Technological fixes can somehow solve those problems who make our life easier. In this case, we might call these fixes as “geo-engineering”, as it has to do with geology and geography. These technological fixes may reduce the impact of rising temperatures by cutting out the elements which produce these temperatures. In addition, a good idea would be to protect the areas in which these rising temperatures could be more dangerous. Socio-technological fixes, depending on each person, are considered to solve problems either in short or long terms. During our readings in class, we have discovered that technological fixes have consequences that affect human beings, although the main goal is to sort out the problems arisen. Despite not knowing how to do it, I think it can be possible to focus and try to decrease the impact of this climate problem in a short-term timeframe, but in the end, there will be consequences to which we will have to put an end.
While reading the professor’s article, we can find the definition that the scientist Tyndall made about the greenhouse effect: changed in the atmosphere “would produce great effects on the terrestrial rays and produce corresponding changes of climate… Such changes in fact may have produced all the mutations of climate which the researchers of geologists reveal.” (Reidy, 13). This perfectly clarifies that everything we see in scientific reports and images from these expeditions are completely real: polar bears are running out of their habitat, sea level is increasing, and so on. They are not subjective elements, or even people’s thoughts, they are actually real facts. So, climate change scientists’ work seems to collect this information and to interpret it. By doing so, we can have an idea of what is going on and what we should do. In fact, nowadays we have many technological devices that enable these people to obtain the necessary data.
I think that the point of socio-technological is that they change both the technological aspect of the problem as well the societal problem that allowed the problem to manifest in the first place. As we have seen in many of the other articles, the LeCain articles in particular, humans have become quite adept at the technological aspect the fixes. However, as we also learned in the LeCain articles as well as in class, fixing the societal part of the problem is the hardest part. We can see that as science is so intertwined with politics, and denying or accepting the mainline climate science position has become a partisan issue, the societal fix to the problem is going to be more complicated and improbable. Changing the the way that we view climate change is probably going to take longer than the deadline. Its interesting comparing the adoption of something the Paris agreement concerning climate change to that of the adoption of the Montreal Protocol, where the signing of one is still controversial and the other was almost universally accepted.