Evaluation of General Sources

In this blog post I will be evaluating two sources I found from a general Google search. I will be analyzing their general purpose, along with whether or not it seems credible.

The controversy of climate change has been an ongoing battle for many years. Geoengineering is a new concept aimed at counteracting the effects of human caused greenhouse gases. Both of the articles analyzed below focus on different aspects of climate engineering. One provides general information on what climate engineering is and its potential. While the other argues against the use of climate engineering and explains why it isn't feasible.

Why Climate Engineering Won't Work

This article comes from The Huffington Post with a URL ending with ".com", which automatically makes it less reliable than other URLs ending in .edu  or .org. In general, URLs that end with a .com could be edited by anyone. After gathering some background information on The Huffington Post itself, this source is potentially filled with bias. The online news source is known for being a liberal-oriented business, implying that many of their viewpoints will be skewed.

Screenshot from "The Huffington Post". September 5,2015 via The Huffington Post

However, the author of the article can convince an individual that the article is indeed credible. Author Anders Levermann is a climate change scientist and physics professor. He was the lead author in the most recent UN climate change report and has some level of authorization over climate change discussions. The article was last updated on May 10, 2015 and provides no internal links. Geoengineering is still a relatively new concept, so the article does not seem to be too out of date.

Levermann's purpose in writing this article is to put the process of geoengineering in layman's terms, and to then explain why it isn't a feasible solution. As a climate change scientist, he explains why simply reflecting sunlight won't work and presents another possible solution. The only graphical image included in the article was of a chemical plant emitting harmful gases. He provides no citations at the end of his article, but has many links to other popular topics related to climate.

Advent of Geoengineering

The information provided in this article comes from a scholarly journal at Yale University and has a URL ending in ".edu". When compared to other URLs, such as ones ending with a .com, this website is more reputable. Scholarly websites are well-known for citing where the information gathered was obtained from, and many of these articles are not published until sufficient research has been completed.

Screenshot form "YaleNews". September 5,2015 via Yale News

The specific journal published has five authors; Dan Kahan, Hank Jenkins-Smith, Tor Tarantola, Carol Silva, and Donald Braman. All five authors reside at universities and study different types of sciences - ranging from neurosciences to political sciences. The article was last updated February 10, 2015 and has a couple of internal links, one being to the journal itself and the other to another subset of the Yale website.

Within the article, one will find the results from a study conducted on a group of people. The five authors wanted to see how an individuals opinion changed depending on how informed they were on the topic (studying the facts themselves or receiving majority of their knowledge from politics). Through the study conducted, it was found that geoengineering has the potential to counteract both the political hold over climate change and the human effects of climate change. Although no images can be found in the article, it provides an accurate citation and hyperlinks you to the full journal publishing.