Some information about climate change

This is the text of a post I made elsewhere. It’ll be edited in due time.

A lot of people want to understand environment change;  in this post are some of the sites an interested non-scientist can link to. It has been kept as basic as possible; the links contain some information on most, if not all, of the main subjects that come up on the internet. Most of them have their own links which lead to more technical follow-up information or material.

Two documents stand out as being clear but detailed introductions to climate change: the Hadley Centre’s 60 page pdf slideshow covers all of the main ideas:
http://www.met-office.gov.uk/research/hadl…_greenhouse.pdf

or a 24 page document called ‘Understanding and Responding to Climate Change’, produced by the US-based Board on Atmospheric Science and climate (BASC), on:
http://dels.nas.edu/basc/

NOAA, a huge US government organisation, has many interesting links on the subject. A quick ‘google’ will take you to their homepage. They have produced a very short summary of the IPCC Third Assessment Report (see below), in the form of FAQ’s, on:
http://lwf.ncdc.noaa.gov/oa/climate/globalwarming.html

The Third Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC TAR) is a long document, but a very important one. It was a detailed international summary of the available science, in 2001, of climate change. A lot of discussions refer to this report, and debates still continue about its contents. On a wet weekend, you can find it on:
http://www.grida.no/climate/ipcc_tar/

Reading this will certainly give you an advantage when discussing the issues, whether you agree or disagree with its contents. Note, though, that the fourth report is due out in January 2007, so some of the information will be out-of-date in a few months time. [a link will be posted when it becomes available online]

An American physicist, Spencer Weart, has produced an outstanding series of long essays on almost every issue to do with climate change, on;
http://www.aip.org/history/climate/index.html

Don’t be put off by the title, ‘The Discovery of Global Warming’; it is a very, very good site for finding out about all sides of the climate change debate.

For information on the past and future of British climate, The UK Climate Impacts Programme (UKCIP) is a good starting point: http://www.ukcip.org.uk/default.asp

Their overview of climate change is on: http://www.ukcip.org.uk/climate_change/

They also have a useful summary of the UK climate since 1914:
http://www.ukcip.org.uk/scenarios/ukcip02_…ervedtrends.asp

At the bottom are links to the Climate Research Unit, another excellent website, and their original research documents. A href=”http://”www.cru.uea.ac.uk/” target=_blank>http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/

There are people who do not assume/agree that global warming is happening. Two popular sites are:

http://www.junkscience.com

http://www.worldclimatereport.com/

Some eminent and respected scientists also take issue with a lot of the assumptions contained in the above reports. Of these, you should know about Climate Science; http://climatesci.atmos.colostate.edu/
and Prometheus.

Some of the commentators on climate change are ‘controversial’. A US site called ‘Sourcewatch’ is not unbiased, but can be revealing about certain people. You can use the search engine on the index page to find out about them:
http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=SourceWatch

Why isn’t Wikipedia on this list? Wikipedia is a brilliant resource. It is also an ‘open’ resource, meaning that the quality and honesty/reliability of some entries is doubtful, but it is hard to tell which. If you are on this pin, it is because you were confused. Relying on the entries in Wikipedia is likely to add to your confusion, until you have an idea about the quality of what you are reading, so, for a ‘beginner’, it isn’t the best idea.
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If you ‘google’ ‘global warming’, you’ll get about 42 million ‘hits’ in less than a second. In a day or so, a post will add some of the more useful and interesting sites, including weblogs and links to graphics.

A final word, about the media: for most of us, the information we get about climate change comes from news, press and internet sources. The job of the media is to make a story out of the science, not to provide balanced public information. Like it or not, most news reports are ‘spun’. They are not necessarily dishonest, but they can be deceptive. It is always a good idea to question what you read or hear from the media. NW is a good place to do this, as are many other forums; you will often get a lively exchange of views, and can then make your own mind up about how credible a story is.

Some notes on education

Whilst thinking about a possible new job last evening, these ideas came to mind. At the moment, it is just a list, but some of these will be explored in more detail as time passes. Some are questions, some statement, some reveal their subject, some are lyrical in style.

•  ‘Am I bothered?’ the contemporary experience of children and literature.
• Revisiting the fear of failure.
• Authority and rebellion at the core of the classroom process.
• Existential phenomenology, psychoanalysis, Levinas and the idea of teaching.
• Applying the ‘Carlsson’ lesson: professional principles applied to school management.
• Making Media Matter; the underselling ofspecialist media studies.
• Communication in the ‘real world’; do schools prepare children for the world of work?
• What is a school for?
• Towards a phenomenological theory of education.
• The releveance or otherwise of school – the consuming child mind and the inquiring mind.
• Schizology and education; approaches from Deleuze.
• The prison or the school; approaches from Foucault.
• Towards a meta-pedagogy.
• (? Empowering) the other in the workplace; Levinas’ being amongst teachers.
• Loving the job; Existential phenomenology and sincerity.
• Joy in the classroom.
• Play and fun in learning.
• The limitations of the academic model in state education >
• How to make egalitarian educational principles work. >
• Attitudes to learning and intelligence in society.
• Existential phenomenology as the grounds of a theory of education and an education policy.
• Is ‘successful competitiveness’ possible, or even desireable?
• From a process model to an interactive model to English learning.
• What is wrong with using media in the classroom?
• Is the end of paper a desireable end?
• English is learning the saying.
• Activities which encourage the autonomous use of the mind.
• Fear of thinking.
• What do children learn in Primary schools?
• The child’s view of education.
• Reconsidering the Key Stage 2 English curriculum.
• A child’s achievement in school is  defined by the earliest experiences.Who speaks in the classroom?; the dynamics of engagement.
• The end of the Teacher.
• Practical considerations for the aspiring Engish teacher.

More thoughts as they occur.