Buckey Forest Council Presentation

David Maywhoor's presentation on Monday was very interesting. It covered some topics that we have covered in class as well as the book, "Lost Mountain" which we have read this quarter. He also covered some of our research paper topics and related to his field of work. The organization that he works for fights to protect the wooded areas in and around the state of Ohio. In his presentation he showed us different pictures of forests that have been burned or logged in order for people to collect wood for building or just for land for any particular interest. One fact that really stood out to me was that he said that years ago if a squirrel wanted to, it could travel all the way from Virginia to Indiana without touching the ground jumping from tree to tree. The law states that a company can only log 25 acres in a given area, but companies found that they could find a way around that law. They would log 25 acres and then leave a cushion of trees, then log another 25 acres. There was no way to prove that they were breaking the law because technically they weren't. So basically, the companies got what they wanted, the wood. He also talked about controlled burns of the forest. These burns however, would sometimes get out of control and they would have to run a bulldozer to doze over a line of trees to stop the fire from spreading. All this deforestation has a lot to do with my research prospectus. Deforestation leads to destruction of biodiversity in an ecosystem which causes an indirect effect on other species.

Research Topic: Biodiversity

The research topic that I have chosen is on Biodiversity. Biodiversity is essentially the variation of every living organism that is on Earth. I am not entirely sure about what I want to get into about biodiversity but as for right now I just want to get some simple facts down about why biodiversity is important. Biodiversity is very important because of many reasons. Every living organism in an ecosystem matters, no how small it may be. A related topic to this matter could be the food cycle. Say for instance the entire plant species of grass and corn went extinct. Though this is an extreme example and is highly unlikely, consequences can affect many herbivores that graze on these plants making them one day die off then the predators who feed on these animals must find an alternative food source, possibly causing a chain reaction. In the humans situation, most of our food today is fed or made of corn and grass. Chickens and cows that are herbivores would have nothing to eat and would get skinnier, resulting in less meat per animal. With less meat per animal means that we would need more supply of those animals just to keep up with the demand of these meats. Biodiversity is not only important to the food chain, but it is a great place for discovering new medicines. There are thousands of species of plants that have not been heavily studied which may contain some element of a cure for cancers and other illnesses. With the human population and its high demand to expand their territory, they are cutting down many trees and wiping out entire ecosystems for their wood, coal, and land, leaving these areas as a useless wasteland. Other areas of interest for this topic can cover the diversity of the ecosystem used as a natural water purifier and when preserved could possibly save the human race from this essential need for the human body. The whole biodiversity system itself is very well interconnected on a system. Insects such as bees help pollinate plants by extracting their pollen from the plants and moving them from pant to plant. The wildlife species that graze on nature will produce stool which will decompose and make good fertilizers. The fertilizers will then become food for the plants resulting in an all natural circular process. So taking away parts of nature is like taking away organs of the human body. Every part of the ecosystem plays its own fair part in nature as well as does the organs in the human body and taking that away the ecosystem would ultimately fail.

Flow: For the love of water

This movie was very shocking. Water is essential to sustain life on this Earth and for someone to be able to take control of who is able to obtain it is very wrong in my eyes. The movie compares the flow of water to the human body. They say that both the Earth and the human body is made up of 70% water and the streams and rivers on Earth is like the flowing of blood through our veins. This was a very interesting comment that the movie added because they compared the Earth as not just trees, water, rocks, etc. as single objects in nature but as one unit that works together for a final product. This is the same as the human body. Every organ has its own purpose to serve the body. This goes the same for the world and nature that surrounds it. The movie also states at some point that man takes what they want from nature and leaves it once they are done with it. This is like if you don't take care of your own body than the body often becomes sick. This goes the same way with the world and its land. Although the world might not get sick, the water that is disrupted may cause flooding in some areas, or droughts in others, or maybe even cause the water to become more polluted. For example, Nestle and Coke take water straight from streams and rivers not allowing water to flow downriver for residents who live downstream to acquire water. In other areas of the world, the water is way too polluted due to people dumping their trash and sewage into the rivers causing the water to be contaminated. In these areas with no running water, they rely on these rivers for batheing as well as drinking water. There have been many deaths in these areas due to people drinking this contaminated water. Then the World Bank decides to establish prepaid running water dispensors around the towns only to find out that the residents can't afford to get the water. So what the residents do is they go back to the rivers and streams where the water is contaminated. What else can they do if the water is unaffordable. Finally, a man was able to produce a machine that uses UV light to sanatize the water. He made this operation so that he could make just enough money to pay the local workers who worked there and to keep the water works running. Being that most residents in these areas make less than a dollar a day, they can still afford this water being that it cost two dollars per year per person to get the water. Along with this there are other ways of collecting clean water such as funneling techniques and storing this rain water in water towers so it can be used accordingly.
This movie was very interesting because water bottling companies are taking water from the streams and rivers for free and selling it to nearly 10 times the amount it costs to produce the water. Besides that, people say that water is a free gift that the gods give to the people. If this is true then how can people regulate the flow of where water goes and how much it costs? Should we have to pay for the air we breathe and the sunlight we use from the sun also?

