This is being discussed here, thought I'd show you this:
Use of the terms "Global Warming" vs. "Climate Change" in books
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Well, I have done some quick research, in anticipation of the State of the Union address tonight. I think you folks will get a kick out of this:
2002 SOTU: Mentions of "God": 2. Mentions of "global warming" or "climate change": 0.
2003 SOTU: Mentions of "God": 4. Mentions of "global warming" or "…
In the latest issue of the journal Public Understanding of Science, Lorraine Whitmarsh from the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research in the UK, publishes a study that finds that the terms "climate change" versus "global warming" matter to public perceptions. In a mail survey of a…
The New York Times' Andrew Revkin asks in his latest Dot Earth blog post if there might be "more effective ways to describe human-caused global warming." The problem with "global warming," he says, has been summed up by Seth Godin thusly:
The muted reaction to our impending disaster comes down to…
Bush's treatment of global warming in the State of the Union address was pretty uninspiring, unless you like vagaries. I have a Seed piece going up about this today so I won't say more, except to point out the actual language so you can see for yourself:
America is on the verge of technological…
If global warming is the cause, climate change is the effect. If one considers one's local climate, speaking of global warming might make one think that the effect would be their local climate getting warmer. If the actual local climate change caused by global warming is colder winters, this might be considered evidence against global warming. One often sees any local colder event cited as evidence against global warming.
Surely "global warming" is a type of climate change. Individual cold events are not climate change, because individual events are not climate. "Climate" is the long term average weather.
"Global warming" doesn't predict everywhere on the globe to get warmer. If a particular local climate gets colder, that's not evidence against global warming, it's just an irrelevant exception.
Greenhouse gases are the cause of "global warming" and (anthropogenic) "Climate change." Global warming is one aspect of the changes we can expect due to increased greenhouse gases.
Local climate is, of course, the local averages for the last 30 years at your place (back in the 1950's when I took courses in meterology and climatology, it was 40 years.) There are predictions about the results of global warming which say that some areas will get colder winters, more snow, etc. These predictions are not irrelevant exceptions. However, the naive person, who expects the effect of global warming to be a simple increase in average temperatures at their house, can think that predicted colder winters where they live are evidence against global warming.
I think that the term Climate Change is far more appropriate, even though it was proposed by Frank Luntz the Republican pollster to make it not seem so bad. Drought here, harsher winters there, carbon dioxide being absorbed at higher concentrations in the oceans, all results of a higher global average temperature.
I have come to the conclusion that we all have a little blame global warming and its consequences and guilt even more politicians who do not slow down.
http://www.globalwarmingweb.com/