Ani, Araf                                                                                                                              10/23/22

English 20107                                                                                                     Rhetorical Analysis

Climate Change Studies:

            The two reports that we will be analyzing is about climate change. The fact that climate change exists and is a real threat to the human race has been known for a while. The main purpose of climate change studies these days is seeing how bad the possible outcomes will be if we as a society don’t do anything. Most of the population of the world believe in climate change, if someone does not believe in climate change, a report like this will not convince them. The main audience for these reports should the general public who would wish to know more about the effects of climate change, what they can do to reduce said effects, and how long the world has roughly.

Title:

The two climate change reports being analyzed today will be from the United Nations document meant for policymakers and the IPCC. Both of these organizations are from the United Nations. The IPCC is a branch of the United Nations. The full name for the IPCC is the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. The title for the first document is named “The Closing Window; Climate crisis calls for rapid transformation of societies”. The title for the second document is named “Climate Change 2022; Mitigation of Climate Change, Summary for Policymakers”. For the titles, I believe that both titles are very good. Both titles spell out the main point of the reports in one to three sentences. The first report has a more eye-catching title, the analogy of a closing window evokes a feeling of dread and urgency. Compare this to the second title and you see a massive difference. The second title is very bland and straightforward, it is nice because it gets the point of the report across. However, compared to the first title, it just isn’t as good. The use of the word “rapid transformation” gives a feeling that we must do something now or else there will be no time left.

Introduction:

For both articles, they have very different structures. The first article is a 132-page report with information about how climate change is affecting us now and how we can fix this in the coming future. The second article is a set of bullet points, which can be read very quickly, and you can get a general idea of climate change solutions in a very quickly. The reason for these differences is because of the audience these reports are trying to reach. The first report is for researchers and people who are studying climate change and its affects. This can explain why it is so long and why it is in great detail. The second report is for policymakers, who mostly want a list of bullet points they can read fast and get a general idea of a social problem. The job of a policymaker is to support ideas they agree with, they don’t need to know the nitty gritty of climate change, only how to promote climate change solutions to the layman.

            The introduction for both reports are very well thought out. The introduction for the first report goes over headlines in the world right now. The first report talks about how the world is behind in reducing emissions in its introduction. The second report is talking about possible solutions for current emissions and climate problems. To paraphrase from the second report, there have been recent literatures that talk about how activists and the general public can work together to slowly start mitigating the affects of climate change. This is very important and straightforward, which is what the document is trying to achieve. This document is for policy makers, so it should be as easily digestible as possible. To paraphrase from the first report, countries are off track to achieve even the globally highly insufficient NDCs. Global GHG emissions in 2030 based on current policies are estimated at 58 GtCO2e. This talks about how we are currently behind in emission reduction and that in 2030 we will won’t be able to go back. We are on an edge and are ready to fall off at any moment.

Results:

The Closing Window: Climate crisis calls for rapid transformation of societies:

This table is taken from the first report. The analysis will be based on this table. Just by looking at this table, the average person can look at this and see that the world superpowers are the countries that release the most emissions. The average person can also see that the gap between the superpowers and the rest of the world is massive. This is very good as anyone can look at this and see the problems with emissions and who is causing that. This table maybe a little biased because it assumes you know what these gases are. The average person would not know what LUILUCF CO2 is. They would likely know that too much CO2 is bad, however they would not know how bad this LUILUCF CO2 actually is.

Climate Change 2022; Mitigation of Climate Change, Summary for Policymakers:

            The second report has this chart of all emissions released throughout the last 30 years, give or take. This chart is a lot better than the previous chart shown. The emissions are more clearly shown. The chart is very colorful, this grabs the readers attention, we see a rising level overall emissions, which the readers can assume to be bad because of the red color. The key here is better because it has more information, each CO2 and other emission is clearly stated and is also given with an example. For example, LUILUCF CO2 is actually used in change of land and forests. Something we did not get from the first report. From the audience these two reports are trying to reach, the second one is for policymakers and the general public. So the second report must be more hand holdly and explain concepts in more detail, since they barrier of knowledge is much lower than the first article.

            Overall, through analysis, the audience seems to be the most defining aspect when writing a report. The audience defines the amount of detail an author or scientist must go into. If the barrier of entry to a report is low, then author is expected to explain the concepts they are talking about more. This is because the common man will not know most of terms, it is only logical to explain them.

References:

The Closing Window; Climate crisis calls for rapid transformation of societies

https://www.unep.org/resources/emissions-gap-report-2022

By: UN environment programme (2022)

Climate Change 2022; Mitigation of Climate Change, Summary for Policymakers

https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar6/wg3/

By: IPCC, United Nations (2022)

Reflection:

            Overall, I think I did my paraphrasing better in this assignment than I did in my previous assignment. I tried not use any quotes in this assignment. Also, for my images, I tried to explain the photos better. I tried to analyze the tables more, however I think I could have better stated how the key was different and better with even more explains than I used. Also, my time management with this assignment was very bad.

            I didn’t submit this assignment on the discussion board because I was too busy studying for my other classes. This is 100% my fault and I should have managed my time better. Next time, I will try to get these assignments done earlier so that I could get feedback on my work. The time management was my biggest problem when working on this assignment. Besides that, I think I should choose better photos to compare next time and also have a better way to analyze the chart that I use in my work. I also have a problem with overstating a fact that I already have clarified previously, I will try to do this less in the future.