“Climate Change: A Runaway Train?” by Stephen L. Baird

Headnote For Students

“Climate Change: A Runaway Train” written by Stephen L. Baird was published in January of 2007 in a journal devoted to technology and teaching.  The article, written by a nonscientist, incorporates a variety of scientific evidence, and includes images with captions to argue for his position.  Use this article as a starting point for thinking about your own positions on issues of sustainability, science, and technology and the evidence you can bring to support your arguments. 

Identifying Rhetorical Strategies

1.        Who seems to be the primary audience for this article?  Does the author write as if his audience is sympathetic or hostile, expert or general?  How would this article be different if he was writing for a different audience, say more hostile of more sympathetic?  Begin to think about how choices in presentation and evidence will impact different or even multiple audiences. 

2.       What are the primary means of persuasion the author employs? 

3.       The article includes a number of images? What is the effect of each image? Do they enhance the urgency of his arguments? In what ways do they contribute the article’s effectiveness?   Consider how you might use graphics and images in your own writing.

Examining Sources

4.       Look carefully at the sources the author cites in his article.  What do you notice? 

5.       The article includes a number of links to documents on the Internet.  After visiting the links decide if you think this is a good strategy for this article?  Why or why not? 

Understanding Key Terms

You will also need to understand the following terms to make sense of the article. You can find good definitions to these terms and other key terms on http://www.climatechangenorth.ca/H1_Glossary.html and http://earthguide.ucsd.edu/events/TeacherTECH_2006/resources.html
 
· Anthropogenic

· Fossil fuels

· Kyoto protocol

· Global warming
· Greenhouse gases

· Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)