Climate change, global warming, greenhouse gases, clean energy: what do these terms mean?

Jan 19, 2025 Consumer Concerns, Features / Columnists, News, Waterfalls Magazine

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CONSUMER CONCERNS

PAT DIAL

Kaieteur News- From time to time, consumers and other members of the public have suggested to us that we explain the terms ‘climate change’, ‘global warming’, ‘greenhouse gases’ and ‘clean energy’ and how they impact each other.

We are asked to do such explanations because although the terms are widely and regularly used in the media, their precise meaning remains vague and confusing to wide sections of the public.

‘Climate’ and ‘weather’ are not the same.  Weather describes a short-term happening in the Environment, as for example, “It was rainy yesterday, but today it will be sunny”.  ‘Climate’ on the other hand, describes a long-term characteristic of the environment. For example, “At some periods of the planet’s history, freezing cold enveloped the earth while at others, there were much higher temperatures than we ever experience today.”

The climate the earth is experiencing today has been with us for several hundreds of years and the seasons. Rainfall, dry periods, floods,  wind currents, hurricanes, tsunamis and so on, are predictable and human beings have been able to structure their lives on this predictability.  For instance, farmers would know when to plough their fields for  planting without expecting sudden droughts or floods or islands in the Caribbean would know which months to look out for hurricanes.

The planet is enveloped in an atmosphere of gases, mainly hydrogen and oxygen and smaller amounts of carbon dioxide (C02) which blankets the earth from the full force of the rays of the sun so that by the time they actually penetrate the atmosphere and reach the Earth,  they  have become benign and life-sustaining.  The gas which blankets the earth’s atmosphere is CO2 or carbon dioxide, which absorbs the heat and ultraviolet rays of the sun. If more carbon were to be added to the present layer, more heat would be absorbed and the temperature of the earth would become hotter and more erratic, with some regions which were hot becoming cooler, and some areas which were very dry or desert being subject to floods.  Carbon dioxide is called a greenhouse gas because it retains heat like the greenhouses used in agriculture, which receive the heat of the sun’s rays but does not release heat.  Other greenhouse gases in the atmosphere are methane, water vapour and nitroxide.

Up  to the beginning of the 18th century, the blanket of CO2 in the earth’s atmosphere was stable but with the industrial revolution, which started around 1750, vast amounts of coal and fossil fuels were burnt to produce power, releasing millions of tons of carbon dioxide, thickening the layer of carbon dioxide already there, trapping more of the heat from the sun’s rays, causing the earth’s temperature to become hotter and erratic. It is this process which is termed ‘climate change’. This quickened climate change of the earth is therefore the result of human activity.

Climate change, which the earth is beginning to experience, has already had marked damaging effects on human life and the environment. It has led to the polar ice caps melting, causing the seas to rise, overwhelming low coastal regions and threatening to inundate and destroy small island states such as the Maldives. Changes in the sea movements have resulted in phenomena like El Nino and La Nina, producing unexpected floods and droughts, affecting farming and minimising food production resulting in food shortages. Then there are forest fires which not only release large quantities of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, but destroy thousands of trees which absorb CO2 and release oxygen. It has also led to the disruption and even destruction of human communities and migration and has also affected animal species in the wild causing many to die off and forcing survivors to try to migrate to far less suitable habitats.

The countries of the world – 195 of them – have all understood the dangers of climate change to themselves and the Planet but since these dangers are often not as pressing as immediate concerns, actions to confront climate change have been dilatory.  Eventually, in 2015, the Paris Agreement was ratified and it was agreed that nations should strive to limit global warming to 1.5% below pre-industrial levels. This is achievable by replacing some of the carbon emitters in use, for example, using electric powered motor cars instead of the fossil fuel cars and, most important, replacing fossil fuels with clean, renewable fuels. The most important of the clean, renewable fuels are solar, hydro and wind, which produce cheaper power.  These are termed “clean” fuels because they leave no carbon footprint compared with fossil fuels which emit carbon dioxide, which is responsible for global warming.

(Climate change, global warming, greenhouse gases, clean energy: what do these terms mean? )                    

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• ‘global warming’, ‘greenhouse gases’, carbon dioxide, climate change, CONSUMER CONCERNS

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