Environmental Issues: Measuring, Analyzing, Evaluating (2nd Edition)
- Book Review,
by Robert L. McConnell, Daniel C. Abel
From Book News, Inc.
This textbook examines 27 issues currently critical to the global environment in the areas of population and migration, consumption and quality of life, energy use and conservation, pollution and climate change, the hydrosphere, and environmental health. The second edition adds a section on using math in the environmental sciences.Copyright © 2004 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR
Book Info
Takes an approach of combining simple math, the metric system, and critical thinking to gain insight into relevant local, regional, and global environmental issues. Softcover.
From the Back Cover
Would you like your students to be able to critically analyze the environmental issues they hear about in the news? This unique case study book provides the basic tools they will need to probe and examine relevant issues. Features topical and timely cases rather than hypothetical situations. These include population growth, energy and natural resources, transportation, and air and water pollution. Presents the tools of critical thinking and applies them throughout the book. This allows students to understand the nature of critical thinking before they are asked to think critically about an issue. Includes simple math to understand environmental issues. Mathematical formulas are explained in a non-threatening, step-by-step manner that demystifies math and helps students gain confidence. Suggests examples for further research while encouraging students to explore the implications, significance, and validity of their work. Written in a clear and straightforward style.
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
TO THE INSTRUCTOR The idea for this book arose when we were colleagues at Mary Washington College. We grew impatient with a teaching style centered on the faculty member as "lecturer" and expert and the student as "scribe" and novice. We feel that such an approach encourages students to be passive rather than active learners and leads to an unhealthy dependency on the faculty person as "expert." Although students generally are both capable and dedicated, many are also afraid of math, rusty in its use, or were superficially trained in arcane fields of calculus. This lack of math skills often leaves students unprepared to deal with the complexity of today's environmental issues. Moreover, we are continually surprised to discover how many bright students can't do three things: understand and confidently manipulate the units of the metric system, use scientific notation, or critically evaluate complex environmental issues. Most of a student's discomfort with math is generally founded in frustration. For example, making one error in a series of calculations can render the whole effort useless. We believe that, in the absence of a real learning disability, to solve most math problems requires no special aptitude, only clear sequential instructions, attention to detail, and hard work. That is why step-by-step calculations are included in your Answer Key. One of our major objectives is thus to help develop math literacy (numeracy) among today's students. We understand that many students have some "math anxiety," so we have included in this second edition a section entitled Using Math in Environmental Issues, in which we use a step-by-step method to take students through examples of the calculations in the Issues. We even show sample keystrokes involved in using common calculators. We believe this method will gradually build the student's confidence enough to trust in his or her own efforts. Math proficiency is one of the important skills necessary for fully understanding environmental issues, and without these skills, the student's only option is to make choices on the basis of which "expert" is most "believable." Such skills involve the ability to manipulate large numbers using scientific notation and exponents, the ability to use compound growth equations containing natural logs, and so on. It is our goal that this book be provocative, factually accurate and up-to-date. Environmental Issues: Measuring, Analyzing, and Evaluating is meant to be the basis for an issues-oriented introductory, seminar, upper-level, or laboratory course in environmental science or studies. However, it can also be used as a supplement to traditional texts in environmental science, geology, biology, and other natural sciences and in humanities courses that seek to cultivate an awareness of and knowledge about environmental issues (ecolacy). These issues may be viewed as projects that use pressing environmental issues as a means to develop students' critical thinking skills in a deliberate and structured way. By their nature, they require students to integrate topics from across subdisciplines to measure, analyze, and evaluate each issue using the discipline and method of a scientist. But becoming educated is much more than simply acquiring skills. Therefore, we have two additional objectives: to provide students with the knowledge and intellectual standards necessary to apply critical thinking to environmental studies and to foster their ability to critically evaluate issues. As such, Environmental Issues: Measuring, Analyzing, and Evaluating is as much an interactive workbook as a traditional textbook. We expect students to have access to standard references in environmental, physical, and natural sciences and to have access to and know how to use the World Wide Web. Indeed, every Issue contains URLs (Uniform Resource Locators) to websites for up-to-the-minute information. We also trust that you, as an expert in your field and with your own perspectives, will supplement the information in this book with comments, introductions, and your own critical comments on the questions we ask your students to consider. The questions in each issue have been used by students in a university/college setting. The issues have undergone an exhaustive set of permutations to make them as user-friendly and comprehensible as we can make them. The issues are based on solid science, key terms are defined, and jargon is kept to a minimum. When important terms are introduced they are italicized and defined if necessary. Key mathematical formulas are introduced and painstakingly explained using a step-by-step, nonthreatening approach that we believe you will appreciate. But we designed this book to be more than a workbook. As we mentioned, one of our major objectives is to foster numeracy among today's students—not necessarily arcane math, but the kind of math needed to properly quantify environmental issues, such as the use of key formulas, scientific notation, and the metric system. We provide detailed introductions for each of these topics, as well as a detailed Answer Key for you to use as you see fit that shows the step-by-step calculations used to determine the answers. We have purposefully not directly provided students access to the Answer