Unnatural Kingdom

        In the article, The Unnatural Kingdom by Daniel Duane, it talks about about animal conservation methods. The article discusses 2 different methods to help with the extinction of animals. The first method has to do with allowing a population of a species reach a sufficient amount, and then relocating them to establish new herds. The second method is to track the populations and hunt the animals that affect the sizes of other populations. These methods have many similarities, and many differences.

        The two methods have lots of similarities in how they work. Both of the methods are for controlling the size of populations, and help endangered species. They both require lots of human intervention on the environment. They also both require for the entrapment of the animals at one point or another. Both require high end technology to track the animals.

        Similarly to their similarities, the two methods have many differences. For one, the first method requires lots of resources to be able to move them, where as the second method requires lots or resources to be able to hunt the necessary animals.The first method also deals with a direct disturbance to the population, where the second one deals with it with out touching the endangered population. The second method requires the intentional killing of another wild animal, which the first methods has no need for.

        I believe that the second method has a greater chance of success. With the direct impact of getting rid of the very thing that hurts the endangered animals population will allow for them to thrive very easily. Also, lots can go wrong with the relocation of the animal.

        The sheep are less diverse because when the population shrunk, only a few were left to breed with. And once you start breeding between the few left, the off spring only have those select genes, with the others ones dying off. Since those genes are gone, they won't be in the gene pool for the new bred sheep.  Conversationalists are attempting to improve genetic diversity using the first method with relocation.

        The animals should still be considered "wild," because they do normal activities. They find their own food, live their own lives, and do things with out the aid of humans. Sure the humans impact their lives, but they still live as independent animals.

Topic 2: Environment

Executive Summary Main Ideas:

• Most of the environmental impact stems from large quantities animal waste, and the facilities are not in the best places to deal with the large amounts of waste. The facilities are in vulnerable locations.
• Manure comes in such large quantities, so there are lots of nutrients, chemicals, and microorganisms that get into the water, soil, and air.
• The facilities affect the air quality where they are from the release of toxic gases, odorous substances, particulates, and bio aerosols. 
• There is a large amount of resources needed for these facilities, such as water.
• The facilities account for 18% of all human-caused greenhouse gas emissions. 
• The current practice for IFAP uses lots of energy from fossil fuels, industrial fertilizers, and other synthetic chemicals.
• IFAP is faster than the old small family farm methods, requires less food, and makes less manure, but still has large impacts on the environment.

Main Document Summary:

IFAP farming tries to be very efficient and cheap, however compared to the old methods of farming, IFAP is very unsustainable. Manure is a big issue for IFAP farming, being the most significant in that it is very hard to manage. Disposing of manure can cause over douses on nutruents, water contamination, stimulated bacteria growth, and reduction in the DO of water. Concerns about the disposal of the waste increased, along with the usage of their methods. A few states have created laws to protect local water sources in efforts to keep safe. IFAP requires a lot of water to work, this isn't very good with a limited water supply. IFAP also has lost of greenhouse gas emissions, which accounts for 18% of human-caused emissions. IFAP has a lot of energy usage, the ratio of fossil fuel energy to food energy is 3:1 (not very good). IFAP is not very good for the environment

Solution:

A solution could be to wipe out this kind of farming completely, but that probably wouldn't go over too well. You could also put heavy regulations on IFAP, so the process is less harmful to the environment.

EROI

1. We should extract the tar sands first, because it has a higher EROI than oil shale.

2. The processes both involve heating the resource. 

3. The processes differ in that the bitumen in the tar sands gets refined into usable oil, and in the oil shale it creates crude oil and natural gas.
4. The author believes off shore oil drilling will reduce greenhouse gas emission in the long run because the off shore oil drilling has a higher EROI causing less energy to be used to get more energy.
5. When eating pizza, I pick the piece of pizza that looks the best to eat first. I get more enjoyment out of one really good slice, than out of two mediocre slices.