The talk for this evening is related to the major problem that everyone on Earth is facing, i.e. Climate Change. We were honored to have two speakers from reputable backgrounds for this evening. They were Dr Shie-Yui Liong and Dr Benjamin Sovacool.
Dr Liong gave a brief introduction to climate change and modeling. He defined the term climate as an average of weather over a long period of time (in this case, we are talking about 10 or 20 years).
He further explained that the main factor which causes climate change is greenhouse effect. Greenhouse effect is essential for heating up the earth for the survival of all living things. Without heat, Earth would become an extremely cold planet without any inhabitants. However, if the level of greenhouse effect increases, the earth will gradually become hotter and to a point of time where it is too hot to survive.
The emission of greenhouse gases plays a main role in greenhouse effect. Research has revealed that the emission of these gases is resulted from human activities such as burning of fossil fuels and agriculture. Dr Liong emphasized on carbon dioxide gas as it represents 74% of the total amount of greenhouse gases. With the usage of a graph, Dr Liong showed us how the percentage of carbon dioxide had increased from past centuries till now.
At the last portion of his presentation, Dr Liong introduced the IPCC to us. IPCC was established in 1988 by WMO and UNEP. The IPCC synthesis report involves the temperature and rising sea level expected after the stabilization of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.
The second part of the talk is presented by Dr Benjamin Sovacool. Dr Benjamin gave us a brief overview of the climate change conundrum and presented the institutional solutions to climate change. Some of the examples of sectors included are energy supply, transport, buildings, waste management agriculture and forestry. The examples of policies and measures for these sectors are reduction of fossil fuel subsidies, limit driving days, certification and building codes, renewable energy incentives and financial incentives to increase forest areas.
With the help of graphs, he commented that China, United States of America and Indonesia are the top three contributors of greenhouse gases. According to a chart which displayed the per capita carbon footprints for various countries, Dr Benjamin gave an analytical comment that the higher the income average of a country, the higher the amount of carbon dioxide emission will be generated from that country.
Dr Benjamin concluded his presentation by encouraging us as individuals to play a part in climate stabilization. He commented that if everyone started to make a difference, the change will be significant in global context.
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i have read the summeries from yuheng and zhaohong.yuheng's summery seems to be shorter that zhaohong's. yuheng;s summery fucuses on the procedure and the whole outlet of the lecture while zhaohong's summery contains much detailed information. i suggest that yuheng should get more detailed in his summery. after all, the summery is more about the content rather than the order of each section. summery is used to be more easy for the reader to abstract main information from the long article and get most of the main points.
ReplyDeletehowever, the outlet for yuheng's summery is quite obvious, which gives the reader a better overview of the whle article. in addition, the use some connective words and phrase is perfect in his summery.