My First Blogging Experience

This has been the first class that I have ever had to use a blog. In fact this is the first time I have ever used a blog. Looking back at it I never really felt like I was completely in tuned to the blogs. That is not to say that I did not but work into the blogs, I am just saying that I was not used to the whole blogging concept. I did like how we used the blogs to discuss the different readings though. I think that reading over the different blogs that people wrote was a helpful tool in further understanding the readings. One thing that I think was hard to do was to keep commenting on different blogs when everyone read the same thing and sometimes the comments got repetitive or were on the same topic. I think that this made it hard keep commenting on the posts when I felt like sometimes I was repeating myself or saying something that someone else had already said.

Knowing that this blog was online and was public did not really affect what I would say or discuss in my blog. I felt that the public aspect of it was easy to look past because of the two classes that were both blogging at the same time. It is easy to comment on someone's blog when I know I will probably not see that person or have to discuss the blog with them. Plus, our class discussion did not involve the blog writing as much as just talking about the book as a whole. This made it easy for me not to worry about having to discuss my blog outloud. Plus as I mentioned earlier, the blogs being public and us having the ability to comment on the blogs helped my learning of the book. I hope my comments were meaningful and gave some good insight to others as well, because I know other people's blogs and comments certainly helped me. I think that my strongest post were those that dealt with Food, INC. I was much more interested in that book than I was in the book Lost Mountain. I feel that this reflected in my blogs because I think that not having to read the whole book, and only having a few different blog assignments really helped me focus on just doing that assignment. Whereas, when it was with LM I kind of saw myself getting away from focus because there were more posts and there was more reading to do. I did think that both books were interesting in their own right, but having a movie to go along with FI made it more interesting and easier to blog about for myself. So I definitely think that my worst blog was one of my earlier posts about LM, especially since I was not used to blogging at all and I don't think that I really got used to it until later in the quarter. My best blog in my opinion is the one that we did as groups. I think that being able to collaborate with others on the blog made it very easy to put up a well thought out and all-together blog.

Looking back at the whole blog experience I think that it was a good learning tool and experience for me. I had never done it before so it was something new for me to do in a class. The best thing it did for me was helping understand the readings and books though because I was able to see what other people's thoughts were. It was definitely a good discussion tool without having to bring the whole class together to hear everyone's thoughts, but the blog made it so everyone's thoughts were visible.

Food, INC. Blog 3 Pages 183-218

The author of the "Declare Your Independence" chapter did a good job at catching my attention and making me want to read on. His idea to stop the problems in the food industry and return to more natural food selections is to completely opt out of the way we make and eat or foods. His last sentence of the first paragraph on page 184 does a good job at grabbing the reader in. He says "...it's actually the most realistic and effective approach to transforming a system that is slowly but surely killing us." (Page 184). This gives a pull at the reader's emotions and makes you think, maybe the way that I am eating and what I am buying is actually killing us. He goes on later listing an array of things that we are letting our food industries take part in. The last bullet at the bottom of page 189 is a good example of another emotional affect on the reader. It reads: "Things that end in "cide" (Latin for death)." (Page 189). We are eating foods that have been treated in pesticides and such, and we think sure its killing the dangerous pests and insects that can affect the food, but what is doing to us?

Salatin is a credible source in my mind for this reading because he is a farmer himself. He provides for more than 1,500 families, ten retail outlets, and thirty restaurants. It's a very well written chapter I believe, and that is expected I think because he also has a degree in English and has had several other articles and six books published. He also gives many different suggestions at what we can do throughout the chapter like buying local products, cooking ourselves, planting a garden, or buying what's in season. The problem is having a garden is just not a possibility at all for me, I know I do not always buy in season (which I can change), and buying non-local products are sometimes just the easier way to go for a college student. I do cook for myself, but things that I'm cooking are not exactly what this book would agree with. I'm not sure how much my eating habits will actually change, if at all, after this book.

Argument Outline and Bibliography

Poor fishery management is leading to the overuse of our oceans and will lead to the collapse of the fishing industry, seafood, and fish stocks around the world.

