The recent visit to the Cloud Forest at Gardens by the Bay had made me rethink about what global warming crisis is all about. Besides learning more about the cloud forest vegetation, there’s an attraction in the Cloud Forest called Earth Check, a special lab where you will learn about the problems we are likely to face due to climate change and habitat loss.There’s even a short film called +5 Degrees to provide us with a visual experience of a prediction of what will happen to our lives as the temperature climbs up to 5 degrees celsius. The film itself was impactful but not quite convincing for me. The message sent was clear : don’t you even dare to do anything which could worsen global warming if not your home will be destroyed by wild fires and your loved ones would be swept away by a tsunami or typhoon. With every increase in 0.1 degrees in temperature, something terrible is about to happen which would terrorize us. The future seems bleak for us humans.
But the truth is, all these natural disasters and nasty events are already happening right now.You don’t have to wait til the temperature to rise by 5 degrees to know that our earth will be doomed. I would define it as an exaggerated truth of how horrid and miserable our lives would be if our earth continues to get heated up. Portraying a negative picture and employing it as a scare tactic just didn’t work for me. What about the work which scientists have done to improve the global warming situation? What about the fact that there are groups of people who have come together to remedy this crisis with inventions and ways to reduce carbon emissions? I am not advocating that we should paint a rosy picture here but we should at least show a balance of view of the situation. For instance, scientists have come up with new cutting-edge technologies to provide alternative clean energy for the world and many governmental bodies and corporations are supporting these green technologies and initiatives. And as individuals, all we need to do is to make wise choices by supporting such alternative energy projects.
With our current advancement in technology, clean and renewable energy could be made more attainable and affordable for all. Besides solar,wind and hydropower, the world now is turning to gasification as a way to generate electricity without doing much harm to the environment. Gasification is a process of converting organic or carbon-containing matter into synthetic gas or syngas which could be used to generate electricity. But how exactly does this work? The science behind this technology could be better explained with this video by The Gasification Council as shown below.
You see, life on earth isn’t all that bad. After watching this video, it does feel as if we are walking in the right direction towards salvaging the situation. What’s even better is that alternative-energy companies such as NRGLab have been constantly researching into ways to improve such technologies to provide a cleaner and more affordable electrical power on a global scale. In fact, NRGLab has came up with ways to improve the gasification technology that efficiently produces electrical power with nearly zero emissions! Unlike the usual gasification plants, NRGLab’s gasification plants are more cost competitive and efficient. Take a look at the table below.
Hopefully with all these alternative-energy technologies in place, we will not reach to the extent of having our earth wiped out by natural disasters caused by global warming. The earth is heating but help is on the way to cool it down. Let us focus on what we can do to save the earth rather than worrying about the consequences or effects of global warming.
