Katherine and Audrey,

   Generally, I think you did a very good job in your project about analyzing
   global average temperature data and CO2 emissions levels.  I was hoping that all 
   of the projects would involve doing some actual analysis of 
   data, and so it's good that you actually dug into the temperature and CO2
   emissions data.

   But the title of your final project paper sounds almost as if you want to 
   come down on the climate change *denial* side, although you clearly want
   to say exactly the opposite.  It's the deniers who usually talk about 
   "busting the myth" of climate change(!)

   The first paragraph of the paper gets awfully far into details of distinguishing
   climate vs. weather rather than laying out what the paper as a whole will
   say. It would have been better to aim for a more general statement of the 
   topic and then start a new paragraph to discuss how weather deals with 
   specific short time-scale phenomena, while climate deals with longer-term
   and wider-area averages.  

   You might also have said some more about why scientists accept that there
   is a connection between CO2 levels and atmospheric temperature earlier on. 
   You mentioned more about the green-house effect and the carbon cycle in your
   talk at this point, but that was a bit vague and not too detailed. The 
   discussion on page 7 of the paper about the green-house effect could have
   gone earlier in the overall background section.   

   One potential objection to the method you used would be that, by using
   the CO2 *emissions* data exclusively, you aren't taking into account 
   how much of that CO2 actually ended up in the atmosphere. There are 
   processes within the global carbon cycle that are continually *removing*
   CO2 like plant photosynthesis, gas dissolving in sea water, etc.  
   I think the correlation between temperature and CO2 levels would be even 
   more convincing if you had used, or at least mentioned, measurements of 
   atmospheric CO2 concentration levels (like the Mauna Loa data set that we 
   discussed before).  It's true that essentially only relates to conditions 
   in the northern hemisphere, but it's a very widely-used and widely-accepted 
   set of measurements because of the way the data is collected.  

   Specific comments on a few sections:

   Page 2:  "our sample size for each analysis was 64"  Technically, you
   are not doing random sampling from a larger population here (except in
   the sense that the measurements made to generate the average temperature
   values involved sampling temperatures at various locations, at particular
   times.)  But the there's not a larger population of temperature readings
   from which these are being taken by some random process.  So calling this 
   a "sample size" is not really correct.  It is the length (or number of terms) 
   of the time series.  

   Page 5:  "This increasing trend of CO2 emissions is, in part, due to global 
   industrialization."  Agreed.  But then,  "Gas turbines and planes were invented 
   in the early 1900, computers in the 1940s, and nuclear power plants in the 1950s."  
   The three inventions you point out here are not the best ones to make your case; they
   are either not especially large contributors to CO2 emissions (the first two), 
   or essentially irrelevant (nuclear power plants).  Nuclear power plants really
   don't emit CO2 at all since they use nuclear fission to produce heat and 
   drive steam turbines, etc.(!)  The really big contributors to CO2 emissions
   are first, electrical power generation in coal- and to a lesser extent gas-fired 
   power plants.  That electricity is used to power computers and other electronics
   (and LOTS of other things too), but the big CO2 "hit" is coming from the power
   plants, not the end-uses.  Second, and even larger, is transportation via 
   gasoline-powered internal combustion engines in passenger cars and trucks.  
   Other industrial processes using fossil fuels contribute too.  

   Page 9:  "There are many things an individual can do in order to delay the progression 
   of climate change."  I would say this is probably true ONLY if EVERYONE is doing them.
   Otherwise, if there are substantial numbers of people going on and consuming and
   generating CO2 emissions as now, then the overall effect will be that not much 
   changes, unfortunately.  

   Final Project: 

   Annotated Bibliography -- 10/10
   
   Presentation -- 33/35

   Paper -- 50/55

   Total -- 93/100   (letter: A-)