There are 2 parts to the lecture on Climate Change; the issues and the responses. Dr Shie-Yui Liang briefly introduced on climate cooling & modelling, while Dr Benjamin Sovacool talked more about the institutional and individual solutions to reduce the harmful emissions of greenhouse gases.
Dr Liang explained that climate change is due to global warming or also known as heating of the earth. Global warming is caused by the increasing emission of greenhouse gases. The breakdown of greenhouse gases (in percentage) is dominated by Carbon Dioxide of a percentage of 74% followed by Methane at 16%, Nitrous Oxide at 9% and high GWP gases at 1%.
Research has shown that the increase of emission is mainly due to human activities, such as burning of fossil fuels, land use change, and agriculture. The carbon dioxide concentration in the atmosphere is now much higher than in the last centuries; and has been growing faster in the last 10 years. Using a graph, Dr Liang showed us that even as the carbon dioxide emission reduces, the temperature and the sea level continued to increase slowly before levelling off.
Dr Liang then went on about the future climate (SRES scenarios), he emphasized that A1F1 is the worst as it is fossil-fuel intensive and B1 is the most ideal scenario as it is more integrated, and more ecologically friendly.
Dr Liang introduced to us that IPCC is a scientific intergovernmental body, established in 1988. Throughout the years, they have been collecting data with the help of simulation climate models, known as GCMs(General Circulation Models) to monitor the climate change and project/predict future temperature changes under various scenarios. The data collected by various GCMs may vary. For example, South America (from 6 GCMs), looks different from each model. By downscaling to smaller grids, better results will be obtained. Because Singapore is too small for the GCM models(150km2, 600km2), they have to downscale to RMs(Regional Models) for analysing. Impact studies hydrological model are then carried out.
Dr Benjamin shared with us the solutions to climate change. Some institutional solutions such as reduction of fossil fuel subsidies, limiting the number of driving days and using non-motorized forms of transport will greatly assist climate stabilization.
Individual action for climate stabilization plays a role as well. If everyone plays a part, the results can be significant. Simply start by substituting a fan for the air conditioner, taking lukewarm/cold showers or unplugging electrical appliances when not in use.
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I would like to add a few more points in regard to Dr Benjamin’s speech. Statistics have shown that carbon dioxide emission has increased in most countries while those countries that have reduced in emission were usually due to problems faced by the country itself, example, turmoil in country.
ReplyDeleteFrom the charts, we can see that carbon dioxide emissions increases when a country develops, even renewable sources of energy produces carbon dioxide content.
Now, we can almost see a link through these statistics that why countries are not willing to participate actively to reduce carbon dioxide emission. Lets focus on developing countries, firstly, in order for a country to develop, it needs a substantial number of workforce in its country and this mean that it will need to increase its human population. When population increases, food consumption and energy usage will also increase, thus leading to an increase in carbon dioxide emission. Countries are constantly in a rat race to outdo each other and this is a never-ending cycle because when 2 countries are progressing at the same rate, we can state that they are not progressing in terms of each other.
Dr Benjamin also states that individuals can start by reducing our energy in-take and altering our lifestyle to reduce the damage done on Earth.
In conclusion, I feel that even though we are largely responsible for the increase in carbon content, individuals can help by changing our lifestyle to reduce the rate of increase in carbon dioxide emission. I strongly feel that it is impossible to reduce the carbon dioxide emission unless population of human stop growing and everyone start using renewable sources of energy.