1. Overfishing
- Many different fish are being taken out of our oceans at too high a rate to sustain
- Currently the fishing fleet on our oceans is three times that of which it can actually provide for
- The taking out of fish that are not normally being used for food
- 90 percent of predator fish are gone
- Jellyfish populations are rising
- Bycatching is occuring- Fish that are too small to eat are being caught in the nets used for larger fish and are still taken out of the ocean and used for fertilizer, other pet food, and even to be fed to fish farmed fish

2. Pollution and Poor fishing techniques
- There is an abundance of lost fishing equipment at sea, inlcuding nets that still roam the waters and can still catch fish and kill them once they are trapped
- Ghost Fishing
- Fishing using dynamite
- Fishing using cyanide and deadly chemicals that killing ocean life and coral reefs
- Fish farms that are producing more pollution and waste products than fish
- Pirate fishing unregulated by laws

3. Depletion of fish stocks
- Bluefin tuna is depleting so much that they are worth up to $100,000 a fish
- Cod almost completly gone
- Scientists saying that complete fish stocks in the ocean will be gone by 2048

4. Fish Farming Problems
- Pollution and waste entering the ocean around the fish farm
- Chemicals used on the fish

Bibliography

"Current Problems in the Management of Marine Fisheries." Science. Beddington, J.R., Agnew D.J., Clark C.W. 22 June 2007. Web 22 Feb 2010. http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/316/5832/1713

Lynas, Mark. "Sacrificed in the Name of Sushi." Issues 41. Web. 8 Feb 2010.
.

"Overfishing Basics." Overfishing: A Global Disaster. Web. 31 Jan 2010. http://overfishing.org/pages/why_is_overfishing_a_problem.php

"Overfishing/Greenpeace." Greenpeace. Web. Feb 1 2010. http://www.greenpeace.org/international/campaigns/oceans/overfishing.

"Poorly Managed Fishing." WWF For a Living Planet. Web. Feb 1 2010. http://www.panda.org/about_our_earth/blue_planet/problems/problems_fishing/

“The Pros and Cons of Fish Farming.” Advocacy for Animals. 4 Aug 2008. Web. 7 Feb 2010.
.

“The Pros and Cons of Fish Farming.” USA Today. June 2001. Web. 8 Feb 2010.
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Food, Inc. Blog Post 2

These parts of the book were really focusing on the effects of climate change and things that we could do to change. The chapter "Why Bother?" posed a good question I thought, and it's in the title. It's not that I wouldn't want to do something to help change the climate problems, or reduce my carbon footprint, but when they talk about having an individual stop eating this is just something that I would never do. I eat every day, and I do not see myself changing that part of my diet. I do agree that there are definite problems with the meat industry in the way they treat animals, process their foods, and transfer the meat. However, this does not deter me from going out and buy meat. I do not think that most of the population would stop eating meat because of these things either. Eric Shlosser even made a comment in the movie how to this day his favorite meal is a hamburger with cheese. The question: Why bother? also comes up because it may just be too late to change anything. Climate change, as Michael Pollan points out, is upon us no matter what we do, and it is way ahead of schedule. I'm all for trying to stop climate problems, and reduce carbon footprints, but as a college student who has cheap easy access to the foods that are causing this, what else am I going to do? I can't plant a garden at my apartment here at OU and organic foods are expensive compared to cheap meats.

Position Statement

For my research exploration essay I researched the effects of fisheries on the oceans. I explored the pros and the cons fishery management and whether or not it really is taking a toll on the ocean and the fish in the ocean. My position on the topic, as I thought it would be, is that poor fishery management is causing overfishing, pollution, bycatches, and several more problems. I feel that fisheries are not taking the right stands on trying to prevent these things. Also, as someone who loves seafood, I would hate to see the oceans actually run out of fish that we eat. Many scientists are saying that this is happening and complete stocks of popular fish, such as the Bluefin tuna, could be extinct as early as 2048. I would hate to see this happen, as many others would I'm sure, but this isn't the only problem with poor fishery management. I will further explore the problems that are hurting our oceans, and will look to see if the fisheries can maybe sway me in their direction.

