E-Portfolio 5 – Roundtable Discussion on 3 March 2009

There was a total of 4 roundtable discussions in our session. Shu Lin’s group discussed about the climate change mitigation technology. One of the suggestions that have been discussed is the injection of sulphur aerosol into the stratosphere to reduce the effect of climate change. This technology works in such a way that the sulphur aerosol injected in the stratosphere will reflect the solar waves out of the Earth, therefore protecting the Earth from further temperature rise. However, the side effect of this technology is the acid rain as a result of the mixing of sulphur with the cloud.

Kai Yi’s group discussed about the advantages and disadvantages of Genetically Modified (GM) food. The advantages of GM food include the production of crops that are more disease-resistant and the introduction of food with superior nutritional value which can be helpful in addressing world hunger issues. They also brought up that the selling price of GM food is much more expensive than the normal food. Kai Yi pointed out that there is evidence showing that GM crops will interbreed with wild weed to become “super weed” that might be a disaster to the agriculture industry.

Terrance’s group discussed about the advantages and disadvantages of Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG). The introduction of LNG would enable contribution in lowering the carbon emission in the atmosphere as compared to fuel we are using right now. Furthermore, the price of LNG is much cheaper compared to the price of petrol in the market. They have also discussed the expensive installation fees of the gas vessel which is one of the reasons to the low usage of LNG currently. There are only a few LNG refilling stations in Singapore and LNG users have to travel a long distance in order to refill their gas. They also brought up that there are consumer complaints that LNG generates lesser power as compared to fuel, causing most of the drivers to feel reluctant to switch from fuel to LNG.

Finally my group discussed about the various advantages and disadvantages of cloning technology. Randy mentioned that it is possible to clone livestock and crops with desired quality. He also talked about cloning of vital organs and even the possibility of cloning humans. Zhi Hong said that cloning can produce healthy cells that can replace damaged cells in degenerative diseases such as Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s. Cheng Xu added that introduction of cloning technology represents the end of the world as it will lead to a lack of DNA diversities in certain species which might cause the extinction of a certain species of animal or plant. Wang Yu expressed his disagreement on human cloning due to the fact that the technology is not safe enough to produce a sheep, therefore it is unethical to attempt to clone humans.