The Coldest Town on Earth | The Weather Channel - Articles

Mornin y'all! Hope y'all are having a wonderful and blessed Missions Monday! Meet the Yakut in Russia
How Unreached Are They?
This is a tricky one. If it wasn't for u/CiroFlexo telling me about this people, I probably would not have picked them at first glance. They are technically 3% Christian which falls outside the bounds of the unreached terms. However, the majority of that would probably be Russian Orthodox so..... Further, only 0.1% of them are evangelical or actively sharing their faith. So on the ground they almost certainly look like a UPG. So let's do math now..
If they are only 0.1% evangelical that means that out of their 488,000 people, there are only 488ish believers who actively are sharing their faith. That's one in a thousand that wants to tell others about Jesus. Thats tragically small for a population that claims to be sort of Russian Orthodox...
There is most of a bible in their language but somehow not all of it.
What are they like?
Typical qualification that all people groups can't be summed up in small paragraphs and this is an over generalization.

The Yakut live uncomplicated, seminomadic lives, tending reindeer and dwelling in simple tents. Alcohol abuse is rampant among the Yakut. In fact, it is so prevalent that the number of murders, early deaths, and suicides attributable to alcohol abuse may seriously jeopardize the future of this small group. Around the world the Yakut are renowned for their strong, hardy, massive Yakut draft horses from Siberia. Joshua Project
The Yakuts engage in animal husbandry, traditionally having focused on rearing horses, mainly the Yakutian horse, reindeer and the Sakha Ynagha (Yakutian cow), a hardy kind of cattle known as Yakutian cattle which is well-adapted to the harsh local weather.
The cuisine of Sakha prominently features the traditional drink kumis, dairy products of cow, mare, and reindeer milk, sliced frozen salted fish stroganina (строганина), loaf meat dishes (oyogos), venison, frozen fish, thick pancakes, and salamat—a millet porridge with butter and horse fat. Kuerchekh [Куэрчэх] or kierchekh, a popular dessert, is made of cow milk or cream with various berries. Indigirka is a traditional fish salad. This cuisine is only used in Yakutia. Wikipedia

History Lesson

The ancestors of Yakuts were Kurykans who migrated from Yenisey river to Lake Baikal and were subject to a certain Mongolian admixture prior to migration in the 7th century. The Yakuts originally lived around Olkhon and the region of Lake Baikal. Beginning in the 13th century they migrated to the basins of the Middle Lena, the Aldan and Vilyuy rivers under the pressure of the rising Mongols. The northern Yakuts were largely hunters, fishermen and reindeer herders, while the southern Yakuts raised cattle and horses.
In the 1620s the Tsardom of Muscovy began to move into their territory and annexed or settled down on it, imposed a fur tax and managed to suppress several Yakut rebellions between 1634 and 1642. The tsarist brutality in collection of the pelt tax (yasak) sparked a rebellion and aggression among the Yakuts and also Tungusic-speaking tribes along the River Lena in 1642. The voivode Peter Golovin, leader of the tsarist forces, responded with a reign of terror: native settlements were torched and hundreds of people were killed. The Yakut population alone is estimated to have fallen by 70 percent between 1642 and 1682, mainly because of smallpox and other infectious diseases.
In the late 1920s through the late 1930s, Yakut people were systematically persecuted, when Joseph Stalin launched his collectivization campaign. It is possible that hunger and malnutrition during this period resulted in a decline in the Yakut total population from 240,500 in 1926 to 236,700 in 1959. By 1972, the population began to recover. Wikipedia

What do they believe?
This one is tricky. I feel like I'm getting mixed signals. So first I'll tell you what my gut tells me, and then I'll let you read the info. So my gut tells me that this is a population who has been "Christianized" but hold onto many of their previous animist traditions. But hear me out, I do not think they are largely Christian nor animist. I think that tradition is what lasts here, and that they are probably nominal even in their animism. So, that does not take away from the fact that they desperately need the Gospel.

The Yakut are shamanists. In the late 1800s anthropologist Waldemar Jochelson vividly described a Yakut religious ceremony: "A shaman has come to heal a sick woman, whose soul has been captured by evil spirits. He has put himself into a trance by inhaling tobacco, dancing, and beating his drum. Now his soul will travel to the spirit world and do battle in order to retrieve the woman's soul and thus restore her. His assistant holds the shaman by a chain so that if he gets lost or trapped in the spirit world he can be pulled back. Some of the flat iron pendants on the shaman's robe represent bird feathers, which allow the shaman's soul to fly. ... As the shaman dances, the noise made by these pieces and by the copper bells and rattles on the robe, as well as the sound of his drum and singing, help summon the spirits." Joshua Project
By the 1820s almost all the Yakuts claimed to have converted to the Russian Orthodox church, but they retained (and still retain) a number of shamanist practices. Wikipedia

How can we pray for them?

