Lectures on Global Warming

Last Friday, three experts gave their lectures respectively on multiple aspects of global warming, providing us a good opportunity to gain some insights on this famous issue.

Professor Andrew Palmer mounted the rostrum first with his topic “Carbon dioxide capture and storage: technology and politics". His opening remarks involved other urgent problems like population expansion, food shortage and regional conflicts. Yet another challenging problem is coming, which already gives dangerous consequential implication globally, according to scientific research. That is climate change. Focusing on this problem, Professor Palmer discussed several respects: technological application, political resistance and public concerns, personal response. With the rapid increase of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, feasible application of existing technology can come into play, in order to mitigate the situation. Besides adopting alternative energy, including nuclear, solar, wind and biomass energy, an impressive example given is the capture and storage of carbon dioxide. This could be achieved by storing liquid carbon dioxide in depleted oil or sealing it with membrane under the ocean. However, the possibility of carbon dioxide leakage may lead to catastrophic effect on marine ecologic system. Furthermore, political barriers overtake technical difficulties. Generally, high-cost methods to reduce greenhouse emissions may affect company profits, industrial interest, even economic growth, thereby influencing people’ daily life, which is great concern of leaders and the public. Professor Palmer commented technological application like carbon dioxide capture and storage is feasible only there is political will. Thus at present, individual efforts to improve energy efficiency seem crucial. Although it is still controversial whether we should make largest investment in reducing greenhouse, necessity of international collaboration on this issue is always valued.

Dr Sovacool introduced Science and Technology Studies (STS) to address energy problems. He started with traditional analysis of technology which is subjected to four different stands of determinism, namely structural determinism, autonomous determinism, consequential determinism and normative determinism. He gave the first case study on renewable power industry. As he pointed out, the spread of renewable power is faced with market failures and barriers, political and regulatory obstacles, cultural and behavior challenges due to psychological resistance, public misunderstanding and other environmental concerns. The second case study presented is electric vehicles which require electricity from batteries and charging station. This limitation keeps people from widely accepting this way of transportation, though electric vehicles are much more environmental-friendly. At last, Dr Sovacool concluded that STS provides a useful lens to evaluate new technologies.

Associate Professor Bala Rajasekhar focused on assessment and mitigation of climate change. Firstly, he presented evidences from the changes in glaciers that support global warming. The enhanced greenhouse effect leads to global warming, followed by dramatic temperature changes and potential natural disasters like droughts, floods and accelerated species extinction. To mitigate this situation, the public should improve energy efficiency and adopt renewable energy; governments may impose tax on greenhouse emissions and subsidize technological projects on research and application. Inevitably, to address global warming may influence current economy and familiar lifestyle. A/P Bala encouraged governments to cooperate internationally.
During the lectures, professional insights on global warming were provided by Prof. Palmer, Dr. Sovacool and A/P Bala. Interestingly, not one of their topics left out a remarkable complication: political resistance, which has a close relationship with the pursuit of short-term benefits. However, who is able to enjoy any benefit without our survival environment on earth? The message conveyed from lectures calls upon us to act, warily and caringly, locally and gloablly.