• Question: Could Global warming effect engineering?

    Asked by Galapagos to Fran, Peppe, Greg, Petros, Pooja on 15 Nov 2017.
    • Photo: Greg Chance

      Greg Chance answered on 15 Nov 2017:

      I wouldn’t say so directly, although some manufacturing processes could be more environmentally friendly. Engineers like you and me need to help solve the problems of global warming!

    • Photo: Petros Papapanagiotou

      Petros Papapanagiotou answered on 16 Nov 2017:

      I think it’s the opposite! Engineering affects global warming both in good and bad ways. The good way is that we come up with ideas to save energy, produce renewable, clean energy, and make things work more efficiently. The bad way is that computers produce a LOT of heat. Large computer centres like the ones used by Google and Amazon are spend a lot of energy and get very hot, so they spend even more electricity to cool them down with air conditioning.

    • Photo: Fran Zuch

      Fran Zuch answered on 16 Nov 2017:

      I think Global Warming will affect many areas. The thing is, as Petros said, it is both good and bad. I feel science and engineering will come up with the solutions about fixing many of the problems we might have caused: for example quantum computers could help us by enabling us to perform a lot more calculations and hopefully that might decrease computer sizes or at least the time a computer requires which means less power, less heat.
      We might need better insulation to help us with energy consumption and get that down and super important, we need better energy storage containers. We actually already create a lot of energy from alternatives, but we cannot store it well and the cables and infrastructure – well, don’t get me started 🙂 For all of this, we need great engineers who dig in and figure it out.

    • Photo: Giuseppe Cotugno

      Giuseppe Cotugno answered on 16 Nov 2017:

      In my opinion global warming does affect engineering a lot. More and more in future we will need engineers to make and install devices that can mild the effects of global warming, and engineers that can design and direct the construction of power plants which obtain energy from renewable sources and machines that do not need to use old fashioned polluting sources of energy (think about cars). Research engineers will be very needed as well, since they will have to study a lot novel research findings to find alternative ways to produce things which originally use polluting materials. For example I know that a research group found a way to create bio-degradable plastic carrier bags, now that this is proven possible a research engineer has to make it practical (cheap to make, easy to use). Additionally, research engineers will have to explore how to put into use alternative sources of energy invented by scientists.

      Global warming is the result of careless economical expansion, careless as the side effects of manufacturing were not accounted in the traditional economical models which optimise resources and maximises sales. Engineering is definitively a way out, in my opinion, if engineers are supported by scientists. Once an alternative power source or sustainable materials have been invented by researchers, it is up to the engineers to use those findings to create non-polluting alternatives which are cheap to make, equally robust and durable and can be sold for the same price (or higher) to clients. That said, we still need companies (which are paying the engineers anyway), that are actually able to organise all this work, advertise it to clients and sell it. However, if an engineering solution has been found for a non-polluting material which can perform and sell equally well than a polluting one, even big corporations will be forced to adapt and chase smaller innovative companies (called “start-ups”) if they haven’t initiate the move for first. Not doing so will push them out of the market and reduce profits for their owners which cannot never happen as it is against all principles of economics. I think engineering is definitively a big weapon against global warming, as long as scientists opened the way firsts (normally it happens for everything else, not just global warming).

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