movement. It says that people are trapped into being victims, not that they don't learn from other's mistakes.

I believe that there is a propoganda that makes us believe that "we" are all to blame, as if human beings were just stupid and flawed and keep on doing dumb things. This obscures the fact that criminal behavior by developers and speculators is putting enormous numbers of people at risk.

Our job should be to put a face on individual families and see how hard most people struggle to do the right thing. I'm proud of the human race; I'm just suspicious of the very few who control the wealth and the media.

Message no. 926[Branch from no. 912] Posted by Thomas Culhane (1311520071) on Monday, May 7, 2007 4:59pm Subject: Re: Varshawn...Relational Summ...

I think you are right Varshawn -- asthma seems to be telling us that our immune systems are overwhelmed by the toxins and particulate matter in the air.

924 Every act of creation is preceeded by an act of destruction

Message no. 924[Branch from no. 916] Posted by Thomas Culhane (1311520071) on Monday, May 7, 2007 4:43pm Subject: Re: relational summary

You are right Dawn -- the cycles of life and death and decay, of fire and flood, are necessary for life overall to persist. As the Greeks said, "every act of creation is preceeded by an act of destruction." Still, this time destruction is happening on a different scale -- one unprecedented except for the 5 times in our past when we had mass extinctions. It is like the idea that we need to tear muscle to build muscle, but if we rip our arm off, no muscle can grow again. A question of rate and scale and scope.

As for dating in the future -- I don't see any reason why we would have to wear face masks and tanks indoors -- but you did remind me of a wedding I witnessed underwater in Hawaii in a lava cathedral 50 feet deep. The bride was in white gown that flowed like the fins of a delicate fish in the current, and the groom was in a tuxedo, but they had face masks and scuba tanks on. It was wild!

923 It's the End of the World as we Know It, and I could use a drink!

Message no. 923[Branch from no. 913] Posted by Thomas Culhane (1311520071) on Monday, May 7, 2007 4:36pm Subject: Re: Varshawn....relational summary

Glad to see how your awareness of the intricacies of the global warming process is growing Varshawn!

It is an immensely complicated and dangerous situation, as you have pointed out. What is so very very sad is that Newsweek magazine last month released a cover story article trying to explain "the pros and cons of global warming". (See Newsweek International, 04/16/2007 . PROS of global warming?!!! I found the article sick, because yes, it acknowleged that millions of people would die in Africa and other poor continents, but it said that we should look on the bright side -- ski resort operators can convert their snowless resorts into spas and casinos, and even though the Mediterranean Beaches will be underwater along with coastal cities, beachgoers can now party on the beaches of the Baltic sea and other formerly frigid waters! It said that agriculture would fail in Brazil and Spain, but take heart! We can grow wine grapes in Alaska and Siberia!! So we never have to go a day without Chianti!

And they said that when the ice caps melt we will find it easier to drill for oil!! They actually said that! Gee, that way we never have to stop using the messy cancer causing stuff!

It is the most egregious example of how out of touch our media and political machine is with the state of the world when all over the world Newsweek is telling people "the party won't stop for the rich and famous just because the rest of the world will be suffering so badly!" Look on the bright side, right? Every dark cloud has a silver mining for the rich!

As our text book points out, at some level increased heat can lead to agression, and at another level it can lead to apathy. What such environmental determinism doesn't explain is how the partying greedy rich, in their air conditioned luxury cars and yachts and villas, can do such violence to the world and what makes them, no matter what the temperature, create a climate of lies and distortions so that they can continue to commit acts of agression against the rest of humanity. By telling the world that Global Warming isn't such a bad thing after all, because wine growers, resort operators and oil companies will still make a profit, Newsweek and other arms of the propaganda machine are acting in the most agressive way I can think of. Do they hope that the rest of us will either be hot enough that we will kill ourselves or so hot we will sit back and vegetate?

Did you guys see that article? What do you think?

Update, September 5, 2007:

A German television program on global warming made the same outrageous argument -- First they showed the dire consequences of Global Warming, then they showed excellent footage on how to insulate your home (conservation of energy and resources is the least expensive and most effective fix we can do!) but then they had a segment on "the bright side" of global warming, interviewing a Scandanavian who has started his own winery because the temperature just doesn't get low enough to freeze the grapes. All I can think of is the title of my friend Professor Scott Sherman's excellent environmental thriller: "It's the end of the world (as we know it) and I could use a drink!"

922 A Doll's House

Message no. 922[Branch from no. 920] Posted by Thomas Culhane (1311520071) on Monday, May 7, 2007 3:58pm Subject: A doll's House

That was an immensely enjoyable and entertaining relational summary Dawn!! I loved the way you went from Barbie to Gerbil cages and showed the tension between our desire to play Creator and the desire of marketers to get us to copy their designs and product placements.

The gap between designer and client becomes easy to understand when you start thinking of your chinchilla or gerbils as the clients -- do we design for what they really want or for what we think would make the coolest "doll house" for our little pets (furry mobile Barbie's essentially). A playground for our personal manipulation, as you say.

During the 4 years I worked for the L.A. Zoo I was fascinated by the way zoo designers created exhibits not to please the animals but to please the public or, worse, to please the cleaning staff (making it easy to sanitize). It was on one of my many trips to the Frankfurt zoo in Germany that the director of the Zoo took me to the new Tiger exhibit and showed me that they had eliminated the concrete and tile floors and replaced everything with many feet of soil, humus and wood chips. It was an indoor exhibit. The director said, "the cleaning staff screamed, but it works much better. Now the organic material of the floor of the exhibit absorbs the urine and the feces and bacterial action breaks it down. I ask the staff to go in and rake and shovel and take some of it away for compost -- but the thing is the Tigers are happy -- like house cats they scratch and bury their waste the natural way and they play in the dirt and wood chips and the exhibit is actually much cleaner!

The same technique was used in the new Polar Bear exhibit at San Diego Zoo where the staff told me "it used to be we would paint concrete blocks white to look like ice flows, and tint the water blue so it would seem like an "arctic" place. But the polar bears hated it, and they weren't fooled -- this is southern California! Now we let them play in dirt and grass and leaves and flower beds and we tell the public "this is what Polar Bears do in the summer" which is true. Why should they suffer because we want to pretend California is Alaska?"

Planning for the client is indeed very important!

Good job on your summary! Keep up the fun writing!

921 Sites for Carbon Calculators

Message no. 921[Branch from no. 910] Posted by Thomas Culhane (1311520071) on Monday, May 7, 2007 3:43pm Subject: Re: sites for carbon calculators

Good sleuth work Michelle! Now we are cookin'! Some of you have got a start figuring out how many planets we would need to live as you do, which should really make you think about what we might need to make your eutopias real for all also. Tough huh?

Has anybody played with the numbers to see how we would all have to live in order to fit on just one planet? Give it a try!

The carbon footprint is a difficult measure, and I see the Japanese calculator is giving infinity for some people, so I am glad you found some other carbon calculators for us, Michelle!

In modelling the world we need as many different models as possible since each one of them is bound to be oversimplified or to contain flawed assumptions and these throw the results off. Bravo for finding more models.