Name: BOX SET: 6 Minute English - 'Climate Change' English mega-class! Thirty minutes of new vocabulary!
Uploaded: 2022-08-16T16:45:12.000Z
Duration: 30 min 30 s
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Hello, this is 6 Minute English  from BBC Learning English.

'No one is too small to make a difference'.

Wasn't it climate change activist Greta Thunburg?

That's right! She went on to say  this in her message to world leaders.

I want you to act as if your house is on fire, because it is.'

Her speech reflected the feelings of many young people around the world who

think that not enough action is being taken on climate change.

And they might be right, judging by the record-breaking temperatures that hit

Canada and the north-west of the United States in July this year.

Greta Thunberg's plea to 'act like your house is on fire' became a reality for

residents of the small town of Lytton, Canada, which burned to the ground in

a shocking wildfire - a fire that is burning strongly and out of control.

So, was the Lytton wildfire yet another climate change wake-up call?

A wake-up call is the expression used to describe a shocking event that should

make people realise that action is needed to change something.

Maybe not, according to some climatologists who, worryingly, say that what happened in

Lytton should not even have been possible. So, in this programme, we'll be

asking if scientists have dangerously misunderstood the realities of climate change.

and it's about that extreme weather in Canada. It broke records when the

temperature in Lytton hit an all-time high on the 1st of July but just how

b) 49.6 degrees or c) 59.6 degrees Celsius?

All those temperatures look really  high, especially for snowy Canada!  

OK Sam, we'll find out the answer later on.

Seeing your hometown burned  to the ground is bad enough,

but perhaps even worse, was the fact  that the wildfires were so unexpected.

According to weather pattern modelling done  by a team of Oxford University researchers,

such extreme heat was  impossible, in theory at least.

The research team was led by  climatologist Geert Jan van Oldenborgh.

Here he is in conversation with BBC World  Service programme, Science in Action.

This is a wake-up call beyond the  wake-up calls that we've had before.

Yes, it's a very big shock  in the sense that we thought  

we knew that how heat waves  react to global warming

are increasing. Of course  they're increasing in temperature

but it's a gradual process, we  thought. And then you get this thing  

and it's not gradual at all, it's a huge jump.

Professor van Oldenborgh had been studying the impact of global warming on

heatwaves - short periods of time when the weather is much hotter than usual.

Along with other climatologists, he thought that climate change was gradual

- changing or happening slowly over a long period of time.

But the Canadian heatwaves  caused him to think again.

Instead of being gradual, the temperature saw

a jump - or a sudden increase - of five degrees

and it's this sudden jump that's got Professor van Oldenborgh and his team worried.

By collecting data from all over the world, climatologists tried to

predict changes in the pattern of global warming.

But as Geert Jan van Oldenborgh told BBC World Service's Science in Action, the

heatwave in Lytton, didn't fit these predictions at all.

Everything looked like a nice, regular, gradual trend like we're used to up to

last year, and then you suddenly break all your

records by four or five degrees. I mean, this is something that's not supposed to

happen, and it has really shaken our confidence in how well we understand the

Despite all his research, Professor van Oldenborgh

And it's this lack of understanding worrying

effects of climate change may be even worse than expected.

Maybe it's time we all took notice of Greta Thunberg's wake-up call to take

Especially if even cold,  northern countries like Canada,

or Britain, for that matter, can  experience such extreme changes.

Speaking of which Neil, what was  the answer to your quiz question?

Ah yes! In my quiz question, I asked you  exactly how high the temperature reached

in the Canadian town of Lytton. What did you say, Sam?

I thought it was a) 39.6  degrees Celsius. Was I right?

Well, you were close but,  in fact, it got even hotter,

the highest temperature ever recorded in Canada by at least 5 degrees.

Phew, that is hot! Ugh well, we'd better recap the vocabulary

be hearing these words a lot more in the future.

out-of-control fire that  is burning the countryside.

A wake-up call is an event which should make people realise that action needs to

A heatwave is a period of days or weeks when

Whereas gradual means happening slowly over a long time.

And finally if something shakes your confidence

That's it for our look at one  of the hottest years on record.

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BOX SET: 6 Minute English - 'Climate Change' English mega-class! Thirty minutes of new vocabulary!

situation

vocabulary

extreme

achieve