Essential Buzzwords to Understand Climate Change

Climate Change Vocabulary

Every epoch of our culture and every era in the history of our society has its own pet words. These are the words that gain popularity through the human effort to understand and describe a new reality. For example, Covid-19 introduced many new words and usages to our day-to-day speech and writing—social distancing, sanitizer, viral load, and lockdown, to name a few.

The world now faces extreme climate events daily, compelling us to learn the vocabulary that helps us make sense of these changes. Words and usages such as carbon neutral, net zero emission, greenhouse effect, global warming, and many more are going to be a common part of our most used vocabulary. There are also now-obscure-yet-immediately-to-be-popular words like dead pool, battery belt and aridification. They wait behind the side curtains of the Anthropocene to make their entrance when their time comes. Climate Change will eventually push them into the limelight, and they will just remain there as our buzzwords literally thrust upon us by a climate-fragile planet.

In this article, we are going to scrutinize these words and understand them one by one because we will see these words more in our daily conversations and news.

Buzzwords to Understand Climate Change: Green House Effect

Heat is getting more and more trapped in the atmosphere near the surface of the earth. Polluting gases such as carbon dioxide and methane are responsible for this trapping of heat and when their levels rise in the atmosphere owing to different kinds of human activity, more heat is trapped closer to the earth’s surface. This heat is then reflected back to the earth increasing the temperature in the lower atmosphere. This phenomenon is called the greenhouse effect.

Global Warming

Global warming is the average progressive increase in temperature near the earth’s surface. This is an ongoing temperature rise that will cause many adverse effects on life on the planet.

Carbon Footprint

If one measures the greenhouse gases emitted into the atmosphere by the activities of an individual, company, building, or organisation, that amounts to the carbon footprint of them respectively. If an individual burns fuel in the kitchen or drives a car, greenhouse gases are emitted. Similarly, the materials used in a building or a project are manufactured using burning fuel and hence their cumulative emission is the carbon footprint of that building.

Net Zero Emission

The net emissions have to be reduced to zero if we want to stabilise the global temperature. Even small changes in the level of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere are aggravating the global warming situation. This is why the concept of net zero emissions has been adopted by nations worldwide. This concept requires us to remove as much quantity of greenhouse gases from the atmosphere as is emitted by human activity so that a balance is achieved. In other words, in a net zero situation, the emissions will be equal to what we are removing so that there is no further increase in the level of already present greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. As of today, this goal is far away from execution for humanity.

Carbon Neutral

Carbon neutrality is a term related to the concept of net zero and represents a state of net zero carbon dioxide emissions. In this state, the amount of carbon dioxide emitted to the atmosphere will be equal to the amount removed by it through climate change interventions.

COP

COP is the Conference of Parties, the annual world conference of nations to deliberate on and prepare action plans for coping with climate change effectively. The latest COP was the 27th such annual event and was held in Egypt. This conference too fell short of formulating effective action plans to mitigate global warming and climate change.

IPCC

IPCC is the acronym for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. It is a panel constituted by the United Nations to study the science behind climate change, recommend mitigation measures, and review the progress of such action. IPCC prepares exhaustive scientific reports on the impact and threats of climate change. It is presently working on its 6th assessment report. The three working groups of the sixth assessment report have already published their reports, pointing to the direr situation that planet earth is moving into due to climate change.

Fossil Fuels

Fossil fuels are fuels formed from decayed plants and animals. The major fossil fuels used by us for different purposes are crude oil, coal and natural gas. They were formed deep inside the earth when heat and pressure acted upon plant and animal remains for millions of years. When they are burned, they emit huge amounts of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere and thus accelerate global warming and climate change. One effective step to reduce global warming will be to reduce the use of fossil fuels worldwide. However, underdeveloped and developing countries depend highly on fossil fuels for their growth, employment and industrial production. So these countries argue that they cannot cut back on them and instead demands that the developed countries, who made all their progress in the past mostly by using fossil fuels, pay up the less developed countries to help them transition from fossil fuels to less carbon-emitting energy forms.

