Summary of the article " Research on global sun block needed now" ( Keith, Parson, Morgan, 2010) ( Chung's post)

In recent years, geoengineering has been considered as one possible way to mitigate climate change, however, little research has been carried out by scientists and world's countries. The article aims at urging countries to conduct further research of solar-radiation management (SRM) before making any decisions towards this method.

In the first part of the article, the authors show the evidence of Mt Pinatubo as an illustration of the effectiveness and swiftness of utilizing SRM. However, the article also shows notification about the political risks and different damages between countries. It is recommended that countries should facilitate further complicated research on SRM to get a deeper understanding of SRM in order to negate critical environmental risks.

Then in the second part, the authors point out the current shortage of information as well as research funding for SRM. This fact may lead to the careless use of SRM in emergency situations while full understanding has not yet been obtained. The authors also suggest that simultaneous research in conducting SRM experiments and defending the environment against risks should be noticed by international leaders.

Ultimately, the article shows that the primary problem for SRM is how to maintain the consensus between countries towards the utilization of SRM. In addition, SRM also should not be governed by any countries. On the other hand, international cooperation will be a better way of approach. Simultaneously, the article demonstrates that it will be more advantageous for us if we know early about the hazards that SRM can cause.

To sum up, throughout the article, the authors suggest that responses towards mitigation of climate change should be in two ways: further evaluation of SRM and at the same time, reducing gas emissions(Keith, Parson, Morgan, 2010).

Peer Review on Jacky's "Nuclear Power's New Dawn" article( already commented in his post)

Generally, I think that this is a well-drafted and straightforward post of Jacky about the new dawn of nuclear power. The whole post have stated clearly his point of view that nuclear power can be advantageous for human and would be the most popular energy if we know how to handle the challenges properly.

First of all, I personally think that one of the strongest points of Jacky's post is the consistency in his support for the utilization of nuclear power. Throughout the post, he has used figures and facts to support his main idea. In addition, Jacky have also discussed some challenges that we are expected to overcome if we widely use the nuclear energy such as the material requirements and its high cost. Personally, I strongly agree with Jacky that nuclear power has many positive points that human beings can benefit from and it is our responsibility to know how to use it in a good way as " with great power, comes great responsibility" .

On the other hand, I think that the article can be better improved if Jacky can elaborate more on the disadvantages and challenges of nuclear energy as those are also great concerns for world leaders as material shortage and costs may not be main challenges. Admittedlly, there is many advantages that nuclear power may bring to us, however, extremely serious problems such as atomic explosion danger, possibilities of war and destruction are much more concerned about than costs and material requirements. Therefore, if Jacky can rebut and point out some possible solution for these problems, the article would be more convincing.

In conclusion, Jacky has been successful in bringing up the issue that is widely debated. Though there is some minor errors in grammar and content, however, in the limitation of a short blog post, I think that if the article was written a little bit longer, it would be better.

An Inconvenient Truth( 2006): Global Warming ( Chung's Post)

 

 As the final examination is coming shortly and I am trying to review the lectures and tutorials for six modules that I am taking this semester, I had a chance to watch again the documentary film “An Inconvenient Truth" directed by Davis Guggenheim. It is about the campaign of "the former next President of the United States”- as Al Gore jokingly introduces himself- to make the issue of global warming a recognized problem worldwide. Although Al Gores might make a joke about his former status at the beginning of this documentary film, what he was about to present to the world afterwards was definitely not a joke, but it was a truth- an inconvenient truth about the Earth’s climate crisis.

 

Firstly, Al Gore, who estimates that he has given his global warming presentation about a thousand times all over the world and he builds his argument with measured and real figures. He then reminisces about the 2000 election and his sister's death from lung cancer as reasons that have inspired him to the issue. He is no scientist, but he manages to convincingly portray himself as an expert on the topic. Al Gore claims that though he did make great efforts to encourage the world’s countries to combat climate change, however; on the contrary, Former US President George W. Bush has tried to make the United States unaffected by the Kyoto Protocol.

 

In addition, Al Gore asserts that global warming is an incontrovertible issue that is really happening and among scientists, there is one hundred percent of agreement on the threat. His presentation also includes evidence that counters views of many critics who claim that global warming is an insignificant problem and has yet to be proven. Throughout his address, Al Gore has shown several striking images of current consequences because of climate change and his country is a vivid example. The presentation has revealed the severity of sea invasion in Florida as well as the destructive power of Katrina and Rita hurricanes in New Orleans.