• Ask God to raise up prayer teams who will break up the soil through worship and intercession.
• Pray that the Lord will call missionaries to go to Russia and share Christ with the Yakut.
• Ask God to grant favor to missions agencies focusing on the Yakut.
• Ask the Holy Spirit to soften the hearts of Yakut towards Christians so that they will be receptive to the Gospel.
• Pray that God will open the hearts of Russias' governmental leaders to the Gospel.
• Ask the Lord to raise up strong local churches among the Yakut.
• Pray for our nation (the United States), that we Christians can learn to come alongside our hurting brothers and sisters and learn to carry one another's burdens in a more Christlike manner than we have done historically.
• Pray that in this time of chaos and panic that the needs of the unreached are not forgotten by the church. Pray that our hearts continue to ache to see the unreached hear the Good News.

Brothers, my heart’s desire and prayer to God for them is that they may be saved. (Romans 10:1)
____________________________________________________________________________________________
Here are the previous weeks threads on the UPG of the Week for Reformed

People Group	Country	Date Posted	Beliefs
Yakut	Russia	08/10/2020	Animism*
Northern Katang	Laos	08/03/2020	Animism
Uyghur	Kazakhstan	07/27/2020	Islam
Syrian (Levant Arabs)	Syria	07/20/2020	Islam
Teda	Chad	07/06/2020	Islam
Kotokoli	Togo	06/28/2020	Islam
Hobyot	Oman	06/22/2020	Islam
Moor	Sri Lanka	06/15/2020	Islam
Shaikh	Bangladesh	06/08/2020	Islam
Khalka Mongols	Mongolia	06/01/2020	Animism
Comorian	France	05/18/2020	Islam
Bedouin	Jordan	05/11/2020	Islam
Muslim Thai	Thailand	05/04/2020	Islam
Nubian	Uganda	04/27/2020	Islam
Kraol	Cambodia	04/20/2020	Animism
Tay	Vietnam	04/13/2020	Animism
Yoruk	Turkey	04/06/2020	Islam
Xiaoliangshn Nosu	China	03/30/2020	Animism
Jat (Muslim)	Pakistan	03/23/2020	Islam
Beja Bedawi	Egypt	03/16/2020	Islam
Tunisian Arabs	Tunisia	03/09/2020	Islam
Yemeni Arab	Yemen	03/02/2020	Islam
Bosniak	Croatia	02/24/2020	Islam
Azerbaijani	Georgia	02/17/2020	Islam
Zaza-Dimli	Turkey	02/10/2020	Islam
Huichol	Mexico	02/03/2020	Animism
Kampuchea Krom	Cambodia	01/27/2020	Buddhism
Lao Krang	Thailand	01/20/2020	Buddhism
Gilaki	Iran	01/13/2020	Islam
Uyghurs	China	01/01/2020	Islam
Israeli Jews	Israel	12/18/2019	Judaism
Drukpa	Bhutan	12/11/2019	Buddhism
Malay	Malaysia	12/04/2019	Islam
Lisu (Reached People Group)	China	11/27/2019	Christian
Dhobi	India	11/20/2019	Hinduism
Burmese	Myanmar	11/13/2019	Buddhism
Minyak Tibetans	China	11/06/2019	Buddhism
Yazidi	Iraq	10/30/2019	Animism*
Turks	Turkey	10/23/2019	Islam
Kurds	Syria	10/16/2019	Islam
Kalmyks	Russia	10/09/2019	Buddhism
Luli	Tajikistan	10/02/2019	Islam
Japanese	Japan	09/25/2019	Shintoism
Urak Lawoi	Thailand	09/18/2019	Animism
Kim Mun	Vietnam	09/11/2019	Animism
Tai Lue	Laos	09/04/2019	Bhuddism
Sundanese	Indonesia	08/28/2019	Islam
Central Atlas Berbers	Morocco	08/21/2019	Islam
Fulani	Nigeria	08/14/2019	Islam
Sonar	India	08/07/2019	Hinduism
Pattani Malay	Thailand	08/02/2019	Islam
Thai	Thailand	07/26/2019	Buddhism
Baloch	Pakistan	07/19/2019	Islam
Alawite	Syria	07/12/2019	Islam*
Huasa	Cote d'Ivoire	06/28/2019	Islam
Chhetri	Nepal	06/21/2019	Hinduism
Beja	Sudan	06/14/2019	Islam
Yinou	China	06/07/2019	Animism
Kazakh	Kazakhstan	05/31/2019	Islam
Hui	China	05/24/2019	Islam
Masalit	Sudan	05/17/2019	Islam

As always, if you have experience in this country or with this people group, feel free to comment or PM me and I will happily edit it so that we can better pray for these peoples!
Here is a list of definitions in case you wonder what exactly I mean by words like "Unreached"

This is the best tl;dr I could make, original reduced by 53%. (I'm a bot)

MOSCOW - Wildfires raging in Siberia in record summer temperatures have decreased considerably over the past week, Russia's forest service said on Saturday, as it battles blazes by cloud seeding and explosives.
Freakishly warm weather across large swathes of Siberia since January, combined with low soil moisture, have contributed to a resurgence of wildfires that devastated the region last summer, the European Union's climate monitoring network said this week.
Russia's Aerial Forest Protection Service said it was trying to suppress 136 fires over 43,000ha as of Saturday.
Fresh satellite images on Saturday showed that the largest fires are still in Russia's vast Yakutia region, which is sparsely populated and borders the Arctic Ocean.
Greenpeace Russia's forest programme, which analyses satellite data, said on Saturday that a total of 9.26 million hectares - greater than the size of Portugal - have been impacted by wildfires since the beginning of 2020.
The organisation blames Russia's wildfire crisis on lack of funding of the forest service which now cannot ensure adequate fire prevention.

