Controlling the Environment: Crash Course History of Science #39 

Very impressed with how many different directions this series has gone.

This is nuts i was able to download these videos in prison i fell asleep everynight watching and rewatching these videos!! I had no idea they were from RU-vid...😳

This "history of science" series has been really great and I hope it continues for years to come because there is so much science history to learn about.

"Famine has always been linked to distribution, or the political-economic process of moving food around, not only how much food is produced." 10 of 10 Crash Course. Some groups of people just don't care that others starve to death.

Heeeeyyyyy I just went to a conference on this topic and I’ve got a couple things to add! Great video, btw. India is a super interesting example in the Green Revolution because, on the surface level, it fits into that classic Malthusian problem where population growth outpaces food production. In response to this, the US proposed hybrid crops, mechanization, and herbicides and pesticides to increase yields. But here’s the thing with that. The costs for owning a farm quickly went through the roof. As the technology for increasing yields became the new normal, farmers with even the smallest farms had to invest in the new technology just to keep up. This meant that they had to buy seeds every year (as there are lots of issues with trying to use seeds from hybrid crops for sowing the next year), and investing in a lot of expensive and often dangerous chemicals that the plants needed to thrive. At the same time, the US held a lot of the patents for seeds, fertilizers, etc and they gained the profits from these farmers. Whether their intentions were noble or malicious, these changes resulted in bankruptcy and loss of jobs or farms for many poor farmers. The US also refused to work with countries who wanted to implement land redistribution or heavy agricultural subsidies. Although similar policies were (and still are) vital to the survival of the American agricultural system, such policies in “developing” counties smelled like communism to 1960s America. Basically it’s a mess. Increasing yields was necessary but there was probably a better way to go about it and the US did a lot of things that felt very benevolent at the time, but proved to have some dangerous consequences in the long run. International agricultural policy, y’all

For anyone curious, Rachel Carson's Silent Spring is still very much worth a read today. I read it recently outside of my environmental science classes, and found it really easy to follow and understand. I took a great environmental history class that touched on a lot of this in depth- and while I love that Crash Course does so well at explaining big picture stuff, exploring some of these things in depth would be super cool. (I understand why that doesn't happen with these though, not meant as a critique!)

This makes me so excited this video is touching on what I focused on for my thesis- algal polycultures vs monocultures :)

I would have liked to hear a bit more discussion on the negative effects of the DDT ban and the controversy of Silent Spring.

I knew I could depend on the show to discuss the whole world, and not just the US. :)

Intro music is a bit too loud. Every time it starts I turn the volume down... Could you adjust it to the volume of the voices in the videos?

Arundhati Roy the manbooker prize winner indian novelist calls it worlds largest demon crazy because of the absence of democractic principles. Just for kind info. This series has really been more intersting than any other series on crash course. It's the accumulation of all.

"Less dangerous" and yet they named it PROJECT *STORMFURY* The Cold War was *wild*

In my graduate program we talk about these problems all the time. Such big issues and it's so hard to find good solutions. Great video and love the series!

Thank you for talking about the Bhopal gas tragedy.

Such an awesome presentation... We do all share a house. One big, beautiful, green-blue-orb-hanging-in-space house, but also a very fragile house.

Crash Course has once again managed to show that they're up to the seemingly impossible task of addressing SO MANY DIFFERENT aspects of science. Impressive. I love this series.

I love your sense of humor Hank💚Green

Only video I'm actually educated on lol. Love it except the part conceptually that the planet is fragile. No it's not. Humans ability to live on the planet is fragile. The planet doesn't care if it's an ice age or 100 degrees but people do. The planet is fine the people on it, not so much

I was born in 1954. For that I have witnessed the use of DDT used to fumigate our village. I saw the difference between the height of rice varieties between my uncle's farm in Upi, Maguindanao (1960) and the rice that was grown in my province (Lanao del Norte) later (1970). I have observed the difference between produce from non-fertilized farm and fertilized farms. I learned from my elementary science classes that man desires to control nature. Now, I realized that what was done during the time that I was growing up have negative effects to the environment and to us, HUMANS.

good video. i think taking a nuanced look on the green revolution both acknowledging positives, which there were a lot of, and negative and political factors as well was great. i feel like i have a much better and more nuanced understanding of this now.

pssst, 2:35 you mention bacteria fixing nitrogen for plants... it's primarily done by fungus (mycorrhizae) not by bacteria... Also, excess phosphorus in the water is a greater driver for algae growth than excess nitrogen.

