Third Entry: Lectures on Saturday evening

On the thirtieth of January, three lecturers presented three topics on climate change. These three lecturers are Andrew Palmer, who talked about Carbon Dioxide capture and storage: technological and politics, Benjamin K. Sovacool, who talked about Using STS to Address Energy (and Technological) problems, and Rajasekhar Bala, who talked about Climate Change: Assessment and Mitigation. These lectures were very informative and interesting, and encouraged the students to think about the fate of future generations.

Andrew Palmer was talking about different methods needed to reduce carbon dioxide emission. The most interesting part in his lecture was to reduce carbon dioxide emission, we must used many different methods such as switch coal to gas, nuclear, biofuel, hydropower, and using the carbon dioxide capture and storage technology. It makes me realize that people have been using oil uncontrolled and now we must accept the consequences. However, our actions to fight global warming cannot be done by individual but must be done by the whole communities in the world and with the support of the politicians. We all face with recession, diseases, and poverty, but if we do not take the action to reduce carbon dioxide emission in the atmosphere, then we will face with extreme cases of natural disasters and viruses. More people will die, and who will benefit from this?

The second lecturer explained to us on how technology dictated the pace and the direction of social change. The most interesting part in his topic was technology can succeed technically but not socially. It makes me thinking that for a technology to be a great success, it must be accepted by the society. Just like how the automobile defeated electric car. Thus for us to change and fight the climate change, we need to educate the public about new technologies that are useful and essential. If not the public will not accept technologies, instead they will fear it and reject the changes made by new technologies.

The last lecture was about climate change: assessment and mitigation. The lecturer showed to us the evidences of global warming and its consequences. Global warming caused the rise in global surface temperature, changes in glacier and hurricanes pattern, and rises in ocean level. The consequences are intense storms and hurricanes, droughts and floods, extinction of organisms, incurable diseases and economic and social disruption. Some parts of the world will remain dry and some part of the world will be drowned because of the sea level keeps rising. The interesting part is that some part of the world will benefit from global warming, maybe countries like USA or Europe, but the third-world countries will receive the tremendous impact of global warming.

The main point that I grasped from these lectures was to fight global warming, the developed countries like USA, Russia and China should reduce their oil consumption and switch to renewable energies. However, it might takes a long time for that to happen as the politicians always make excuses and trying to manipulate the society to accept their decisions not to switch to renewable energies.