Global climate change, although often thought of as a recent issue, is not restricted to recent geologic time. Evidence also exists for past climate change events. Discussion 5 focuses on the study of paleoclimatology (past climates), and how that can help us understand recent concerns about global climate change.
In order for your instructor to have a better understanding of your prior knowledge and learning experiences with global climate change, you are asked to complete a pre- and post-lesson survey. Your surveys contribute to your participation grade for discussion 5, but are NOT graded as correct or incorrect responses. Please answer as honestly as possible. Also provide a paragraph on how you evaluate the authority and reliability of the article that you submit for the assignment. See the guide below for more information.
Quality Assessment Guide – Evaluating the quality of what you find

Never just accept that the information you found is authoritative and reliable. Especially if it is found on the web. Before you use information you need to evaluate it to see if it is reliable information supplied by authoritative authors.

Not all books are reliable or authoritative.

Who is the author? What is his background? Does he have a bias?
Does that publisher only print books with a particular political bias? Yes even science and technology information can be biased.
Magazines and journals and newspapers contain content of varying authority.

Popular magazines may slant content for entertainment value.
Popular magazines may misrepresent science or technology because their writers do not fully understand it.
Popular magazines often have a bias suited to their normal readers.
Scholarly journals try to be authoritative, and nonbiased.
Peer reviewed journals print only articles approved by an author’s peers in the field.
In the scholarly world a journal can say “we will not publish your article because your peers don’t think it is any good” These are Peer Reviewed Journals. Every article is evaluated by other people working in the same field before being included in the publication.

Be particularly careful with web pages and documents. The web is not controlled by any entity. Anyone can put misinformation on the web, and no one can force them to take it down. This is definitely a buyer-beware world.

Guides for your assignment:

Review the following tutorial to learn more about how to evaluate the information you find. Just place your curser over the evaluation criteria to see what it means.

Evaluating sources
Expanded evaluation criteria. Print out this document and refer to it as you do your evaluation.

How to Identify Reliable Internet Sources
Look at this document to find out how to tell if a periodical is a newspaper, popular magazine, trade publication, or a scholarly journal.

Types of Periodicals
Look at the following to learn how to immediately tell if a journal is scholarly or not.

Popular vs. Scholarly Articles
Here at WSU we subscribe to a tool that can help you decide if a periodical is a magazine, a scholarly journal, or a Refereed Journal (their name for peer reviewed journal). It is called Ulrich’s Periodicals.
First, please complete the pre-lesson survey. Go to the “Surveys – Lesson 5” folder and select the “Pre-Lesson Survey”.
Next, read the following:
Frequently Asked Questions about Global Warming from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). http://lwf.ncdc.noaa.gov/oa/climate/globalwarming.html#q8
From: A Paleo Perspective on Global Warming (NOAA)
What is Climate Change?
What is Global Warming?
How do we study Global Warming?
Discuss Weather, Climate and Paleoclimatoloty and what you can learn from past climates
Take a look at the data and discuss the:

The Instrumental Record of Past Global Temperatures:
Paleoclimatic Data for the Last 2000 Years
Paleoclimatic Data Before 2000 Years Ago
Part of the intent of the discussion board assignment is for you to see what kind of data is out there on noaa’s website. Look around and see what you can find. Heres some more detailed links to get you started:
Climate Change: https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/climate-information

Global Warming and Paleoclimate: https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/monitoring-references/faq/indicators.php
and https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/data-access/paleoclimatology-data
and http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/paleo/globalwarming/climate.html
Past Temperatures: https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/cag/
and https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/climate-information/climate-us
and https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/data-access/paleoclimatology-data/perspectives

Complete your original and response discussion posts. After reading the initial sources listed above, search for a recent (last year) news or journal article which discusses the study of paleoclimatology in the geologic record. Post a link to your article and discuss the following:
Give a paragraph summary of the article. Please include any reference to causes, impacts or evidence of past climate change.
Which geologic period(s) are being studied for the article?
What methods are used to measure past climate change?
How does this study of past climate relate or contribute to our understanding of recent climate change?
Finally, once you are completely finished with lesson 5, please return and complete the post-lesson survey. Go to the “Surveys – Lesson 5” folder and select the “Post-Lesson Survey”.
For further information, visit the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Climate Resources Fact Sheets http://oceanservice.noaa.gov/education/pd/climate/.