NSI Day 9 Script - Spring 2000
- Reminder - Pseudoscience papers due today
- Any remaining questions or comments about global warming stuff? - due May 4
- return journals
- Journal starter - What are the most important factors (for you personally) in deciding whether you use public transportation?
Next week we’re going to begin working on the major project of the term- transit options for the Portland area. I’ll hand out the assignment and give more specific details on Thursday, but today want to do some background that I think will be helpful both for this project and for global warming.
Even more than with global warming project, want to emphasize from the start that this is a real issue, an immediate one about which decisions are being made.
Want to apply what we have learned about scientific investigation and conclusions to a real situation. As we’ve discussed somewhat before, the interplay between science and politics gets very complex very quickly. I want to give you a small example first to remind you how important accurate scientific knowledge is in making many social decisions:
Recycling example of how knowledge of science impacts your worldview (ideas of what actions are right or wrong, what you consider virtuous, etc.) - Hold up an empty glass juice bottle. I need to decide what action I should take with this bottle. To keep the discussion as constrained as possible, I’m going to limit myself to 2 choices: I could toss it in that garbage can over there, or I could hold onto it until I go by the glass recycling bin on the way back to my office, and put it in there. Each of those two actions will set in motion a whole series of other actions by various people and machines, and will have an impact of some kind on the conditions on earth (pollution, energy use, natural resources available, etc.). My question is, which option should I choose? (Sort of a version of the “paper or plastic” dilemma you’ve seen on TV ads). Ask how many vote “throw it in the garbage” and how many vote “recycle it”? (good, so we’re all good northwesterners) Then ask why - what goal are they pursuing, in giving the answer they give (answer will probably be some version of, “better for the earth”, preserve resources for future use, etc. ). Try to agree on some fairly specific goal that we’re seeking by choosing (presumably) to recycle. (Note that this may be very hard to do - most of the time we just have some vague idea that “recycling is “better” for the earth,” without being sure what we mean by better, or for whom or what things on earth. We know it’s supposed to be the virtuous thing to do, but aren’t quite sure what makes it so. Same thing comes up in our big project, when we have to get out of the trap of automatically taking MAX as the icon of environmental-consciousness.) But once agree on something, then can start to ask, “what do we know or think we know that makes us sure that recycling is the ‘best’ option?” (Maybe want glass to last longer, less pollution in atmosphere from producing the bottles, less resulting destruction of wildlife, etc.)
Emphasize clearly that I’m not trying to get you to oppose recycling - it probably IS the best thing, for many materials, by some reasonable definition of what we mean by best. What I am trying to get you to notice is that the answer is not a no-brainer - it is information dependent. (and hence it is crucial that we know the science, i.e. how the world will work in response to our actions) Depending on the type of material, how it is produced, and how the recycling process for that material works (including how the recyclables are sorted and collected - curbside, etc.-), recycling may have more or less impact on the environment than “throwing the stuff away” (which ultimately DOES recycle it in some way), and then going out and collecting more from nature. We cannot legitimately make these kind of decisions in the absence of information about how things will work - without such knowledge, our moral code may be leading us in exactly the opposite of the desired direction.
For both global warming, and the transit project, the problem of pollution ultimately stems from the need for energy, and in the process of transforming energy into the form useful to us, we produce pollution. So want to spend the rest of the period today giving everyone some common understanding of energy and how to work with it: (go to energy introduction notes)