 

Subsequently, Al Gore argues that “global warming is really not a political issue, so much as a moral one". With many well-selected figures and graphs, he shows that how to maintain the harmony between economical properties of products and moral issues is also a dilemma for many countries. American car makers, for instance, are currently losing their profits because US standards are so high that their products cannot be exported to Europe and Asia. 

 

To sum up his presentation, Al Gore argues that if appropriate actions are taken soon, the effects of global warming can be successfully reversed by releasing less CO2 and planting more vegetation to consume existing CO2. He also invites people to "change the things that we buy, the electricity we use, the cars we drive".  Moreover, Al Gore calls upon his supporters to learn how they can help him in these efforts as he believes that the will to act is also a renewable resource. 

 

In conclusion, “An Inconvenient Truth” is a well-argued and remarkable film about global warming. It is better to be aware of the issue and take several precautions beforehand rather than unconsciously letting global warming happen and then making the world feel regretful. Knowledge is empowering and “An Inconvenient Truth” is not a depressing film. Al Gore's forecast is serious, but he knows better than to leave us in despair. Currently, we are only lacking the political will to do anything about what Al Gore calls a "moral imperative" and he insists that the solutions to the problem are within our reach if we starts actions now because there is always room for hope.

 

Comments on GengXin's Review (Done by Fan Lei)

Thanks GengXin for the review. I think he did he did point out my problem of this essays. It is "quite academic", as what he said, and it is difficult for ordinary readers understand it. In my first draft, I focused too much on the uncertainties of the climate models themselves instead of talking about why and how much the government could rely on them to make policies. I kept on providing information but forget to derive my own idea, thus making readers tired of the tedious professional issues.

And another problem is about the language. Some sentences in this essay is confusing and inaccurate, as I tried to make them long. It is undoubtedly a shortcoming for academic writing. Because if the sentence is too long and with so many definitions in it, it will certainly confuse people.

So to sum up, the improvements I should make for this essay is that, "to think actively and write clearly". I think only an inspiring and clear article can attract readers, but at this time, I lack both of these in this draft. However, I will try to make more discussion on my own opinion of the pros and cons of relying on the present climate models, thus making it worth reading.

Peer Review of Shao Tu's WA2 (by Pulkit Agarwal)

Shao Tu's essay has a very impact-full introduction with very appropriate examples being used with good corelation to past experiences.It also exhibits a very coherent and powerful way of expressing his thoughts.I pretty much liked the manner in which Shao Tu by posing several question was able to gather attention of the readers. Though I do feel that there was a lack of clarity as whether he is supporting the use of nuclear power as source of electricity or he is opposing .

Apart from this,I was highly impressed by the way Shau Tu was able to project both sides of the issue through the arguments presented but ,at the same time I was still confused as to which side is he taking. The essay maintains a constant flow and there was a good linkage between different aspects of the issue that were disscussed in the arguments.The examples that are used in the essay are very well connected to environment and can be related to our day to day lives .

At the end,I would just like to appreciate his sincere effort as his essay clearly portrays his in-depth research and hard work.Although if Shao Tu would have been a bit more clear as to which side of the argument he is favoring,it would have been much more influential.

Peer review of Pukit's WA2 (by Shao Tu)

In the WA2, Pukit has given a brief introduction on the nuclear power energy and listed accurate reasons to explain why we should invest for a further development on this field.

In general, this essay is quite convincing and well organized. In the first paragraph, a common phenomenon is illustrated that nuclear power has always been related to danger and panic during these years. By using the phrase, apart from, the author gave out his point that, he would support nuclear power which is also the theme statement. However, i think Pulkit did not directly ansewer the qustion of WA2 but focused more on advocating that nuclear power was benefitial and deserved the investment. This makes the themes sentence fuzzy.

The next two paragraphs are closely related as two strong auguments to support the arthor's view. Examples and statistics were used here which made the arguments more comvincing and accurate. Especially in the third paragraph, the author gave a further discussion on the lead cooled generator which is quite precise.

In the end, a comprehensive conclusion is drawn to help the readers to review the main topic of this essay. Words and expressions used in this essay are quite accurate which impressed me a lot as i myself is weak in this part.