Also Rachel Carson FTW

For a deep dive on these issues check out the 2018 book "The Wizard and the Prophet" (The "wizard" is a reference to Borlaug)

"One Big Bioshpere" 0:11 wouldn't have noticed but i paused it right on that slide.

I love your sense of humor Hank

All I have to say is that the color of the wall behind the host is the most mesmerizing shade is brown I've ever seen and I MUST recreate it.

$20 says this episode will have an inordinate amount of contributions to the blooper reel.

3:41......... Eutrophication..........right..........

Am I the only one that feels excited when a crash course notification pops up?

Very nice professor ❤

The Haber process does NOT strictly require fossil fuels to work! Something requiring energy and that energy currently being mainly produced by fossil fuels does not mean the process itself is bad! Everything needs energy. Energy can be clean.

Im dying to know research sources, they would be perfect for my research paper

Wait Hank, I'm confused. You said that plants cannot take nitrogen out of the air and fix it in the ground, but isn't this exactly what legumes like soybeans do? Also, why do the algae blooms from excess pesticides running off into nearby bodies of water use up the oxygen? Don't these green plants absorb CO2 and give off O2? Thanks in advance...

There should be a video on the in-depth description on Nutrition Facts. What each thing is and dose for you and how (much u should have, many garms, many percents, or high or low an item should be on it). Not really focusing on one specific food either. Like why carbs and trans fats are bad or why u need more saturated fat and less sugar for ketosis, etc. Ik this comment dosent matter this video, but yea.

So the solution for the biosphere that has gone bad because of the unintended consequences of engineering is geoengineering? Anyone else sees the dramatic logic flaw here? Can we engineer our way out of every problem? or maybe can we change the approach for more cultural/dietary/non-interventionist approach?

What is founder of political Zionism, Theodore Herzl, doing there at 10:37?

Very interesting video. I certainly learnt some new things. However I was surprised how negative the ending was to synthetic products for crops. Especially at a time when highly safe products like glyphosate are under attack by activists citing a biased view of the literature. This is especially dangerous while court cases are being conducted and judges, not scientists, are deciding on if products like these are safe or not.

Oh Boi oh Boi oh Boi, that ending

I learned about some of these things from Citation Needed, albeit in a much different presentation form.

As far as pollution a good documentary series to search for is 'late lessons from early warning' it covers asbestos to DDT and PCB's. These toxic chemicals added to products like plastic and how they effect the endocrine systems and animals offspring. When people are so focused on climate control the real disasters are happening in the environment.

Great job on the presentation work done here but I got to say, that new transition sound (atleast new to me), it quite annoying.

amazing all the things!!

Hundreds of thousands of deaths due to the Chernobyl accident sounds vastly exagerated. The disputed range appears to be in the range 4000 to 60000 (not between 10s of thousands to 100s of thousands).

no one ever believes me when i say the malthusian problem is still relevant

Shpere

Have you been reading "The Wizard and the Prophet: Two Remarkable Scientists and Their Dueling Visions to Shape Tomorrow’s World," by Charles C. Mann? Most of this video sounds very familiar, based on the half of that book I read. I did not finish it yet because I got too busy with work and had to return it to the library as I had already renewed it the maximum number of times. I might check it out again to finish, but I have other things checked out now I'll try to read first.

Educational!

Trolling the environment? Count me in!😂

I can't imagine what this kind of work looks like..

The beautiful circle of life.

Love this series 🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥

good video, regards from north korea

ouch harsh buzz kill. If he did the research first, published it first, and got the prize for it does that mean he should do what with it?

Congratulation on 9M...........

you missed spelled "biosphere" at the beginning

Union Carbide doesn't even accept their responsibility for Bhopal Gas tragedy.

Wouldn't one have to expose the plant they want to make more resistant to pests, subjected to the pests that are harmful to said crops?

