Project/Paper and Presentation

Topic

This year I am asking you to do a project/paper and a presentation on a topic related to mitigation or adaptation to climate change. This is a wide open topic with paper possibilities ranging from how to reduce our fossil fuel consumption or strategies to leave fossil fuels in the ground, to mitigating both the emissions of greenhouse gases and the impacts of climate change, to lifestyle or societal changes that will help us adapt to different energy resources and the climate change impacts that we can’t avoid.

You may either do a research paper on one of these topics or complete a project (most likely some sort of data analysis project, but I am open to other ideas such as case studies or data collection). Use your imagination; some of the research ideas at the ends of the chapters in the textbook may spark some ideas

My expectations for the quality of work are high. You will need to use primary and high quality secondary sources. Primary sources are original material, such as research presented in peer reviewed journal articles. Secondary sources are review papers or news articles that discuss one or more research papers. Tertiary sources such as your textbook and Wikipedia may be good places to start to get a general idea on a topic, but are not acceptable sources to cite in your paper. A lot of data is available on the internet, but again you need to take the source into account. Most government and international agency data is high quality. Blog pages and random webpages are generally not acceptable.

The papers will be due at the end of the semester, no later than the scheduled final exam date.

Some Guidelines on Writing your Paper

A scientific research paper generally follows an established format. Variations are permitted, but must make sense and have some definite function, such as leading to increased readability. The typical format is outlined below, together with some information as to what kind of content I will be expecting in each section and hints to simplify the process.

Typical scientific paper format:

Title Page – Three lines: Title, Author, Date, usually centered

Abstract – This is a one to two paragraph summary of the major points of your paper. It should include the objective of the study or analysis (thesis statement), why the study is important, and your key findings. It must include the findings. The abstract is typically presented in a smaller font than the main paper and may be in italics. Write the abstract only after you have finished the entire paper .

Introduction – The introduction provides the objective, rationale and background for your paper. In the first paragraph you must provide a succinct thesis statement that clearly defines the objective of the study and why it is important (that it is a class assignment is not a valid reason for doing the study). The next few paragraphs give the background information from your literature search that describes the state of understanding of the subject, provides any information that the reader needs to know in order to understand the significance of your analysis or discussion, and identifies any gaps in information that your paper intends to address. This background information must include in-text citations.

Methods (optional) – Most class papers will probably not need a methods section. However, if you are doing any financial or statistical analysis or forecasting or gathered information from interviews or in some other way, this is where you talk about what models/methods you use and why they are appropriate to your analysis.

Results and Discussion – You can change the heading of this section to reflect what you are going to talk about, and feel free to use subheadings. This section is the bulk of your paper. If you have done any unique analysis the results go here. Feel free to create tables. If you use tables or images from the internet they must be accurately cited. To make it easier for me to read the paper, embed the images in the text and be sure to refer to them in the text to back up your discussion. If you have actual results make sure you present them clearly first and discuss their implications afterwards. Both here and in the introduction, use appropriately referenced examples to illustrate your points. If you make a statement but provide no data or examples to back it up, I am not going to consider it very important. If you are advocating a certain position, you obviously need to cite references or data generated by you that support your position, but you should also discuss the alternate position (or positions) and discuss why the evidence does not support that position.

Conclusion – In this section you summarize (again) your main points and tie them back to your thesis statement. You can make recommendations for future work if this makes sense, but apart from this, do not introduce any new ideas in this section. If you have a brilliant idea while you are writing your conclusion, go back and put it in the discussion section. Writing a paper is an iterative, not a linear process.

In text Citations and References Cited

Information in the body of your paper must be appropriately sourced. You should paraphrase information and use brackets and numbers i.e. [1], [2,3], [4 – 6] after this information to identify the source. These numbers will correspond to your References Cited list at the end of the paper. In text citations should be in numerical order throughout the paper, so the References Cited will not be in alphabetical order. If you repeat a source, use the original citation number.

This section goes at the end of your paper. All material that you have used to write your paper should be cited somewhere in the paper. Use numbers in parentheses to refer to specific references. The citation list should be numbered to correspond to the citations in the order they occur in the text. If you read something but don’t talk about it in the paper, don’t include it on your citation list. Wikipedia and other encyclopedia type sources should not be included as references. If you have information from Wikipedia, go to their citation source, double check that the information is correct and cite the original source.

Citations should be in the ACS format. A link to a website with details on how to use this format for different types of sources is provided on BB. Be careful if you are using a citation program. If there is missing information they will come up with abbreviations such as n.a (no author) or n.d (no date). This is not acceptable and will impact your grade.

Topic Given :Exxon’s campaign to promote climate denial when they know for a fact it is real?  There should be quite a lot of information on this subject.  Try searching climate denial.  This would make a very good paper but it won’t be easy.  Let me know how I can help.

· My paper will discuss ways we can reduce our fossil fuel consumption and dependency as a country. I will be specifically targeting the influence of business’s and big cooperation’s that control our primary resource to energy usage. What role they play in our fossil fuel consumption and decency and what role they have played throughout history. I will highlight examples of business ventures and organizational objectives that have more influence over policy than the environment.

· For example Exxon’s campaign to promote climate denial when they know for a fact it is real?

· climate denial   – the scientific community has reached a broad consensus that the climate was warming, human activity was very likely the primary cause, and there would be significant consequences if the warming trend was not curbed. These facts encouraged discussion about new laws concerning environmental regulation, which was opposed by the fossil fuel industry. My paper will highlight how this controversy has influenced our fossil fuel consumption and depency and how there influence can become positive.