I believe that after some careful polishing, this essay can definately be much better.

Review of Fan Lei's essay

Fan Lei's essay talks comprehensively about the aspects of the climate model that may possibly influence our decision making on climate issues in the future.

In the first paragraph, the essay gives us an example of how a disaster was averted from happening to the people near Russian River by using the climate model established twenty years ago which oversees the climate conditions of Russian River area. Drawn from the example is the notion that the modeling of climate can be used to help us understand the climate issues in the future.

Then, in the following two paragraphs, the essay mainly states the advantages of the climate model and what benefits we could possibly gain in applying the climate models. One of the benefits is to predict disaster and another is to combat climate change.

Following that, the essay comes to the parts where discuss the negative sides of the climate change. Since, by now, we still do not have sufficient climate information that can cover the area of the whole earth, the conclusion we get may not be accurate. Moreover, there would also be some human error in modeling the climate. Therefore, it is not good enough for us to rely on currently.
The conclusion of the essay is that we should exploit the useful parts of the climate models with its flaws bearing in mind.

The organization of the essay is clear and logical. The main idea of each paragraph is also clear. However, the essay seems to be quite academic. For those who do not have knowledge in the area, it would be a bit difficult to understand. And the language used in the essay sometimes is confusing and accurate.
After all, it is a good essay and if the abovementioned flaws can be improved, it will be a better one.

The Summary of GengXin’s Article (Done by Fan Lei)

In this essay written by GengXin, he wrote mainly about the future development of the nuclear power and he focus mainly on one specific nuclear techonology – VHTR.

At the beginning of the essay, he argued typically about the current global tendency of the exhuasting energy sources. If such energy as oil and fossil fuels are comsumed at present rate, they can only be available for at most another century whithout saying that they are being used at increasingly fast speed. Hence, GengXin raise the importance of making use of another type of energy – nuclear power.

Among the six major design of the Next Generation Nuclear Plant (NGNP), as what he figured out, VHTR is the most practical and workable one. Then following this statement, he presented some of the advantages of this design to support its future development. For instance, it is more efficient, environmentally-friendly and safe since there are less radiation in the remaining reacting sources.

However, in this part, even though he successfully persuaded me that the VHTR is the most possible way and provided me with some of the interesting things I have never know, these things are so professional, and as a reader, I want to hear his own voice. When he is introducing this technology, besides some theoritical thing, he can still tell us about what opinion he personally hold upon this operation. In that way, I will be more interested and even inspired, because what I know through his essay is not merely some knowledges but also some arguments I can do futher thinking.

Anyway, this essay is well-written, I think. If he can suitably cut the information part and add more thoughtful and discriminant things to it, it will surely be a good job! (*^_^*)

Summary of ‘The Great Ice Age: Climate Change and Life’

The article ‘The Great Ice Age: Climate Change and Life’ by R. C. L. Wilson, S. A. Drury, J. L. Chapman explains the natural climatic and remarkable changes that have occurred during the past 2.6 million years, outlining the emergence and global impact of our species during this period. Exploring a wide range of records of climate change, the writers demonstrate the interconnectivity of the components of the Earths climate system, show how the evidence for such change is obtained, and explain some of the problems in collecting and dating proxy climate data. One of the most dramatic aspects of humanity's rise is that it coincided with the beginnings of major environmental changes and a mass extinction that has the pace, and maybe magnitude, of those in the far-off past that stemmed from climate, geological and occasionally extraterrestrial events. This article reveals that anthropogenic effects on the world are not merely modern matters but date back perhaps a million years or more. This article was also able to throw light on the fact that evolution of mankind has not only had its good affects like globalization but also the changing habits of mankind throughout these many years have resulted in catastrophic climatic problems that we are facing today.

