[newbie!]

anyone know any good papers worth checking out about global warming.
i have to write and essay titled "global warming - is it inevitable"

want to stick to trust worth sources coz there's gona be huge bias on the web.

[Arkcon]

Yeah, the bias is going to be a problem. This is one time when Wikipedia can be a bad source to start from. I'd start with Nature and Science, they'll have this topic headlining from time to time.  Then see who wrote the articles featured in the magazine that month.  Use the author's name in that article to find more of what they've done in other, less flashy journals.  And study their methodology, to see if you think its rigorous enough.  Remember to pay attention to the abstract or introduction, and see who they cite in the bibliography for statements they make in the abstract or intro -- and remember those names.  Soon, you'll have built up a core bibliography of your own on this topic.  It will come in handy in the future, if this is a topic that really interests you.

[newbie!]

is nature and science a magzine?
thanks for the adive.
yeah the topic is alright, it wouldnt have been my 1st choice but it was the best of what was left to chose from.

[newbie!]

oh also "gobal warming" and "climate change" they are interchangeable, right?

[TheUnfocusedOne]

Nature and Science are scientific journals that cherry pick articles from all science fields. It's usually the cream of the crop. Also try The Proceeding of the National Academy of Science (PNAS), they'll more of the same.

Google school is always a good place to start, just make sure your sources are peer reviewed and reputable .

[newbie!]

i'll check them out.
i'm trying to find the easiest way to access these journals.
using scopus and science direct there is also elsevier. any others?
also if my uni will have access to the full text.

i've found a few articles on new scientist i guess they're pretty accruate too.

[Arkcon]

oh also "gobal warming" and "climate change" they are interchangeable, right?

Probably climate change is a better term.  Global warming has become a little jingoistic, and loss some of its reputability.  Climate change is more apt, because changes in the atmosphere can cause weather pattern shifts, causing heavy snows, or desertification, or heavy rains, none of which are "warming."  Problem is, climate change lacks the word "global", lessening its impact.  But anyway, if you want to avoid buzzwords in science, maybe that's not such a bad thing, so long as the message gets across.

Science is published by the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and is more popular in the US.  Nature is published by the Nature Publishing Group in the UK, and is more popular in Europe.  I'd heard, the publications have something of a bias towards who they'll accept articles from, and so scientist on each side of the pond seem to extend the bias back towards the journal in question.  Funny, I don't often read PNAS, I always reach for Science or Nature first.  Silly of me to have that sort of bias, myself.

[newbie!]

how do i find these journals?

[fledarmus]

http://www.sciencemag.org/ will get you one,

http://www.nature.com/ will get you the other.

The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences http://www.pnas.org/, also mentioned earlier, is nice because many (if not all) of the articles are free

[newbie!]

^ thanks.

i'm looking arould. lol pnas most articles are free!? 1st one i came to http://www.pnas.org/content/108/47/18899.full.pdf+html

[fledarmus]

Sorry, I checked that again - it looks like they are free after six months.

Or possibly I have completely misunderstood their website? It seems that most of the ones I have tried to use are free...

[newbie!]

so this is a 2000 word essay, due a week today.
i have done pretty much zero! fail.
i;ve dl'd a few articles but reading them makes my brain hurt.
i hate writing essays tbh.
any tips on how to start?

[Arkcon]

You can try by making an outline.  List the statements in the first paragraph, and the last paragraph of the articles.  Unless the article in question has headers that say Abstract at the beginning and a Conclusion at the end, in which case, I mean use those sections.  Look for support for those facts inside the body.  Then write the list out in full sentences.  Look for other articles that make the same points and combine the evidence.  Summarize it all yourself in your own written Introduction and Conclusion paragraphs.  A 2000 word paper is 5 pages long.  That's a high school level term paper.  The tiny print in Science, Nature and PNAS makes their average article are much longer than that.  Science term papers aren't like English Lit where you create something yourself, just intelligently summarizing someone else's research will is what's wanted, and will earn you a grade.  You don't have to do any real work at all -- designing an experiment, collecting data, summarizing, building graphs, drawing conclusions.  You should be able to blow this assignment away.  You just have to start working.

[newbie!]

nice advice!

and yeah its just coz of the "plagarism" like you have to reword everything... but there's only so many ways you can reword stuff lol.

[Arkcon]

English lit. majors have often called my term papers plagiarism.  They are simply collections of someone else's research, to be sure.  But their term isn't quite fair.  If you've taken a bunch of articles, found their similarities, combined them into one, crediting each point in your term paper with the original in the bibliography -- you have actually done something useful.  What I just described is essentially writing one of the lead-in articles in Science.  We read those all the time to get the background we need before we study technical journal articles.  Or start designing experiments for ourselves.  Try to think of what you're doing in that way, so you keep your term paper clean, concise, and you have an easier time doing it.