Experts address global warming during science event
The Future Science Forum, a warm-up to the Pujiang Innovation Forum set to take place in October in Shanghai, has invited geosystem scientists and environmental researchers from home and abroad to give online speeches under the theme of "Innovation, Co-governance and Collaboration in Climate Change Research."
At least 150 years of steady global warming is driving changes in extreme weather, air pollution and more. Even the remote polar regions are not immune.
Worse, the North Pole has been warming more than twice the global average, causing extensive melting of ice sheets, said He Jianfeng, a senior researcher at the Polar Research Institute of China.
“Every 10 years, the Arctic sea is losing 6.3 percent of its ice area,” He said. “Previously, Arctic sea ice was 3 to 5 meters thick. But in 2010, its thickness was less than 2 meters. Research data shows that in the middle of this century, the Arctic will have no ice in summer.”
According to Professor Myles Allen from Oxford University, one effective way to fight global warming is to adopt safe and permanent disposal of carbon dioxide, which, coming from fossil fuel emissions, is driving up global temperatures by 0.2 degrees Celsius per decade.
Norway has offered a good example, he said. There, scientists capture carbon dioxide in chemical plants, add pressure to turn the gas into liquid and inject it into rocks deep underground. Carbon dioxide can thus be safely stored away from humans.
However, every year, only 40 million tons of carbon dioxide are handled this way, while another 40 billion tons of carbon dioxide are still in the air due to lack government incentives, Allen said.
According to Professor Denise Mauzerall from Princeton University, it’s better for replace heat energy, usually generated from coal burning, with new energy in power plants. Meanwhile, this will bring cleaner air, which can also help improve efficiency of solar energy.
Guan Dabo from University of Cambridge suggested that everyone can do a bit in curbing global warming by living a sustainable lifestyle.
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