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SECOND QUANTITATIVE EXERCISE:
CARBON DIOXIDE REDUCTION
DUE IN CLASS TUESDAY, APRIL 22 AT 1:30 p.m.
This is one of four quantitative exercises, of which you must choose three.
For years now, we have been urged to fight global warming by doing everything from driving smaller cars to changing our light bulbs to burning biofuels to planting forests. Your exercise is to look at one action that is widely advocated for slowing climate change (you choose which one--from fluorescent bulbs to hybrid cars to...) and determine how much it would reduce the U.S.'s net carbon output to the atmosphere, and how much that might slow various IPCC scenarios for projected warming of the atmosphere.
In doing this, remember several things:
- The measures of carbon output or carbon sinking for some processes (running a car) are better understood and more precise than for some others (planting trees or burning biofuels, given that the biofuels also have carbon costs in their production and transport).
- The measures for how much a particular reduction in net carbon output to the atmosphere will reduce projected temperature change over a given period adds another layer of uncertainty.
- Therefore, you are well advised to give high and low predictions, or different scenarios.
Your one-page reflections on this one should touch briefly on two issues:
- Is the effect of one of these measures really predictable at all? Think of Useless Arithmetic
- Is it good, does it make any difference, to urge people to do such things as use fluorescent bulbs or recycle paper? Think of The Death of Environmentalism.
Points for doing effective quantitative exercises:
- Each quantitative exercise should be no more than 3 pages in length. I will not read page 4.
- References can be in any standard footnote, endnote, or embedded reference format. If you use endnotes or embedded references, the notes or bibliography may appear on page 4.
- Each exercise should consist of the use of data, calculations, and statistics of your own choosing to illustrate a point about the environmental problem posed.
- Exercises will be graded on reliability of the data used; appropriateness of specific data, calculations, and statistics to the problem posed; accuracy of calculations, and persuasiveness of arguments made on the basis of the calculations.
- Remember: Figures are human creations. How your calculations come out depends not only on the accuracy and completeness of your data and on how well you do your calculations, but also on how you frame the question and how you interpret the data and the calculations. For this reason, some of your exercises include the requirement to reflect on your own biases in selecting your particular data and in doing the calculations the way you did.
Processes and grading:
- All the quantitative exercises are due at the beginning of a class. You should print out your exercise and bring it to class that day; we will spend the first 25-30 minutes of the class going over the exercise. You should also turn it in electronically to the instructor before the beginning of class. If you have drawings, etc., you can scan and send as a .jpg or, better yet, if you have the capability to do that, as a .pdf.
- I will grade and return exercises, with comments, within one week of the due date.
- A is 4.0, A- is 3.7, B+ is 3.3, B is 3.0, etc.
- Late exercises will be graded down one letter-scale point (A to A-, B- to C+) at 1:30 p.m. on the due date, and one more letter-scale point for each additional calendar day they are late.
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