response to review from Ms.Fong (By ZhuoMing)

As there are not so many objective proves for my inatial point of view in Topic 1. I changed to Topic 3, which is considered much easiler to choose a side: Should decision-mskers focus primarily on sulfur particles as the way to combat climate change or should they not? Of course, I chose they should not rely on this respectively new thehnology. And I found that there are a lot of arguments I can present in this topic including those in the roundtable we discussed and some other material I found from the Internet.

Some points are: we should not rely on this as there are a lot of uncertainties and it will weaken our determination to reduce the gases emission. Another reason we should not rely on it because the time is limited and we should concentrate on facing the problem from the obverse side. once this method fails, it would be too late for us to restart the reduction of emission or it would be too dangerous to try other methods again.

I think these reasons are more valid and objective. And as this is only the first draft of my essay on Topic 1. I will still modify it after the conference.

review of the draft of WA2 from Ms.Fong(by ZhuoMing)

The topic I firstly chose was topic 1, namely , discuss how much governments should rely on predictions from climate models when they are planning climate adaptation measures. So the question is how much should leaders rely on the predictions. And it is comparatively a hard topic for an argumentive essay. If we agree that decision-makers should rely primarily on the report, the opposite perspective should be that they should not rely on the predictions, vice versa. And if my statement is that the decision-makers should rely partly these, I probably need to refute both relying totally and not relying nothing at all on the predictions, As is said by Ms.Fong.

However, my point is that different countries should rely on the reports provided by now differently simply because different countries have different values, different profits and different conditions. In the argument, I said something as there are uncertain components in the reports that are provided by developed countries and developing countries may not believe in this as they do not have such advanced technology and would even consider this could become a way that developed countries restrict their economic developing, which is considered not valid and objective by Ms.Fong. After thinking again, I found that there were few argements that could proof my point if I argue in this way so I decided to change a topic.

Response to JiaYue's peer review ( by Zhao Hong)

As mentioned by JiaYue in her peer review, I have also realized that my first draft seems to be out of point and does not look like an argumentative essay. It is more like a summary of the 3rd essay given to us. Thus I have decided to rewrite my draft to rectify the mistake. In my new draft, I have added in my arguments and counterarguments with rebuttals. Furthermore, I have also expressed my stand on the issue clearly similar to that of an argumentative essay.

Next, I have also added quite a number of citations and quotations from different references into my draft to make it more sounding and interesting.

Last but not least, I have also rewritten my thesis statement and my main points for the essay, and edited my conclusion, as suggested by JiaYue.

Peer Review for Yuheng (Done by Zhao Hong)

Yuheng did a good job in writing his first draft of WA2. His essay is well-organized, accompanied with clearly elaborated arguments and counterarguments. His thesis statement “… although some people oppose such a method, there is some evidence which indicates that this is not a good way to combat global warming…” clearly expressed his view on the injection of sulfur particles to cool the planet.

In addition, his introduction paragraph gives a brief yet detailed background of the issue to be discussed, with a question as food for thought. Usage of transition words further enables the paragraphs to be linked smoothly to one another and prevent “breakage” between paragraphs.

On the other hand, Yuheng can probably improve on his paragraphing to improve the presentation of his essay. Some paragraphs are slightly too lengthy which may cause readers to lose their interest while reading halfway.

Moreover, some of his rebuttals can be further elaborated if not most of the content will seem to be focused only on research of SRM. I would advice Yuheng to provide more supporting facts to make his essay more interesting and sounding. I would also like to advice him to edit the part regarding the cost of SRM as he did not give a clear stand on whether SRM is deemed cheap or not.

In a nutshell, this is a good draft with some minor editing to be taken care of.

Peer review (Post by Song Yuheng)

After reading JiaYue’s essay, I think it is a good essay. In the introduction part, she used some examples to show how serious the global warming is. This draws readers’ attention. Then she raised two opposite opinions and rebutted them. Eventually she summed up the reasons why SRM should be implemented. The structure of the essay is very clear. In addition, there are a lot of reference to be used which makes her argument more convincible.
However, there are some defects as well. One thing is that the introduction part seems to be too long. It is almost as long as the body part. I think she can sum up the examples a little bit to make it shorter. The other thing is that the thesis statement is not very clear. I think she can make it clearer by putting her stand at the beginning of the body part.
Generally speaking, it is a good essay.