Nuclear Power's New Dawn

Nuclear Power's new dawn gives a vision of the future nuclear industry and how would it possibly impact the future energy structure.
Personally, I think nuclear power still has large potentials to exploit.
First of all, nuclear power has an advantage over other fuels that it can provide huge energy with only very little resources. Many conventional energy sources, such as oil, are predicted to run out in 40 to 60 years and by 2020, the world will begin to feel some pressures in oil supply. However, the resources for nuclear reactions used to generate electricity in nuclear plants, such as uranium, are relatively abundant. If we can well exploit this advantage, the nuclear plant can play a leading role in solving the energy demanding problem in the future.
Secondly, given the worsening environmental situations and the fast pace of climate change, nuclear power provides a good way to meet the energy demand without harming the environment. Nuclear power is a non-carbon-emission energy providing method. Therefore, if we can increase the portion of nuclear power in our energy structure, the climate change problem could be mitigated largely.
Nonetheless, there are many challenges facing the nuclear industry. One common challenge is the new material needed to develop the next generation of nuclear reactors. And we also need to make it more competitive economically to other energy supplies.
In conclusion, there are potentials and challenges existing for the future development of nuclear power. If we can overcome the challenges, the nuclear power can play a leading role in solving the future energy supply problem.

Peer Review of Pulkit Agarwal

Shao Tu's essay really impressed me at the first instance as it was pretty straightforward and coherent. The essay as a whole reflected the kind of research that has gone into it. Shao Tu's though seems to go off the topic in the sense that I felt that he is not answering the question that has been asked. Shau Tu seem to be trying to merge too many sentences together thus I feel that he might be making some punctuation errors ex use of excess commas.

Though the essay seem to be very well connected such that there is a constant flow has been maintained throughout the essay. The entire essay has been broken into well-organized points that portray the various aspects of the problem of climate change. The points are very well supported by the facts that Shao has very viciously picked up from the article itself.

Moreover I found out there were some grammatical errors in the essay like the use of has and have that were pointed out to him at some places. Apart from that I strongly feel that besides stating so many facts, Shao Tu should have included some real life examples to support his arguments.

Overall it was a very systematic and crisp essay which was able to clearly state all the points that needs to be addressed with the immediate affect.

Summary of ' Nuclear power's new dawn'

In face of the global energy crisis, human beings are now paying more attention on a set of new energy, among which nuclear power is the most controversial.

In the article, Nuclear power's of new dawn, however, the author seems quite optimistic. An imaginary description of Generation Four is given at the very beginning. But go back to reality, the horrible memories, like the 1986 accident at Chernobyl in Ukraine, have shown that to make use of the nuclear, the public will take some convincing.

Compared with fossil fuels, nuclear is not a source of carbon dioxide. It can be treated as "safe, abundant, reliable, inexpensive and proliferation resistant" only if technical hurdles can be overcome. That is to say, a renaissance to nuclear power is badly needed.

In the second part of the article, the author mainly introduced two GIF concepts, Very-High-Temperature Reactor(VHTR) and Supercritical-Water-Cooled Reactor(SWCR). The VHTR is the most efficient concept so far. Meanwhile hydrogen can be split as a beneficial biproduct. The SWCR, on the other hand, come up with a quite effective solution deal with the new coolants which play a vital role in the high temperature reactor.

Next comes the core issue. The author pointed out that large amounts of defects exist in the pebble bed reactor which is not accepted for a modern reactor. Still costs must be cut by a quarter so that substantial numbers of new plants will be built.

To draw a conclusion, technological challenges are great to make nuclear cheaper, cleaner and safer. In addition, this newly industry has to adapt to the rapidly changing global environment. It is like the early morning jogging before new nuclear dawn. Hope exists.

SUMMARY FOR GENGXIN'S ARTICLE

In this article, named “Common Yet Differentiated Responsibilities”, Gengxin discussed separately upon the responsibilities the developed and developing countries should shoulder when the problem of fighting against the climate change is taken into consideration.

To begin with, as the developed countries take 80 percent of the proportion of the emission of green house gases, it is undoubtedly responsible for them to cut the release of it and offer strong help to combat global-warming.

Furthermore, since the developed countries are more capable financially and technologically, they can deal with the climate problems efficiently, while the developing countries would rather spend money to improve their people’s living condition.

For developing counties, they also should escape their responsibility. While they are in the process of industrialization, they may contribute more in the future to the global-warming. In that case, they still have tasks to take.

In conclusion, as the conflict between the developed and developing countries are being the barrier of the ultimate agreement, the problem can only be solved when these two nation groups take common yet differentiated responsibility.

