Enviro Goes to School, Wasser TL UKRI

Enviro Goes to School

Pendidikan harus terus berlangsung meskipun wabah Covid-19 belum juga usai. Tentu saja dengan melaksanakan prosedur kesehatan yang benar dan baku, yang disarankan oleh ahli epidemiologi (epidemiologist). Setelah pembelajaran online, kemudian dicoba PTM 50%, atau baru saja mulai PTM 100%, murid SMKN 5 Bojong Koneng Kota Bandung telah melaksanakan penanaman pohon seperti alpukat, sawo dan mangga. Kegiatan ini diinisiasi oleh mahasiswa Wasser Teknik Lingkungan UKRI dan dihadiri oleh kepala sekolah ibu Dini Yuningsih, S.Pd., M.M.Pd dan wakil kepala sekolah, juga guru pembina kegiatan pelestarian fungsi lingkungan.

Anggota Wasser terutama pengurus himpunan mengenakan jaket himpunan berwarna hijau dan memberikan materi diskusi dan games serta hadiah untuk murid yang mampu menjawab quiz.  Mahasiswa juga membagikan pohon dan ikut menanamnya di halaman sekolah seluas kurang lebih 18 hektar. Sekolah yang berlokasi di bagian timur laut Kota Bandung ini berlokasi di perbukitan sehingga sebaran gedungnya juga ada di bawah dan di atas bukit. Fisik murid akan prima apabila selama bersekolah selalu naik turun dan berjalan di dalam halaman sekolah selama tiga atau empat tahun. Ini pasti menjadi tantangan juga bagi guru, terutama yang sudah di atas 55 tahun usianya. 

Begitu juga di SMKN 13 Kota Bandung, dihadiri oleh kepala sekolah, bapak Dr. Asep Tavip, M.Pd dan guru pembina kegiatan murid. Anggota Wasser memberikan kegiatan serupa, yaitu diskusi tentang Climate Change dan penanaman pohon. Sekolah Analisis Kimia ini berlokasi di Jln. Soekarno-Hatta. Lahannya datar dengan gedung berlantai dua tetapi tidak seluas SMKN 5. Murid belajar selama empat tahun dan bisa langsung bekerja seperti umumnya alumni sekolah kejuruan atau vokasi yang diarahkan untuk praktik kerja. Tentu saja alumni bisa juga kuliah. Sejumlah anggota Wasser adalah alumni SMKN 5, SMKN 13, juga SMKN 7 Kota Bandung. Alumni inilah menjadi narahubung dengan pihak sekolah untuk mengadakan kegiatan Enviro Goes to School.

Keutamaan alumni sekolah analisis kimia, kimia industri yang kuliah di Teknik Lingkungan adalah memiliki dua kapabilitas. Mereka memiliki kemampuan sebagai analis kimia, yaitu terampil dalam praktikum di laboratorium dan memiliki kemampuan sebagai sarjana Teknik Lingkungan dalam hal desain pengolahan air minum (IPAM), air limbah (IPAL), desain TPA, TPST, IPA Lindi sampah, reduksi polutan udara dan bising, dan kemampuan dalam pekerjaan UKL, UPL, Amdal dan KLHS. Juga memiliki kemampuan dalam bidang hidrolika di segmen pekerjaan perpipaan transmisi, distribusi air minum, sistem plambing gedung, dan perpipaan sewerage system air limbah domestik. Semuanya mencakup pekerjaan rencana induk (master plan) dan detailed engineering design (DED).

Dalam kegiatan tersebut, khususnya sesi diskusi, anggota Wasser memberikan materi diskusi bertema Climate Change (Perubahan Iklim). Inilah materi yang ramai dan mendapatkan perhatian dari seluruh negara, khususnya negara industri dan para ahli. Banyak pendapat pro dan kontra dengan berbagai alasan yang melatarinya. Terlepas dari pro dan kontra tersebut, di bawah ini di-shared tulisan John Horgan. Ini sebagai bahan bacaan dan pembanding dengan pendapat ahli lainnya.

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Climate Change: Facts Versus Opinions

By John Horgan

It is a fact, not an opinion, that human consumption of fossil fuels has boosted global temperatures over the last century. Source: NASA, http://climate.nasa.gov/scientific-consensus/

Next week, I’m attending a meeting of scholars, journalists, activists and others on polarization in politics and science. I’ve been asked to kick off a discussion of “what is settled and what is contested” in the climate-change debate. What are facts, in other words, and what are opinions?

This post previews what I plan, tentatively, to say at the meeting. My first point will be that nothing is settled. Every climate-change claim is contested by someone--blowhards running for President, for example. So the list below, which is skewed toward issues I’ve written about, represents my opinion of what are facts and opinions. Your opinions welcome.

CLIMATE-CHANGE FACTS

FACT: Carbon dioxide, a byproduct of fossil-fuel combustion, is a greenhouse gas, which traps solar radiation in the atmosphere. (Sources for my first seven “facts” include NASA and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.)

FACT: Increased human fossil-fuel consumption over the past two centuries has increased levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Atmospheric CO₂ recently surpassed 400 parts per million, the highest level in more than 800,000 years.

FACT: As a result of increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide, global surface temperatures have increased by about one degree centigrade since 1880. The 10 warmest years ever recorded—with the exception of 1998—have all occurred within the last decade. 2014 was the warmest year ever recorded.

FACT: Arctic ice and glaciers around the world have shrunk markedly in recent decades, although in 2014 “ice surrounding Antarctica reached a new record high,”according to NASA.

FACT: Sea levels have risen 6.7 inches over the past century as a result of human-induced global warming. This sea-level rise, which is accelerating, makes coastal storms more destructive.

FACT: Reasonable extrapolations from current trends suggest that unchecked fossil-fuel consumption will increase the risk of coastal flooding, droughts, severe storms, heat waves, food and water shortages and other harmful effects.

FACT: A consensus of scientific experts believes that fossil-fuel consumption is driving global warming

FACT: Scientific experts can be wrong.

FACT: Some influential criticism of the scientific consensus on climate change has been motivated by pro-capitalist, anti-socialist ideology.

FACT: Not all those who doubt the scientific consensus on climate change are ideologues or idiots.

FACT: Some left-wing activists have used climate change to promote a socialist agenda.

FACT: Fossil-fuel consumption was key to the industrial revolution, which over the past two centuries has boosted average global incomes six-fold and decreased the proportion of people living in extreme poverty.

FACT: The United States, historically, has been the biggest emitter of carbon dioxide and hence bears the greatest responsibility for climate change.

FACT: Those who agree that climate change poses a threat vehemently disagree about how severe the threat is, how it should be countered and how it should be discussed in public.

CLIMATE-CHANGE OPINIONS:

OPINION: If humanity does not take dramatic steps to curtail fossil-fuel consumption,civilization may collapse.

OPINION: Climate change could make armed conflict, including wars over water,more likely.

OPINION: Global warming is already causing “extreme” weather events, such as hurricanes Katrina and Sandy and the current drought in California.

OPINION: Nuclear energy is necessary for countering climate change.

OPINION: The natural-gas boom, made possible by advances in fracking, has on balance been good for the environment, because it has reduced reliance on coal, a far more damaging pollutant.

OPINION: Optimism is a more constructive approach than pessimism to countering the climate change and other threats to humanity.

John Horgan is a teacher at Stevens Institute of Technology. He is the author of four books, including The End of Science, 1996, re-published with new preface 2015; and The End of War, 2012, paperback published 2014.