Peer review on lim zhao hong’s WA2

Very clear and good expansion and introduction about geoengineering and SRM , gives the audience good review of the definition of SRM AND GEOENGINEERING.
Very clear and obvious thesis statement at the end of the first paragraph--- the introduction paragraph.
Clear outline. Know well what you want to say.
However, I don’t think this is a agrumentive essay, as you have no opponent and proponent and rebuttal as well as the stands and thesis statement for both sides.
You have only introduced the advantages and defects of SRM, without showing your own stand and the arguments seem not powerful enough.
Still the points in this essay seems not vey collective and lack of some coherence.
In addition, some references should be added in your draft.
For the conclusion part, not review your thesis statement and main points in your final conclusion. Better mention again in the conclusion

By liang jiayue.

comment on JiaYue's blog(post by yuheng)

This is a good summary. The structure is clear by using transition words “firstly”, ”secondly”, ”thirdly”, ”in addition”. The content is clear as well. It displays the main points in the article one by one. At the end of the summary, it shows the author’s opinion.
However, I think in terms of the problems of SRM some of the author’s opinions is missed in the summary. For example the author also said, SRM might lead to the ignorance of coming out new policy on global warming. In addition, the author also mentioned about the uncertainty.
Anyway generally speaking it is a good summary.

Liang Jiayue :SUMMERY OF THE ARTICLE:REASERACH ON GLOBLE SUN BLOCK NEEDED NOW

SRM is a proposed form of geoengineering, aims to reduce the earth's absorbtion of solar energy to reduce the effects of globle warming.
SRM is cheap and fast, but imperfect. the problems that reasearchers have encountered studying SRM make it a more serious problem to put SRM in use.
firstly, besides the argrument about whether SRM could effectively improve the climate situation, the side effects SRM caused can be very serious and uncertain. the earth may have less precipation and less evaporation. moreover,other introduced environmental risks like ozone holes wil eventually pose riskes as arge as those from the uncontrolled emmission. dealing with such case, we must develop the capability to do SRM in a manner that completments such cuts, while managing the associated environmental and political risks.
secondly, the size and amount of ditribution of aerosols need further testing and may cost millions of dollars.
thirdly, the crucial points of the globle governance of SRM is establishing legitimate collective control over an activety that some might to seek to do unilaterally.a nation might grow frustrated at the pace of international coorpration and establishin a national programme of gradually expanding reserach and field tests. in additon, no existing treaty or institution is well suited to SRM governance. from the author's point of view, a better approach would be to build international cooperation and norms from the bottom up, as knowledge and experience develop.

Response to Jia yue’s Peer Review(Post by Song Yuheng)

Thank for Jia yue’s advices. I have taken some of her advices.
First of all, I added some punctuation after the transition words. Then I used the APA to quote some of the information which I get from some materials.
However, I did not agree with her that I should add some deeper arguments in the last paragraph. Because all the arguments need some facts to prove that it is true. Since it is the last paragraph there should be no examples. Therefore I do not think some deeper arguments should be added to the last paragraph.
In addition when I was editing my 1st draft I also found that my vocabulary was poor. Thus maybe I should do something to enlarge my vocabulary.
Again thanks for Jia yue’s comments on my first draft.

Comment on Zhuo Ming's Summary (by Zhao Hong)

Firstly, Zhuo Ming’s did not clearly indicate which article he is summarizing on. So I am going to assume that he is using Article 3: Copenhagen needs a strong lead negotiator as his reference. Zhuo Ming did a bad job in summarizing as he did not include the important details which a summary should have. In this article, the main points should be the actions and experiences faced by Kyoto chair Raul Estrada-Oyuela.

Next, the summary contains a number of spelling and grammatical errors. Zhuo Ming should spend more time on the usage of certain words, such as “explodes” in paragraph 2. It can be observed clearly that some of the words are not used appropriately in his summary. In addition, Zhuo Ming should use more connective words and expressions to link his summary to make the sentences relate to one another smoothly.

In conclusion, I would like to advise Zhuo Ming to read the article a few times, get an idea on what the article is about and list out the main points before attempting to summarize it.

4th post--summary of COPENHAGEN NEEDS A STRONG LEADER NOGETIATOR (ZhuoMing)

A strong leader negotiator is needed as stated by the author is the main point of the passage. The characters a strong leader has are exceptional skill, knowledge and diplomacy as what a respectable professional diplomat said.
Firstly, after the quotation, the writer introduced some facts on Climate Change to give a background and let readers know what situation we are in now.Then he gives his main point that the main reason that caused these problem is the lack of a strong leader and the best way to solve this problem is to find a strong leader, because the failure of the conference is largely caused by a lack of a strong leader(the leader was changed again and again, finally, it was a leader who was considered to be without necessary experiences that presided over the talks.)
Later in the passage, the author gives a solution that we a committee that combines UNFCCCIf and the Kyoto Protocol can be formed. If such a committee is formed, its elected chair would naturally lead the negotiations at the Copenhagen summit. And there is a good chance that this strong international leader will make a difference. After this, the leader holds himself as an example and then mentions Jean-Maurice Ripert and Tommy Koh and the excellent work they had done to illustrate how important it is to have a strong leader in charge. The auther did not only talk about some leaders we already know but also introduced some leaders he had been working with, which shows that he was also a leader in this field and made his statements more believable.
In the conclusion, with reference to the conference in Copenhagen, he said a good leader is so important that without one, no conclusion will be made and we could do nothing but postpone the discussion. By arguing his statement from another perspective, he lets his readers understand his point better.

