CO2 capture and storage

In these three speeches, the lectureers talked about the same thing---carbon dioxide(CO2), but in different aspect.

In the first speech, the lecturer, Prof. Palmer, first talked about the present situation of our environment. He quoted some data to prove that we are facing a serious climate change. And one of the reasons is the unduly released CO2. Then he introduced a new high-tech method to store CO2---store them in the deep ocean at the liquid state. Secondly, he provided a solution to the global warming, which is put particls in the air to reflect the sunlight. As he stated, though it is technical feasible, but there do exist some political resistance.

The second lecturer, Dr. Sovacool, talked about the global warming and greenhouse effect in a different way, including the history of the development of modern industrial. As the productivity increases and our society more and more industrialized, the global warming will also become more and more serious.

Unlike the first two lecturers, rather than introducing the puzzledom we are facing, the last lecturer, AP. Bala, provided some detailed solutions to this problem as well, such as increasing the taxes on oil or other products that may generate CO2; using renewable energy and so on.

What impressed me most is the way o storing CO2 the first lecturer mentioned. I think it is quite interesting to compress CO2 into liquid and transport it into the deep ocean. But it is only 'interesting' to me; I do not think it is practical. Firstly, suppose we do make this method realistic, we need to transport million tons or even more liquid CO2 to the ocean every year. That is quite a big amount. The direct consequence I think is the environmental balance in the seabed will be destroyed. As we know, there are lots of plants and animals living only in the seabed, the huge amount of CO2 will definitely ruin theri habitant.

Secondly, as we are only store the CO2, but not convert it to some other harmless chemicals, it has the potential to do harm to people. To make it obvious, let's think about the earthquake in the seabed. Suppose we have successfully stored CO2 in teh ocean, as we know, there are possibilities of earthquake or volcanic eruption. At that time, liquid CO2 will be brought to the upper layer of the ocean, and the high-pressure condition will be break down. As a result, liquid CO2 will become gas again and come out of the ocean. We can try to imagine that as million, or billion tons of CO2 come to atmosphere in a single day at a certain place, how fateful it will be!

However, as the scientist do more research on this, and improve this method, it may come into realistic someday.

An Inconveniet Truth

This is my second time watching this documentary. I am shocked again. Al Gore used very vivi graphs and data to show us how serious the environmental problems we are facing are. As our society develops, the inevitable consequence is that our environment is worse and worse. our earth is becoming more and more infirm, especially due to the releasing of the greenhouse gases.

In this documentary, Gore tried to convince the audience that it is time for us to take measures to stop polluting the environment, or thegreenhouse effect will went even worse, the destructive climate change will kill all of us. Though he had recognized this inconvenient truth, he did not give any specific solutions to help us get rid of it; rather, he generally suggested us reducing releasing of the greenhouse gases. He emphasized the responsibility of US citizens again and again during the documentary, he thought th US could and should take responsibilityis to solve the problem of global warming. But actually, it is impossible for relying on 'some' people on the earth to solve this world wide problems. All the people should take part in and contribute to it.

For the governments, they should disseminate the importance of protecting the environment and set examples for people to follow. Environmental problems are very big issues that they are closely related to a country's developmental modality. The government can not simply promulgate a new law to prohibit or restrict releasing greenhouse gases, the development of the country's economics should also be taken into account. The government can only encourage people doing researches on renewable energies and replace the traditional energy sources gradually. Policies can not work very well in helping solving the problem; rather, policies are only guidelines that provide the orientation of development. The very basic thing the 'policies' should do is only make people realize the importance of protecting our environment.