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Finger dam in Delaware Park showing algae and general yuck

Environmental Resources

Some of the resources we used in Environmental Earth Science, Environmental Case Studies, and Environmental Field Methods

Climate Change
VOting REsources
Mapping REsources
Media Literacy
Water Resources
Other Resources

Climate Change

Here are some resources for you to use in investigating climate change:  

The 4th National Climate Assessment Volume I – Physical Drivers https://science2017.globalchange.gov and Volume II – Impacts, Risks, and Adaptation in the United States   https://nca2018.globalchange.gov. If you are interested in the next report, due out in 2023, you can check the status here https://www.globalchange.gov/nca5

If you want to go to the horse’s mouth, here is the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Website – where you can look at the original reports – this is the official compilation of information concerning global climate change/global warming https://www.ipcc.ch/reports/  All of the reports can be accessed here. That last full synthesis report is the AR5 (2014). Of more recent interest are the Global Warming of 1.5°C Special Report from Oct 2018 and The Ocean and Cryosphere in a Changing Climate Special Report from Sept 2019.

The most recent IPCC report, the AR6, is being released right now starting with AR6 Climate Change 2021: The Physical Science Basis (August 2021), the AR6 Climate Change 2022: Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability (February 2022) and the one that just came out that I mentioned in class AR6 Climate Change 2022: Mitigation of Climate Change (April 2022).  The final synthesis report is due in September.  These reports are huge but you can find pathways to all sorts of interesting research.  

If that was a bit overwhelming, try the https://skepticalscience.com/big-picture.html  – it is a little dated at this point but covers the main ideas 

Yes, there is natural variation – you can read about Milankovitch Cycles here https://climate.nasa.gov/news/2948/milankovitch-orbital-cycles-and-their-role-in-earths-climate/#:~:text=The%20Milankovitch%20cycles%20include%3A,is%20pointed%2C%20known%20as%20precession but think about the key term here “cycle.” What we are looking at now is outside that cycle. Technically we should be cooling right now. You can also read about this at https://skepticalscience.com/Milankovitch.html

The NASA Global Climate Change: Vital Signs of the Planet website is https://climate.nasa.gov/ 

The NOAA Climate Reports can be found here https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/sotc/ and some really cool graphs showing temperature data here  https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/cag/   

Here is another source of information on methods of determining paleoclimate https://www.climate.gov/maps-data/climate-data-primer/past-climate 

Some additional sources of additional information if you want to read up more on this subject:

  • If you have heard/read some of the arguments that “refute” global warming, this is a good resource to use to investigate them  http://www.skepticalscience.com/argument.php
  • Another useful resource is http://www.climatecentral.org/ 
  • For a deeper dive, it is worth taking a look at the Berkeley Earth Project, which was headed by Richard Muller, a physics professor who was profoundly skeptical of the published data on climate change and decided to ‘correct’ all those confused climate scientists who didn’t understand physics. You can still see their “Skeptics Guide” from 2014 and take in the patronizing tone of project. Turns out that climate scientists were not idiots and already understood physics, so the results they got were pretty much in line with all of the climate findings Muller was disbelieving. All the data they have accumulated and their models are downloadable if you are feeling ambitious. They do have some interesting visualizations but I still view them with some skepticism myself. 

Please note that the following websites misrepresent and/or distort climate science – actually some of them just outright lie (if you investigate you will find most of them have a vested (monetary) interested in continued reliance on fossil fuels):

  • The -*- symbols are added to break up the names so they aren’t searchable but you can still work out what they are …
    • https://www.friends-*-ofscience.org
    • http://climate-*-sciencenews.com
    • https://www.climate-*-depot.com
    • https://wattsup-*-withthat.com
    • https://www.ca-*- to.org
    • http://www.aei-*- .org
    • https://www.heart-*-land.org
    • http://principia-scien-*- tific.org

These are MISINFORMATION SITES ! 

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Voting Resources

League of Conservation Voters Score Card   http://scorecard.lcv.org/

Open Secrets 115th Congress List  http://www.opensecrets.org/politicians/summary_all.php

From Lecture 

Library of Congress  https://www.congress.gov/  (this is where you follow the progress of Bills)

United States Code Office of the Law Revision Counsel   http://uscode.house.gov/  (official one)

United States Code Cornell Law Library  https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text  (easier to search)

Supreme Court  https://www.supremecourt.gov/ 

Executive Orders (which are published in the Federal Register)
Recent order are at https://www.federalregister.gov/executive-orders 
for older orders go to http://www.archives.gov/federal-register/executive-orders/disposition.html (up to Obama)

Treaties (on Senate Website) https://www.senate.gov/legislative/treaties.htm 

Federal Register  https://www.federalregister.gov/   or https://www.govinfo.gov/app/collection/fr 

Electronic Code of Federal Regulations (CFR)  http://www.ecfr.gov/ 
CFR at Cornell Law Library   https://www.law.cornell.edu/cfr/text

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Mapping Resources

If you are searching for additional information about a site, you can do virtual reconnaissance using Google Maps (http://maps.google.com/) and/or Bing Maps (http://www.bing.com/maps/) (both can be useful as they typically have different time signatures of satellite imagery). Street View can be particularly helpful.

You might also want to play with Google Earth – you can do this online using Chrome only (https://www.google.com/earth/) or if even better you can download Google Earth Pro (https://www.google.com/earth/versions/#earth-pro) – which has additional functionality, for example – you can step back in time and see older satellite images to 1997 which can be illuminating about changes in an area.

  • The Web Soil Survey (http://websoilsurvey.nrcs.usda.gov/app/HomePage.htm) site allows you to search by address but it is sometimes a bit off. You might have to play around and use your Google/Bing Map image to make sure that you are looking at the correct place. Once you have centered your site, create an AOI (area of interest) using the Define AOI by Rectangle button. Once the AOI has been generated, click on the tab that says Soil Map. This brings up a map with the soil types contoured on the map and a listing of the relevant soil types.
  • You can take a look at what modern foot and bicycle traffic in an area using the Strava Heat Map which is a visualization of two years of trailing data (i.e. location data from people wearing a tracking device) from Strava’s global network of athletes   https://www.strava.com/heatmap#8.84/-78.75008/42.87337/hot/all 
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Media Literacy

Here are some resources that might be helpful for evaluating information:

Beall’s List of Predatory Journals and Publishers  https://beallslist.weebly.com/standalone-journals.html

Snopes https://www.snopes.com/ “We are the internet’s go-to source for discerning what is true and what is total nonsense.” Urban mythbusting usually. 

Sourcewatch  https://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=SourceWatch (The Center for Media and Democracy publishes SourceWatch to track corporations.) 

Open Secrets website at http://www.opensecrets.org/ (Created by the Center for Responsive Politics, a non-partisan research group that tracks money in U.S. politics and its effect on elections and public policy.) 

False, Misleading, Clickbait-y, and/or Satirical “News” Sources by Melissa Zimdars, assistant professor of communication and media at Merrimack College in North Andover, Mass.  https://docs.google.com/document/d/10eA5-mCZLSS4MQY5QGb5ewC3VAL6pLkT53V_81ZyitM/edit?usp=sharing 

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Water Resources

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OTher Resources

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Yes – I am still working on this list

(former students – email me to let me know what you is missing that you would like access to again)

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