Earth’s Greatest Enemies?

Climatologist James Lovelock(http://www.jameslovelock.org/)(originator of the Gaia_hypothesis ) once said that Earth’s greatest enemies were the Three C’s: cars, cows and chainsaws because of their contributions to destabilizing planetary climate.

A. In this final Discussion Forum, you will answer the following question to show your ability to find connections among the environmental issues that you have learned about in this course.
Number your responses so I can see you have addressed each part.

You must cite specific evidence from any Unit of the course to support each of your responses.
Each contributing factor is worth 4 points x 3 = 12 points.

1. What and how do each of these things contribute to the destabilizing of Earth’s atmosphere and its climate?

1a. cows?
1b. cars?
1c. chainsaws?

Reminders:

• Loss of land plants because of human activities will notresult in a reduction of atmospheric oxygen because most of planetary photosynthesis and its resulting oxygen production is in the oceans.
• Be sure to back up your explanations with some research before discussing this topic online with your classmates. Be sure to read relevant sections of your text (and supplementary readings from this Module) and look online. Start with the links in this question and the Resources listed for this Module.

B. After you have posted, you must respond to at least one of your classmates right there on the discussion thread. This is worth 1+3 = 4 points.

• • In your response posting, you must include

1. 1. 1. a reply to your classmate (this is worth 1 point) and
      2. your own “beautiful question” – that is, a well thought out question that shows knowledge and understanding beyond an obvious question. Beautiful questions are clear, specific, relevant, and invite an open-ended response (i.e. not a yes/no question). They may be in response to another classmate’s question (you can’t reply to yourself ) or to something that they have written in their original post. Your beautiful question is worth 3 points.