Key. In addition, we provide you with suggested answers to the "Critical Thinking" questions, but we are confident that you will have your own point of view that you will wish to develop in many if not most of them. To encourage rigorous critical thinking, each issue has a set of "Critical Thinking" questions with spaces for answers. Critical thinking involves using a set of criteria and standards by which the reasoner constantly assesses her/his thinking. At the core of critical thinking is self-assessment. These questions are intended to serve two purposes: to allow students to practice their writing in a non-threatening journal format and to develop their critical thinking skills. In terms of critical thinking, we devote a detailed section to the aspects of this important concept in the first section of this book. It is vitally important that students read this material for content as they will be asked to apply these standards and criteria throughout the book. We trust that this book will provide an extraordinarily stimulating experience for your students. The "Critical Thinking" questions have been designed (using principles of critical thinking) to be provocative, and you or your students may perceive a "bias" in the wording of some of the questions. Although we have made the content as factual as possible, we do have strong convictions about these issues. Convictions are not, however, biases. Based on the scientific method, our views as scientists are subject to change as evidence supporting our convictions changes. And as such, we are constantly testing the assumptions that we use when approaching complex environmental issues. Indeed, this aspect can be turned to a major advantage. Ask your students to look for examples of bias in the questions, and then discuss with them the difference in science between "bias" and "conviction." No doubt it will prove a fruitful activity and may lead students into research (perhaps to "prove us wrong"), which is the essence of progress in the search for scientific truth. How to Use This Book Effectively As an instructor, you are probably aware that many students will resist doing the work necessary to fully appreciate the issues. Others will wait until the last minute and then slap together something just in time to turn in. Still others will respond to critical thinking questions with only a few words containing inch-high letters. Here's how we use Environmental Issues in our classes. First, we typically dedicate a class or a portion of a laboratory early in the semester to introducing students to the principles of critical thinking. In this period we ask students to list characteristics of critical thinking (or higher order thinking, or just plain good, effective thinking). More often than not, the class's list encompasses many of the standards of critical thinking that are contained in the section of this book entitled Basic Concepts and Tools: Using Math and Critical Thinking. As we go over these characteristics, we emphasize clarity, awareness of assumptions, and continuous self-assessment, as well as the importance of applying critical thinking to environmental (and other) issues. We then analyze passages from letters to the editor, newspaper op-eds, and popular magazine articles. It is also worthwhile, before using this book, to confront students' math anxiety early and attempt to reassure them that they are capable of doing the math, although they may be rusty and require some practice and assistance. We frequently assign Issues or blocks of Issues as group projects, in which students collaborate using a web page, "blackboard" or another form of electronic discussion group, and we try to ensure that every student logs on to the system. An e-mail system allows your students to communicate with each other outside of class; they can exchange information, send reports, references, and critiques to classmates, and so on. Using this format, students can also provide less-threatening critiques of each other's work and ideas. We recommend you encourage students to do this, while reminding them that few people are won over to another's argument by having their own ideas ridiculed. For classes of more than 24 students, use of a group e-mail system offers you enormous possibilities. You can break the class into working groups of three to four members, and the group can be reorganized as the term progresses. Working groups can do the calculations independently, can check their work by e-mail, or in meetings, and can get together to hash out the answers to the For Further Study questions. This method also allows you to monitor the class's work and communicate with the class in a nonthreatening manner. Your institution's computer or network services department can provide you with the details if you've never used one. We have found that many students who would be reluctant to participate in a classroom discussion will willingly contribute in the relative anonymity of an electronic discussion group. Students can (and probably should) copy their math and send it to others over the system, thereby checking each other's work. You can send comments to the groups if you feel they are on the wrong track and commend them and encourage them if they are making progress. You can send them questions arising out of their own discussions and respond immediately to their inquiries. They can exchange information on the For Further Study questions, and you can discuss these question with the students as their work evolves. Regardless of whether you are teaching a large or small class, you can have students work in groups of two to four members. They can debate the issues and grade each other, or they can turn in their work in the normal fashion and be graded on the accuracy of their calculations as well as on the thoroughness of their answers to selected For Further Study questions. Whatever the size of your class, work on these issues can take the place of one or more exams, freeing you up for other activities and providing students with a less-threatening way to earn class credit than an all-exam format. We believe that students retain more information from work on projects and reports than from cramming for tests. At the end of the term, you could pass out a study sheet detailing specifically what material from the issues will be covered on the final exam, if you choose to test them on their work in this manner. A Few Final Comments This book has a simple, straightforward format and intentionally includes only black and white figures. We made this decision to lower printing costs and thus save your students money. We realize, however, the importance of illustrations: As our editors constantly remind us, texts must be able to pass the "flip test." For location maps not included in the text, we recommend that students access Census Bureau data at http://www.census.gov and Tiger Map Server Browser at http://www.nwbuildnet.com/nwbn/mapservice.html, which is an outstanding website for maps. At this site students can type in city, county, or