1. Sustainability Freshman Inquiry
Jan. 25, 2011
Jeff Fletcher
See also: Daily Log Page

2. Logistics Extra Credit Opportunities
2nd annual PSU Earth Day Festival Planning
Thursday, January 20th, 1:00pm in SMITH 338
THIS Thursday, Jan 27, 6 – 7:30 p.m.  Chris Paine, Lincoln Hall, room 175
Read Kolbert Chapters 8, 9, 10, afterward, and chronology for next Tuesday
Reading notes
Mercy Corp Fieldtrip Thursday Feb. 17, 2-5pm (including transportation time), $2.50 each
Attendance
HEAT questions
Signup for 1 on 1 meetings
Bring any old work, reading notes, questions
Midterm next Tuesday, Feb. 1
Testing as a learning tool (NY Times)

3. Voluntary Simplicity
Free PSU Weekly Discussion Courses on Voluntary Simplicity Start Feb 1
Do you feel stressed, harried, broke?
Explore ways to live simpler and more sustainably.
Meet in small groups to discuss slowing down and creating a more ecological life.
Join us for a free informal 4 week discussion course on Voluntary Simplicity 
offered in one hour sessions throughout February
sponsored by Northwest Earth Institute and the Capstone Program
Mondays, 11 to noon ISS conference room 4th and Market  contact:
Tuesdays 10 to 11am Chit-Chat Cafe  contact:
Tuesdays 7 to 8pm 105 Smith Hall  contact: or
Fridays 11 to noon ISS conference room 4th and Market  contact:

4. How Do We Decide What to Believe in Science?
Bags of poker chips A, B, and C
Represent differences or are they the same?
Could be analogy for:
Deaths: with medicine A, vs. placebo B, vs. no treatment C
White chips are correct predictions of coin flips by blindfolded ESP “experts” A, chance B, a pet sea lion C
temperature without human CO2 A, temp. with human CO2 B, temp. with human CO2 plus carbon offsets C
In pairs:
How would you decide whether you can claim that A, B, and C are the same or different?
Be as precise (quantitative) as you can

5. Complex Systems Yield Surprises
Most models of systems are linear
Change in state predicted to be proportional to change in inputs
Most real and complex systems are non-linear
Systems with feedback are often unpredictable
Small causes can have big effects
Butterfly effect from Chaos theory
Chaos Demos
Catastrophe theory: state is not reversible by reversing cause
Logistic Equation: xt+1 = r xt (1-xt)
Current financial crisis is great example
Emergence

6. Examples from Atmosphere
Is CO2 effect proportional to its abundance in atmosphere?
What proportion is CO2?
Caution in reading graphs
What is ppm in percent?
nitrogen (78%), oxygen (21%) and argon (.93%) = 99.93% of atmosphere!
Methane also has disproportionate effects
Ozone hole: example of unintended consequences and irreversibility (video 2:20)
Big hole until 2017, then hole will start to shrink; back to 1980 level in year 2070!
Example of something not easily reversible, directionality
But also example of world working together to solve a problem!

7. Time Machines? In groups
Identify different methods presented in the text so far for estimating past conditions
What systems states in the past have been analyzed?
What methods have been used?

8. Catastrophe: Time Machines
How do we know about ancient atmosphere, temperatures, weather, fauna?
Greenland Ice Cores (also Antarctic Ice Cores)
Atmosphere: trapped air bubbles
Temperature: isotopic composition of the ice (isotopes of hydrogen and oxygen different ratios depending on temperature)
Lakebed sediment pollen samples
What kind of plants were growing at a particular location in the past
Ocean and lakebed sediments for wind blown substances (e.g. dolomite)

9. Exercise
Each player starts with $100 and can choose to invest from $0 to their current balance.
In each round, each member’s investment is subtracted from each member’s balance
The total of all the investments from the current round are doubled and then divide evenly among all the players
This gives each player a new balance to start a new round
We will do several rounds—please do not get ahead of (or behind) me. I will announce when each round starts and stops
Player with highest final score wins a prize
There is no communication allowed between players

10. Bad/Good Apples Homework 2 This American Life Episode #370
Take notes on:
the main types of behaviors identified
what support/examples are provided
any ideas that come to mind related to your own experience
any thing else you think is relevant