Learn English Fast-Climate Change Vocabulary And Discussion Ep 683

Learn English With A Discussion On Climate!

Look, I get it. You want to learn English and work on your English fluency, but textbooks put you to sleep. How about learning real-world English from real-world events? 👀 Adept English brings you an all-new lesson you can't afford to miss. This isn't your run-of-the-mill English class. This is a deep dive into the hot topic of Climate Change. We're cutting through the jargon and serving you everyday English. 🌏

Why You Need This Lesson:

• 📈 Up-to-Date Topics: Get the scoop on climate change while mastering English.
• 🎧 Listen & Learn: Our proven method makes learning easy-peasy!
• 🗣️ Speak like a Local: Vocabulary you'll use. No fluff.
• 🛠️ Useful Tools: We're even throwing in handy tips for tackling English like a pro.
• 🤔 Critical Thinking: Engage in thought-provoking discussion topics.

✔Lesson transcript: https://adeptenglish.com/lessons/learn-english-language-climate-change-vocabulary-lesson/

Our planet's alarm is going off, and it is time to wake up and take action!
⭐ Leonardo DiCaprio

Let's talk about today's weather and yesterday's headlines! Polish your #spokenenglish today 🗣️ Curious about why the weather's been so warm lately and how it connects to climate change? Well, don't just sit there scratching your head. Dive into our latest Adept English lesson where we unravel this sizzling subject—not as scientists, but as fluent English speakers.

You'll not only grasp essential vocabulary but also spark your thoughts on a subject the world can't stop talking about. So why wait? Turn up the heat on your English skills and start making your own predictions!

I want you to act as if the house is on fire, because it is.
⭐ Greta Thunberg

• If you feel we have helped you please consider supporting us https://adeptengli.sh/donate

So, here's the deal: You're going to talk about climate change anyway, why not polish your English skills at the same time? 🤷‍♀️ Sign up today and get hot on your English learning journey. Your future self will thank you. 🌟 Hit that button and let's make #englishlearning sizzle. 🔥

More About This Lesson

Welcome to an Adept English lesson that's like no other! Today, we dive into climate change—a hot topic that's important for the planet and for your English skills. By the end of this lesson, you'll not only learn useful words but also join important discussions about your planet, Earth.

The Earth is what we all have in common.
⭐ Wendell Berry

Things you will learn fluency to this English fluency lesson:, you will discover:

1. Real-world Vocabulary: You'll encounter modern, relevant terms like "climate change," "CO2," and "global warming."
2. Discussion Context: The lesson sets you up for insightful conversations, helping you think critically in English.
3. Practical Usage: You'll find language that people actually use in daily talks about current events.
4. Pronunciation Practice: Listening to the lesson sharpens your pronunciation and comprehension of the British accent.
5. Grammar in Context: You'll come across different sentence structures and tenses, giving you a rich, context-based grammar lesson.
6. Repetition for Retention: Multiple listens reinforce your grasp and recall of new terms.
7. Cultural Insight: You'll gather some British viewpoints on climate and weather, enriching your understanding of the culture.
8. Interactive Learning: Questions from the host stimulate your active participation in the lesson.
9. Resource Recommendations: You're introduced to extra materials like the "Most Common 500 Words Course," boosting your vocabulary even further.
10. Listening Skills: Being audio-based, the lesson naturally enhances your listening skills, key to fluent conversation.

Benefits of our listen & learn approach to learning

Learn & Enjoy: Not only will you grasp new English words, but you'll also get insights into British culture and current events.

• Boost Your Vocabulary: Learn timely words like "carbon emissions" and "greenhouse gases."
• Understand Real Issues: We'll talk about today's problems like rising temperatures and why the British Prime Minister moved the electric car deadline.
• Enjoy While Learning: Have fun and forget you're even studying. You'll get lost in the discussion!

We are the first generation to feel the effect of climate change and the last generation who can do something about it.
⭐ Barack Obama

Real-World Context: Understand complex issues like global warming and CO2 emissions through engaging discussions, helping you practice spoken English.