state names or use a zip code to access maps and demographic information for any locality in the United States. These maps can also be manipulated to provide representation of additional data and can be downloaded and printed. This book provides you with a wide range of issues, many of which you and your students may never have thought about previously. It is likely that you will not be able to get through all of these in one semester, unless you assign different issues to groups of students. However, we feel Issue 1 is pivotal, and it should be completed first and very carefully. Other issues can be assigned at your discretion. You may contact us personally at rmcconne@mwc.edu and dabel@coastal.edu with questions and comments. We hope to hear from you! TO THE STUDENT If you are concerned about and interested in environmental issues, but feel you just "can't deal with the math," then this book is for you. As environmental scientists, we care deeply about environmental issues, and we feel that you, as a responsible citizen who will have to make increasingly difficult choices in the years ahead, need to be concerned about them as well. Here are a few of our reasons: As this book goes to press, the world's leaders are beginning a dialogue about how to respond to human-induced global climate change, a result of global warming. A scientific consensus already exists that our growing human population is having a measurable effect on the composition of the planet's atmosphere. Even though we can't yet be certain what the effect of these changes will be, the preponderance of evidence suggests the impact will, on the whole, be negative, and could be catastrophic for hundreds of millions of people crowded into many of the planet's coastal cities. Oceanographers are becoming increasingly concerned about the very survival of many marine organisms, including some that form the basis of major world fisheries. In fact, entire ecosystems, such as coral reefs, may be at risk. The ocean's ability to absorb our waste, toxic and otherwise, is certainly limited, and these limits are being tested. Although we in the United States and in a few other areas of the world have made impressive strides in improving or at least slowing the degradation of our air, water, and soil, our relentlessly growing human numbers threaten this progress. Growing levels of material consumption in developed countries, coupled with less-regulated international commerce (free trade) are placing increased stress on critical ecosystems such as tropical hardwood forests, which in turn gravely threatens the planet's species diversity. Environmental issues, such as water conflicts in the Middle East and the impact of air and water pollution, could destabilize international relations, thus leading to regional conflicts involving powers such as the United States. Fossil fuels are the basis of industrial and postindustrial society. Their extraction, transportation, and use impose significant costs on the planet. Much of this cost is externalized (or dumped) onto the environment. In our view, addressing environmental issues must involve an awareness of these costs. We hope you will find this book to be a provocative introduction to a number of these issues and to many others that you may have never even thought about. These are real-lift issues, not hypothetical ones, and you need certain basic skills to fully understand them. You must be familiar with the units of the metric system. You must be able to use a few mathematical formulas to quantify the issues you will be debating, and you must be able to carry out the calculations accurately. You should develop the habit of rigorously assessing your thinking and you should apply certain critical thinking skills and techniques when discussing the implications of your calculations. You should realize that critical thinking requires practice, dedication, and time. We understand that many students have some "math anxiety," so we use a step-by-step method to take you through many of the calculations in this book. We have even included samples of keystrokes used on common hand-held calculators. Math proficiency is one of the important skills necessary for fully understanding environmental issues, and without these skills, your only option is to make choices on the basis of which "expert" you believe. But becoming educated is much more than simply acquiring skills. Therefore, we have another two fundamental objectives: to provide you with the knowledge and intellectual standards necessary to apply critical thinking to environmental studies and to foster your ability to critically evaluate issues, without which mechanical skills are of limited value. To that end, we have included a section, Basic Concepts and Tools: Using Math and Critical Thinking, in which we illustrate and describe each criterion for critical thinking, as well as the framework within which these criteria are applied. It is very important that you read this section carefully and do all of the exercises in it before you begin the analyses of the issues. Let's consider an example: growth. The word is used in many societal, economic, demographic, and environmental contexts, including growth of the economy, growth of the population, growth of impervious surfaces, growth of food production, and growth of energy use. Assessing the impact of growth requires an understanding of a few simple equations such as the compound interest equation. You must be able to use it accurately and understand its implications. As our national and global population grows and changes and our relationships with other nations and peoples evolve, environmental issues will become increasingly complicated. Domestically, demographic and ethnic changes are becoming more important, which in turn requires an enhanced ability to critically evaluate issues. We don't try to avoid controversial topics such as population growth, personal consumption, the automobile, and immigration. We hope you will be challenged by the issues discussed in this text and that you will research them and become an "expert" on the topics yourself. In fact, if we may be allowed a hidden agenda, this is it. And while you are testing your own thinking and reasoning, test ours as well. Look for examples of "bias" in the "Critical Thinking" questions and be prepared to explain your conclusions and discuss them with your fellow students and with your instructor. A Note on Conventions Used in This Book When we express rates, concentrations, and so on—for example, milligrams per liter, people per hectare, tonnes per year—we use all acceptable formats, including "per" (as above), the slash (mg/L, people/hectare, tonnes/year), or at times negative exponents (mg • L-1, people • hectare-1, tonnes • year-1). These have been used interchangeably throughout the book. Information sources are provided as footnotes at the bottom of each page and the corresponding number is placed in the text where the footnote is cited.
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