Food, Inc. Movie and Book Blog 1

In the movie Food, Inc. the part that stood out most to me was the segment on corn. It stuck out the most to me because of how many different things contain corn. This did not only include food either. That was the most shocking. You don't really think of diapers and such to contain corn but apparently they do. I liked how the movie presented to the information on corn and what all contains corn as well. It kept popping up images of different familiar products, first showing ones which it was easy to see how corn was in them , but once more and more products kept popping up, the movie showed more and more products that you would never associate with corn. The flim was also hard hitting when it talked about how corn farmers are being put out of business and getting in trouble when they save their seeds now because of Monsanto's restrictions on corn farming.

The book supplemented the movie very well. In the chaper about organic foods, more was talked about on how the world is becoming more and more dependent on foods that are enhanced by chemicals. One quote said this well: "All of humanity ate organic food until the early part of the twentieth century, yet we've been on a chemical binge diet for about eighty years." (Page 48). This really makes you think about how much the food we eat has changed because of chemical enhancement. The book also mentions how much Stoneyfield has done to break organic foods onto more of a mainstream scale. Plus, it gives the mission statements of Stoneyfield and what their goals are. Monsanto is discussed further in the book, outside of the corn topic on how they sell their bovine growth hormones to be put in milk cattle.

"A Forest Returns"

After watching this video I was glad to see that it is possible for a forest to regrow in an area that it was destroyed. I had no idea that Wayne National Forest was not there at one point. I just assumed it had always been that big and full of tree growth and what not. This is a perfect of example of what should be happening to the forests in the mining communities after all the devastation takes place from the mining. It is terrible thing to see a forest get destroyed because of all the life and homes for different species that it brings. So to watch this video and see that it is possible to grow a forest again once where there was so much destruction and a barren landscape. It obviously would be better if that never had to occur in the first place, but at least the forest grew again. The old man who told the story seemed so happy that the forest was there again, and it was incredible to hear his story about how the forest was not there at one point. It was great to hear the story from someone who had a great knowledge of the area and went through it from no forest at all, till what is now Wayne National Forest.

Research Prospectus Introduction and Bibliography

The ocean provides the earth with one of the most diverse and interesting ecosystems today. This is the marine ecosystem, which stretches from the tiny plankton to the huge whales in the ocean. Seafood then of course is included, and this is providing a problem with the marine ecosystem. Overfishing of the oceans is a big issue today, even though it goes unnoticed to most people. Overfishing occurs when there are more fish being taken out of the oceans, than the system can support. This is an unsustainable problem in today's oceans. In fact, huge numbers of fish are being taken out of the ocean at such a high rate, scientists believe that soon enough it will change the oceans forever, not to mention our dinner plates. Of the oceans population, 52% of fish stocks are fully exploited, 20% are moderately exploited, 17% overexploited, 7% are depleted, and one percent is recovering from depletetion. The world is at risk of losing a major food source and a vast and diverse ecosystem. Some say that many important fish stocks, one like tuna and cod which many people rely on as food sources, could be completely gone in as a little as 25 years.

There are several different causes of overfishing. One of the biggest causes is the fact that today's fishing fleets are almost three times larger than needed to catch the amount of fish actually needed. This means that more and more fish are being taken out than we as people can even consume or need. Another cause of overfishing the many technological advances that makes fishing easier such as stronger nets and better boats. There are also Pirate Fishers who do not follow and rules or regulations regarding fishing and they are continually pulling fish out illegaly in large numbers. Many fishing fleets produce a massive bycatch as well when the fish for their main target. This means that they are accidentally pulling in smaller fish that are not used for human consumption, but they are being taken out anyway. Finally another cause and problem of overfishing is the destructive techniques used by some to get the fish out of the ocean. This includes dynamite (ever heard the expression it's like fishing with dynamite?), using cyanide for fishing, and ghost fishing. Ghost Fishing is when equipment used to fish gets lost at sea. For example, nets can be released from a ship and get lost at sea, and they can still catch things.