1. Fresh Vocabulary: Words like "prediction," "conjecture," and "gobsmacked" will make you sound like a pro.
2. Learn Through Listening: Just hit play and your listening skills will get better.
3. Fits Your Schedule: Listen whenever you have time, making learning easy and fun.
4. Stay Current: Don't fall behind in important talks about the planet. Learn English while staying up-to-date.
5. Ease Your Fears: Worried about complex words? We make it easy for you.
6. Get Involved: You're not just learning English; you're part of global conversations that matter.

Ready to take your English to the next level? Don't wait. Hit that play button and make learning English with Adept English a regular part of your day. 📚 Learn words like 'prediction' and 'conjecture' as we discuss climate change. Perfect your English. Available on Spotify.

Questions You Might Have...

Embarking on this Adept English lesson is like diving into a riveting novel on climate change—every word turns a page, every sentence unfurls a plot twist. You're not just swimming in the shallow end of spoken English; you're deep-diving into urgent global discussions. This lesson is your snorkelling gear for a deep-sea exploration of language and climate dialogues. Come up for air not just fluent, but enlightened.

1. What is the main goal of this English lesson? The core aim of this English lesson is twofold: to delve into the pressing issue of climate change while simultaneously enhancing your spoken English vocabulary. You won't just pick up new words; you'll spark thought-provoking discussions, making your learning journey much more engaging.
2. Who is the host of this lesson? Hilary is the host of this lesson and she represents Adept English. While not a climate scientist, she helps you navigate complex issues like climate change in a way that boosts your English fluency.
3. How does this lesson fit into the Adept English "Listen & Learn" approach? This lesson perfectly aligns with Adept English's "Listen & Learn" philosophy. You're immersed in British English and culture while listening to hot topics like climate change. As you hear Hilary dissect current events, you're not just passive observers; you're active learners absorbing language, culture, and vocabulary.
4. Is this lesson solely focused on climate change terminology? While climate change serves as the lesson's backbone, it covers a range of topics, like weather patterns and government policies. You'll get a holistic understanding of how climate change impacts life, which naturally enriches your English vocabulary and conversational topics.
5. How can I maximize the benefits of this English lesson? To get the most out of this lesson, listen to the podcast multiple times. Revisiting the material helps to solidify the new vocabulary and concepts you've learned. Don't hesitate to visit Adept English's website to explore more courses and resources that cater to various levels of English fluency.

Most Unusual Words:

• Conjecture: A guess about something, not based on solid evidence.
• Pelargoniums: A type of flowering plant often seen in gardens.
• Gobsmacked: Very surprised or shocked.
• Dissent: Disagreement with popular opinion or current belief.
• Indigenous: Native to a certain place; originally from the area where they are found.
• Mitigate: To make something less harmful, severe, or strong.
• Maunder Minimum: A period in history when the sun was less active than usual.
• Particulates: Tiny solid or liquid pieces in the air, like dust or soot.
• Consensus: General agreement among a group of people.
• Frontal Lobes: The front part of the brain; important for decision-making and personality.

Most Frequently Used Words:

Listen To The Audio Lesson Now

Transcript: Learn English Fast-Climate Change Vocabulary And Discussion

Warm weather and a hot topic

Hi there. Today, let's cover a hot topic. Recent news has been talking about how warm the weather has been for the time of year. And of course, the concern about rising temperatures and global warming. And how warm September turns out to have been. I'm not a climate expert, but I am passionate about keeping informed. The best part of this, we can dive into this hot topic together and use it to help your skills in spoken English. So a chance to pick up some useful vocabulary today. And hopefully an interesting discussion at the same time.

And this is a hot topic, so let me say again, I'm not a climate scientist. I'm not claiming to be an expert. None of what I'm saying is conclusive, it's conjecture. And it's simply offered as great material to practise your English language skills on. But let's make it interesting.

Hello, I’m Hilary, and you’re listening to Adept English. We will help you to speak English fluently. All you have to do is listen. So start listening now and find out how it works.

Don't forget the 500 Words Course can help you!

Don't forget, if you're finding podcasts a bit challenging, or you're keen to start speaking English, but you feel a bit stuck with that, we have something made just for you. Our Most Common 500 Words Course focuses on the words that you'll use most, ensuring that you grasp them, understand them perfectly. Makes sense, doesn't it? Visit our website at adeptenglish.com for more information on this course.

