User:Bradycat130/sandbox

Notes on Article Climate Change- 2/12

Overall, this article was written very well and covers the topic of climate change very thoroughly. Where the article lacks a bit is it's one sided coverage of the physical evidence for human made global warming. Granted, there is a significantly greater body of evidence that points to humans contributing to global climate change, but this article never references a single point of evidence against human caused climate change. By not sharing the complete picture, I believe this article is not completely neutral. In terms of the information, most of it is very current coming from sources dated in the past decade. One piece of information that could be updated is the figure at citation 70. This past year 2016, was actually warmer than 2015, meaning this chart could be updated to include the more significant piece of data.

Notes on Coral Climate Research-2/12

1)This article does a very good job at explaining exactly what Coral reefs are made up of as well as how they reproduce, survive, and function within their respective environment. In the article, titled Coral, there are several sections where the editors get into the taxonomy, eating and reproduction habits, as well as corals natural habitat.  When it comes to explaining how coral and coral reefs are used to explain past climates, the article is very thorough in covering the different approaches, but could be more specific about the impacts the world is currently experiencing today.   When dealing with data analyses, this article does a very good job of addressing different scientific methods for analyzing how a coral reef relates to past climates, such as geochemistry, oxygen isotope anomalies, and sea surface temperature and salinity .  One area the article lacks in data analyses is addressing how climate change is increasing ocean acidification due to increased levels of carbon dioxide.

Overall, the assumptions made by this article are fairly accurate. One specific assumption under the Geochemistry header, basically states that climate modeling can get an assist from geochemistry analysis. Climate models can indeed be made more accurate by understanding past climates with help of geochemistry.

This article, however, does not address the strengths and weaknesses of the proxy method. It only goes as far as to say that the methods may help with piecing together specifics of past climates, but never gets into specifics about real time and past data.

2)I found two peer reviewed articles that dealt with coral reefs as a proxy. The first was titled Redefining thermal regimes to design reserves for coral reefs in the face of climate change and was authored by Iliana Chollett, Susana Enríquez, and Peter J Mumby.  This peer reviewed article was not one of the sources cited on the page, but offers some valuable information of how to combat climate changes negative impact on the coral reefs.  The second peer reviewed article I found was Exploring errors in paleoclimate proxy reconstructions using Monte Carlo simulations: paleotemperature from mollusk and coral geochemistry authored by M. Carré, J. P. Sachs, J. M. Wallace, and C. Favier. This article used similar geochemistry methods that were described in Coral, but went into much greater detail about the process.   This source was also not cited in under the sources in Coral.

3)In the future, this article could be improved upon in few ways. First, it could go into much greater detail about how changes in the coral reefs and coral patterns show changes in climate, specifically addressing ocean acidification due to increased levels of carbon dioxide.  Secondly, the references were overall very credible, but more could be included that point to specific coral reefs and/or coral that are being used as a proxy to give a more clear picture as to how they are being used as a proxy.

Notes on Wiki article Electronic Vehicle :

Group Member # 1: Brady Harris (Bradycat130)

Overall, the article was thoroughly written and included not only descriptions about what an electronic is and its makeup, but also information on the current advantages and disadvantages that electronic vehicles are facing today and have faced in the past. This article also clearly outlines the history of electronic vehicles, which gives great insight into why they were created as well as the purpose they serve today.

Not only did it cover the topic fully, the article also did a fairly good job at remaining unbiased and neutral when it came to comparing electric vehicles to conventional gasoline powered vehicles. There were a quite a few instances however, where the phrase "efficiency" was used when the comparison between these two automobiles without properly being defined first. Without the proper definition, the reader is left to guess whether the author is writing about how efficient the vehicles are themselves or how efficient their electric source that are used for the cars plus the cars themselves. The article references both the cars and their power sources, so that is where the confusion comes into play. I would recommend having two different terms, one that referred to just the efficiency of the car, and a second that referred to the efficiency of the power source and the car. Also, if numbers were added to back up the differing efficiency between fossil fuel generated power and other sources of power to replace any assumptions with facts, it would bring the idea to a neutral plane. The article eventually partially defines a distinction between "tank to wheel" efficiency and "well to wheel" efficiency, but never references them anywhere else in the article, which leaves the unsure which type the author(s) are referring to.

Overall the citations appear to be reliable sources of information and the article is well cited throughout. The section titled "Energy sources", however may need a few more sources within the body. Within the section, there are several assumed facts like "electric vehicles are still more efficient than a comparable amount of fossil fuel vehicles". The author should cite where they got this information or at least provide some numbers to back this claim up so that even an uniformed reader can see the data.

This article had a lot of information in it and did a great job at informing the reader. Keep up the good work!

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