In fact, since the large scale industrial fishing began in the 50's, ninety percent of the predator fish, which we love to eat like tuna, marlin, and cod to name a few amoung many, have been fished out. When this number continues to decrease and decrease then the number of smaller fish like plankton will increase because they no longer have to worry on predators. Some scientists say this will even increase the number of jellyfish in oceans. This opens up the effect of overfishing on other wildlife, not just the human race. For example the puffin, which is a seabird, relies on sandeel, which is a fish that has been declining in numbers with the overfishing problems. This then has cause a drop in the number of seabirds that nest every year and the number that breeds every year. Also, since the numbers of larger fish that can be caught is getting smaller and smaller, the size of the mesh in the nets that fisherman use are getting smaller. This causes smaller fish to be caught that people will not eat. When this happens the fishermen do not throw these fish backin the ocean, they will grind them up and then the remains are used as animal food or fertilizer. Another staggering fact is that 20,000 porpoises die each year in the nets of salmon fishermen and thousands of dolphins are killed each year by tuna fishermen.

Bibliography:

"Marine Ecosystems." U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. 28 Dec 2009. Web. 31 Jan 2010. http://www.epa.gov/bioiweb1/aquatic/marine.html

"Overfishing Basics." Overfishing: A Global Disaster. Web. 31 Jan 2010.
http://overfishing.org/pages/why_is_overfishing_a_problem.php

"Overfishing/Greenpeace." Greenpeace. Web. 1 Feb 2010. http://www.greenpeace.org/international/campaigns/oceans/overfishing

"Overfishing." Peoples Trust for the Environment. Web. 1 Feb 2010.
http://www.ypte.org.uk/environmental/over-fishing/29

"Poorly Managed Fishing." WWF for a Living Planet. Web. 1 Feb 2010.
http://www.panda.org/about_our_earth/blue_planet/problems/problems_fishing/

Research Topic cont...

Well, I've tried to find as much information as I could on turning salt water into an energy source, but it looks like there just is not enough to make a full research paper out of it. It was a very interesting topic to me, but it looks like I'll have to look for another topic.

I would like to start with environmental issues dealing with water though. I came across an issue of the ocean's actually shrinking. The information on this involves poorly managed fishing, inadequate protection, tourism and coastal development, shipping, oil & gas, and pollution among many other issues. This is something that interests me because the ocean has always been a big area of interest of mine. With everything that the human race depends on the ocean with though, the oceans are finally being pushed to their limit. I want to explore this topic so more and narrow it to a few of the issues that seem to be the biggest. It should be an interesting topic to research because even though most of us regard the oceans as endless in possibilities, in fact, we might be taking it for granted.

Buckeye Forest Council Presentation

After David Maywhoor's the thing that I struck me the most was prescribed burnings. I went to the BFC website and saw how the Shawnee forest was supposed to only get 280 acres to burn, but instead over 2,000 acres burned. This just struck me as something that needs to be way more controlled. He touched on prescribed burning and showed us pictures of what was happening to the forests after the burnings. It just looked completely barren and almost depressing. Also, he said to control the burnings they would just take a bulldozer around the perimeter of where the fire was supposed to stop and just destroyed more forest. I do not agree with the way the burn the forests at all.

Research Topics

When I started to think about which environment issue to write about, I'll admit I was pretty unsure of where to even start. So like a lot of people did I'm sure, I went straight to Google and searched, environmental issues. I clicked on the first one and luckily something that struck me as interesting came up: Water more valuable then oil? I clicked on the article and it was talking about how freshwater is becoming more and more scarce and the site mentioned how by 2050, more than 48 countries and 2 billion people will have insufficient drinking water. I realized as I kept reading this article, that we have talked about this in class and the different water issues, so I wanted to move to something that we hadn't talked about.