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Lovely weather in the UK at the moment

So, I mentioned in my podcast last Thursday that it had been unusually warm in the UK, so far for October. And I'm recording this just before another weekend where it's meant to be 24 degrees Celsius. That's much warmer than it usually is in October in the UK. It's 'sit outside in the sun in a T shirt' weather, rather than the 'feeling a bit chilly, let's put the heating on' that we normally have in October. In fact, my pelargoniums and my summer bedding plants are looking great!

While all this is very nice, it also feels like something we should be worried about too. We hear a lot about climate change and I've made numerous podcasts looking at government measures to reduce CO2. Like my recent one, number 675, where I talked about electric cars and that 2030 deadline in the UK. Interesting that since I've made that podcast, British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak has pushed back that 2030 deadline to 2035 in line with France and Germany.

But reducing carbon emissions and being concerned about greenhouse gases, it's what the world is focused on. And measures around this will affect our lives for many years to come and in many ways.

Learn English Fast-Climate Change Vocabulary And Discussion Ep 683 Article Image

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A British Kingfisher in all its glory! From electric cars to greenhouse gases, get fluent talking about real-world issues. Our lessons on YouTube!

©️ Adept English 2023

But is it climate change?

We hear a lot about climate change that is prediction. That's P R E D I C T I O N. And 'prediction' means 'what scientists and modellers' - those who produce the data models - 'think it will be like in the future'. That's 'prediction', or 'to predict', is the verb.

And I noticed when researching material for this podcast, any search online brings up almost entirely predictions. It's much harder to find the actual data. What actually happened temperature-wise and weather-wise, say for this year or last year or the year before.

2023 has had remarkable weather events

There are a lot of headlines that tell us that weather patterns are changing. There was the extreme heat in the Mediterranean area this summer. There have been floods in New York. And again, I covered the floods in Libya, notably in the city of Derna. That was podcast 677, if you're interested. In Derna, Storm Daniel meant that there were 40 centimetres of rain in one day, in a region where 1. 5 millimetres of rain is normal for the whole month. That undoubtedly is an abnormal weather pattern, which is why flood defences couldn't cope. And this event in the city of Derna also illustrated just how awful the consequences can be of such abnormal weather patterns. So we're familiar with these examples of changing weather patterns because they're on the news.

The warmest September on record

And news reports of the last few days are telling us that it was the warmest September on record, by some margin. Apparently the average temperature for the whole world for September this year was the warmest ever recorded. And it was actually 0.93 degrees Celsius warmer than the September average between 1991 and 2020. That's a huge amount. It was also half a degree Celsius warmer than the highest ever recorded level, which was September 2020. Scientists in news articles actually used the word 'gobsmacking' to describe their reaction to this. Remember the word 'gobsmacked', which I've covered before?

So all of this can feel quite frightening. And we are very focused on carbon reduction, we and our governments. But perhaps it's good to ask, is all the change in our weather patterns, down to climate change, greenhouse gases, carbon, global warming. Or are there some other factors at play too?

Is it all down to CO2?

There is some dissent, some disagreement about this, but the overriding belief among scientists and environmentally-concerned people is that it's ongoing greenhouse gas emissions that are driving up temperatures and hence the focus on CO2.

But what else might be going on? Is it still OK to ask that even?

IPCC investigates El Niño

For instance, the warm temperatures in 2023 are also down to variations in the pattern around El Niño. But then you might ask, why did El Niño behave differently this year? Was that down to climate change?

So apparently, UN scientists and the IPCC, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, looked into this - were changes in El Niño down to global warming?

They concluded that there'd been 'a greater effect since 1950 than those observed between 1850 and 1950'. But they also looked at 'tree rings' - that's what you can see if you slice the trunk of a tree - and other historical evidence.

And they said, 'It's clear there have been variations in the frequency and strength of events like El Niño, since the 1400s'. So the IPCC concluded that actually the El Niño weather variation wasn't down to climate change.

Data across time?

And this is similar to some of the arguments put by people who disagree with the mainstream view on climate change. They say if you compare current temperatures with those in 1850, that is pre-industrial revolution, it's much warmer now. And the usual view is that change is down to the burning of fossil fuels brought about by the industrial revolution, of course.

