Scripps Hall 111 (auditorium)

April 26, 2011, is the 25th anniversary of the nuclear catastrophe at Chernobyl.

To commemorate this horrible event, we will first have a 20 minutes reading from the oral history book “Voices from Chernobyl” by Russian journalist Svetlana Alexievich, who collected these stories for the 10th anniversary of Chernobyl. The reading will be set to music from Dimitri Shostakovich’s 11th Symphony, specifically a variation on the Russia…n funeral march “You Fell as Victims.”

Following the reading, we will show the 90 minutes documentary “The Battle of Chernobyl” by Thomas Johnson, which explains the causes and consequences of the nuclear accident and documents the tremendously complicated clean-up operation in the aftermath of the catastrophe. The film was featured on Discovery Channel.

After the film screening, there will be time for a discussion.

• * *

While Chernobyl has so far been the most devastating accident in a nuclear power plant, the ongoing crisis in Fukushima shows that Chernobyl was by no means a unique and extremely rare event. The proponents of nuclear power have claimed over and over again that the risk of a devastating accident was so small that it would only occur once in a million years. 25 years after Chernobyl, we have yet another nuclear accident in Fukushima that is rated on the same scale (7 out of 7) as Chernobyl.

It seems that a million years are considerably shorter than we thought.

• * *

When Chernobyl exploded, there was a lot of confusion and an outrageous lack of information about the disaster. The Soviet government, in concord with Western media and governments, employed the three-D-approach: downplay, dazzle, disinform.

We have seen the same three-D-approach at work in Fukushima. That is very concerning because Japan is a democracy with free media. Looking at the more than suboptimal information about the ongoing Fukushima disaster, we can no longer assume that the three-D-approach is specific to the political circumstances in the Soviet Union. Instead, we have to understand that mega-technology such as nuclear power, is built upon secrecy and disguise, independent of the political and economical system

• * *

The event is sponsored by ECOFIN (Environmental Communication Faculty Initiative) and HTC Journalism. It is part of the 2011 Earth Month at Ohio University.

Readers:
Javier Wegescheide, Spencer Smith, Benjamin Stewart, Anna Nkrumah, Isaac Smith, Kristen Helmsdoerfer, Allie Dyer, Jessie Cadle, and Savannah Aepli.

Arrangement:
Bernhard Debatin

at 5:00 PM in Baker Center 239

Get information on exciting Study Abroad opportunity in Germany!

Program title: “Environmental Communication in Leipzig: Between Legacy and Transformation in the Coal Mining Fields of the Leipzig Region”

No language requirements — June 20-July 20, 2011

Scholarships available!

Visit our blog for more information:

http://ohioleipzig2011.wordpress.com

and go to the education abroad website:

http://www.ohio.edu/educationabroad/programs/OLEC2011.html

Localizing Environmental and Science Journalism in Southeast Ohio

On Thursday, June 11, from 1:00 to 5:00, the class “Environmental and Science Journalism” will present articles that were produced as final projects during this quarter, focusing on the effects of coal industry in Southeast Ohio. This public event, to which OU members and residents from the local communities are invited, will take place at the newly renovated Eclipse Company Store in The Plains (view map here). For an overview of the program, see here.

The event will kick off at 1:00 PM with an introduction and overview by Bernhard Debatin, on the abyss of time and the beauty of algae, followed by Ann Alquist and Susie Shutts, who will talk about abandoned Mines and various acid mine drainage abatement programs. Then, Amy Nordrum and Joe Brehm will present their work on clean coal and the controverial planned coal power plants in Meigs County. The first part will be concluded with Josh Spiert’s and Megan Moseley’s project on coal mine subsidences and relocation of residents.

The coffee break from 2:45 to 3:15 will provide an opportunity for informal conversations and for trying some fruits and local pastry. The second part will then start with a walk through the Dysart Woods by Michelle Shaw and Meredith Barnett. Air pollution in Southeast Ohio and the effects of mercury is the topic Sarah Watson and Emily Hanlon are presenting. Jessica Blakely and Katherine Bercik will then talk about the use of bottom coal ash for skid control in winter and whether the toxins in coal ash pose a health risk. The second part will be concluded with Mary Nally’s and Leah Crone-Magyar’s contribution on agriculture in Southeast Ohio: “You Can’t Eat a Lump of Coal.”

A New Course Model

This course on Environmental and Science Journalism is a new, experimental class that combines elements of learning communities with traditional approaches to teaching. The class was a mix of conventional seminar meetings, three workshops with experts, and four field trips to various locations related to our coal mining history. The course was supported by an Ohio University 1804 grant, which made the expert workshops and field trips possible.

Another remarkable element of this class was also the website, a combination of a blog and of static pages with background information. In addition to response papers on their own blogs, students contributed frequently to the course blog at http://esj09.wordpress.com. These contributions were partly course assignments, such as seminar minutes or reports from field trips, and partly voluntary contributions, motivated by the interest in sharing important information on environmental or science issues.

Program for the Presentations

Location: Eclipse Company Store

Time: June 11, 1:00-5:00 PM

1:00 – 2:45 Part I

1. Bernhard Debatin (Introduction: The Abyss of Time and the Beauty of Algae)

2. Ann Alquist/Susie Shutts (Abandoned Mines and Acid Mine Drainage Abatement Programs)

3. Amy Nordrum/Joe Brehm (Clean Coal and the New Coal Power Plants in Meigs County)

4. Josh Spiert/Megan Moseley (Mine Subsidences and Relocation of Residents)

3:15 – 5:00 Part II

5. Michelle Shaw/Meredith Barnett (The Dysart Woods: A Walk Among Giants)

6. Sarah Watson/Emily Hanlon (Air Pollution in Southeast Ohio: Mercury and Other Problems)

7. Jessica Blakely/Katherine Bercik (Bottom Coal Ash for Skid Control: Cheap and Risky?)

8. Mary Nally/Leah Crone-Magyary (You Can’t Eat a Lump of Coal: Agriculture in SE Ohio)

College Green is an exciting new online publication that will cover the scientific, economic, and cultural aspects of environmentalism in southeastern Ohio.