I remembered hearing once that salt water can turn into an energy source. So I googled that and an article about a scientist who lit salt water on fire. He mentions how if we can turn salt water into fire, then they could use it for energy, and think about how much salt water we have on this planet. There are a lot skeptics about this however and people think that he put electrodes in the water. However he says its just salt water, so I'll do some more research to see how real that is. So I decided to do look up: salt water energy source on google. It turned out that CBS news did a special on this. Kanzius, a luekemia patient is the man who discovered that salt water could be burned using radio frequencies. If this is true, and we could find a way to do it with mass quantities, keep it safe, and use it inexpensively, could it really be a new energy source? Kanzius went to meet with officals of the Department of Energy to try and obtain funding. The heat produced from burning salt water got to 3,000 degrees Fahrenheit, but they want to know if it could power a car or machinery. This article I found was published in 2007 though, so I'll have to try and find some more recent developments in it.

Last mountain pt. 3

Reece talks about Wendell Berry and how he explains the difference between a "rational" mind and a "sympathetic" mind. When I think about rational thinking I believe it to be the thought process in which one makes a decision because they believe it to be the smartest, most realistic, and least consequential decision. Rational decisions are made for the best possible outcome at that time and it does not necessary comply with the emotions or thoughts of others. A sympathetic mind or way of thinking differs from a rational mind. My thought of what Berry explains sympathetic minds to be is one that makes decisions and actions based upon emotions and the effects that their decision may have on others. Sympathetic minds do not think only upon themselves and they look at other possible decisions even if it will not provide the best outcome for themselves.

Reece's sympathetic mind can be seen in the first chapter of part 3. He talks about the Carter family who live by a road in which the weight limit was constantly suppassed by coal trucks driving on it. Darlies Carter was on her way home from work and was hit head-on by a coal truck being driven by an ex-con on thirty Xanax. It killed her. She was going to graduate from college that year and her mother said, "I was getting ready for a graduation and instead had to go to a funeral." Another way that Reece demonstrates his sympathetic mind was in the chapter RFK in EKY. He talks about how Robert Kennedy had come to Eastern Kentucky to address the coal mining problem in Kentucky. RFK talks about how devasted the land was that he saw after strip mining had occured. He mentions that "the people of Eastern Kentucky are three-way losers." After all this he gets in the car with Mr. Caudill and tells him they will do something about this. Four months later Reece adds, Robert Kennedy was shot dead after winning the Democratic Party. He uses both these examples to show sympathy and to get the reader's sympathy in his reading.

Qoute: "Serous Measures to move toward alternative energies were shuttled by the bill. This is obviously bad news for Appalachia. And it is ad news for everyone downstream. There is a certain insanity (I choose the word carefully) about perpetuating a global economy based on limitless growth when that is powered by finite resources-in the case of the energy bill, fossil fuels." (Page 228)

I chose this quote because I believe it brings about a great point. We are trying to produce a limitless world with a resource that has it limits and will run out. We need to find alternative resources other that coal. The problem, as brought up in this class before, is that America is so dependent on coal that we continually just keep going back to it, even though it destroys the environment and people. We do need coal, but we also should really start more and more investing and development of alternative resources before, like Professor Krupa said in part 2, "We kill ourselves off."

Lost Mountain Pt. 2

I really enjoyed how the second part of the book was started off by Reece. I'm not necessarily talking about pages 87-91, but I'm talking about the chapter on the flying squirrels. I think that this chapter does a great job of taking your mind off the depressing effects of mountain top removal mining and the somewhat overral "sad" tone of the book. It was also very interesting to find out how they trapped the squirrels, and how abundant they were in this part of the forrest. At the end of the chapter Reece states how they trapped ten different squirrels, but Krupa mentions how Reece and these students just witnessed something that 99.99% of all people will never see. This stuck out as very interesting to me and as another reason why these forrests need to stay intact. Fying squirrels only florish in this area and if this part of the forrest was destroyed then where would they go? Plus, the idea of a flying squirrel is very fascinating so I think that it was very interesting how Reece dedicated an entire chapter to them.

