ClimateCiv prediction assignment

From GeoClasses

Contents 1 Part 1: Writing assignment 2 Part 2: Peer review 3 Part 3: Author response 4 Part 4: Presentation

Part 1: Writing assignment

Assignment: Write a report describing what the world will look like in 50 years given the possibility of climatic change.

• Page 1: Your assumptions regarding climate change in the next 50 and 100 years and the changes to the global and regional environment you would expect.
• Page 2-3: What happen next. How does the society respond?
  • eg. social, political, economic changes.

Note:

• It is very important that you state your initial assumptions, because your grade for this part of the assignment will not depend on what we think will happen in 50 years but on the logic of your reasoning given what we have read about and discussed in class over the semester.
  • You may assume that extreme global warming will occur, or that global warming is not occuring (but the world will still try to mitigate against greenhouse gasses) or whatever. Your reasoning about the consequences of these assumptions is important, not the initial assumptions themselves.

This assignment is due by Thursday, April 17th. Please send it to me as an electronic file at my memphis email address (lurbano). I will print out copies of your answers for the peer-review portion of the assignment.

Part 2: Peer review

Each person in class will read and comment on two of their peers' papers. You will be graded on the quality of your comments. Your comments will answer the question:

• Is the paper's extrapolation reasonable, based on its stated assumptions and your knowledge of how people and societies behave particularly as we have discussed in this class.
  • You will need to support you arguements for or against the reasonableness of the paper.
  • You are required to challenge at least one item in each paper; even if you agree with everything, the brevity of the original papers will lead to at least one oversight or error.
  • Please restrict the length of your comments to 1/2 page per paper.

• You will also give each paper a score from 0 (very, very bad) to 5 (excellent). Remember your grade is based on the reasoning of the paper, not your agreement or disagreement with the initial assumptions of the paper.

Your grade for this part of the assignment will be based on your reasoning.

Part 3: Author response

Comments from the peer review will be returned to the original author who will prepare their own response. You may choose to accept or refute the comments, but you will need to justify your decision in 1/2 page.

Part 4: Presentation

Each student will give a 5 minute oral presentation of their paper to the class.