Global Warming and Climate Change: Hoax or reality?

Climate change is perhaps the most controversial global challenge that has emerged in the last decades and is a top agenda item in terms of its social, economic, political and technical impacts. The Paris agreement articulates the most recent international effort, negotiated by 196 countries, to combat climate change. The agreement aims to keep global warming to well below 2°C above pre-industrial levels and to pursue efforts to limit it to 1.5°C. The latest UN report published in Oct 2018 confirmed that atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide is an increasing concern as it may cause global temperature rises to occur faster than it was previously expected. Historical meteorological data also shows that the average temperature of the earth has risen since the industrial revolution and the rise in global temperature is positively with unprecedented increases in greenhouse gas emissions and in particular carbon dioxide. However, there remains controversy over whether climate change is really occurring, how much has occurred, if greenhouse gases caused it, if any actions should be taken and, if so, what remedial actions should be and what is its economic impact. This is in spite of the fact that in the scientific literature there is a strong consensus that global surface temperatures have increased.

This presentation addresses the above, focussing on the UK and worldwide and presenting a number of possible engineering solutions to combat climate challenge.