User:Mu301/Climate change

Global Warming vs. Climate Change

See What's in a Name? Global Warming vs. Climate Change for an overview of how the terminology has changed over time. (through 2008)

There has been a significant shift in search engine "hits" for the two phrases with a crossover point about five years ago where CC became more common than GW[1][2] and a similar longer term trend occurring earlier in books.[3]

Academic publications

The references in this list analyze popular usage and perceptions of the terminology. Some are written from the perspective of strategic communication while others merely try to understand how different demographic groups understand the terms. Many of the studies are out of date as usage has evolved recently. There are few recent (since 2015) works in this area. I tried to select quotes that define or compare the most common phrases. They are not intended to summarize the conclusions of the sources.

Sources are listed in chronological order with most recent at the top.

• Majdik, Zoltan P (2019). "A Computational Approach to Assessing Rhetorical Effectiveness: Agentic Framing of Climate Change in the Congressional Record, 1994–2016". Technical Communication Quarterly. 28 (3): 207–222. doi:10.1080/10572252.2019.1601774. The term 'global warming' is included to capture documents, particularly those in the early years of the dataset, that still used this term over 'climate change.'

• Reser, Joseph P.; Graham L., Bradley (September 26, 2017). "Fear Appeals in Climate Change Communication". Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Climate Science. doi:10.1093/acrefore/9780190228620.013.386. ISBN 9780190228620. If we step back from 'fear appeals' and consider the nature, multiple referents, and meanings of 'climate change' and 'global warming' as they have emerged and morphed over the past half century, it is clear that 'climate change' encompasses much more than global atmospheric and climatic pattern changes...

• Benjamin, Daniel; Han-Hui, Por; Budescu, David (August 1, 2017). "Climate Change Versus Global Warming: Who Is Susceptible to the Framing of Climate Change?". Environment and Behavior. 49 (7): 745–770. doi:10.1177/0013916516664382. The terms global warming and climate change are often used interchangeably, but recent research finds 'global warming' has become more emotive and more polarizing, resulting in less advocacy by some subpopulations.

• Schuldt, Jonathon P.; Enns, Peter K.; Cavaliere, Victoria (2017-07-01). "Does the label really matter? Evidence that the US public continues to doubt "global warming" more than "climate change"". Climatic Change. 143 (1): 271–280. Bibcode:2017ClCh..143..271S. doi:10.1007/s10584-017-1993-1. ISSN 1573-1480. In general, global warming refers to the rising global average surface-level temperatures that scientists have linked to human activities (chiefly, fossil fuel combustion that creates heat-trapping greenhouse gases), whereas climate change encompasses broader changes to the state or variability of the climate (e.g., increased precipitation, ocean acidification)

• Weber, Elke U. (2016). "What shapes perceptions of climate change? New research since 2010". Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews: Climate Change. 7 (1): 125–134. doi:10.1002/wcc.377. ISSN 1757-7799. Even though climate scientists distinguish between climate change (CC) and global warming (GW) (with CC being the more general term that refers to changes in a broad range of climate conditions over time and GW referring to only the global earth temperature increase aspect of climate change), the general public and the media often use the two terms interchangeably.

• Lineman, Maurice; Do, Yuno; Kim, Ji Yoon; Joo, Gea-Jae (September 29, 2015). "Talking about Climate Change and Global Warming". PLoS ONE. 10 (9): 9. Bibcode:2015PLoSO..1038996L. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0138996. PMC 4587979. PMID 26418127. Global warming is defined as the long-term trend of increasing average global temperatures; alternatively, climate change is defined as a change in global or regional climate patterns, in particular a change apparent from the mid to late 20^th century onwards and attributed to the increased levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide arising from the use of fossil fuels.{{cite journal}}: CS1 maint: unflagged free DOI (link)

• MoJang, S.; Sol Hart, P. (May 2015). "Polarized frames on 'climate change' and 'global warming' across countries and states: Evidence from Twitter big data". Global Environmental Change. 32: 11–17. doi:10.1016/j.gloenvcha.2015.02.010. Furthermore, this study examines the usage pattern of the seemingly interchangeable terms, 'climate change' and 'global warming.'

• Schuldt, Jonathon P.; Roh, Sungjong; Schwarz, Norbert (March 1, 2015). "Questionnaire Design Effects in Climate Change Surveys: Implications for the Partisan Divide" (PDF). The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science. 658 (1): 67–85. doi:10.1177/0002716214555066. Various terms — including 'global warming,' 'climate change,' 'global climate change,' and 'the greenhouse effect' — are routinely used in climate surveys in a more or less interchangeable manner, yet scholars have only recently begun documenting the different ways that the general public reacts to these terms.