Summary from Gengxin

The essay begins with a introduction which give us an idea of how serious the forests have been degraded and how serious the result will be if we let it continue happening. Then it reveals its main idea in the last sentence of the essay: "However, to fight against global warming, what we need is much more than such human efforts."
There are four paragraphs in the body of the essay, each of which has a clear topic.
The first paragraph of the body is an overall statement about what else do we need to combat climate change other than the human efforts, and we know the answer here: the integrated biodiversity.
Then, the following part is divided into to two part. to state the authors' views on the use of the integrated biodiversity.
The first part is the authors' call on more use of the integrated biodiversity and the benefits it would bring about.The second part tells us the importance of the biodiversity and the consequence if we fail to do so.
Then, in the conclusion part of the essay, it reiterate the importance of the use of the integrated biodiversity in combating climate change.
In the essay, transition sentences like "to begin with" are used, which makes the essay quite smooth.Sufficient supporting ideas are given to make it more persuasive.And the unity and coherence of the essay is generally good.
To conclude, my peer did a good job in doing this essay.

Peer review of Shao Tu

Generally speaking, my partner has done quite a good job in summarizing as well as extension. These indicate a thorough understanding of the whole article and his further research.

The essay starts with a conclusion of the reading material and goes straight to the point. At the end of the first paragraph, the theme statement is put forward that ecosystem and biodiversity are our two weapons to fight against global warming, and we should change the way we perceive the nature.

Transition sentence is used at the beginning of the next two paragraphs, which explain the two points respectively in details. Concrete statistics are given out here, like '.74º rises in the temperature per 100 years', which is quite convincing. What impresses me most is his discussion on human beings 'selfishness', and the related education problems which are normally ignored by others. In addition, an irony is that nowadays, people even spend more money on weapons which may do long term unrestorable destruction on our environment!

The whole essay is structured well as the APA style is used, and some expressions are quite accurate. Still some improvement should be made in the reference part. Meanwhile, a title is quite needed to highlight author's opinion and capture readers' interest.

Summary

I really feel I gained a lot from the lectures about the climate change, especially from the second lecture. So, I am going to mainly summarize the second lecture.
It basically gives us an overview of the political and social approaches to the climate change problems, which is not that scary as the daunting statistics but teaches us something practical and doable by the individuals, like ourselves live in this world.
The first part of the lecture gives us an overview of the climate change conundrum, both in a historical and contemporary perspective. In the past or maybe just a few decades before, the leading emitters in the world are predominated by the western countries, that is, developed countries, such as the United States and countries in Europe. However, in today’s context, companying the soaring of the eastern countries, more and more countries especially those in Asia are gaining more weight in the affairs of carbon emissions and climate change. China has outran the United States to be the world’s largest carbon emitter; India will also soon catch up with its huge economy and fast industrializing pace. If other countries like Malaysia, Indonesia in Asia keep developing economy without properly taking care of the environmental issues, Asia would soon be dominating in carbon emission. Nonetheless, the carbon emission per capita in developed world is still considerably high than that in developing world.
Secondly, we need strong governmental or institutional approaches to tackle this problem. The government can invest in clean energy; transform the energy structure, increasing the clean energy portion; Tax the roads or vehicles to control the numbers of cars, or like Mexico City where rules that there is a particular day in a week on which you cannot drive your cars; government can also extend the responsibility of the producers on their products as European Union does.
Lastly, it comes to the individual responsibility. Although maybe one’s efforts seem quite minor in combating climate change, as long as we can do it together, it actually a very powerful force to fight the climate change. We can choose to eat less meat or eat meat that is home-grown, since meat is actually very carbon intensive and by eating home-grown food, we can decrease the carbon emission caused by the transportations in carrying those meat from far abroad.
To conclude, the climate change issue has been a problem we have to focus on and we can do much to help. If everyone can do a small part, we are absolutely able to achieve the goal of containing the climate change in an acceptable range.

LECTURE SUMMARY

In the lectures, the two professors stated respectively upon the present phenomena of global climate change and specific and practical method for ordinary individuals to contribute to the prevention of the warming process. The details and summaries are listed as follows.

Part I:

To begin with, professor Liong define what is actually called “climate change”, it is a concept that ought to be distinguished from the phrase “weather forecasting”, and moreover, predicting the weather change even in only one week is difficult. Therefore, what is supposed to be talked about is a long term average.

