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Class Readings and Plans for Thursday, November 19
Climate Change
Class Plan Today we will use historical examples of climate change to examine how relevant they might be to current efforts at climate change mitigation and particularly adaptation. As background, everyone should read the Summary for Policymakers from the 2013 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change 3013 Working Group I report.
After reading the IPCC summary, but before 9:00 p.m. on Wednesday, November 18, please post a comment on one of the two questions below:
- The relationship between economic and ecological aspects of the debate on how we should address climate change
- Whether you think that paleoclimate research such as that described the Cooper and Dugmore articles is relevant to our current understanding of and plans for addressing climate change.
Then we will divide into two groups:
- Group 1, understanding historical climate change, will read
- Dugmore, A. J., McGovern, T. H., Vesteinsson, O., Arneborg, J., Streeter, R., & Keller, C. (2012). Cultural adaptation, compounding vulnerabilities and conjunctures in Norse Greenland. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 109(10), 3658-3663.
- Cooper, Jago. 2012. "Fail to prepare, than prepare to fail: rethinking threat, vulnerability, and mitigation in Precolumbian Caribbean." In Surviving Sudden Environmental Change: Answers from Archaeology, J. Cooper and P. Sheets, eds. Boulder: University of Colorado Press. Pp. 91-115.
- Group 2, facing contemporary climate change will read
In class, each group will meet briefly to formulate a list of what you think are the most important points in your readings, which you will then report to the class. After this, we will cross-cut the groups so you can discuss the possible implications of the past for the future, and then finally each cross-cut group will report to the whole class.
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