Don't go overboard in reading up on the issue, since we are only using it as an example. It is not the primary focus of the course!
Nevertheless, here is a link to quality introductory information on the basics of climate change science and policy discussion.
Global Warming Basics (from the Pew Center on Global Climate Change)
There are various articles at this site. Some should suit your needs, depending on the specific issue you want and how deeply you want to go.
Their 'Climate Change 101: Overview' document provides a concise and non-technical introduction to the whole issue (both science and policy basics).
The Pew Center is not necessarily 'neutral' (whatever that could mean on this issue) but they do seem to be mainstream in their approach and to be fairly careful in their citing of sources and evidence.
In the interests of avoiding information overload, I think I will leave it at that for now.
1 comment:
Climate change is somewhat of a weasel term, IMHO. Given that we had Global Warming for some time now, why did they change it to Climate Change?
My take on it? Certain things are going to happen which could make a mockery of Al Gore's claims. As a matter of fact, even the IPCC admits that the hottest year on record for the past century was 1934. The more recent 'hot years', 1998 and 2006, came in ranked 2nd and fourth respectively.
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/graphs/Fig.D.txt
Interestingly, four of the ten hottest years came from the 1930s.
On another note, the sun is currently at a low level of activity, with very few sunspots.
http://wattsupwiththat.wordpress.com/2008/02/13/where-have-all-the-sunspots-gone/
And more pertinently, it was at a maximum as recently as 2004. Possible temperature decline? Certainly food for thought. The Russians, who don't exactly lack in scientific brainpower(they gave us Mendeleev and Tesla), certainly think there's a strong correlation.
I'm a skeptic by nature. I'll hesitate to accept any direct answer given, especially when it regards a system as volatile and unpredictable as the atmosphere.
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