response to the peer review of ZhaoHong (by zhuoming)

In the peer review, the most right thing zhaohong has mentioned is that I am off topic as I had not read the three topics carefully. So I have done a great editing again in the second draft. And as ZhaoHong said, the beginning is a funnel introduction, however, I found the funnnel introduction is a little bit long and I should have focued on the discussion of the subtopic, so I just cut some down.
Another thing I have added is the expression usage and I found the structure of the passage becomes more clear after this and I will pay attention to this when I am writing a passage in the future. Even though there is unity in paragraghs, I still think some discussions are too detailed, which makes some paragraphs too long than them should be, so I just cut off the unnecessary setences.
Finally, thank ZhaoHong for his review, he had found a lot of disadvantages that I can not find myself.I will take care of these later I write other passage.

Peer Review for Zhuoming (by Zhao Hong)

Zhuoming’s essay started off with a funnel introduction, whereby he begins with a general sentence about the topic. Subsequently, each following sentence becomes narrowing onto the topic until the last sentence which states the main point of the whole essay.

Zhuoming seems to have some difficulties expressing his thoughts through writing due to his inconsistent sentences. Some of the sentences are not comprehensible as well. This problem might be due to direct translation from the Chinese language to English language.

I realized that this essay is off topic due to the fact that it is not related to either one of the Writing Assignment 1’s questions. On the other hand, there is unity in each paragraph stating each factor contributing to Global Warming. In addition, the reasons and suggested solutions of each factor are stated at the end of each paragraph.

Due to the lack of expression usage to link the gap between the paragraphs, it gives the impression that the paragraphs are not related to each other. On the other hand, he did a good job in using a lot of transition signals such as ‘however’ and ‘but’.

The conclusion of this essay ends with a question, “If we are doing the same thing day by day, how could we expect a different result?” This is an effective ending because it probes the readers to think about how they can change their daily lifestyles to alleviate the factors contributing to Global Warming.

summary about yuheng's draft1 review(liang jiayue)

firstly,yuheng's draft 1 has very clear outline: lead negotiator for Copenhagen summit should be a great diplomat, a strong lead and a scientist.
secondly,paragraphs are well connected and the questions asked in the beginning of each paragraph are very good to attract the audience's attractions.
thirdly,good examples are given for each main point in body paragraphs. fourthly,very clear and straight forward thesis statement and topic sentences for the article.
there are also some places that should be improved or focused on:
it should be better if you could ass some of your own comments on the article or give some of your ideas that is different from the opinions of the author, or else, give some deeper arguments in the last paragraph(the summarizing paragraph).
then,it should be better if you could make some of the sentences shorter using punctuations.
lastly,try to apply APA in your essay would be a better choice.
as a whole,yuheng's essay is quite a good one.

Summary of ZhaoHong's first draft (by ZhuoMing)

This draft is very clear: in the introduction, in the last sentence, he points out all five thsis statement, namely, economic, politic, corruption, employment and security reasons of the failure of Gobenhagon Conference. And each of the reasons makes a paragraph, the five paragraghs make the body of the passage. Two things need to say, the first is that in the five paragraghs there is only one real example(the indonisia one), more detailed facts need to be added to make the discussion more vilad. The second is that more expressions need to be added between the paragraphs to link paragraphs, as I have seen, there is only one, namely,"last but not least"(at the beginning of the sixth paragraph). And the conclusion is paraphrase of the thesis statement(And it also did call actions), which, again, makes the whole passage very clear and in good order.
Last but not least, at least one reference needs to be added.
Best Regards
ZhuoMing

Peer review(post by Song Yuheng)

After reading Jiayue’s essay I find there are some good points in the article. Firstly the article uses a question to raise the topic. Secondly the structure is clear. There are thesis statement, body and conclusion. Thirdly the arguments are good. They are demonstrated step by step and are very persuadable. Finally there is a transitional paragraph between the thesis statement and the body. This makes the article more coherent.
However there are also some defects in the article. First of all the transitional paragraph seems too long. Maybe she should make it shorter. The second thing is that there can be more specific examples such as some research results or some data. At last APA should be applied to the quotation parts and a list of reference should be added at the end of the article.
To sum up it is a good article with clear structure, good arguments and so on talking about ways of solving global warming problem. Just a little amendment is needed.

