Calculating Your Carbon Budget

How much do you contribute to global carbon cycling? Possibly more than you think. Go to www.lpb.org/programs/forest/calculator.html [a site provided by the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) of Louisiana] and calculate your personal carbon budget. How many trees would be needed to offset your yearly production of CO₂? Try modifying your lifestyle: suppose you drove half as much or recycled more. What are the most effective strategies for reducing your carbon budget?

Once you have figured your personal carbon budget, first multiply your carbon emissions by the number of people in your class, and then by the number of people in your state. This multiplication should give you an idea of how individual actions contribute to global-scale processes. If everyone in your state reduced his or her carbon emissions by 10 percent, how many tons of carbon would be kept out of circulation?

Investigating Current Research Problems

Scientists exchange ideas and information through scientific journals. Thousands of journals exist, many in very specialized fields. Conservation Ecology is an important example of a new variety of scientific journals: e-journals, which you can access on the World Wide Web. This journal includes research articles, debates, discussions, and comments from a variety of well respected and active ecologists, and it covers topics that are very current. Go to Conservation Ecology at www.consecol.org/Journal and look at the most recent issue.

1. Review the table of contents. What topics are ecologists concerned about today?

2. Look at one of the articles in detail. How does the tone of the article reflect some of the ideal approaches to science outlined in chapter 1 (hypothesis testing, cautious inspection of evidence, objectivity)?

3. What kinds of data (or other evidence) does the author present in support of his or her arguments?

4. Some of the articles are debates about a particular topic. Find one of these, and identify the positions on either side of the debate. What is the question being debated? Describe two (or more) opposing views on the question.