Climate change issue

Every engineering discipline has specific climate change issues, preventive measures and adjustments to impacts. Some of these are summarized in... 

Should for one reason or another the climate change issue disappear, there would only be a future for nuclear power if it can compete vis-a-vis combined cycle natural gas plants. At least for the next 50 years, there should be adequate gas resources and if gas hydrate deposits are taken into account, resources could last centuries. 

In the near future, the challenge for COP 21 to reduce GHG emissions is to try to link heterogeneous climate policy instruments as a way to reach the solution of climate change issue in the long term. 

Moving to the transport sector, Fig. 15.1 quantifies the continued oil stress of the transportation sector. Even when a rather aggressive development of biofuels is included, the transportation demand for oil does not go down. This underlines that in all likelihood the energy security issue is as much a long-term issue as the climate change issue. It induces a strong motivation around the world to develop non oil-based transportation fuels, even in the absence of CO2 emission concerns. Current investments in the area of Gas-to-Liquids (GTL) and plans for Coal-to-Liquids (CTL) attest to this [7]. 

A panel of 17 environmental experts convened by the National Academy of Sciences adopted an unfavorable report on the president s plan, however. They said that the plan lacked "most of the basic elements of a strategic plan a guiding vision, executable goals, clear timetables and criteria for measuring progress." They were also concerned that the plan missed the opportunity to cooperate with other countries on research on climate change issues. 

Antonia V. Herzog is staff scientist in the Climate Center at the Natural Resources Defense Council, where she analyzes climate change issues and provides information to decision makers and the public. She had been a Congressional Legislative Science Fellow and a postdoctoral fellow at the University of California, Berkeley. She received a B.A. in physics from Vassar College, a B.Eng. from Dartmouth College, an M.S. in applied physics from Columbia University, and a Ph.D. in physics from the University of California, San Diego. 

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