• Capstick, Stuart; Whitmarsh, Lorraine; Poortinga, Wouter; Pidgeon, Nick; Upham, Paul (2015). "International trends in public perceptions of climate change over the past quarter century" (PDF). WIREs Climate Change. 6: 35–61. doi:10.1002/wcc.321. Early studies in particular, and some continuing work in the United States and elsewhere, have used the terms 'global warming' and 'greenhouse effect' synonymously with 'climate change'. For consistency, throughout this review we use only the latter term, while acknowledging that variations in terminology can lead to different types of responses from public participants,^37–39 a point to which we return later.

• Leiserowitz, A.; Feinberg, G.; Rosenthal, S.; Smith, N.; Anderson, A.; Roser-Renouf, C.; Maibach, E. (2014). What’s In A Name? Global Warming vs. Climate Change (PDF) (Report). Yale Project on Climate Change Communication. Scientists often prefer the term climate change for technical reasons, but should be aware that the two terms generate different interpretations among the general public and specific subgroups.

• Schuldt, Jonathon P.; Roh, Sungjong (2014). "Of Accessibility and Applicability: How Heat-Related Cues Affect Belief in 'Global Warming' Versus 'Climate Change'". Social Cognition. 32 (3): 217–238. doi:10.1521/soco.2014.32.3.217. Although their technical meanings differ (i.e., global warming refers to increases in average global surface-level temperatures; in contrast, climate change encompasses myriad altered climatic patterns resulting from anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions; Environmental Protection Agency [EPA], 2012), these terms are frequently used interchangeably in public discourse, including in news stories and national surveys on global climate change (e.g., Program on International Policy Attitudes [PIPA] and Knowledge Networks, 2005; Voorhees, 2012).

• Diaz, Denise (Spring 2014). 'Global Warming' and 'Climate Change' A corpus driven cognitive linguistic comparison (PDF) (M.A.). San Francisco State University. This is a corpus driven cognitive linguistic comparison of the nearly synonymous fixed phrases 'global warming' and 'climate change' to investigate the metaphors that currently structure these terms.

• Villar, Ana; Krosnick, Jon A. (March 2011). "Global warming vs. climate change, taxes vs. prices: Does word choice matter?". Climatic Change. 105 (1–2): 1–12. Bibcode:2011ClCh..105....1V. doi:10.1007/s10584-010-9882-x. On the whole, then, the present findings suggest that the choice of global warming vs. climate change has had little if any impact on national-level perceptions of the seriousness of the problem.

• Schuldt, Jonathon P.; Konrath, Sara H.; Schwarz, Norbert (Spring 2011). "'Global warming' or 'climate change'? Whether the planet is warming depends on question wording". Public Opinion Quarterly. 75 (1): 115–124. doi:10.1093/poq/nfq073. At present, survey researchers' choice of term seems somewhat haphazard—some surveys refer to the phenomenon as 'global warming' (e.g., CBS News and New York Times 2006), others as 'climate change' (e.g., Bloomberg 2009), and still others use the terms simultaneously (e.g., 'global warming or climate change'; PIPA/Knowledge Networks 2005).

• Grundmann, Reiner; Krishnamurthy, Ramesh (2010). "The discourse of climate change: a corpus-based approach" (PDF). Critical Approaches to Discourse Analysis Across Disciplines. 4 (2): 125–146. We noted significant differences in the frequency of search terms. The US discourse is highly dependent on the specific term used. It makes a big difference whether the term global warming or climate change is used.

• Whitmarsh, Lorraine (July 1, 2009). "What's in a name? Commonalities and differences in public understanding of 'climate change' and 'global warming'" (PDF). Public Understanding of Science. 18 (4): 401–420. doi:10.1177/0963662506073088. In this article I have argued for the need to distinguish genuine understanding of the causes and implications of climate change/global warming from superficial recognition of abstract terms used in survey checklists.

• Center for Research on Environmental Decisions (2009). The Psychology of Climate Change Communication: A Guide for Scientists, Journalists, Educators, Political Aides, and the Interested Public (PDF) (Report). Columbia University in the City of New York. p. 2. Climate change is a better choice than the term global warming because it avoids the misleading implications that every region of the world is warming uniformly and that the only dangerous outcome of growing greenhouse gas emissions is higher temperatures, when that, in fact, is just the tipping point for a cascade of changes in the earth's ecosystems.

• Wilson, Kris M. (January 1, 2000). "Drought, debate, and uncertainty: measuring reporters' knowledge and ignorance about climate change". Public Understanding of Science. 9 (1): 1–13. doi:10.1088/0963-6625/9/1/301. News reporting on global climate change, formerly known as global warming, first peaked in 1988⁵ declined in the early 1990s, and then resurfaced on most news agendas in late 1997.