Lost Mountain P.165-243

Wendell Berry’s work, “Two Minds”, distinguish between the rational and sympathetic minds that people have and Reece relates it to coal mining. When Mr. Berry is talking about a rational mind, he is talking about the objective, analytical, and empirical, ways of thinking. To me this means that he is saying this is the way the coal mining companies think. In the third part of the book, Reece talks about how coal companies believe that since the locals pollute the areas with trash anyways, that they should be able to mine the mountains and just add to the pollution. He thinks that since the area is already polluted, why not add just a little more pollution and be able to get this black gold from the mountains. The sympathetic way of thinking is more organic, the intuitive, and thinking about the wild. To me this is related to the coal miners and the people who live in these counties. The way the coal miners think is that the coal companies strip the land of all of its resources and leave it a wasteland when they are done, which is true to some extent given the interviews and the primary sources that Reece uses in the book. He also talks about how if the coal companies never came the forests could grow various foods such as herbs and mushrooms, and be used for hunting.
“It has been well documented by psychiatrist Peter C. Whybrow that Americans are four times more affluent than during the ‘60’s, we have shown no measurable gains in happiness. In fact the opposite is true: We are more depressed, more medicated, more frazzled than at any other time in our short history. The more we are anesthetized by material wealth, the farther we stray from our biophilic selves. We move from house to garage to car to work to mall to gym to house again with little regard to our ancestral homeland.”(Page 241) I think that this quote is pretty accurate when it comes to people trying to keep up with their everyday lives and them potentially losing sight of what their true values are. Everyone these days are too busy trying to make more money than the next guy, they don’t take the time to realize what put us here and what keeps us alive. Personally, I do not blame them. I hate to say it but in order for our lives to go round, we must make money. That is a value that people hate to admit but if you didn’t make money then you would not be able to eat. Everything is tied together. In order for us to make money, we must work, in order to work we must have a way to get there, in order for us to get to work we need money for gas. Everything is circular allowing no time to stray too far from the tree, but in this case it is our house behind a white picket fence.

The second part of the book, Lost Mountain, was very interesting to say the least. It talked about the different areas in Kentucky near the Appalachian Mountains that have coal mining has affected their drinking water. In the book Erik Reece said that 47% of Kentucky's rivers and streams are too polluted from mining for the water to be drank, fished, or swam. The reason for this is that when coal is being mined, the rocks that fall into the valleys, rivers, and streams cause many different kinds of sediments and minerals to get into the water. This makes all parents in these areas scared to death for their children to drink the water. The results that tend to happen from drinking the water vary greatly from nausea, diarrea, vomiting, and shortness of breath to long term effects of bone damage and cancers of the digestive track, liver, kidney, an spleen failure.
Along with the hazardous drinking water, the people in this region have to watch out for the flash floods that occur also because of the coal mining. These flash floods has taken lives, destroyed ecosystems, destroyed homes, and destroyed towns. In some cases there were up to one foot of mud that made its way into the homes of the people who live there. These floods of what is described as a massive black milkshake that contains many hazardous chemicals including mercury, arsenic, cadium, and lead, all of which can kill you.
I think that the many results of coal mining can only lead to bad consequences. As we have discussed in class about how bad drinking bottled water is for people and the amount of energy it takes to make bottled water, I have decided that these people do not really have a choice other than to drink bottled water. Because of how bad the water condition is in these areas, their only choice if they want to drink water and not die is to drink water that is bottled.