Sea Level Rise

Since 1880, it is measured that the global average sea level has risen by 8 to 9 inches. The sea level rise is accelerating too owing to global warming. This is an alarming trend because if one takes the world’s 10 largest cities, 8 of them are on sea coasts.

When the sea temperature warms, the volume of the ocean expands and the sea begins to encroach its coasts. The second major reason for the rise of the sea level is glacier melting. The sea level rise is already a major threat to the small Caribbean island nations. The foreign minister of Tuvalu, a small South Pacific island nation, addressed the 26th UN climate conference online by standing in knee-deep sea water to remind the world about the grave danger his country was facing from climate change.

Glacier Melting

Because of global warming, the glaciers and ice cover all over the planet are melting at a faster rate than normal. This is contributing to sea level rise and also depleting the freshwater reservoir of the planet drastically. 97.2% of the water on earth is sea water and hence salty. Only 2.8% is fresh water. Of this, 2.7% is stored in glaciers and only 0.1% is groundwater and the water in lakes, wells, and rivers. These figures show the scale of the freshwater crisis the world will face if the glaciers melt.

Deadpool

Deadpool is the word used to describe a certain water level in a reservoir when the drought brings the level of water so low that it cannot flow downstream. In the future, this word is going to be used more in our conversations. This word is going to be used in different contexts to indicate not only reservoir water levels but all kinds of critical levels of crisis.

In the gaming world, being in a dead pool already denotes being on a list of people who are going to be murdered. This shade of meaning will also add to the usage of this word in a climate change situation.

Cool Pavement

Cool pavement is another buzzword to understand climate change and is all about reflecting sunlight to create a cooler atmosphere. Painting roofs and pavements white to reflect maximum sunlight is one way to create cool pavement. Many other measures such as installing air conditioners in parking lots and parks, and planting avenue trees could come under the genre.

Aridification

Aridification is the long-term drying of a region so that crop cultivation becomes very difficult. This phenomenon is often caused by climate change. It is different from a region getting dried up during summer. Unlike a normal summer, it is a phenomenon that causes an everlasting drought to persist in a place.

Yimby and Nimby

Nimby is the word that came into use in the 1980s. The word is an acronym for ‘not in my backyard’. Nimbies are those who do not want any infrastructure development in the surrounding areas of the place they live. A few years after the word, nimby became popular, another word emerged in response to that. This is the word, yimby. Yimby is a person who says yes to all the infrastructure development activities in his/her neighbourhood. In San Fransisco, both the Nimby and Yimby movements have taken root. These two contradicting and equally strong positions are seen all over the world among people whenever new infrastructure projects are planned and implemented.

Battery Belt

Battery belts are modern manufacturing areas where instead of steel and iron, which are the traditional production materials, green technologies are used. It is similar to the term Silicon Valley, which represented the place where the new IT revolution played. A battery belt will be the region where green technologies will have a field day in future.

Resilience Hubs

Resilience hubs are the modern cooling centres of the future. Such hubs will be set up with air conditioning, water supply, coolers, charging points, and so on. This is the place where people-especially the less privileged lot- would take shelter to have a comforting break from the heat waves and warm temperatures that would become an everyday reality. These centres are also expected to have social workers, basic health care support facilities etc. to assist those who go there for help.

Solastalgia

Solastalgia is a set of psychological problems that manifest in a native population as there happen destructive changes in their natural habitat. This term was coined by the Australian philosopher, Glenn Albrecht. The medical journal, Lancet, had accepted this term as a psychological condition in 2015. This mental condition happens after one is affected by a climate event- either natural or human-made.

Anthropocene

As global warming and climate change cause more and more extreme climate events, there is a rising discussion about the Anthropocene. Anthropocene is defined as the period on earth when human activities have an impact on the climate of the planet. Though not a geologic term in the strict scientific sense, (Holocene is the scientific term used to describe the current geological era of the planet) many scientists and environmental activists argue human activity has such a huge impact on the planet that it should be demarcated by using the term, Anthropocene. Anthropocene has become a buzzword in climate change discourses.

