Wr2

Writing 2 McKercher

Essay 4: Global Warming

Five pages minimum, at least five sources (including a minimum of two academic/scientific).

As with last paper, your best bet is UC library sources, including Academic Search Complete and these. Wikipedia is not considered a legitimate source for college level work. See PRwatch article on corporations altering Wikipedia including Chevron deleting the entire article on bio-diesel, and Exxon rewriting the history of the Valdez oil spill. The College 8 Wiki has a great deal of information on the debate on global warming, as well as information on climate change itself.

The purpose of this essay will be take what you've learned in 81B and explain some aspect of what is undeniably the key environmental issue. We'll also continue the process of finding credible sources and using high end heuristic prewriting, Pentadic analysis. It will be assessed based on quality of sources, depth and clarity of analysis.

Choose ONE of the following three options (it might be possible to combine some, but clear it with me first)

1) Recommended It's now clear that the fossil fuel industry has been able to heavily affect the way Americans have thought about global warming, possibly for several decades. See here for lots of info. In fact, recently, the number of American who believe global warming is real has actually declined (overview, October '09 Pew Poll and March Gallup Poll).

You now have a good grounding in how climate works, so you should be able to see through the scams. How exactly have skeptics manipulated the science? Are there any legitimate reasons to doubt that climate change is largely a human-created problem? Have you reassessed your own position? How would you convince your friends who still have doubts?

Some other possible "angles"/approaches:

a) Skeptics have repeatedly used a ploy of circulating a petition of "experts" claiming that global warming is not real. The first was the Oregon Petition, the current version is the Inhofe 400. Sort of like the Innocence Project, investigate (perhaps dividing up the list among people in a group) and determine whether you think it's legitimate or bogus. Then pick one or two people who are interesting or representative of a category you have discovered. Look at an article or website they have produced and evaluate it for fairness and accuracy. You might want to consult Sourcewatch.org and other resources on the College 8 wiki to find out who they work for/with. You can get some good tips on how to to good detective work here

2) Discourse Analysis: This approach involves finding a representative "text" (could be a website, a video or some other document meant to persuade us that global warming is not real, or at least not caused by human actions. Use what you've learned in 81B to evaluate the fairness and accuracy of these texts. You might want to put your discussion in some recent historical context: What happened at Copenhagen? Was it altered by "Climategate"?

Examples (you, of course can choose your own. If you do Google or YouTube search for "global warming" it will suggest "facts" and "hoax"): video segments Russia Today Link
Fox News Link

Jesse Ventura Conspiracy Theory (45 min)
We Are Change Link
Glenn Beck/ Media Matters promo: Link

Climate Skeptic Website has myths about global warming.

3) Effects of Global Warming This paper option explores the consequences and ways of coping with global warming, including how it will affect rainfall, and air pollution. Apply the key 81B concepts to a specific place or segment of the population that will be heavily affected (ideally people you know or have some connection to). Beware the dreaded high school "book report." We want specifics and analysis that your group could actually use to make plans to cope with the coming changes (in fact it'd be great if you could make some specific recommendations with an eye towards giving them to your city council, a refugee agency etc). UCSC green research resources.

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