Climate Quiz

Hey folks, on the occasion of World Environment day, I am taking a break from the weekly newsletter and bringing to you a special edition Climate quiz!

On the occasion of World Environment Day, celebrated every year of June 5, we bring to you a climate quiz! This is a short 10 question quiz. Answers are at the end.

Hope you enjoy doing it as much as we enjoyed making it!

1. The price of this popular cooking ingredient, a key part of the Mediterranean diet and now popular throughout the world as a healthy cooking alternative, is reaching record levels. This is majorly due to a prolonged drought in Spain - a major producer and the largest exporter of this item - that has resulted in this season's harvest in Spain being 50% of the usual. What ingredient are we talking about? 

2. This European country (X) has recently banned short distance flights to and from its capital for routes where a train journey of less than 2.5 hours is available. This was done to reduce the number of flights as the carbon footprint of aviation is almost 6-20 times that of trains. This impacts a popular route from the country’s capital to a well known wine growing region Y. Identify X and Y. 

3. We learnt last month from the WMO (World Meteorological Organization) that world temperatures will likely breach the 1.5 deg increase over pre-industrial levels before 2027. The increase in global temperatures will also lead to increased heating of the world’s oceans. This could lead to the destruction of 70-90% of what oceanic mainstay, that supports 25% of all marine life?

4. This location in Italy, a UNESCO world heritage site, is visited by more than 5 mn tourists every year. A long period of extreme dry weather (no rainfall, prolonged drought) has impacted a popular activity that tourists undertake at this site. Identify the site and the activity.

5. Climate change has not only created new problems for humanity to deal with, but revived Biblical ones. In May 2018, an unusually powerful tropical cyclone made landfall over the Arabian peninsula, causing heavy rainfall over the Rub Al Khali (‘Empty Quarter’) desert. The warm, sandy soil was perfect for the hatching and breeding of X. Another tropical cyclone and a lack of focus due to the unrest in Yemen, led to uncontrolled growth of X through the next year. Propelled by a third cyclone in 2019, X reached East Africa and destroyed nearly half a million hectares of crops. Identify X.

6. The UK saw record heat waves in the summer of 2022. The July 2022 heat wave was the worst recording of the hottest day in the history of UK with a temperature of 40.3 deg. This led to all major supermarket chains including Tesco, Waitrose, Sainsbury’s, M&S etc. halting the sale of an item X, part of a popular outdoor activity in the summer, especially in parks and forests. A spokesperson for M&S said: "We'd already stopped selling X near national parks and in London. But given the unusually hot and dry conditions, we've taken the precautionary step of removing them from sale across the UK." What is X and what is the potential risk? 

7. The popular street artist X created an artwork named Y in 2009. He created this artwork by hijacking an 1890 painting of Mount Rainer in Seattle by German-American artist, Albert Bierstadt and painting an asterisk on top of the dormant volcano. He added a caption "Y for a limited period only" at the bottom borrowing a common phrase used for limited time offers. He was trying to pass on the message that our natural wonders may not last forever unless we take action to mitigate climate change. The painting is part of a series of ‘vandalised’ oil paintings by X and was auctioned in 2021. Identify X and Y. 

8. Forest Green Rovers are a club playing in the the 4th tier of English football, recognised by the UN as the “world’s first carbon-neutral football club” and by FIFA as the “greenest team in the world”. With 100% organic pitches and vegan food only, they’re planning to relocate to a new stadium, Eco Park. This 5000-seater stadium will be made almost entirely from what, described by them as “nature’s original renewable building material”?

9. Syukuro Manabe and Klaus Hasselmann were 2 of 3 winners for the 2021 Nobel Prize in which field (X)? The Nobel foundation cited “their pioneering work on developing climate models”. A 2022 Nature article lauded their work for rendering “the question ‘do you believe in global warming’ meaningless: whether the globe warms in response to greenhouse gas increases is determined by the X of energy balance.”

10. In May 2023, The Annual General Meeting of Barclays bank was interrupted by climate activists urging the bank to stop funding fossil fuel companies with the rendition of the song X by the popular 90s girl band Y. They then reworked the lyrics of the popular 1997 song to “Stop right now, no more oil and gas, stop burning fossil fuels and end this madness … hey you, burning up the Earth, gotta stop it now baby we have had enough … you dirty, dirty bank.” Identify X and Y. 

Hope you enjoyed the quiz! If this intrigues you and you are curious to know more about climate change and its impact on our lives, subscribe to my weekly newsletter!

Answers below the line.

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Answers

1. Olive oil

2. X: France; Y: Bordeaux

3. Coral reefs

4. Venice; Gondola rides

5. Desert locusts

6. X: Disposable barbecues; Risk: Starting forest fires

7. X: Banksy; Y: Subject to availability

8. Wood

9. Physics

10. X: Stop; Y: Spice girls