Furthermore, the climate change is also known as global warming, and such warming process is contributed by the green house gas in the atmosphere which behaves like an umbrella shading the earth and preventing the solar energy from radiating out to the space. With the layer getting thicker, the earth will get warmer. And it can be perfectly proved that the warming it forced by human activities instead of natural forces while making comparison between them. Trough the graphs, it can be obtained that the temperature variation has very close connection with the emission of carbon dioxide.

Then, Liong focused on IPCC-Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and the observations and predictions made by them. One system useful is the climate model which has two branches called GCM and RCM (RCM is able to represent the observed patterns more closely), standing for global and region separately. They can efficiently display and analysis the climate variation, but the fact which cannot be denied is that temperature anomaly projected by different GCMs is also varying, with the highest presenting a 5-degree increment which will severe consequence in a long term. Finally, another system named WRF-Weather Research and Forecast Model is introduced, indicating that a weather change in one region can have a very obvious influence in its neighborhood (take Singapore and Vietnam as an instance). And the impact studying is very important in this case.

Part II:

In this lecture, professor discussed mainly about institutional and political solutions confronting the climate change.

At first, the environmental problems are stated. The largest proportion of green house emission is taken by the carbon dioxide emitted by the burning of fossil fuels and the process of deforestation, worse still, the emission is still increasing in most of the countries. And according the survey, the higher the individual income, the larger amount of the emission.

There are a lot of things that the institution can to contribute to the climate stabilization covering the range from energy supply, transportation system improvement, environmentally-friendly buildings, agriculture and forestry, then to the waste management.

Moreover, ordinary individuals can also participate to improve the living environment. As the climate stabilization includes sustainable electricity, food, homes and technology, it is then effective to apply renewable energy and promote energy efficiency. Furthermore, some sustainable technologies can also be supported by individual companies, such as making investment and purchasing new energy. Upon the daily issue on food, making it sustainable can help to deduce the energy consume by agriculture and extra gas emission from the fossil fuel and deforestation. It can simply be eased by changing our food habits. Then, cutting the energy consumption at home is contributive as well.

To sum up this part, the roots of these climate crises are in our individual behaviors, and inversely, it is through the corporation that we constitute that we can truly make a difference.

Above all, even though these two lectures are talking about different aspects of the environment and the climate, they are undoubtedly necessary and interdependent. To save our earth, we need not only the sense of crisis, but also the confidence and solutions to make improvements. This is what these two professors have brought to us, far beyond the knowledge itself.

Shao Tu's Summary of the last Friday lecture: Brief introduction to climate change &modeling

Given by professor Liong Shie-Yui and his climate team, i think the lecture, named after 'Brief Introduction to climate change', is quite exact, convincing, and inspiring.

At the beginning of the lecture, a scientific definition of climate was given out by Professor Liong, that it is an average of weather over a long time. More details were followed to illustrate the phenomenon of global warming and how it is related to human activity. Two side by side line charts were used here to prove that the global warming is really happening and it is closely related to our human beings.

After this, a method called SRES Scenarios was introduced to help give out a reasonable assumption of what the future climate would look like. Then a few slides were used to explain the IPCC, an organization from which all the data used came from. Furthermore, a quite impressing opinion was pointed out here that the increase in temperature and rising of sea level were expected even after achieving stabilization of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. This indicates that only reducing the emission is not enough, more serious problems were waiting for us.

Lastly, GCM and RCM were introduced as two powerful models to help us analyze the climate change. Still data together with graphs were used to illustrate these two models. Conclusions were drawn that the first hand coarse information from Global Climate Model(GCM) might be not adequate for hydrological models, therefore the downscaling approaches are needed to limit the uncertainties. Anyway, this conclusion itself may seem useless for most of us, but on the other hand it showed us how those scientific data came out and made them for convincing.

As a scientist, large amount of data and graphs were used throughout professor Liong Shie-Yun's lecture, those professional terms and definitions may make it confusing and hard to understand. But once you think it over, you can find its logicality and accuracy, so that you will learn something from it and get inspired by the power of science.

Welcome~~~

Hi!
Happy to meet you here! It is amazing we are from so different places far apart but still be able to meet in a small tutorial room in this country called Singapore, isn't it? Hopefully we are going to have a semester-long study together and possibly life-long friendship~
So, let's work together and have fun!