2nd Post

a) How can policies of your government either contribute to help or reduce the problem of global warming?

A policy by definition is a deliberate plan of action to guide decisions and achieve rational outcome. Global warming on the other hand is the increasing average temperature of the Earth's near-surface air and oceans since the mid-20th century.
Global warming is a big concern to many as the increasing global temperature causes sea levels to rise and will change the amount and pattern of precipitation that will likely destroy subtropical desert regions. Other undesirable negative effects include Arctic shrinkage and resulting Arctic methane release, increases in the intensity of extreme weather events, changes in agricultural yields, modifications of trade routes, glacier retreat, species extinctions and increases in the ranges of disease vectors.
Having discussed the above negative effects of global warming, there has been an increased awareness from the government to try to do something to help reduce the effects of global warming that attribute from our everyday activities. So in order to bring in fast and effective corrective actions would be to have the government introduce policies like restricting the amount of toxic gaseous or solid waste disposed into the environment as these toxic waste contaminate the waters and air and thus causing the habitats to be infected and die causing extinction or by imposing penalties when electricity or energy consumption exceed a certain amount as it will mean burning more fossil fuel to generate the demanded energy, as burning generate a lot of carbon dioxide that is released into the air and increases the global temperature.
With the government implementing policies, it will show the seriousness of global warming and it will alert everyone else how much damage will global warming thus affecting our live style, due to increasing prices of livestock to provide food for the humankind, increasing number of people suffering from lung problems due to breathing in of unclean air, etc. These government policies will definitely contribute in reducing the problem of global warming.

b) What are the existing or possible roles of environmental and special interest groups in contributing to or solving global warming?

Many special environmental and interest groups have produced many information including educational television programs to educate everyone on the raising temperatures of the earth and the changes in the natural habitats and structures of the wild. There are many campaigns to create awareness to save the world, animals and the environment like the recycling efforts to reduce the amount of waste thrown out.
The possible roles of the groups are to provide more services to help reduce energy consumption at homes and industrial, invent efficient machines to reduce energy consumption and not forgetting to constantly update everyone on how their efforts have helped reduce global warming through regular updates on the situation of the environment that we all are living in, as this will motivate and urge everyone’s commitment and participation.

My First Post

As the article states, tertiary engineering education has trained the future engineers to systematically analyze the complex information and apply a systematic approach in designing solutions in view of the various problems layman, businesses or government face. This is possible as engineers are trained to be able to visualize the various situations in a holistic view, where they will then gather more relevant data from the affected parties by conducting focus groups, interviews or observation sessions.

However, there will be obstacles like short deadlines, unresponsive respondents hindering the engineers when they are on the job, they may even at times face restrictions passed down by legal laws and standards. In order to overcome the difficulties of collecting important relevant data, engineers have to be equipped with interpersonal communication and soft skills where they will need to get the users commitment and also get management support. These soft skills play an important role as it will help the engineers to better understand the problems contributing to great challenges like creating an ideal handphone, machine or even service procedures to create more satisfied users and happy management as needs of the related parties are met with acceptable standards.

Furthermore, with the common goal of globalization, Singapore university such as NUS have offered more overseas or local opportunities for the training of students including engineering students to experience and learn skills and technical knowledge from engineer schools in other countries and the real working environment, in this way they can be exposed to more knowledge and case studies and how problems are tackled in order to develop sound solutions. This will help produce engineers that are well poised to provide regional and world leadership in engineering.

The article also states that the scope of an engineer has expanded into the service sector as they are more becoming more technology and knowledge intensive. Given the flexibility of engineering education, it has led to a high demand for engineering trained students in both the service and manufacturing in order to contribute to the growth of the new challenges.