The Global Warming lecture

On the 30 January, most of us have attended the lecture on global warming which is being presented by three different lecturers. While each lecturer has his own style of presentation, their main concerns are the same, that is the effects of global warming and how people, regardless of organisations or as individuals, can help to reduce the effects of it.

The first part of the lecture is presented by Prof. Andrew Palmer whereby he shares with us some of the possible solutions that can help to reduce the problem of global warming. One such solution would be to capture and store carbon dioxide to places like under the depth of the oceans, which is possible with modern technology. Switching to alternative sources of energy such as solar power, wind and biomass fuels is also an option to solving the problem. He had also talked about how we should response to climate change like accepting the world as it is and to focus on actions that could be taken now such as applying existing technology.

Dr. Benjamin K. Sovacool is the second lecturer and he mainly focuses on using the Science and Technology System to help analyse the problems and suggest why certain solutions do not work even though they are considered to be good. For example, renewable power and electric vehicles can reduce the effects of global warming and yet they were not used for the past few years. This is due to other factors such as political, social and economical reasons. Hence, he said that technology can succeed technically but fail socially.

The third lecturer, Prof. Rajasekhar Bala, gave a presentation on climate change and its mitigation. He talked about the greenhouse effect gasses which contribute to global warming and some evidences on global warming like the rise in average global surface temperature and rise in sea level. He mentioned about the potential consequences of global warming, mitigation and the difficulty of carrying out the solutions. He had also talked about basic approaches that we can take and how government can reduce the threat of the climate change.

After attending the lecture, what I found interesting is the technology of capturing and storing carbon dioxide as this solution can only be possible with repeated research and development and today's technology. Furthermore, this idea of storing CO2 under the ocean is quite interesting in itself as we know CO2 is a gas and to store it, it would have to be liquefied and pumped onto the sea bed via pipe lines. Thus, I believe that with today's technology we can overcome most of the problems which includes global warming as long as each of us help to reduce the effects of global warming by doing whatever we can and hope that in the near future global warming will no longer be a threat to us.