If you are interested in becoming involved with this student organization, there will be an information session at 5 p.m. on Wednesday, March 11, at Scripps 111.

Leadership and editing opportunities are also available. For additional information and for application information, please contact Katherine Bercik at collegegreen.editor@gmail.com

It’s Jour 492 (call No: 04369, undergraduate) / Jour 792 (call No: 04450, graduate), on Friday, 9:10 AM – 1:00 PM / Scripps Hall 116

It also includes some workshops and field trips that will extend into the afternoon.

Here’s a description:

LOCALIZING Environmental and Science Journalism is a course that focuses on local issues, particularly the effects of coal mining, and on the sciences at OU. This means that students have an opportunity to learn in a tangible way and to develop a sense of place and interrelationships. At the same time, this will be a good training ground for non-fiction narrative journalistic writing.

ENVIRONMENTAL AND SCIENCE journalism is increasingly important in our techno-scientific world. It requires a high level of technical and scientific understanding and the ability to translate complex issues into everyday language without oversimplifying.

JOURNALISM means informing and educating the public. Environmental and science journalism is about the interrelation of science, ecology, and risks. It requires unveiling the hidden costs and consequences of techno-scientific action. This implies giving up the ideological fiction of indifferent objectivity that tells “both sides” of the story regardless of the validity of their truth claims.

A NEW, balanced, knowledgeable, and nuanced approach to reporting is needed: a blend of basic ethical principles — such as informed citizenship, sustainability, and social justice — with a weight-of-evidence approach and a critical, highly educated perspective on techno-scientific, social and environmental processes and their risks and unintended consequences.

COURSE members will participate in field trips to get first-hand knowledge of acid mine drainage, abandoned mines, and other environmental issues and locales. In addition, we will conduct workshops with OU faculty, activists, and local citizens, who will serve as both expert sources and potential interviewees.

More information and course website:

https://oak.cats.ohiou.edu/~debatin/ESJ/

or talk to me (Scripps Hall 118, 740-593-9808)

- or like this:

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And for those, who did not get it from the picture, the title at the bottom reads: Athens County a blue island in a sea of red.

What’s wrong with this picture? Let’s put it this way: If you’d write the premises of this picture as an argument in a text, it would be called a faulty argument, a fallacy. Because you’d state that it is ok to represent the amount of elements in a given space by the size of this space, even though the size of the space has nothing to do with the amount of elements in it.

Complicated? Well, what it means is that we’ve become accustomed to accept a geographic representation of population numbers. If you look at an electoral map of Ohio or the US, you would think that it is almost impossible that the Democrats won the elections. Sure, we all know that population density matters. But the manifest message of all these territorial maps is different.

This is why some people have created population cartograms, in which the sizes of states are rescaled according to their population.

The site techpresident.com has a cool flash animated electoral map that morphes from territorial representation to an accurate electoral vote representation, which at the end looks like this:

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(watch the animation here)

Mark Newman, a physicist from the University of Michigan, created an even cooler set of cartograms, which keep the overall landmass intact while representing the actual popular and electoral college votes. The popular vote map, for instance, looks like this:

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Check out his cartograms at http://www-personal.umich.edu/~mejn/election/2008/.

Why is this important? Because it’s a good example for how a particular perspective—in this case geo-territorial representation—creates an implicit argument, and with it: media bias.

Please let me know if you’re interested, and also if you’d need financial support to attend the conference.

I am very excited about this conference, not least because it will focus on mountaintop removal in the Appalachians, a topic that I have been following closely for quite some time.

Among the highlights of this conference is a day tour to the Kayford Mountain, an infamous mountaintop removal site.

Photo by Vivian Stockman, OHVEC.

Almost Level 1: Cutting Down Mountains for Coal
Kayford Mountain, about an hour south of Charleston, WV. Notice how the massive dragline is dwarfed by the scale of the operation.

6:00 a.m. departure, lunch included, $30 fee
Larry Gibson’s piece of Kayford Mountain used to be the lowest peak for miles. Now it’s the highest. There’s no better place to see the effects of mountaintop removal coal mining — a practice that is feeding a growing demand for coal and leveling wide stretches of Appalachia. See an active mine and hear from people who live near the mines and the processing plants and coal trucks that serve them. See mine reclamation and hear from industry representatives who’ll tell you why what they’re doing is good and necessary.
Driving time — 6 hours total. But there will be beautiful scenery, informative speakers, and documentaries on the way.

Source: http://www.sej.org/confer/vatech/agenda.htm

However, there’s a number of inexpensive motels and hotels in town, and given the fact that there’s no fee for students, it is still a good deal. Super 8 at I-76 has rooms with 2 queen beds for $50-65 per night. Days Inn at I-76 has rooms with 2 queens for $60-75 per night.

Again, please let me know if you want to attend. Also, I’d need to know who has a car and who needs a ride…

Kent State University Inn, 330-678-0123, walking distance to campus, $68 per night

Days Inn @ I-76, 330-677-9400, 3 miles from campus, $60-75 per night

Super 8 @ I-76, 330-678-8817, 3 miles from campus, $50-65 per night

Also, if you’re having difficulties finding a place to stay you may also contact

Christopher S. Sledzik
Kent State Graduate Student
Miami University Alum 2007
Cell: 330-687-8807
www.transarcticexpedition.com

The website for the Ethics Workshop is at
http://ksumlc.com/events-activities/2008-ethics-workshop/