Newsplaining: Global warming and climate change - News9 LIVE
Newsplaining: Global warming and climate change | News9live
Editor’s note: News should be for everyone and not just for those with the patience for technical jargon and confusing contextualisation. In the interest of bringing simplicity back to the news, News9 Live presents ‘Newsplaining’, a fast and easily digestible dose of explainers focused on keywords that are driving the daily news cycle.
Today on June 5 we are celebrating ‘World Environment Day’. The fight against ‘climate change’ as a result of ‘global warming’ is a common theme of our time. What is needed is a bridge between scientists and the general public aimed at efficient communication of these scientific topics.
For a start, weather is a short-term phenomenon and climate long-term. Many people mistake climate change and global warming to only mean a rise in temperature levels in their area of residence. A non-seasonal, short spell of rain may be explained as a ‘climate change’ phenomenon.
Climate change means an increase in the average temperature of the whole earth with time. Throughout the history of the planet, its temperatures have changed. From extreme heat to the freezing of the whole planet, it has seen many phases. Today’s temperature conditions have not existed all the time since its formation and this is important to note.
From severe volcanic eruptions to tilt in the orientation of the Earth’s orbit, the reasons have been many. But these have been natural and long-term.
The problem of today’s increasing average temperatures is human intervention. From the burning of fossil fuels that we use in our cars for energy to chlorofluorocarbons in refrigerators, all result in the emission of the gas carbon dioxide.
This results in an increase of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and the molecules (constituents) of the gas act as absorbers and radiators of heat. So more carbon dioxide emission means more increase in the temperature of the planet over time.
As scientific studies have pointed out this is already happening.
Thus, new commitments in fighting climate change include terms like’ Zero Net Emission’, which mean to halt carbon emissions to zero so that its content in the atmosphere and the resulting heat is minimised.
It is with this in mind that use of electric cars, using non-fuel based sources of energy and wind, solar energy are being promoted.
Many of the consequences of the problem have started to become visible, from species being extinct to slow melting of glaciers, increased ‘climate change’ due to ‘global warming’ needs to be stopped.
Related Knowledge Center: Climate science
What began as a theory in the 1890s — that industrial emissions of carbon dioxide could increase global temperatures — had progressed to a scientific fact a century later. Scientists across a range of disciplines are studying the impact of the still-growing concentration of carbon dioxide and other so-called “greenhouse gases” in the atmosphere as they call for industrial and governmental policies to slow, then halt, the warming of the planet.