England-2011-ben

Ben's Journal

First question:

In your view what are the three most important challenges facing society in the near term (say 50 years)? Why are each of these so important? What does science have to offer for each? What does technology have to offer for each? Your entry should clearly address which are science based and which are technology based. You can describe both science and technology approaches for each of the problems you identify.

• First response.

The three biggest challenges facing society in the next fifty years are climatic change, failed states, and peak oil.

Climate change is a blanket term that covers a wide range of problems from warming and cooling of certain areas to sea level rise. It could cause Indiana to have ocean front property and New York to become the new Venice. This lessens the amount of arable land while simultaneously pushing people into a smaller land area. This will lead to real food shortages and strife as people are pushed together. Sciences offering to this problem are somewhat abstract. They could lead to ways of creating more efficient GMO's (although this hardly seems like a solution), discovering new methods for desalinating water. Technology stands to offer a good deal practical things to the solution. Technology could help help us build better sea walls so our cities can exist what will become below sea level. It could also help us develop machines to desalinate water or land. basically technology creates better systems with our existing science and incorporate new science into both existing and new machines.

Failing states is a huge problem because it creates a breeding ground for terrorist and human rights abuse among other things. Perhaps science can lead through breakthroughs that can help develop cheap infrastructure such as low cost high speed rail systems, but i dont think this is really a problem of science or technology. Likewise, technology could put these places in an area of higher economic stability by developing their resources, but without money this is unlikely to happen. This problem is largely economic and political.

Peak oil may be the biggest problem and one very closely linked to both failing states and climate change. Without oil, a great deal of our infrastructure, whether it be manufacturing or transportation shuts down. Science could offer a lot in terms of new fuels or new higher efficiency methods of extracting heat and in turn energy. Technology will allow us to adopt these new methods and adapt our current infrastructure to their use.

Atmosphere I

I found the exhibit Atmosphere interest, less because of of what it told about climate chance. Instead i was interested in how they were relaying that information, particularly how they linked technology (the interactive displays) with real artifacts (the ice core). The information about climate change was alright, but after several classes on the topic it was nothing new. Here is my critique of the displays:

• The hydrogen car: I wish it demonstrated more about the technology, but even without developing a complex understanding it was neat to see a prototype of this much talked about but as of yet undeployed technology.

• Several of the stations involved simulation games. I thought these were a neat way to engage people in thinking about what really influences climate change. I was a bit frustrated with the inability to tell how much emitted by section (do cows farting and transportation have the same effect on the atmosphere?). Even with their flaws, this was a step in the right direction when it comes to interactive displays.

• Several of the displays did not tend to work very well. This included several that utilized cameras to recognize movements (the one as you first went in on the left). Several of the touch screens were also a bit touchy.

• Each display was repeated several times. This was helpful especially when there were several people where in the gallery simultaneously.

• There was a lot of overlap between displays. This allowed ideas to really sink in by presenting them in several different context. It also gave the issue a breadth of coverage that is often lacking.

Overall it was a good exhibit and one that i learned a lot from. Granted most of what i learned is not directly relevant to climate change, but relates more to our ongoing project to monitor energy consumption (which arguably is tangentially related to climate change...).

Final notes: the information seemed pretty well sourced. They quoted a number of people who seemed to be well known in their field. The thing that led the most credence to the exhibit was my prior knowledge in the field. I had heard it all before, in some form or another, so either all the material was sourced poorly, it it was all pretty decent.