date: Tue Oct 30 16:16:02 2007
from: Tim Osborn <t.osborn@uea.ac.uk>
subject: Re: Essay help
to: V.Coe@uea.ac.uk

   Dear Vikki,
   the marks won't really depend on the style or approach that you take with presenting
   them... as long as you have identified natural mechanisms of climate change that might
   contribute to some significant part of the observed warming then that is good enough.  So
   either of your options is ok, provided you use most of your word allowance on the natural
   mechanisms.
   The only reason why I asked for it to be presented in this particular form (i.e. a briefing
   document for George W Bush) is to make it more difficult for people to just cut and past
   from the web!  It might be easy to find text about natural mechanisms on the web, but not
   so easy to find it in the required style and therefore encourage everyone to re-write it in
   their own words -- which everyone should be doing anyway, to avoid "plagiarism", but sadly
   not everyone does.
   Hope that helps,
   Tim
   At 15:52 30/10/2007, you wrote:

     Hi Tim
     I am an environmental undergrad student, i am currently working on the
     coursework where you have to submit a document to George Bush.
     I am slightly confused on how to answer this question. I have researched
     natural mechanisms such as sunspots etc. however i am unsure on how to
     present this information
     George Bush did not sign the kyoto agreement so therefore his thought
     patterns must be towards the fact that anthropogenic factors are not a
     significant cause of climate change. Is the idea of the essay to write
     about natural mechanisms and therefore give some weight to his arguement?
     Or
     Is the idea of the essay to say write about for example sunspots and
     dictate that this natural mechanism may have caused 10% of the global
     warming trend observed.....however 90% may be other natural mechanisms or
     anthropogenic causes? ( i just plucked those figures out of thin air!)So
     should i write in the style of considering natural mechanisms are partly
     to blame however anthropogenic reasons should not be ignored!
     I would really appreciate your help in getting my head around what the
     question is asking...or atleast pointing in the right direction.
     Regards Vikki Coe