The biggest tragedy facing the planet is pollution and if I had to narrow that down I would say plastic. If I had to narrow that down I would say single use plastic and the food industry is the biggest user. If you want to watch a good movie on plastic watch A plastic ocean.

Controlling weather is much simpler than cloud seeding existing storms. Weather is fundamentally just pressure systems, pressure is just energy, pump enough energy into the atmosphere in the right locations (creating a low pressure system) and you can manipulate the high and low pressure systems around the world, move storms and such where you want them.

Didn't India widely revolt against the green revolution after the chemicals destroyed their soils?

Oh yeah! Today’s lesson: how we learned to industrialize our crops and cattle and the consequences of such artificial breeding

11:30 The confirmed casualties of Chernobyl is something like 30 people, the crew of the plant itself and the firefighters sent into the reactor to put it out. And they can't really be called accidental exposures the people who ordered them to do it knew they were condemning them to a painful death, but did it anyway in the slim hope of being able to bring the reactor under control and avoid the international outcry. Also Chernobyl was intentionally running it's reactors hot as a part of an experiment and had very lax security procedures to begin with. Do you have any source for this claim of tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands?

That problem on the third hand is very concerning.

Yessssss finally

I fear if enough people are working to get us out of this precarious position, arising due to our dependence on few crops.

"bioshpere"

... on the third hand .... I like to say that too.

Man vs. Nature: The Road to Victory

I'm usually a fan of this series, but I feel like this episode missed the mark. The reason most famines are political in nature is because of the work of agronomists like Borlaug. When the supply problem of food is solved, the only remaining reason for famine is distribution, but distribution can't save us when there's not enough food to go around. If we had a system of "perfect communism" and subsistence farming, there's no way the world would be able to support the population that it currently does. Criticisms about mono-cultures, over-fertilization, and pesticides are quite fair, but I don't think the slightly dismissive stance this video took regarding agronomy is deserved. In my opinion, Crash Course Engineering handled this topic better.

You are not forgetting talking about the Periodic Table of the Elements nor organic chemistry and the petroleum age of chemistry, are you?

bioshpere...

Can you mention Fritz Haber without hinting at his role in the development of gas warfare during the Great War? Before you can suggest we are on the verge of running out of plant based foods I think you need to talk about the contribution and cost of animal based protein. It's my understanding that (in most, but not all, places) we would be much better off if people switched to a plant based diet.

Hello

❤️

So controlling nature hasn't been a total slam dunk for human kind...

Warren Anderson managed to escape with help of Indian National Congress and later on lived a happy life which he shouldn't deserve being CEO of UNION CARBIDE. (Company that was responsible for the incident taken place in India)

Why not GMO a crop that can take Nitrogen from the air?

We are going to have to terraform Earth

YOU STILL HAVEN'T TURNED DOWN THE VOLUME ON THE INTRO!!!!

HaWt BoI

First and educational

Trust the vlog brothers to find a negative with the green revolution

اللغة🔹العربية🔹موجودة طبعًا

can we learn some not rockefeller science?

First from India😘

Hoped you atleast name some scientist other than borlough like M S Swaminathan from India etc though i am just nitpicking.

First to comment, only 4 views. yeah! like that matters.

first like thou

18st

dammm thought i was fist

That table is sooo floppy

we gotta move our farming indoors before we control the weather. 'coz other countries be like:" hey we have not moved our food indoors yet, wait up!!" and the rest of the world sighs, and I eat popcorn.

If we stopped eating meat (especially beef) we'd be able to sustainably feed a much larger population. No doomsday-esque environmental engineering attempts required.

So, I guess we're not getting any development on Social Sciences :(

Neither did? Not in a usefull way anyhow.

4 views and 14 likes wait that's illegal

NEVER did he articulate how economics affected farmers decision to adopt the industry trend of modern farming techniques. Biased indeed.

that's such a cheap mistake for a professional channel to make, your intro is some high quality / loud audio, and then the show itself is less quality / quieter. i think its bitrates or something like that.

Sad that you are banning comments I guess that says something about trying to control the environment in itself.

So the solution for the biosphere that has gone bad because of the unintended consequences of engineering is geoengineering? Anyone else sees the dramatic logic flaw here? Can we engineer our way out of every problem? or maybe can we change the approach for more cultural/dietary/non-interventionist approach?