comment by ZhuoMing

(by zhuoming)
I am so surprised that jiayue comment on both Zhaohong and Yuheng, so I am commenting on jiayue's comment first. A good point in jiayue's comment is that she compared the two passage, which makes it easier for us to see the respective advantages of each passage. Her comparasion is in series, which creats points to points comparasions, rather than point to point comparation. An advantage os this is that it indicates readers what are the respective outline and main ideas of each auther and it makes the comparasion clear. After the comparation, she gives some suggestions to each author, which are quite practical. finally, she gives her point to summary and end her comment.
For me, as the two summaries are already compared quite completely by jiayue, I just want to give some suggestions for writting a summary. For this summary, I think a good way to organize is to make a comparasion as jiayue.
I am not saying this because comparasion is a good form for passage, I am saying this because there is a lot to compara between the two lecturers, one is more formal and scientific while the other is easier to understand and related to our daily life, and the difference in their contents makes their characters of speech different, one is more serious while the other is more humorous. So if we write our summary in a comparasion style, maybe it would be easier for readers to get a clear outline of the whole lecture and really remenber something and put them in our real life, but their summaries are already very good, I am just giving some suggestions, which are inspired by jiayue.
A little long, thanks for reading and welcome commenting on my comment!

PS: I still upload my comment as I did the day before yesterday, so I have to write again and post my comment.

Summary on the Friday’s lecture

Summary on the Friday’s lecture
By Song yuheng
On the Friday’s lecture the two speakers, Dr. Shie-Yui Liong and Dr. Benjamin. K Sovacool, gave us their presentation on climate change.
The first lecturer, Dr Liong, defined climate as an average of weather over a long time. Then he emphasized that despite a little greenhouse gas was necessary too much greenhouse gas was bad. He also illustrated some kinds of greenhouse gas and showed that the climate was becoming warmer and warmer. After that he introduced IPCC(Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) and some of the work they have done. At last he showed us that we could downscale the output of GCMs to match the hydrology needs.
The second lecturer, Dr. Sovacool focused on the facts of the condition of climate change and the solution of climate change in terms of both institutions and individuals. He illustrated that most of greenhouse gas was from fossil fuels and other sources and most of emission due to energy supply and use. He also showed the top ten emission countries among which China and the US ranked at the first and second place. Then he showed the institutional actions of climate stabilization in terms of sector, energy supply, transport, building, industry, agriculture, forests and waste management. In addition he laid out some individual actions of climate stabilization in terms of electricity, food, homes and technology. Finally he gave us some advises on what we ourselves could do to make a difference on climate change.

Friday Evening Talk on Climate Change (by Lim Zhao Hong)

The talk for this evening is related to the major problem that everyone on Earth is facing, i.e. Climate Change. We were honored to have two speakers from reputable backgrounds for this evening. They were Dr Shie-Yui Liong and Dr Benjamin Sovacool.

Dr Liong gave a brief introduction to climate change and modeling. He defined the term climate as an average of weather over a long period of time (in this case, we are talking about 10 or 20 years).

He further explained that the main factor which causes climate change is greenhouse effect. Greenhouse effect is essential for heating up the earth for the survival of all living things. Without heat, Earth would become an extremely cold planet without any inhabitants. However, if the level of greenhouse effect increases, the earth will gradually become hotter and to a point of time where it is too hot to survive.

The emission of greenhouse gases plays a main role in greenhouse effect. Research has revealed that the emission of these gases is resulted from human activities such as burning of fossil fuels and agriculture. Dr Liong emphasized on carbon dioxide gas as it represents 74% of the total amount of greenhouse gases. With the usage of a graph, Dr Liong showed us how the percentage of carbon dioxide had increased from past centuries till now.

At the last portion of his presentation, Dr Liong introduced the IPCC to us. IPCC was established in 1988 by WMO and UNEP. The IPCC synthesis report involves the temperature and rising sea level expected after the stabilization of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.

The second part of the talk is presented by Dr Benjamin Sovacool. Dr Benjamin gave us a brief overview of the climate change conundrum and presented the institutional solutions to climate change. Some of the examples of sectors included are energy supply, transport, buildings, waste management agriculture and forestry. The examples of policies and measures for these sectors are reduction of fossil fuel subsidies, limit driving days, certification and building codes, renewable energy incentives and financial incentives to increase forest areas.

With the help of graphs, he commented that China, United States of America and Indonesia are the top three contributors of greenhouse gases. According to a chart which displayed the per capita carbon footprints for various countries, Dr Benjamin gave an analytical comment that the higher the income average of a country, the higher the amount of carbon dioxide emission will be generated from that country.

Dr Benjamin concluded his presentation by encouraging us as individuals to play a part in climate stabilization. He commented that if everyone started to make a difference, the change will be significant in global context.