Going back to the plants in the area that are being destroyed Reece mentions how there is one plant in Appalachia that is only traceable to that region in Appalachia and in China. This was the tulip poplar. Then he goes on to say how there are two-thirds of all the wild orchids in Appalachia are cousins to those in China. This is so interesting based on the fact of how far area these two areas obivously are. These facts just go on to continually show how old this mountain range is. Reece mentions how it is even older than the Himalayas. Destroying this mountain range by mountain top removal is just a complete shame and Reece is doing a great job at depicting why.

Lost Mountain 1-85

Reece gives many different arguments on why the mountain top removal program in Appalachia is more negative and positive things for this region. The main argument that I came across is what mountain top removal is doing the people in the region. Already very poverty stricken the mountain top removal program gives many environmental problems to the region as well. When Reece meets up with Teri Blanton we see many of these negative affects. He mentions how more than once when the two were traveling past homes of people she has known or knew, she says everyone in that house died of cancer. The reason for this she believed and is a very valid argument is because of the toxins that were being released and not cleaned up from the coal companies.

The county that they were going through was Dayhoit. When the two went to a graveyard a very noticeable thing on the stones was the fact that most date of births to date of deaths would only span till about fifty five years. Blanton says "Not many people in Dayhoit live past fifty-five". Obviously this life span is not near the average life span in America.

Reece also visits a community meeting in which people come to speak about the coal mining situation and problems in the community. The argument for coal mining comes up often in this meeting and the most notable one he mentions is that of Paul David Taulbee. One thing he said was "The only way to stay in the mountains is to mine the mountains!" This argument can become very relavent I believe because mining does bring jobs, not nearly as many as it used to, but it does. Plus most of these communities had been brought up around mines. People who leave the region do sometime come back because they know no other way of life but that of living in a coal mining community.

If I were in the debate of whether to keep coal mining going on in the region, I would say that we need coal to run this country. In the community meeting they also make a mention to how everyone in the meeting is going to use coal and even Reece mentions how he used fuel to write this book. However, something needs to be done about the method of strip mining. Harder laws should be passed to keep the region in as best shape as possible and the carbon and toxic wastes that contaminates the air and waters of the Appalachian region need to be cleaned up.

In-Class Writing- Coal Pros/Cons

Going to both the pro coal and against coal websites obviously I found considerable differences. The one that I found more appealing would have to be the American Power website, which I also found more persuasive. It seemed more professional to me, and seemed like there was a lot more interaction to be done with the website.

From reading several facts against and for coal on both the websites, it definitely seems that the environment and health of Americans is in trouble, but also the major fuel source in America is coal. Without coal I would not even be able to typing on this computer most likely. Now, I completely agree with the argument that coal power plants need to start capturing the CO2 that is being emitted into the environment, but could we really be doing the things that we have to do to get by in our lives without coal? The This is Reality site states that something must be done in the future to capture the CO2 gas from the plants, and to invest money into alternative sources of fuel. The site says how investing in finding and using alternative fuels like wind power or solar power would also provide many more jobs than the coal industry. Coal is our most abundant fuel source in America though. On the American Power website it states that there is enough coal to power America for the next 200 years, and American Power says how they are and have been for the past 30 years investing money into making it cleaner.

The reason why I found American Power more persuasive was because America would not be the same without coal. Plus, coal provides many jobs for people who may not have opportunities elsewhere. I believe that coal companies need to keep finding cleaner ways to produce energy from coal and start capturing CO2 for sure. I still though am for the use of coal as energy, because until an alternative fuel source is used, which would take years and years to get going, coal is the most affordable and abundant.

Introduction

Well, to start my introduction I'll start by telling you all I am a junior at Ohio University studying criminology, and I also play on the football team. This past season we played in a bowl game but unfortunately we lost to Marshall 21-17. I grew up in a small town outside of Cincinnati, Ohio call Wyoming. I lived there with parents Jeff and Kathy. My dad's name is Jeff like mine, but I am not a junior because our middle names are different. I also have two older sisters. One is married with two kids, one of which I am the very happy Godfather of. My other sister attends Ohio State University and is actually getting married in June. Also back home I have two dogs, both akitas. They are both very large dogs weighing in at about 135 pounds each.