Conversing with the Choir

I'm currently attending the Earth System Science Education Alliance meeting that the Museum of the Earth is hosting. The idiom "preaching to the choir" has been bandied about considerably. It's gotten me thinking about that practice.

I know a few people who have regularly attended church for decades (in some cases lots and lots of decades) without believing in God. They like the fellowship, the tradition, and/or the music. I'm not talking about Unitarians, either. These are folks who regularly go to Christian churches (or Jewish synagogues) and don't believe in God.

While none of the ones I know personally are members of the choir as far as I know, I'm sure that such folks populate a lot of choirs across the country.

This will highlight for some that preaching to the choir is necessary as there are folks in choir who, you might say, don't get it. They are in church but not buying the central tenet of the institution's purpose. That's certainly one way to read the issue.

I think this highlights a need to listen to the choir -- not just what they're singing, but also to engage them in discussion of what they're thinking. For these folks, obviously those aren't the same thing.

This raises several questions:

• Why do some folks sing along when they don't believe what they're singing?
• What are the parallels in the environmental movement?
• How often are we just singing along (or mouthing the words)?
• How often is it the case for folks who believe differently from us (or espouse different views from our own)?
• What are the costs and benefits of saying what we actually believe?
• How can we engage in meaningful conversations with the choir?

And, finally, why are you in the choir? Or why aren't you?

A "Scopes" Trial For Climate Change?

A colleague sent me this post from the Wall Street Journal's Environmental Capital blog. It seems as if the United States Chamber of Commerce is encouraging the EPA to put the science of Climate Change on trial, a la the famous Scopes Trial.

Here's the post: Inherit the Wind

What do you think? Let us know in the comments section!

Things That Make You Go Hmmmm....

I received a link from a Facebook friend from Greenpeace. It's a letter that was written to Jack Gerrard, CEO of the American Petroleum Institute (API), asking him if an email that he wrote and sent to API members about upcoming protests against the Climate Bill is in fact from his office.

It's a pretty interesting letter and email.

Read it here: Greenpeace

Let us know in the comments section what you think!

Interesting Conversations

Happen on Facebook!

A colleague of mine, Don Duggan-Haas, forwarded me this exchange he had on Facebook. It's really interesting, and I thought I would share it with you:

Don was asked this question:

How many planted trees would offset my Honda Civic's yearly use? Yeah, yeah, I know. Not that simple. Humor me.

Here's his answer:

Lots and lots. And it depends on the type of tree. But seriously, let's step through at least some of what goes into the calculation.

Gasoline has a density of about .7 g/cc. That means a gallon of gas has 70% of the weight of a gallon of water. So, you can imagine that. Do imagine that. Imagine yourself holding a gallon jug that's 70% full. It would weigh about six pounds. Pause and think about that -- every gallon of gas you put in your car weighs about six pounds and after you drive for a while, that stuff is gone from your tank? Where did it go?

To answer that question, you need to think about what gasoline is. Most of the weight of that gasoline comes from the carbon within it. There's some hydrogen and a bit of other stuff too.

When you burn the gasoline, the carbon combines with oxygen, O2, from the air to make carbon dioxide, CO2. That means that the CO2 from your tailpipe weighs in at about three times the weight of the gasoline you started with.

Photosynthesis reverses that -- takes the carbon from the air and combines it with hydrogen and oxygen to make the cellulose (and some of the oxygen goes back into the atmosphere).

So, using VERY rough estimates, you should plant roughly enough trees to equal the weight of the gasoline you burned. Each gallon is about six pounds. Do you burn 10 gallons a week?

That's 60 pounds a week, or about 3000 pounds a year. You need to plant enough trees that they grow about 3000 pounds in a year.

I can easily lift a 12 year old scotch pine tree over my head (our five or six foot Christmas trees). So, a young pine is putting on maybe a few pounds a year.

Let's be generous and say five pounds a year. So, that'd be about 600 trees. Happy planting!

And don't even think about flying.
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Thanks for sharing Don!