EK Response Week 12

Both of these papers bring up good points and work together well to help save the ecosystem. Biodiversity Datadiversity is about the difficulty of classifying information so that is can be easily accessed and used and Biodiversity, Science, and the Human Prospect discusses the changing environment, the threat of extinction and the importance of protecting the species and environment that we have. Science needs to become more organized, find a way to classify information that it is easy to find and use, and make the information available to public in order to protect the environment.
Biodiversity Datadiversity has several good points that make clear how important classifying data in an categorized manner is. Bowaker points out that scientific work relies heavily upon data and that social studies in science are an important part of data collecting and information so this information needs to classified. He mentions that data usually ends up thrown out after a paper is written. This is a problem because it usually difficult to reproduce the experiment without all the original data/
I thought while reading this article that there should be one database for everyone to use so it is not difficult to obtain information that may not be classified or organized well. This would promote create more opportunities to make greater discoveries and new developments. Bowker stated that this idea has been proposed many times but is difficult to do because of different areas of interests and money.
Another point in this article that I found interesting was that things that the public is interested in gets studied the most and gets the most funding and things we already know about also get studied a lot because they are easy to understand. This makes sense because it is hard to push studying something that hasn't been discovered or that we know little about. Although, the things we know little about should probably be studies the most so we could learn about them before they become extinct or they could become a cure for something. The public should not have so much influence on science so it can flourish on its own.
Biodiversity, Science, and the Human Prospect discusses many of the pressing issues in today's environment that need to be addressed before its to late. For example, biodiversity is in trouble with many species near extinction. It is being threatened by human activity including, population growth, pollution, exploitation of resources, global climate change. This article points out that human induced extinction has been going on for thousands of years but is now more pressing because it is a global issue
In hindsight one might think that this problem should have been stopped when the issues were smaller and localized because it probably wouldn't be an issue if people had been more aware of their habits and consumption rates. However, that has not happened and we must work to prevent the crisis now. A fact mention in the article was that 99% of all species are now extinct. That is a lot of species that are now gone. Instead of accepting more species becoming extinct we should try to change our ways and become more aware to prevent it. After all 5-10 million years is along time for the earth to recover.
Pointing out the affects harming the environment has on human life is a good point because many people rely on medications and would not be able to survive without them.
Also another issue that I have never thought of before was that how biodiversity helps to maintain the stability of social and political systems. It helps to keep people fed and maintain jobs. It also enriches cultures by keeping many different cultures alive, providing activities for people to enjoy, being a part of people's faiths, and promoting thought and creativity
The general public needs to become more aware of these pressing environmental issues. Right now there is more a green movement going on but most people probably do not realize how pressing the issue is. There should be more advertising campaigns introduced stressing the importance of maintaining biodiversity. The campaign can focus how extinction for some species can mean that their medication will not be able to be produced or that without a sustainable environment population will not be able to eat or drink and jobs will be loss because the parts of the environment will have been depleted. Introducing a campaign that makes people realize the changing environment will affect them directly will probably cause more people to question their lifestyle and make a change for the better.