Summary of two articles, Going underground and Warming signs

The topic of my group is to investigate one of technologies about climate changes mitigation and explicate why citizen groups should support, promote, or oppose such a technology.

The first article is ‘Going Underground ‘, written by Mark Schrope, a freelance science writer base in Florida. The article is talking about that development of Carbon dioxide capture and storage technology, which can mitigate the current climate changes by capturing and storing carbon dioxide gas emitted by industrial plants from worldwide. It is also pointing out some technical issues that the scientists have to research more, such as the measurements of the force of gravity to monitor carbon dioxide storage sites. Lastly, the article introduces encouraging outlook of CCS based on some achievements and progresses from different countries or scientists.

Basically, the carbon dioxide capture and storage technology is to capture the CO2 from power-station chimneys and to store them deep underground safely. But before implementing this technology, researcher must make sure that the stored carbon dioxide gas would not leak out to pollute surroundings. Therefore, a method called gravity measurement was tested to track the spread and store of the buried carbon dioxide. The principle of the method is that the force of gravity is slightly higher at a spot that has seawater below it, compared with one that has less dense carbon dioxide. Researchers believe that CO2 could be stored safely with this method.
The second part of the article gives some encouraging outlook about the CCS. It says, a team has been able to achieve the remarkable precision of gravity measurement, needed to effectively monitor the buried gas although they still need a lot of data to be collected later on to be analyzed.

Schrope, Mark. (December 2008). Nature report climate change, VOL 2, www.nature.com/reports/climate_change, macmillan publisher limited

The second article ‘Warming Sign’ written by Mohan Munasinghe, vice chair of Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and chair of the Munasinghe Institute of Development in Colombo Sri Lanka, points out that nowadays, the climate changes are caused by recent human activities and greenhouse-gases emission. Here are two ways for human to deal with climate change, adaptation and mitigation, suggested by Mr. Munasinghe.
For the first way, adaptation, we have to increase our adaptability such as build dikes against increased sea-level. The second choice is to mitigate climate change by sustainable lowering the emission of greenhouse gases which is a clean development mechanism of Kyoto Protocol.

The article also points out that climate change spans the planet, play out over the countries and concerns on every human being. For developing countries, they should reduce the greenhouse gases emission while continue developing their economy. But for developed countries, display more leadership in mitigating climate change and share their experiences in this area to help developing countries.

Munasinghe. Mohan, A World of Science in the Developing world, macmillan publisher limited

Evaluation:

The first article goes into details of CCS technology in aspects of helpless of CCS, the technical issues to be solved and encouraging outlook of CCS. These information is very helpful for reader to understand this technology and to make decision whether they support, promote or oppose the CCS technology.

The second article analyzes the situation of global warming and suggests what policy-maker from developing or developed countries should do depends on the situation of their own country.

Clean Development Mechanism—it permits the industrial countries transfer part of the obligations to reduce emissions to other nations in exchange for payment.