Summary of the lecture on Global Warming

By watching ‘An Inconvenient Truth’, my awareness of global warming was reinforced and I realized that the actions must be taken against the effects of global warming either by governments or individuals. On January 30th lecture, there were three experts in the area of global warming gave us three presentations which focus on carbon dioxide, social science systems approach and difficulties in dealing with global warming. The following is a brief summary of the ideas of the presentation.

The first speaker, Professor Adam Palmer, focused on effects of carbon dioxide in global warming and the technology on capture and storage of carbon dioxide. First Prof. Palmer used several slides to explain how carbon dioxide affects climate and the trend of climate change on earth if human do not take actions against the emission of carbon dioxide. Next, he mainly concentrated on introducing the technology of capturing and storing carbon dioxide. The method is to pump CO2 into sea and store it in a membrane bag which can prevent CO2 diffusing into the sea and acidifying the sea to affect marine life. But, unfortunately whether to implement this technology is decided by politics who are only interested in short-term goals.

The next speaker was Associate Professor Benjamin K. Sovacool from Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Police. He mention that how to use Science & Technology System (STS) to address energy problem. First he elaborated four determinisms, structural, autonomous, consequential and normative determinism. After that, he went on talk about how social factors affect the development or implementation of a new technology. For example, US people protested against their first nuclear power plant reactor. From Prof. Sovacool’s presentation, social factors also can affect dealing with global warming.

The last speaker was Dr. Rajasekhar Bala. His speech was mainly focused on the effects of greenhouse gases such as water vapor, carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide. Next Dr. Bala talked about what we can do about global warming. For instance, we can increase energy efficiency, rely on renewable energy resources and reduce emission of greenhouse gases. At end of his speech, he mentioned about the difficulties encountered in fighting against global warming. For example, global warming is global problem which needs worldwide cooperation to deal with.

With the experts’ presentation, I believe that everyone has realize how important to fight against global warming. I hope everyone can play a role in contributing to protect our planet and saving our planet from suffering global warming.