This blog post will discuss a peer-reviewed journal from the George Mason University database. The journal being observed is Climate Change Impact by Marcia Mcnutt who is the Editor-in-Chief of Science magazine. The purpose of this journal was to highlight the aspects of climate change and add in Marcia Mcnutt's personal opinion on what is going to happen and how to approach it. This is a rather short journal that is only a page long in their magazine. It was written on August 2nd in 2013 appearing in that editions magazine.
Marcia Mcnutt starts off this editorial by stating that the environment needs to be protected so we can manufacture new genetic stocks for cultivation. Then she discuses that the first step for modeling greenhouse gas emissions is input from many different scientist in each area of study such as a ecologist, and economist. This is a lot of information to collect and it takes time for these people to analyze this information and then pass it on. Collecting this data is even harder since the oceans circulations and the terrestrial ecosystem control the climate. This system is being affected by the climate change which throws this data off. Marcia then goes on to say that scientist looked into the past history of the earth and came up with the conclusion that this world could experience higher CO2 gas in the atmosphere. If animals survive this, their species will decline anyways since the ecosystem which they rely on collapses such as the ocean becoming less and less productive. If the oceans bounty of life fails the 20% of organisms that rely on this nutrition will also be affected. She then goes on to say crops will fail more and so forth. Basically the world will experience a major change for the worse is what this short paper says. The author then goes on to discuss that she isn't as optimistic as what scientist were saying and expects worse.
My personal opinion on the article you may ask? Well, she seems to just list everything and type it out more than necessary. For example, she could have just said the environment will be affected rather than listing off everything in the environment like the rivers, mountains, animals, and blah blah blah. Her article does clearly explain some of the negative effects that climate change can bring to the world. Ultimately, its a okay article to read if you are looking on just to collect a few negative impacts from climate change.
Interesting take on this peer-reviewed article. I have to agree with you in a sense that there are a lot of articles about the impact global warning and climate change will have on our lives that don't do a very good job at it. Instead of providing people with examples on how to improve the climate they just seem to ramble about how we are going to pay for the bad choices we've made. I also believe this article is the perfect example of what we discussed in the class discussion board about how science and politics mix. Mcnutt is an editor-in-chief of a science magazine who has the ability to post her own articles because she is the editor-in-chief. The fact that she is discrediting what scientists are saying and bases the article on her own feelings makes me think this isn't the best of articles to read.
ReplyDeleteI think that climate change is a very critical issue and one that many people do not take seriously. Part of the reason I believe is that scientists have a difficult time compiling their massive amounts of data into a concise and easy to understand format for the layperson to absorb. I also wonder if the study went into detail as to how she collected her data and how far she went back. Earth seems to have a cyclical climate but it is the rate that we, especially in the last 70 years or so, have sped it up that is so disturbing. I think that a lot of people sometimes miss that point.
ReplyDeleteClimate change is a topic that people know about but do not address as much. Climate change is a very vague topic on how the world is changing due to our global footprint. When climate change is discussed, I think of movies that depict natural disasters destroying humanity. I think the reason she would be so pessimistic about the effects of climate change is to scare people into thinking about their impact on our planet.
ReplyDeleteI think you hit the requirements for this post, describing the article almost bit by bit. She is correct about how the oceans can only rise in temperature so much before the ecosystems of billions of organisms will die off, causing a domino effect. But at the same these catastrophic levels may be avoided, and in the mean time the carbon dioxide emissions will continue to help plant growth on the land, which helps with our human via plant relationship of oxygen and carbon dioxide interchanging. Also we currently are not in a warming period, that ended in the lsat 90s, however if it picks up again, things will continue to spiral out of control. You did point to a great argument which is how difficult it is to collect data, good data, in a world that is so large, and has such a complex and efficient biodiversity system for controlling its environment. Thanks, good post.
ReplyDeleteYes, I feel that your description of this article is sufficient...just "okay". This article really just reiterates what on mainstream news today about the negative effects of climate change. I feel that we need to make a change today so that our kids will not be affected tomorrow.
ReplyDeleteIt sounds like the article was trying to be a light read of condensed data on the subject. If that was in dead her goal then she accomplished it, I suspect that she was trying to get the reader to go further into the tropic and try to understand more, trying to hock the reader. The climate is definitely an issue that needs to be evaluated in a timely manner for future generations. I know that some nations do a lot of effort but some of the largest one tend to fall behind on meeting international goals (USA included) which is sad.
ReplyDeleteI think it is great that Ms McNutt emphasized bringing scientists from all different specialties. This will allow more perspectives and potentially more data. I appreciate the information how difficult it is to collect the data since the oceans are ever in motion. I see how you said she may have hit overkill with the examples, but I think thats a good sign because it shows how passionate she is and how she wants everyone to be able to relate and understand. I think that your blog post is well structured and easy to follow.
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