Summary Source | FAQ | Feedback | Top keywords: fire^#1 Russia's^#2 wildfire^#3 service^#4 over^#5
Post found in /worldnews and /environment.
NOTICE: This thread is for discussing the submission topic. Please do not discuss the concept of the autotldr bot here.

This is the best tl;dr I could make, original reduced by 68%. (I'm a bot)

Russia's forest service said there were nearly 300 wildfires blazing across the vast country's northern wilderness on Saturday, as it attempted to contain them with methods including explosives and cloud seeding.
Russia's Aerial Forest Protection Service said it was trying to suppress 136 fires over 43,000 hectares as of Saturday.
Russia's weather service expert Roman Vilfand said that anti-cyclones-which create abnormally clear skies with no clouds or rain-had increased in the northern hemisphere.
On Thursday, the Russian weather service said wildfires this year have already covered an area that is 9.6 percent larger than last year over the same period.
Fresh satellite images showed Saturday that the largest fires are still in Russia's vast Yakutia region, which is sparsely populated and borders the Arctic Ocean.
Russia's weather officials and environmentalists have said climate change is a major factor behind the increase in fires, though exacerbated by an underfunded forest service forced to leave most blazes unattended.

Summary Source | FAQ | Feedback | Top keywords: fires^#1 service^#2 Russia's^#3 region^#4 wildfires^#5
Post found in /worldnews.
NOTICE: This thread is for discussing the submission topic. Please do not discuss the concept of the autotldr bot here.

This is the best tl;dr I could make, original reduced by 33%. (I'm a bot)

A diamond containing another, free-moving gem inside unearthed from a mine in Siberia is the first stone of its kind in recorded history, Russian state mining company Alrosa PJSC said on Friday.
The diamond may be more than 800 million years old, Alrosa said in a statement.
"As far as we know, there were no such diamonds in the history of global diamond mining yet. This is really a unique creation of nature, especially since nature does not like emptiness. Usually, some minerals are replaced by others without cavity formation," Oleg Kovalchuk, deputy director for innovations at ALROSA's Research and Development Geological Enterprise, said.
The diamond came out of the Nyurba mine in the Siberian region of Yakutia, but it was sorters at the Yakutsk Diamond Trade Enterprise who discovered the nature of the stone and passed it on to the Research and Development Geological Enterprise for analysis.
"Based on the results of the study, the scientists made a hypothesis about how the crystal was formed. According to them, there was an internal diamond at first, and the external one was formed during the subsequent stages of growth," Alrosa said.
An Alrosa spokesman said the company plans to send the Matryoshka diamond to the Gemological Institute of America for further analysis.

Summary Source | FAQ | Feedback | Top keywords: diamond^#1 Alrosa^#2 mine^#3 stone^#4 Matryoshka^#5
Post found in /worldnews, /NotClickBaitNews and /NotClickBaitNews.
NOTICE: This thread is for discussing the submission topic. Please do not discuss the concept of the autotldr bot here.

Terminology, some misleading things to be alert for people saying, and some suggestions on words to use or not use
But first -There's an excellent post (elsewhere) about climate comm for scientists, saying "Choose plain language over technical terms, insider jargon, and acronyms" - and it includes a table of meanings, that gives the scientific term, its contrary meaning to your public audience, and a better choice of wording that communicates better. (See bottom of this post for suggested additional terms&replacements.)
Also: I am NOT THE EXPERT. Run this stuff past a real expert, please, before you use it anyplace important.
Glossary:

