Portfolio Task 3

Professor Andrew Palmer, Benjamin K.Savacool and Professor Bala are invited to give a speech on topics related to global warming. After the lecture, I got a deeper understanding of the impact and causes of global warming, and what contributions can the global do in helping to reduce global warming.

Professor Palmer is from the Department of Civil Engineering, NUS and he has been working in the centre for offshore Research & Engineering. In his presentation, he talked about the increasing trend of emission of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. This is due to the increasing coal consumption by countries such as China and USA and the developed countries reluctant to take action as they worry economy more than environmental issue. He also went to talk about the actions to be taken by individual, government and global as a whole. From his presentation, I learnt some new technology with the fight on global warming and that is to store CO2 in depleted oil or gas field. Another option is to store liquid CO2 in ocean by creating a membrane. Both options have its disadvantages as CO2 will diffuse into the ocean or field, making it acidic. Another knowledge that I have gained is that to inject sulphur the air or mirrors on atmosphere to shade the Earth but both required a huge amount of resources.

Benjamin is from the Science & Technology Studies and his job is to understand and influence how society shapes science and technology, and how in turn science and technology shape society and the environment. He presented 2 case studies on the Renewable Energy and Electric Vehicles. What give me a surprise is that before the 1920s, electric vehicles are in fact a more popular choice. The trend changes gradually and people preferred fuel vehicles due to challenges from the economic, political and technical. The conclusion is that no technology is self sustaining and it is part of social system. In order for new technology to be used, it must gain the support from the government and the people.

Professor Bala is from the Department of Environmental Engineering, NUS and his presentation is about the climate change and mitigation. In his presentation, he presented graphs on the rising trend temperature due to CO2 emission and pictures on how countries have been seriously affected by it such as drought and floods. There also a list of actions that an individual can do to combat global warming. An interesting fact in his presentation is that scientists are able to extract an ice core and studies on the amount of CO2 are trapped inside.

Generally as a future environment engineer, I feel that the today’s lecture has given me an extra knowledge on the current situation. Global warming is a long term issue and it requires the cooperation from all the countries to reduce the impact of global warming as it can disrupt the lifestyles and economy of the future generation.