Portfolio 3

This Friday we heard three preentations on climate change and global warming.

The first lecture was Andrew Palmer. In his presentation he first summarised all the crisis we face today's world. Then, among them, he talked about frontier technologies which can mitigate climate change. The two methods he mentioned were carbon dioxide capture and storage and put articles into atmosphere. Unfortunately, these two methods are difficult to implement. For the first one, carbon dioxide capture and storage, the idea is quite simple but joint effort from all countries is needed. For the second one, it requires advanced space technology and most countries in the world cannot afford this. Besides technologies, Prof. Palmer also talked about politics. He mentioned that politicians always prefer short-term interest to long-term ones. They do not recognize envoronmental problems as of the greatest priority. Thus, fund and effort that ought to put into it are reduced. " If unchecked global warming is the greatest trouble in 100 years, then we are lucky indeed.", he ended his presentation.

After Prof. Palmer it was Dr. Sovacool who gave us another presentation. He analyzed environmental problems in a systemetic approach and brought about quite different ideas. Comparing with Prof. Palmer, Dr Sovacool stressed not only technology but also our social considerations. He gave us two case studies: renewable energy and electrical cars. Both of them showed that technology can succeed technically, but fail socially. Market failures and barriers, political and regulatory obstacles, cultural and behavioral challenges are things we cannot ignore. Finally, he concluded that technology is part of social system. The failure and acceptance of certain tachnologies can sometimes have nothing to do with technical feasibility, and instead relates to contests over power and interest.

The last presentation was made by A/P Bala and talked about something very conventional. The topic was : climate change : assessment and mitigation. He gave quite a lot of convincing data which shows temperature on earth is indeed increasing, and predicted the potential consequences of enhanced global warming. After that, he mentioned several factors affecting the earth's temperature and what a warmer earth can bring to all creatures. Lastly, he gave suggestions on what individuals and governments should do to mitigate climate change.

This lecture on environmental issue is very interesting and informative. The part that interests me most is Dr. Sovacool's STS method of evaluating technologies. After his presentation, I realised that being engineers, we should have a good understanding of social and political issues as well as technologies.