Lost Mountain, Pg. 1-86

The Appalachian Mountains are home to many different species of birds, animals, and trees. Strip mining consists of blowing away the mountain summits destroying the homes of many animals as well as people on the depths below. In the book, Eric Reece talks about a 5,000 page document explaining why strip mining is bad for the environment. In it states that it bad because it buries head water streams, causes erosion and flooding, degrades water quality downstream, kills aquatic life, shakes walls and cracks of foundation of homes, and wipes out huge portions of diverse ecosystems. Since there are not very many laws against how the strip mining companies are allowed to collect the coal below people’s land, they decide to do it the cheapest and easiest way they know how, and that is to blast it out of the mountains and collect it after. Along with the animals and the people that live in the depths below are the streams and wells that flow for the people who live there. These streams and wells allow for safe drinking water. Due to the water is being contaminated by the coal mining companies, people have died from cancer and other illnesses by drinking this nasty water.
The opposing argument for mining the coal are that it allows for a lower unemployment rate in the areas, it allows for flat land to establish housing and businesses, and it will draw investors into the state for new business ventures. Though some houses and businesses were built on these newly flat lands, most of the areas remain vacant because of the poor nutrition in the soil and water.
After reading the first portion of the book, I think that coal mining does much harm to not only the environment and wildlife, but also to the people who live in those areas where coal is being extracted. Yeah it does all these things in that area, but I want to raise this question… If not there, then where? I think that if it’s not going to be in Kentucky, then it’s just going to happen somewhere else. Like the previous websites said, coal is our most cost efficient and abundant form of energy. So we must get it somewhere…

Coal Burning Websites

My first impression of the first website, this is Real, was that the bird that flew across the screen really caught my eye. Then when the bird fell over and died, I knew that it had to do with the burning of coal. The website was implying that coal burning kills the wildlife. The animations for the introduction of this website really caught my eyes because it was entertaining to see all that happening and made me want to look more into the site.
The first impression that I had of the other website, Americas Power, was that this was the more serious website of the two and that it was setup in a more professional standpoint than that of the other website. It did not have any animations to make it cheesy and it was well organized with many statistics and recent news tabs. Initially I would say that the America’s Power website has better sources and appeal given the seriousness of the topic. By just taking a glance at the websites, one could distinctly tell which website was on which side of the coal energy topic.
The debate that the, this is real, website has is that there is no such thing as clean coal. It is said that the leading cause of global warming is due to coal burning. On the other hand, the Americas Power, website debates that Americas most abundant and affordable fuel source is coal and that they are working on making the burning of coal more eco friendly.
The audiences differ between the two websites. This is reality website, they try to aim their audience toward environmental activists whereas the other website, Americas Power, aims their audience toward the general consumer who are more interested in cheap energy instead of environmental protection.
The people that support the first website are all environmental and wildlife friendly groups. These groups include the League of Conservation Voters, Natural Resources Defense Council, National Wildlife Federation, and the Sierra Club, just to name the major groups. The other website, Americas Power, is represented by the American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity and a bunch of other coal burning company’s. Both the websites have credible sources but it just depends on which side the person is standing. The first website has more environmental facts whereas the other website has more facts about using coal as energy in the U.S.
The emotional appeals that the first website shows are the appeals of environmental friendly supporters where as the other website appeals to a broad consumer base with incentives for cheap energy. These appeals are effective to both parties because it gives hard evidence to support the thinking of each party.
The visual expression in both the sites give effective rhetorical strategies because there are useful facts and statistics to support each position and with good facts a person can persuade people that know less about the topic than they do.
I find that the first website is more persuasive to my appeal because coal isn’t a clean source of energy but at the same time I do think that it is inexpensive and readily available to the public to use so I think as of this point in time I will continue to use coal energy.

About me and my interests

Hey my name is Yu Sum Chan but you can call me Sam. I am a junior here at Ohio University and my major is international studies. I have a cat named marley and he's pretty chill. I have two older brothers who are twins and also an older sister. Before i turned my focus to school, i liked to play basketball and go snowboarding during the winter. I like anything dealing with me being outdoors as well as anything where i get some excercise. My favorite color is green and my favorite food is chicken...