• World War Zero is what we must engage in, to win this.(SG talk
• We must avoid "Doomism" (source); "Narratives of inevitable catastrophe make us feel powerless and rob us of agency." (source+)
• CO2 = carbon dioxide, the greenhouse gas that is "earth's temperature control knob".
• Greenhouse gas, aka GHG - a molecule that traps outgoing heat when it's in the atmosphere. CO2, H20, methane are some. Some stay there only for a few days (H20), others for centuries? (with CO2, the increase stays for much much longer, because we've taken it from deep underground (where it was inert) and added it to the carbon cycle. ). Molecule for molecule, some GHGs are much stronger than CO2 (methane and some refrigerants) - but they're "short-lived climate pollutants", SLCPs) - methane for one will relatively quickly degrade into CO2. (Basically, CO2 is the "control knob" for earth's temperature (see 1-hr AGU (amer.geophys.union) talk by Alley).)
• Natural gas = "fossil gas". (source)
• Carbon cycle - Carbon from the CO2 in the air naturally goes into water, is taken into plants, re-emerges when they rot. Much longer term (millions of years), it reacts and becomes bound up in some rocks, via rock weathering.
• A Carbon source emits CO2, a Carbon sink takes it up. Seawater is a carbon sink. Trees are carbon sinks until they die or burn.
• ("Tons of carbon" and "tons of CO2" are sometimes used interchangeably, but they shouldn't. The same amount of carbon (C) emitted into the atmosphere is only 1/4 the tonnage as when it's communicated as tons of CO2 (because of those 2 oxygen atoms). (Aside: 'tons' seems like a counterintuitive measure, for anyone who thinks of air as weightless. In some contexts ppm (parts per million, concentration) is a better one. In others it isn't.) ( how to do better?) ("A gallon of gasoline, which weighs about 6.3 pounds, produces 20 pounds of carbon dioxide (CO2) when burned... To calculate the amount of CO2 produced from a gallon of gasoline, the weight of the carbon in the gasoline is multiplied by 44/12 or 3.7...The carbon in a gallon of gasoline weighs 5.5 pounds" (link)))
• Clean energy is Renewables (wind,solar, tides, hydropower) plus nuclear power (and geothermal, or does that count as renewable?). It just doesn't include fossil fuels (oil, coal, gas).
• Energy is all forms of energy. Sometimes people say 'energy' when they mean just electricity (as in, "100% clean e..." to mean "make the electrical grid be made up of all-clean sources."). (how to word this better?)
• Greenhouse effect - CO2 traps heat, and so does the glass of a greenhouse (even though the actual mechanism isn't the same, it's still useful for understanding). Without this effect, we'd be on Snowball Earth. On the other hand, too much heat isn't good either.
• 'committed emissions', the CO2 emissions (ergo additional warming) that are already "in the pipeline" ('pipeline' is metaphorical here): "If every car, pipeline (literal), and power plant around today were allowed to keep operating until it broke down, and no other new fossil-fuel infrastructure was built, they would still lock in enough carbon emissions to shoot Earth well past 1.5 degrees of warming, according to a recent study." (link)
• "duck curve" - over a day, the demand for power that's not met by solar (or other renewable) power generation(?) (looks like the underside of a duck; read here).
• "curtailment" - when the grid 'dumps' excess solar power because it has no immediate use for it.
• "adoption curve" - the rate at which a tech. shift occurs. For staying below 1.5C, this now must be abrupt. (source)
• CO2e and GWP - see the ['background - greenhouse gases' page] for now. Short for CO2-equivalent and global warming potential (for a comparison of various other greenhouse gases to co2) (or better yet, see wikipedia)

Science terms:

• Consensus. "When scientists talk about consensus, they mean consensus in the peer-reviewed literature, not a vote of scientists' opinions." (source)
• "Mundane science"(pdf) - (the simple stuff, to solve global problems (e.g. third world cookstoves), with outsized payback.

climate change effects, related terms

• Ocean acidification - when CO2 dissolves in water it forms carbonic acid. Larval crustaceans' protective shells dissolve, etc. Even if we were able to control the earth's heat imbalance from the buildup of CO2, ocean acidification would transform the oceans, resulting in fewer fish, more jellyfish. (and no coral?)
• Global warming - the extra heat formed when there is increasing atmospheric CO2 (from burning fossil fuels), which traps heat. (It sounds globally comfy, which it isn't and won't be.)
• Global heating. Sounds just like global warming but more so, doesn't bring to mind the other effects of increased GHGs on the oceans, hurricanes, rainfall etc.
• Global climate disruption - the increased atmospheric CO2 causes a global energy imbalance between incoming & outgoing energy, which makes for all sorts of changes. Increased global surface temperature is just one of them - ocean acidification, increased floods drought and wildfires, and (unproven but likely) a loopy jetstream ( maybe not from Arctic sea ice loss? keyword jet stream) that gets fixed in 1 place & doesn't wobble around day by day like it used to (and so, gives us days of the same weather, which can produce extremes of rainfall etc), warm surface waters that make hurricanes stronger, a melting Arctic whose meltwater may slow the 'heat conveyor' ocean current that keeps Europe warm, sea level rise that inundates our big coastal cities and much of Florida, etc. We don't know what other climate change risks (page) there will be. (The opposite of global climate disruption is: a stable climate, which is what we humans need to fight for. (eric de Place, source) - aka, curb climate change. )
• Other terms that get used include 'climate chaos' and 'climate breakdown', but they're not great terms since the changing climate might not be chaotic, and there will presumably still be a 'working climate' even if it doesn't work well anymore for people to live there. (@mtobis has explained here).
• "Global change" - a term that obscures good vs. bad kinds of change, leaving the listener free to assume that the outcome could be fine. When your society is well-suited to a particular climate (and sea level), disruptive changes to that climate aren't going to be helpful. (Topsoil is located where the climate has been good for growing crops, and as optimal-crop-climate moves north, in North America it will hit the Canadian Shield, rock with thin layer of soil). Also, re good&bad change, "global change" brings to mind the aspirational "hope and change" (though climate change as a phenomenon isn't going to be good, even for formerly cold places - think crop failures, and refugees from no-longer-habitable regions or from wars from shortages.)
• Stationarity - the assumption that things will be, and behave, pretty much like they used to - that infrastructure can still get built as it used to, to handle the same expected 100-year rainfall events, etc. With climate change, stationarity goes out the window.
• "threat multiplier"
• "heat index" - a measure of how hot it actually feels to humans, includes humidity (and ?)
• "Rossby waves" (aka 'planetary waves') formed by a meandering jet stream - see wikipedia
• "heat domes" - "as the Earth’s temperature gradient flattens, the Rossby waves tend to bend, resulting in a curvy jet stream that is more likely to get “stuck,” trapping weather systems in place and creating what Mann calls “huge heat domes.”" (source
• Thermokarst - hummocky permafrost that's irregularly melting (source)
• AMOC, Atlantic meridional overturning circulation, correction it is NOT the same as the 'gulf stream' (link (?)

