Chapter 7 Flashcards
Adaptation
Adjustment to different or changing circumstances, such as when insurance companies modify their claims forecasting and setting of premiums with regard to future climate change conditions. The largest challenge for adaptation strategies will occur in the future when the most significant consequences from climate change will appear.
Aspirational approach
An approach emphasizing long-term but unspecific and non-binding targets for reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Advocated by developed countries such as Canada (p 224)
Atmosphere
The layer of air surrounding the Earth (p. 202)
Bali Conference
A UN-sponsored climate change conference held in the first two weeks of December 2007 in Bali, Indonesia, to start a process to create a new framework to replace the Kyoto Protocol,which ended in 2012. There was agreement that both developed and developing countries must participate in reducing greenhouse gas emissions but reluctance from key developing countries, including Canada, to commit to binding targets (p 225)
Biochar
Created through pyrolysis of biomass, a type of charcoal used to enhance soil. In addition to sequestering carbon. it increases food security and soil biodiversity (p.235)
Cancun Summit
A meeting of representatives from 193 countries and other interests parties held in Mexico in December 2010 to seek advance mitigative action on climate change. Canada continued to be a laggard, and only incremental progress was made (p. 226)
Carbon sequestration
Reforestation and afforestation to ameliorate carbon dioxide loadings in the atmosphere because trees and shrbs use the excess CO2 (p 232)
Carbon tax
An approach in which greenhouse gas emissions by individuals or companies are taxed. The purpose is to change human behaviour towards activities that produce fewer greenhouse gas emissions (p. 231)
Climate
The long-term weather pattern of a particular region (p. 203)
Climate change
A long-term alternation in the climate of a particular location or region, or for the entire planet (p. 203)
Climate change deniers
Those who, for ideological and economic reasons, use communication tactics to question the science underlying climate change and therefore delay action to mitigate this change (p.220)
“Climategate”
The controversy surrounding leaked e-mails from a climate research centre at the university of east anglia, just weeks prior to the the Copenhagen Summit, which appeared, incorrectly, to suggest that researchers had manipulated their data to make climate change appear more severe (p.221)
Climate justice
Focuses on the interaction of environmental degradation and social, economic, and racial inequities created by climate change. It calls for resolving the disproportionate impact of climate change on poor and marginalized people (p. 235)
Climate modelling
Various mathematical and computerized approaches for determining past climate trends in an effort to build scenarios predicting future climate, which use any or all of the following factors in measurement: incoming and outgoing radiation; energy dynamics or flows around the globe; surface processes affecting climate, such as snow cover and vegetation; chemical composition of the atmosphere; and time step or resolution (time over which the model runs and the spatial scale to which it applies (.p 207)
Copenhagen Summit
A two-week meeting of world leaders, environment ministers, and other interested parties held in Copenhagen, Denmark, in late 2009, which sought unsuccessfully to advance the agenda for action on climate change. Canada showed itself at this conference to be among the greatest laggards in seeking action for improved GHG emission standards (p 225)
El Nino
A marked warming of the waters in the eastern and central portions of the tropical Pacific that trigger weather changes and events in two-thirds of the world. (p 203)
Emission credits
Credits that can be earned by a nation based on land-use or forestry (afforestation, reforestation) initiatives that reduce measurable greenhouse gas emissions (p223)
Emissions trading
Under the Kyoto Protocol, a system whereby one country that will exceed its allotted limit of greenhouse gas emissions can buy an amount of greenhouse gas emissions from another country that will not reach its own established emissions limit (p 223)
Fossil fuels
Organic (coal, natural gas, oil, tar sands, and oil shale) derived from once-living plants or animals (p 218)
General circulation models (GCMs)
The most prominent and complex type of climate modellings, which takes into account the three-dimensional nature of the Earth’s atmosphere and oceans or both (p 208)
Geo-engineering
Various technologies, from as simple as tree planting to as complex as stratospheric aerosols and space mirrors, that are used to or have been proposed to mitigate the effects of climate change (p. 226)
Global warming
Changes in average temperatures of the Earth’s surface. These changes are not uniform (i.e., some regions experience significantly higher temperatures, others only slight changes upward, and still others might experience somewhat cooler temperatures (p 203)
Greenhouse effect
A warming of the Earth’s atmosphere caused by the presence of certain gases (e.g., water vapour, carbon dioxide, methane) that absorb radiation emitted by the Earth, thereby retarding the loss of energy to space ( p 204)
