Video Analysis

Video:

Misconceptions
• “The climate is always changing”
• “Temperature and CO2 levels do not show a strong correlation”
• Relative impacts of other impacting factors:
• Solar activity
• Earth’s eccentricity
• Earth’s obliquity
• Earth’s precession
• Current warming trend precedes significant CO2 increases by about 100 years
• “No significant warming trend in the 21st century”
• “The trend over the past couple of decades has been essentially flat”
• “About 25% of all the CO2 emissions from human sources have occurred in this period of no net warming”
• Disputes scientific confidence in climate predictions (possibly link IPCC report prediction confidence)
Analysis the video above and write a critical analysis. We’d like to see you using multiple sources, asking questions
about the intended audience and motivation for the video, as well as understanding whether there are credible
alternative points of view.
We strongly encourage you to critically analyse your article’s content, purpose and motivations.
Purpose of a critical review
The critical review is a writing task that asks you to summarise and evaluate a text. (You will just need to evaluate
this time) Writing the critical review requires you to watch the video and to also read other related texts so that you
can present a fair and reasonable evaluation of the selected text.
What is meant by critical?
To be critical does not mean to criticise in a negative manner. Rather it requires you to question the information and
opinions in a video and present your evaluation or judgement of the video. To do this well, you should attempt to
understand the topic from different perspectives (i.e. read related texts) and in relation to the theories, approaches
and frameworks in your course.
What is meant by evaluation or judgement?
Here you decide the strengths and weaknesses of a text. This is usually based on specific criteria. Evaluating requires
an understanding of not just the content of the video, but also an understanding of the video’s purpose, the
intended audience and why it is structured the way it is.
What is meant by analysis?
Analysing requires separating the content and concepts of the video into their main components and then
understanding how these interrelate, connect and possibly influence each other.
Critique
The critique should be a balanced discussion and evaluation of the strengths, weakness and notable features of the
text. Remember to base your discussion on specific criteria. Good reviews also include other sources to support your
evaluation (remember to reference).
You can choose how to sequence your critique. Here are some examples to get you started:
• Most important to least important conclusions you make about the text.
• If your critique is more positive than negative, then present the negative points first and the positive last.
• If your critique is more negative than positive, then present the positive points first and the negative last.
• If there are both strengths and weakness for each criterion you use, you need to decide overall what your
judgement is. For example, you may want to comment on a key idea in the text and have both positive and
negative comments. You could begin by stating what is good about the idea and then concede and explain
how it is limited in some way. While this example shows a mixed evaluation, overall you are probably being
more negative than positive.
• In long reviews, you can address each criteria you choose in a paragraph, including both negative and
positive points. For very short critical reviews (one page or less) where your comments will be briefer,
include a paragraph of positive aspects and another of negative.
• You can also include recommendations for how the text can be improved in terms of ideas, research
approach; theories or frameworks used can also be included in the critique section.
Some resources you may want to use:

AR5 Synthesis Report: Climate Change 2014

https://www.ipswich.qld.gov.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0018/7641/climate_change_science.pdf
https://climate.nasa.gov/

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