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1. Developing A Common Language

(The first six terms are from The Climate Reality Project at THIS WEBSITE.)

• A GREENHOUSE GAS is a chemical compound found in the Earth’s atmosphere, such as carbon dioxide, methane, water vapor, and other human-made gases. These gases allow much of the solar radiation to enter the atmosphere, where the energy strikes the Earth and warms the surface. Some of this energy is reflected back towards space as infrared radiation. A portion of this outgoing radiation bounces off the greenhouse gases, trapping the radiation in the atmosphere in the form of heat. The more greenhouse gas molecules there are in the atmosphere, the more heat is trapped, and the warmer it will become. Trapping of the sun’s warmth in the planet’s lower atmosphere by greenhouse gases is called the GREENHOUSE EFFECT.
• CARBON DIOXIDE (CO2) is the primary greenhouse gas and driver of climate change. It’s an integral part of life cycles on earth, produced through animal respiration (including human respiration) and absorbed by plants to fuel their growth, to name just two ways. Human activities are drastically altering the carbon cycle in many ways. Two of the most impactful are: one, by burning fossil fuels and adding more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere; and two, by affecting the ability of natural sinks (like forests) to remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.
• METHANE is a chemical compound that’s the main component of natural gas, a common fossil fuel source. Just like carbon dioxide, methane is a greenhouse gas that traps heat in the atmosphere. Methane accounts for about 10 percent of all US greenhouse gas emissions (using 2013 figures), second only to carbon dioxide. Many people don’t understand the negative effects of methane as an alternative to other fossil fuels. While methane doesn’t stay in the atmosphere as long as carbon dioxide, it absorbs 84 times more heat, making it very harmful to the climate.
• FOSSIL FUELS are sources of non-renewable energy, formed from the remains of living organisms that were buried millions of years ago. Burning fossil fuels like coal and oil to produce energy is where the majority of greenhouse gases originate. As the world has developed and demand for energy has grown, we’ve burned more fossil fuels, causing more greenhouse gases to be trapped in the atmosphere and air temperatures to rise.
• EMISSIONS refer to greenhouse gases released into the air that are produced by numerous activities, including burning fossil fuels, industrial agriculture, and melting permafrost, to name a few. These gases cause heat to be trapped in the atmosphere, slowly increasing the Earth’s temperature over time.
• ANTHROPOCENE ERA is an unofficial unit of geologic time, used to describe the most recent period in Earth’s history when human activity started to have a significant impact on the planet’s climate and ecosystems. (National Geographic)
• HOLOCENE ERA is the name given to the last 11,700 years of the Earth’s history since the end of the last major glacial epoch or ice age; a relatively warm period in between ice ages. (UCMP Berkeley)
• OCEAN ACIDIFICATION refers to altering the pH balance of the ocean and is a result of absorption of CO2 from the atmosphere into the ocean.
• ECOSYSTEM is the biological community formed from the interactions of interdependent organisms and the habitat in which they live.

2. A Simplified Story Of The Earth

• It’s eons ago, and the Earth’s atmosphere is high in carbon dioxide and low in oxygen. Conditions evolve to allow for prolific plant growth which uses much of the carbon dioxide and creates oxygen through photosynthesis (plants take up CO2 and give off oxygen (O2)). Animals take in O2 and exhale CO2. A balance of CO2 and O2 allows animal life (including humans) to exist on Earth with plant life. Geological changes and events over many years sequester excess carbon dioxide as coal, gas and oil in the Earth. As human beings increase in numbers, many forests are cut down to build cities and other necessities. This reduction in forests reduces the uptake of CO2 by trees. In addition, huge swaths of trees are harvested to increase agricultural growing space. Then the combustion engine comes along requiring fossil fuels (coal, gas, oil) as its energy source. These energy sources are mined from deep in the Earth where they had been sequestering carbon. When they are burned, the carbon is released back into the atmosphere as CO2. With more CO2 in the atmosphere, more global warming occurs. The additional heat leads to melting of the glaciers and ice sheets and warms the permafrost which has stored and now releases more carbon as methane and CO2. The oceans absorb a good part of the increased CO2 which causes acidification in the ocean’s waters and the death of coral reefs. The world’s population increases from 1 billion in 1800 to almost 8 billion in 2021. Commercial forms of agriculture deplete soil health and release carbon stored in the soil. Temperature changes lead to destabilization of weather patterns and lots of weather-related disasters. And so the Earth and its inhabitants arrive at NOW.

• "In the past ten years, humans have released 43 billion US tons of CO2 each year. About 28% of it is captured by terrestrial vegetation and soils, and about 22 percent is absorbed by the oceans, but the remaining 44% remains in the atmosphere.” ( From This is Climate Change by David Nelles and Christian Serrer.) HERE’s more detail on global greenhouse gas emissions.

• Video: Project Drawdown’s "Climate Solutions 101, Unit 2, Stopping Climate Change"

  Unit 2: Stopping Climate Change

3. The Industrial Revolution

• The industrial revolution began in the 1760’s and continued into the early 1900’s. It was a period of sustained economic prosperity (at least for some) in Great Britain, Continental Europe and the United States and Canada. The advent of the steam engine, electricity, cheap steel, the gas engine, oil, coal, and gas as new energy sources, introduced mass production which increased productivity and efficiency and lowered cost to the consumer. Many of our ancestors left farming and joined the ranks of factory workers in cities. The building of roads, canals, railways and the invention of the airplane allowed for movement of products throughout the world and a major increase in global trade. Mass production and increased trade suddenly meant that the impact of each person’s labor was magnified, leading to more of everything, including people. The primary energy source for the industrial revolution was fossil fuels (oil, gas, coal) which when burned to create energy also released into the air the carbon that had been stored underground for ages.

"Engine Trouble": How greenhouse gases threaten our world

• The Anthropocene Era: The complex changes set in motion by the Industrial Revolution resulted in the arrival of the ANTHROPOCENE ERA. This term is an unofficial unit of geological time used to describe the most recent period in earth's history during which human activity began to have a significant impact on the earth’s surface, atmosphere and oceans.
  • Shortly after WWII, conscious changes were made regarding our economy. A quote from Victor Lebow, a retail analyst of that time, summarizes the plan to ramp up our economy.  “Our enormously productive economy …. demands that we make consumption our way of life, that we convert the buying and use of goods into rituals, that we seek our spiritual satisfaction, our ego satisfaction in consumption …. We need things consumed, burned up, replaced and discarded at an ever accelerating rate.”  Thus, planned obsolescence (designed for the dump) and perceived obsolescence (staying in style) became such a part of our lifestyles, that, today, only 1% of products bought are still in use 6 months after the date of sale!  You can watch a great 20-minute video “The Story Of Stuff”. THIS is a great website that has many interesting videos.
  • As climate scientist, Katharine Hayhoe says: “Our planet has a fever, caused by our lifestyle choices since the dawn of the Industrial Revolution. The news is bad: Antarctic glaciers are accelerating into the ocean, coastal towns are flooding, polar bears are starving, forests are burning, islands are disappearing, and species are going extinct. If we aren’t able to change our habits at the fundamental, systemic scale needed, the consequences for humanity will be incalculable.” (from "Saving Us" by Katharine Hayhoe)