Americans Worry More About "Global Warming" Than "Climate Change"

[Zato-1]

"Funnily enough, the same trick apparently works when it comes to global warming. Or should I say climate change? According to a recent study at Yale, using one phrase or the other can have a deep effect on how Americans specifically view what is literally the same problem."

Sure, Climatologists may be referring to the same process by using Climate Change and Global Warming interchangeably... but given how prevalent the topic is, it's not just climatologists, but also politicians, the media and laymen who discuss the topic. For the vast majority of these people, Climate Change is the worse, more frustrating term; it's a catch-all, because climate is always changing (How is it changing? Where is it changing? On what time scale is it changing?), even without human intervention- and thus it cannot be proven to be wrong in normal conversation, even if we were not contributing to this change at all, or for past periods of time when we were definitely not affecting the climate noticeably. But it is also frustrating for those who are deeply concerned with the issue, as the name Climate Change fails to convey the subject of their worries effectively.

For Climatologists, Climate Change may be fine as a term, but for everyone else, I consider it to be toxic to discussion and understanding, and I hope people stop using it.

 

[PunkRex]

Although the thought of 'repackaging' science to reach the widest audience worries me, the same is true for almost everything else in life so... let's really shake them up, call it DOOM STORMS OR COMMUNIST GAS BUILD UP!!!

 

[ColaWarVeteran]

No surprise to those study results. Nothing we didn't basically already know.

We ARE talking about the same country whose citizens were easily fooled by rewording such as "not tor-ture but enhanced inter-rogation", "not civilian cas-ualties but en-emy comb-atants", "not corporate welfare but subsidies" as well as some of the more recent situations of the rich not being held liable for crim-inal acts because they're "suffering from Affluenza".

What country are you talking about? Here in the United States none of the news organizations I listen to ever reworded those topics.

 

[Kuala BangoDango]

No surprise to those study results. Nothing we didn't basically already know.

We ARE talking about the same country whose citizens were easily fooled by rewording such as "not tor-ture but enhanced inter-rogation", "not civilian cas-ualties but en-emy comb-atants", "not corporate welfare but subsidies" as well as some of the more recent situations of the rich not being held liable for crim-inal acts because they're "suffering from Affluenza".

What country are you talking about? Here in the United States none of the news organizations I listen to ever reworded those topics.

I never said the News people changed the terms, though they certainly help push them along. The government (with the help of PR groups or whatnot) changed most of them while lawyers (always willing to throw in confusing terminology to trick people into seeing their way) did some more...such as the "Affluenza" term.

 

[Tumedus]

Those terms do not mean the same thing.

Global warming: the increase in Earth?s average surface temperature due to rising levels of greenhouse gases.

Climate change: a long-term change in the Earth?s climate, or of a region on Earth.

They are interchangeable only insomuch as global Warming is one of the primary causes of man made climate change and therefore both are on topic when discussing the actions we must take to minimize our global warming.

 

[cthulhuspawn82]

People freaking out about the weather is a product of human short-sightedness due to a small life span. They are afraid when things change from "the way they have always been", but they way they have always been in the short life of our species matters little to a 4.5 billion year old planet. The entire history of our species is a footnote in earths history.