Carbon Sequestration

Carbon sequestration is the process by which plants carry out photosynthesis, and absorb carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. When eventually the plant parts such as leaves fall, this carbon returns to the earth. The sequestration process thus removes atmospheric carbon dioxide and delivers it to the soil, thereby reducing global warming. This is why afforestation is considered as a very effective measure to combat climate change.

Heat Island

A heat island is an urban area that has a higher temperature than its surrounding areas. As urban areas have less vegetation and more buildings, roads, and infrastructure, all these human-made structures absorb more solar heat and make the surroundings hotter. This is the heat island effect. Planting trees is the best way to reduce the heat island effect.

Ocean Acidification

Oceans absorb carbon dioxide. An increase in the saturation of carbon dioxide in the ocean water leads to ocean acidity and this phenomenon is called ocean acidification. For organisms such as corals and shells, this could mean extinction because their shell calcification will be hindered by the acidic seawater.

Ozone Depletion

The protective ozone layer in the stratosphere of the atmosphere is already depleted due to chemical air pollution from our factories and other such activities but this aggravates because of climate change. Once the ozone layer is depleted, the harmful solar radiations will find their way to the lower atmosphere causing adverse effects on various life forms including humans.

Permafrost

When the temperature of a place remains below zero for many years, a permanently frozen thick layer of ice forms and this is the perennial permafrost. The arctic ecosystem is one example of permafrost. In such an ecosystem, the ground is watertight and many lakes and water networks sustain perennially, supporting many life forms of the ecosystem. Global warming is causing permafrost to thaw. The result is that the methane and carbon dioxide beneath it gets released into the atmosphere in huge quantities and triggers a repetitive cycle of thawing and warming. When permafrost thaws, the pathogens such as viruses long frozen beneath it have been found to resurface. In 2014 and 2015, two hitherto unknown viruses, pithovirus and mollivirus, were identified underneath the melted permafrost in Siberia. The thawing of long-dead people in the permafrost is also a threat to humanity, with old and dangerous viruses coming back to haunt us.

Carbon Sink

A carbon sink absorbs carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. The soil, forests and oceans are the major carbon sinks of the planet. It is the phytoplankton in the ocean that absorb carbon dioxide in huge quantities. The total quantity of carbon dioxide absorbed by the phytoplanktons is equal to the total carbon dioxide absorbed by all the trees and plants on the planet taken together.

Tipping Point

A tipping point is a word that denotes a point in time, somewhere between 2030 and 2050, when global warming will reach an increase of 1.5 degrees Celsius. This is predicted as a point of no return in the sense that then the adverse impact of climate change will become irreversible. This prediction was made in an IPCC special report released in 2018.

Climate Denial

Climate denial is the position that an individual, country, organisation, company, or group takes, when they believe and claim that the earth is not going through global warming or climate change, and even if they admit that climate change is real, they believe it is not caused by human activity.

Climate Refugees

People whose habitats are destroyed by climate change events, who are forced to flee their birthplaces or the places they call home, are called climate refugees. The UN refugee agency, UNHCR has estimated that around 20 million people are already displaced within their countries, thanks to extreme climate events.

Eco-anxiety

Eco-anxiety is the anxiety that climate change, global warming, and its manifest impacts create in the minds of the people. The American Psychology Associationhas already accepted eco-anxiety as a form of anxiety in humans and defined it as given below:

“The chronic fear of environmental cataclysm that comes from observing the seemingly irrevocable impact of climate change and the associated concern for one's future and that of next generations”.

Kaitiakitanga

This is a Maori word. It means the human responsibility to be the protectors of the environment, that is, a duty to environmental stewardship. This word was borrowed from Maori to the mainstream vocabulary of the world; the reason being, in no other language, a similar word with such a profound meaning exists for the case of environmental stewardship as a duty of humanity.

There are many more words that accompany our ongoing transition to a climate-insecure era and more words are getting added to that list day by day. This emerging vocabulary hyper-charged with the climate catastrophe ahead could eventually make us think more about the problem, and solutions too.