Fairness terms:

• Climate apartheid, "in which the rich would “pay to escape overheating, hunger and conflict while the rest of the world is left to suffer.” The scale of this climate emergency very much depends on the level of effort the global community puts into mitigation." (source)
  
• urban heat island (*) has a social-justice dimension, as it varies by neighborhood ("new research shows that temperatures on a scorching summer day can vary as much as 20 degrees (F) across different parts of the same city")
  
• Climate justice means that those who didn't cause the problem shouldn't be the ones bearing the heaviest burden. This entails, 1, Intergenerational justice - which means staying within our global CO2 emissions budget. And socioeconomic justice - we need to allocate that emissions budget fairly, by country (as is tried in here), and also to craft climate solutions that leave marginalized communities in our own countries better off. A possible problem with the 'climate justice' lens, is that it could morph into spending $$ for low-effectiveness measures, & that redirection of funds would reduce effectiveness of GHG-cutting investment, so that benefits to today's marginalized community come at the expense of the future - both of their community&descendants, and of the rest of humanity. GHG-cutting effectiveness should be front¢er, to the extent that it's politically possible, if we aim for climate justice for future (including older-than-now) stakeholders.
  
• a Climate Marshall Plan, aka Green Marshall Plan (example) - The original Marshall Plan was what the U.S. did after WW2, we extended much aid to the war-torn countries for postwar reconstruction. Today, a "climate Marshall Plan" for 3rd-world countries to fight climate change would include stuff like subsidized renewable energy projects, etc. (I'm handwaving here). It's fairer, since cumulatively the U.S. has been the biggest CO2 emitter by far (scroll to 2018)
  

Misc. terms

• "Climate redlining" (areas that become uninsurable) (link)
• climate denial ("it's not happening, not us, or not so bad") vs. climate nihilism ("it's too late, what's the point")
• web terms
  
  • "listing image" - the thumbnail image that 'illustrates' an article, that's used on Twitter alongside the title and link (do I understand this correctly? (*) (keyword illustrate illustration)
• general system and communication terms
  
  • "tipping points" - "the utility of tipping points as a concept is in describing self-perpetuating systemic shifts." (it gets misused, in climate comm) (source) ("not every +feedback leads to a TiP, & not every big change implies a TiP happened.")
  • "concept creep", when the term encompasses one thing & then others shoehorn more into it

Climate policy terms, Decarbonization, carbon budget,...