But those dissenters, those people who disagree, say that if you compare the data from many centuries then, there is huge variation and temperatures have varied massively across time. There are examples of this, say the paintings of people ice skating on the Thames in London. This happened in the 16th and 17th centuries - the Thames was covered with ice. Because there was a mini ice age across Northern Europe.

So clearly there are variations in temperature across the centuries. This would never happen in London now. Sub-zero temperatures are quite unusual in London. They do happen in the winter, but snow and ice are certainly a rarity!

You could say, well that's evidence that it was much colder back then, and you'd be right - it was a whole 2 degrees Celsius colder in those times. And this also serves to illustrate how seemingly quite a small change in temperature has a massive effect on people's lives, a massive effect on our experience of the weather.

A 'mini ice age'?

So given that there had been no industrial revolution back in the 16th and 17th centuries, what do scientists think were the causes of this mini ice age in Northern Europe? Well, they've put it down to volcanoes erupting. They shoot dust into the upper atmosphere, and this hangs around for a long time, shading the Earth from the sun's heat. That has the effect of reducing global temperatures.

Scientists have also argued that forests regrowing in the Americas, in North and South America on abandoned farmland - that this made a difference. The farmland was abandoned because European settlers in the Americas killed the indigenous populations. 'Indigenous', I N D I G E N O U S - means the people who were there naturally, the people who didn't arrive from elsewhere. So it's been argued that even something like that would have an effect on the world's temperature. And indeed, one of the ideas put forward to try and mitigate CO2 levels - can we plant more trees to offset the effect?

Another possible explanation put forward - something called the 'Maunder Minimum', that's M A U N D E R. Meaning 'one of the periods in history when the sun was less active'. Apparently sun spots and solar flares can have an effect on the Earth's temperature, if there are a lot of them.

There are also cycles in the distance between the Earth and the Sun. The distance varies depending upon which point in a cycle we are, and this can make a difference in temperature.

Either way, in the 16th and 17th centuries, the River Thames froze often enough for there to be annual ice fairs. So that's collections of temporary shops or stalls, S T A L L, on the ice in the Thames in the winter. This would certainly be impossible these days. There's no way that the Thames would freeze over at the moment.

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CO2 matters - but what about other environmental concerns?

So the consensus, the overwhelming belief, is that we do need to be concerned about CO2 and global warming, and that climate change is mainly man-made and down to industrialisation and the burning of fossil fuels. So we do need to press on with our targets to reduce CO2 and become less fossil fuel dependent. We also need to press on with those targets because of the effect that particulates in the air have on our health. That's P A R T I C U L A T E. And that's something I've discussed in previous podcasts too.

I suppose my concern is while we're all focusing on CO2, are there other ways in which we're living, other effects we're having on the planet that we need to turn our attention to?

It bothers me a great deal - that report that the UK is the 'most nature-depleted country in the world'. That somehow by the ways that we're farming, the ways that we're living, we are destroying the habitats of our native species, our native animals.

What right do we have to do that just because our brains are more evolved, because we have frontal lobes? I don't think we have that right, and it needs to change. Just because we have greater intelligence doesn't give us the right to be dominant.

I'm concerned that this and other issues like pollution and plastics in the sea aren't quite getting the attention that they deserve.

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What do you think?

It's a hot topic today and one that occupies the thoughts of many of us. And as I said at the start of this podcast, I'm no expert. I'm probably just like you, trying to make sense of it all.

So let us know what you think. Let us know whether you've experienced changes in the weather this year that have concerned you. And while I'll be going out to enjoy that lovely weather this weekend, like many people in Europe, it will be with some concern and some unease.

Goodbye

Don't forget to listen to this podcast a number of times to help your English language.

Enough for now. Have a lovely day. Speak to you again soon. Goodbye.

Thank you so much for listening. Please help me tell others about this podcast by reviewing or rating it. And, please share it on social media. You can find more listening lessons and a free English course at adeptenglish.com

Links

• New York City Is Not Built for This
• September 2023 was world's hottest September
• Warmest September on record
• What are El Niño and La Niña
• The little ice age
• UK has 'led the world' in destroying the natural environment
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