Post 3

The first lecturer was presented by Professor Andrew Palmer talks about his view regarding Co2 emissions in the world. He mention that the Co2 emissions have been increasing rapidly especially during the recent few decades. The Co2 emissions have increase from 275 parts per million in 19750 to about 400 parts per million in 2000. He mentioned about what are that measures that can be taken to prevent Co2 concentration from escalating to an even higher level. In order to take effective measure to solve this problem, we need to accept the world that we would not like to be. We need to cut down a lot on the usage of electricity and cars this would be a huge change in the lifestyle we have now. There is a need for large scale actions to restrict the Co2 emissions from factories and our automobiles. We need to capture Co2 and develop more fuel efficiency devices. We can capture Co2 from the surface and store Co2 under the oceans. However, there is a need for more plants to store Co2 to combat climate change. In the lecture, he also mentioned can manipulate the Earth climate through geoengineering. For example, we can manually release So2 into our atmosphere to screen the earth from the sun. The huge release of So2 in Mount Pinatubo during eruption caused global temperatures dropped by about 0.5.What I found interesting was that Co2 can be store in the sea. The release of So2 into the atmosphere into the atmosphere can reduce the temperature of the earth but I doubt this would work because it would cause more acid rain.
The second lecturer talked about how technology is dictates by social progression and change. The reason why renewable energy is still not widely adopted by people is because most people are ignorant about new technology. The returns in investment in renewable energy are lower much than conventional energy. People are not willing to adopt it because of the higher cost. There is also a lack in government funding in certain parts of the world to research in renewable energy sources. The case study on electrical cars shows fully illustrated how people adapt to technology. In order for a particular technology to be adopted by people, it has to be cheap for the people to adopt. If alternative energy can be made cheaper, I believe more people will use it.
The third lecturer Pofessor Bala talked about climate change. He mentioned about the rise in Co2 concentration in the recent decades and what can the government and people do to play a part in combating climate change. He mentioned that the rise in Co2 will results in devastated consequences. The melting of ice cap will cause the sea level to rise and extinction and even hurricanes. It would cause extreme weather conditions in different parts of the world. We can do to play a part is not waste electricity and take more public transports. We should not buy products that can indirectly contribute to climate change. We need to change our lifestyle to save Mother earth.
Many nature disaster have happened recently may be a sign that the global climate change has taken a toll on our planet that we lived it. Politicians are not doing enough to combat rising climate. Countries are more interested in their own economy than the environment. This is because we are living in a highly competitive world. United States, the world highest amount of Co2 emitter, is not willing to aggressively cut down on Co2 emissions because it is afraid it would lose out to China and India. I feel that unless there is a global effort to stop climate changes, this problems will continue to escalate and will cause our future generations to suffer.

tutorial 2

Singapore green efforts to promote to the quality of our environment can trace back to 1970s. One of the attractive points that cause tourists from other countries flocks into Singapore is the clean and green environment of our country. Our government has constantly implement measures that help to sustain make Singapore a better environment to live in. The Green Plan, which was implemented in 1992, served to achieve environment sustainability. The Plan was reviewed in 1995 to keep up with the current standards.

The focus of the Green plan is on clean air, clean water and clean land. Singapore government has pump in money to focus and developing more efficient catalytic converter to be used in cars and factories. As Singapore has a limited land space, we do not have the luxury to set up factories that are far away form housing estate. Singapore government has implement laws that prevent factories from dumping their wastage into rivers. In addition, our government is spending more money to develop alternative energy resources. Furthermore, in order to encourage more people to used alternative fuels, rebates where given to car buyers that bought cars that were powered by natural gas. Annual events such as the Clean and Green encourage people to reduce, reuse and recycle. Television advertisements are constantly being played regularly to remind Singaporeans to save electricity and water.

Although there are such measures being implanted by our government, however I feel that there are more to be done. Singapore signed the Kyoto Protocol climate treaty in 1996 under the non-Annex I countries. Singapore can be considered as a developed country. By signing under non-Annex I countries means that it is restricting its emission for a developing country status. Despite Singapore Co2 emissions is 0.2% of the total emissions, the Co2 emissions per capital is 12.2% in 2004. This is considered to be quite high for such a small country. The reason for this may be because Singapore is still a very competitive society and the focus on is more on our economy than on our environment. In fact, this is the case for a lot of countries around our world. There should be more cooperative work between different countries to work on sustaining our environments before it is too late.