• Mitigation vs. Adaptation, distinguished by @drvox here. Mitigation (aka decarbonize) means Prevention, cutting [our emissions of] atmospheric GHGs, vs. Adaptation which means coping with, aka preparing for, the consequences of our not having mitigated enough. There's confusion being created, to blur this distinction. (Adapting to climate change would cost much much much more (and ultimately fail, examples) than mitigation (source), and it only helps locally, it doesn't help globally. (And if you "adapt" by building a 3 foot sea wall, but sea level then rises 4 feet, that's doubly costly.) A term I've seen that (I assume) means Adaptation (but doesn't say it outright, so, obscures the fact that it's only coping with the problem, not trying to prevent it) is 'climate resilience'. Another, that seems more clear to me, is ruggedizing (which makes good sense for non-giant projects, i.e. don't do this: "(Ironically, new, energy-efficient buildings are tightly sealed, making them dangerous heat traps.)"(link). (Also: any time you're tempted to say "mitigate the effects of", the clearer (and usually much better) term is "adapt to".)
• Carbon budget, or more clearly "CO2 emissions budget" - the sum total (or total remaining when it was calculated) CO2 emissions we can put out, from burning fossil fuels, that's thought to keep the GHG-induced rise in temperature below a specified target "safe" increase. (if we just refer to it as 'carbon budget' it can create confusion, as the 'CO2' number is ~4x larger than the equivalent 'Carbon' number.)
• HVDC - "[electrical power grid] transmission lines: Alternating current (AC) lines are generally used for shorter distances. High-voltage direct-current (HVDC) lines are more expensive, but carry more power with less loss, so they are typically used for long-distance lines." (source)
• "Feed-in tariff" - an electrical utility does this to ensure that if you (a homeowner with solar panels on your roof?) start to supply your utility co. with renewable energy, you'll get the same price per watt for it, even over time as the market price for it would drop due to increasing supply or innovations. So, this provides an incentive to jump in and buy the technology now, not sit back and wait for it to improve - and this sales income stream helps manufacturers do the innovating that drives further improvement that drives down costs.
• Net metering - "use it anytime", aka "use the utility as your battery", if you have solar panels or are otherwise making power & are hooked up to the grid.
• Renewable electricity standard, aka renewable energy standard, aka Renewable Portfolio Standard (RPS): requiring an electric utility co. to get at least a certain % of its energy from renewable sources.
• Carbon neutral doesn't always live up to the name, link
• Policy Effectiveness vs. Efficiency - @drvox points out (Apr2019) that they're two different things (effectiveness is empirical, efficiency is theoretical) - a carbon tax is efficient, but it is only effective if you can get it implemented and can make it high enough to achieve the needed goal.
• Continuous improvement or ratchet ("Don’t set a quantitative target, set a rate of improvement." - like CA's building efficiency performance standards)(source)
• LCOE ("levelized cost of energy", lets you compare cost of electricity made from different sources)
• levelized cost of energy storage (LCOS)
• DAC - direct air capture (of CO2, then putting it somewhere), which needs huge huge huge amounts of energy
• Thermal battery - if you heat (the building space or the hot water) when power is abundant, then you won't need to do it when available power is low.
• (what's the term for plugging your electric car into the grid and letting it charge or draw from the car batteries as needed? besides "using your car as a battery")
• dispatchable power sources are ones that work when you want them to; in contrast, the output of variable power sources like wind & solar depend on the weather & time of day.(*)
• “Curtailment is a reduction in the output of a generator from what it could otherwise produce given available resources, typically on an involuntary basis.” (source, maybe)
• power capacity vs energy capacity.(*)
• "load flexibility" (run the dishwasher later),
• "embodied carbon emissions" aka "upfront carbon" (term) encompasses both the carbon used in the product or construction project's materials, and also the carbon emitted during construction. For example, Concrete uses a lot. (See this Jan. 2020 post (link) for a good graphic showing the C-reduction potential at different stages of development - earliest is best)
• "distributed energy resources” (DERs, DER) (these are the Devices - rooftop solar panels, wind turbines, batteries, smart thermostats etc) (source).
• 'Ecomodernist' - empirically, this is a person whose (apparently main) 'advocacy' goal is to build support for nuclear power. No one else uses the term.
• Sequestration - putting the troublemaking material someplace where it will effectively be inert and won't re-emerge to cause trouble. The carbon from burning fossil fuels can be sequestered in rock (essentially forever) or trees or soil (where its duration is probably for decades, depending, but, not certain, and warming may make it re-emerge...)
• Peak carbon uptake, for tropical forests, it looks like we've hit it.

Agriculture terms and confusions

• "Terra preta" - soil that's enriched with (sequestered) charcoal, aka biochar, e.g. prehistorically in the Amazon rainforest; it seems to last in the soil for a long time(5000 yrs?), and its microstructure allegedly makes soil more fertile. (wikipedia is your friend here, as usual.)
• "A rift in the concept of 'sustainable agriculture'" (source) (Agriculture will need to be able to sustain the global human population, which will mean (intelligently) using the improvement tools that are at hand, technology-wise, that sustainability efforts have previously eschewed.)

'Solutions (devices)' terms

• Also look at the 'electrify everything' page, which is probably where this stuff should go.
  
• Buildings
  
  • HVAC - heating, ventilation and air conditioning
  • ERV - energy recovery ventilator (tweet with info)
  • Heat pump - shifts heat energy from one place to another. Your fridge is cooled by a heat pump. A heat pump is typically much more energy-efficient than just electrically heating a space (or water) - "For every unit of energy input, you get three units of output" (source.); improvement; improvement)
    • VRF systems ("heat pumps that serve multiple rooms and can provide cooling to one part of a building while heating another") (paywalled source)
    • HSPF / SEER metrics: "HSPF measures heat pump efficiency in heating mode, SEER measures heat pump efficiency in cooling mode." HSPF is "total heat output(BTUs), as compared to the total electricity consumed in watt hours during the same period. The HSPF is a heat pump’s heating version of SEER* or Seasonal Energy Efficiency Ratio." (source)

