Portfolio 3

Carbon Capture Plant in Germany

Vattenfall, one of the largest energy companies in Europe, has established a new type of power plant that can bring answer to today’s problem of climate change. The technology, carbon capture and storage (CCS), is capable of reducing nearly all carbon dioxide which is emitted by a normal coal power plant. The carbon dioxide emitted will not be released to the atmosphere, but compressed to a liquid and pumped into deep porous rock. Then it will be injected for permanent storage in a gas field.

“This technology will become more important than offshore wind farms,” claimed Vattenfall boss Lars Josefsson ( www.dw-world.de/dw/article/0,2144,36289,00.html ,2008). It is not a bluff, as it is as clean but more effective in fulfilling energy needs. According to Hattaka, the process was viable because companies need to pay for every ton of carbon dioxide they release into the air. “At 30 to 35 euros per emission certificate, the nechnology breaks even,” he said.

However, the plant that existed is comparably small to those conventional coal power plants. There is a plan to build a bigger “demonstration plants” in 7 to 12 years from now, but some critics said that they are uncertain if it would work on large scale. In addition to this, Thomas Becker of BUND, a German conservation group, also said that the power station will obtain 10 percent less power from coal than conventional plants did, and it was not clear if there were enough suitable sites to dump the CO2. As conclusion, they suggest to concentrate on far cheaper renewable energy.

Despite of the critics, the European Union wants to have 10 or 12 full-scale CCS power stations within the next few years, although it is not clear who will pay and run the plants.

Taken from:
“Carbon Capture Plant Opens in Germany Amid Reservations”, 9 September 2008, retrieved from http://www.dw-world.de/dw/article/0,2144,36289,00.html , September 11, 2008.

Assignment 2

"Grammar and logic free language from being at the mercy of the tone of voice. Grammar protects us against misunderstanding the sound of an uttered name; logic protects us against what we say having double meaning." (Rosenstock-Huessy). As what Rosenstock-Huessy said, grammar should be helping us to make our writing understandable. Unfortunately, using a correct grammar is not easy. While using it correctly will help the reader, misused of it will confuse them even more.
I did a lot of grammar mistakes before, knowingly or unknowingly. From what I discovered, most of them are related to plural-singular rules. This contributes to around 50% of the mistakes I made.
There are two reasons why I find it is hard to master this area. Firstly, the nature of my mother tongue does not have anything to do with singular or plural. The other reason is the complexity of rules in it.
I have spoken a language which does not add any ‘s’ or ‘es’ for a plural word. Therefore, I never need to be worried whether I am speaking about one or two or even infinite number of things, neither do I need to be worried of the countable or uncountable rules. This is why I cannot naturally tell whether something is plural or singular.
In addition, there are a lot of guidelines determine whether something is singular or plural. There is the countable and uncountable rule, where uncountable nouns will be considered as a singular thing. I get confused when it comes to words that can be both depending on the context, such as “work”. Another rule that annoys me is the negative form rules. “I do not have any book.” Or “ I do not have any books.” Until now, I cannot tell the difference.
In conclusion, one of grammar problem I am facing is plural-singular problem. The only way I can overcome it might be to keep practicing, so I will become more familiar with it.

assignment 6

There are various reasons why people do not like to do things in new ways. These include environmental issues, ethical issues, and personal subjectivity problems. First, some inventions in technology are being resisted for their potential harm to the environment, even though the probability of this potential danger is extremely low. Nuclear power development, for instance, is the example of this. People are terrified that a single mistake in the nuclear power producing process can damage the environment and endanger humans' life for generations. Other issues that drive people to resist new technology is ethical issues. Many people think that it is just not right for men to interfere with what is considered as "God's work". The improvement of humans' knowledge has reached a state that people can do almost everything, even creating a new life form from a single cell which is known as cloning. This, for some people, is wrong. They believe when men mess with nature, something terrible might happen. They fear that a new species or a dangerous mutant will be created as a result of it. In addition to those reasons, another common reason is people feel comfortable enough with their way of life now. This means anything new that does not really help their life is not needed. As long as they are happy, it is better not to take risk. Imagine if there are no other ways than nuclear power to produce electricity, certainly no one will oppose the plan to build a nuclear powerplant. However, when there is a safe old way, there is no point risking their comfortable life. In conclusion, people resist some new invention because of ethical and environmental issues or subjectivity problems.