1.

Renewable and nonrenewable resources are similar as they are both natural
resources which are various substances and energy sources we need to survive.
Renewable natural resources are either perpetually available or renew themselves
over months, years, decades, if we are careful not to use them up too quickly or
destructively. In contrast, once nonrenewable natural resources are depleted they
are no longer available. Two nonrenewable natural resources are crude oil and
coal. Two renewable natural resources are wind energy and sunlight.
2. The agricultural and industrial revolution both triggered large increases in
population size. The agricultural revolution was a transition from hunter- gatherer
lifestyle to an agricultural way of life. As people began to grow crops, raise
domestic animals, and live sedentary lives in villages, they found it easier to meet
their nutritional needs. As a result they lived longer and had more children who
survived to adulthood. The industrial revolution entailed a shift from rural life,
animal-powered agriculture, and manufacturing by craftsman, to an urban society
powered by fossil fuels such as oil and natural gas. This revolution introduced
improvements in sanitation and medical technology as well as enhanced
agricultural production with fossil-fuel powered equipment and synthetic
pesticides and fertilizers. These improvements in both revolutions helped increase
populations immensely.
3. Garret Hardin of the University of California at Santa Barbara disputed the
economic theory that unfettered exercise of individual self-interest will serve the
public interest. According to his best know essay, “Tragedy of the Commons,”
published in Science in 1968, resources that are open to unregulated exploitation
will eventually be depleted. Harden based his argument on a scenario he
described in a pamphlet published in 1833. In a public pasture, or “common”, that
is open to unregulated grazing. He argued each person who grazes animals will be
motivated to increase the number of his or her animals in the pasture. Eventually,
overgrazing will cause the pasture’s food production to collapse. Because no
single person owns the pasture, no one has incentive to expend effort taking care
of it, and everyone takes what he or she can until the resources are depleted. The
concept would easily apply to an unregulated industry that is a source of water
pollution. Each company or person in the industry that pollutes the water will
increase water pollution as the industry expands until the resources are depleted.
Because there is no regulation no one will have incentive to clean the water, and
everyone in the industry will take what they can until the resources are depleted.
4. Environmental science is the study of how the natural world works, how our
environment affects us, and how we affect our environment. Examples of
disciplines involved in this science are ecology, biology, chemistry, atmospheric
science, oceanography, geology, archeology, anthropology, sociology, history,
political science, engineering, economics, and ethics.
5. The first meaning of science is the systematic process for learning about the world
and testing our understanding of it. The other meaning is the accumulated body of
knowledge that arises from this dynamic process of observation, testing, and
discovery. Three applications of science are use in developing technology,
informing policy, and management decisions.
6. Scientists generally follow this process. It is a technique for testing ideas with
observations; it involves several assumptions and a series of interrelated steps. It
is a formalized version of the procedure any of us might naturally take, using
common sense, to resolve a question. The typical steps are make observations, ask
questions, develop a hypothesis, make predictions, test the predictions and finally
analyze and interpret results.
7. A manipulative experiment provides the strongest type of evidence a scientist can
obtain, because it can reveal casual relationships. In practice some modes of
scientific inquiry are more amenable to this type of experiment then others.
Physics and chemistry tend to involve manipulative experiments. Certain
disciplines that do not fit the so-called physics model of science rely on natural
experiments. At large scales in fields like ecology it is sometimes impossible to
run a manipulative experiment and instead the scientist runs a natural experiment.
The natural experiment is one that is conducted naturally, and it is up to the
scientist to interpret the results. Natural experiments can show correlation
between variable but cannot show one variable causes change in another, as
manipulative experiments can. Natural experiments also do not always come up
with clean and neat results because of the large scale and complexity of the
results. This can be a problem as scientists cannot give policymakers black and
white answers to questions like they might be able to do with manipulative
experiments.
8. When a researcher’s word is done and the results analyzed, he or she writes up the
findings and submits them to a journal for publication. Several other scientists
specializing in the topic of the paper examine the manuscript, provide comments
and criticism (usually anonymously), and judge whether the work deserves to be
published in the journal. This procedure is known as peer review. Then scientists
frequently present their work at professional conferences, where they interact with
colleagues and receive informal comments on their research. Such feedback from
colleagues can help improve the quality of a scientist’s work before it is submitted
for publication. The scientists also usually need grants and funding and grant
applications, like scientific papers, undergo peer review. This peer review is
usually intense.
9. Pollution is one major environmental problem. It is due to pollution from our
farms, industries, households, and individual actions dirty our land, air, and water.
Another environmental problem facing our world today is climate change.
Climate change, according to scientists, is due to human activity which is altering
our composition of the atmosphere and that these changes are affecting Earth’s
climate. Another huge environmental factor which seems to be overlooked is
overharvesting. We have converted nearly half the planet’s land surface for
agriculture, and our extensive use of chemical fertilizers and pesticides poisons
organisms and alters natural system. The cause of this problem is since the
agricultural revolution progressively more powerful technologies have enabled us
to grow increasingly more food per unit of land.
10. Sustainable development is the use of renewable and nonrenewable resources in a
manner that satisfies our current needs but does not compromise our future
availability of resources. It is important because it helps us, as humans, develop
sustainable solutions that meet environmental, economic, and social goals
simultaneously, or satisfying the so-called “triple bottom line”.