Urbanism (Urban policy) terms + acronym

• Induced demand (if you build more freeway lanes, the traffic to fill them will come (*)) (note, this doesn't happen for fancy housing)
• "missing middle" - When you have single family homes, and big apartment highrises, but all the more moderate density housing that could lie in between is legally unbuildable.
  • "Amsterdamnesia" (newly coined, for the 'rule' that politicians never realize that when the streets are changed to be more multimodal, that change will create its own constituency)
• "Affordable housing" means subsidized housing restricted to selected lower-income people. (more info, well explained, here ("Subsidies are, in effect, taxes on new housing. ..."); common source of stories like "850 applications submitted for 74 units" (source)
• in contrast, "Housing affordability" is about whether the price of market-rate housing in a city is within what non-rich people can afford; we get affordability when we have abundant housing.
• I think "Workforce housing" in a proposed development is boutique housing affordability (likely of insufficient scale), is that correct?
  
• National Association of City Transportation Officials (NACTO), who create design standards for roads, for parking, etc. (Not to be confused with NAKTO the low-cost e-bike maker)
  
• "Magpie architecture" (*) - making cool shiny things, that might not be good in other ways
  

Climate action denial, terms related to it

• 'Implicatory denial' - refusing to believe scientists' findings because we don't like the implications; and, there's now "exploitation of implicatory denial. We now have organized networks of people who deliberately try to stoke doubt...")
• Serengeti strategy - isolating and attacking
• 'Gish Gallop' - the tactic of burying a debate opponent under a pile of falsehoods, since it's quicker to state one than to refute it.
• Climate inactivism / climate delay / climate neglect / "carbonism"
• ""Business as usual" (BAU) means "let's keep on warming up until everything breaks". BAU = KWUEB ... It is a very very very bad plan." (source)
  
• "Republican climate closet" (link, via)
  
• "Block and tackle" (how the Koch brothers had dealt with Trump - block what they didn't like, tackle what they did)
  

Individual-action terms

• "the hair shirt future" - the kind of misguided comm. by climate activists that portrays the future as one of privation, and acts of individual sacrifice as how one should respond to the climate problem.
• "action-omission bias"(?) ('footprintism'?) - “Emitting carbon directly ourselves is [wrongly] perceived to be morally worse than not taking action to [help] reduce emissions caused by others — though the consequences are the same.” (source) For countries, this is illustrated by a country like Germany, which "could eliminate its production-based emissions entirely and it would scarcely make a dent in global emissions, whereas, for a tiny fraction of the cost, it could unilaterally double the global clean energy R&D budget and stimulate far more innovation, with arguably greater impact." (source)) For individuals, action-omission bias is more or less the same as "[individual footprint] action bias" (source), i.e. when you hear about a problem and your kneejerk response is to want to reduce your own direct contribution to it, rather than do things that will actually solve it. This can be manifested as preference for taking the bus instead of voting. (an alternative term in a decarbonization context would be "footprint-focused," for people who are only looking at their individual action, including extreme action, as consumers (which in no way is the path to global success), to tackle this huge global problem ). Working on this is fine if bookended by clarifications that it's just a doorway to the real effectiveness, which is policy/technology/politics. It's true that being a trailblazer can be very helpful, if you find out & report back on what works well and what needs to be easier. (link), and that knowledge informs improvements. Our goal should be to 'drive down the cost' (and increase the effectiveness) of doing the right thing - the goal is to work to make it scale up.
• "aspirational recycling" - contaminating the stream of recyclable goods by tossing the wrong items into the recycling bin and hoping somehow they’ll be taken care of (source)
• "crying Indian" was an example of "deflection" - industry managing to successfully shift responsibility for a problem to its gazillions of consumers. (And, given what we know of what human nature is like, when you are only one out of a gazillion, this makes the problem much much much harder to solve)

Unclear or misleading things that politicians and advocacy groups sometimes say, that might not mean what it sounds like they mean:

• typically, "Transition to 100% clean energy by [year]" (#ReadyFor100) actually means moving to getting electricity from 100% clean generation (i.e., it doesn't address our use of, e.g., gasoline in cars and trucks). It's "cleaning up the grid"; and cleaning up the grid does become a bigger task, the more that we "electrify everything" (autos, heating&cooking systems, etc). We need to do both.)
• "low to no carbon"
• "Get people out of their cars". Where, and into what? (get into Lyft / Uber / autonomous? or bus, or bikerent, or their own micromobility?)(what are advantages and disadvantages of people owning their own 'wheels'?(be they 1,2,3 or 4) How does intercity transit work, & what vehicles will occupy freeways? What can be done with minimal hit to quality of life, and what's achievable, given current transportation conditions?) And, what is safe for the traveler and nearby pedestrians.
• "Fight the effects of climate change" is a confusing way of saying Adapt, or Cope With. "Let's armor ourselves against what climate change will do, but, quietly not mention whether we're still making the global problem worse by continuing to dig up and burn fossil fuels." It's not good, to confuse taking this path with tackling climate change itself (by lowering atmospheric GHG emissions). Likewise a bad choice of wording (likewise a euphemism for Adapt) is if people say "mitigating the impact of climate change" or "mitigating the risks" when they mean just "preparing for" - it confuses the listener by blurring the distinction between climate mitigation(preventing) and climate adaptation(locally coping with). Example of this error: "mitigate the heat effects." (Do not say this.)
• While it sounds good to say that "Adaptation without first lowering emissions is misguided", this statement isn't strong enough, since what matters is CO2 concentration. If you are merely lowering emissions (turning down the "faucet" in the metaphorical bathtub), the CO2 concentration (water level in the tub) is likely still going up, the climate problem is still getting worse. A more correct statement (I think): "Adaptation without first taking the actions that will stabilize or lower our atmospheric GHG concentration is misguided".

Misc.

• Geoengineering vs. 'geofinessing'; satisficing
• "Definition of austral: of or relating to the southern hemisphere." ("Antonyms: septentrional, boreal, northern. Synonyms: meridional, southern.")
• Solastalgia

"Use this word, not that word" (or, Naming) suggestions for increased clarity etc:

• the Somerville/Hassol climate comm. recommendations pdf
• science comm. "use this term not that one" recommendations (from Carl Zimmer)
  
• plainlanguage.gov general recommendations (*)
  
• also see other tips in the 'writing tips' section of the 'general Comm tips' page
  
• a few tips mostly from me: (IMO these would be an improvement. But, the below suggestions have not been reviewed by anyone.)
  
  • Instead of "mitigate" - say Reduce or Cut instead, unless it's specifically about mitigating climate change, in which case you could say "Limit climate change", or consider using Decarbonize. The reason why: these choices make it clear what you mean. (Although our making this change isn't so great, it's a form of conceding, it's what you'd do if you can't successfully push back against public communicators' confusionary use of 'mitigate' in climate-related contexts where they actually mean Adapt.)
  • Use Specific or Tangible, instead of Concrete. (and? in place of "salient", either "important" or "prominent"? (gm)) (and also, if there's a clear on-the-ground distinction between strategy and tactics, I still haven't mastered it.)
  • "debunked" vs. "refuted"
  • 'Coinages': some tips for if you're creating a new name, term or hashtag (also see event tips on that):
    
    • Be kind to people with other interests, put some context into your hashtag. I recently clicked on "#VisionZero" thinking it meant zero carbon emissions, but the "no bicyclist or pedestrian fatalities in this city" people were using it. (This is indeed a worthy goal, but, let's compare that goal with the goal of zero carbon emissions...) It will also be more kind to historians - the 1990s' #MeToo "flood of clueless newbies from AOL onto the internet swamping its culture (& also of univ. freshmen in the fall)" problem is going to be hard to search for. Similarly, journalists using 'green' as a euphemism for marijuana.
    • there's a downside to choosing words or expressions that are catchy due to their rhyming (or other similarity) with something different: even when they may be completely clear in text, they will likely be mistaken for the other thing if spoken. Spoken communication matters too! e.g. "science/silence".
    • if it's a hashtag that's an agglomeration of abbreviated words, consider whether it will evoke something that's not aligned with its intended meaning - or otherwise create confusion. Don't try to create confusion.
    • if it's a multi-word title:
      
      • Consider how it sounds. If you're putting the words "in" and "action" next to each other, for example. Protected bike lane, not "cycle path".
      • Consider its acronym - how that will look, and sound. (also: you won't want to make it sound trivial, and you won't want to make it sound arrogant.)
      • If it's anything at all professional, please, don't alliterate - that's been done so, so much, that now it sounds distracting, tiresome and self-absorbed.
    • be aware that some words have more than one meaning. In a good-faith world this would be fine, but in a beavis&butthead-esque southpark denialist world, it's less so. Even 'clean' alternate meanings can be problematic, an example is here(link).
      
    • if you're creating a forum for others to participate in, when you name it, realize that you'll get less or no participation from people who aren't comfortable with the name you select. Maybe choose a relatively humble, straightforward name, not something aspirational that can come across as presumptuous. And maybe think twice about choosing coinages that are actively hostile to the whole terms-have-meanings communications enterprise.
      
    • (Also see the 'naming' tip at top of the "Event tips" page, and again, the Hassol/Somerville advice about climate comm for scientists, which also is of use for journalists (page) and other communicators. ) And there's more comm. stuff in the general "Communication tips" page
      
    • If you're choosing a name or a logo, for a forward-thinking organization, think about whether you want to use the name or image of a contraption that evokes the past, vs. one that evokes the future.
      
    • If you're just generally thinking of a name for something climate-change-related, think about what the name connotes, and if you want a bunch of names running around in the climate discourse that subliminally, gratuitously evoke disability or other diminution of power, that might reduce confidence in our power to curb climate change.
      

What factors make the weather in Northeast Siberia (Yakutia especially) so much colder than rest of the world? Temperatures seem to reach -60C (-76 F) every 2-3 years.
The area is at similiar latitude as other areas (Finland, Alaska, Canada) that don't seem to get quite so cold.