“They” changed the term global warming to climate change because the planet is not warming is an oft-repeated talking point of those, such as US President Donald Trump, who cast doubt on the reality of rising temperatures.
This claim is demonstrably incorrect, nevermind that it’s unclear who “they” are.
The gradual change in preferred terminology from global warming to climate change began about a decade ago because that’s what the scientific community and governmental institutions called for. It also happened to be the preference of the George W. Bush White House. Temperatures never stopped rising.
No matter the reality, Trump has now twice uttered this falsehood. In 2013, he tweeted: “They changed the name from ‘global warming” to ‘climate change’ after the term global warming just wasn’t working (it was too cold)!”
Then, in an interview with Piers Morgan last week, when asked about his belief in climate change, he responded: “There is a cooling, and there is a heating, and I mean, look — it used to not be climate change. It used to be global warming. . . . That wasn’t working too well, because it was getting too cold all over the place.”
Trump apparently missed the joint NOAA (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration) and Nasa (National Aeronautics and Space Administration) news release earlier this month that showed the four warmest years on record have occurred in the last four years. “The planet is warming remarkably uniformly,” Gavin Schmidt, director of Nasa’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, told reporters.
When the preferred terminology for the planet’s rising temperatures pivoted some years ago, it had nothing to do with thermometers.
In 2005, the National Academies of Sciences published a pamphlet that expressed the viewpoint climate change was a more scientifically comprehensive description of what was happening to the planet. “The phrase ‘climate change’ is growing in preferred use to ‘global warming’ because it helps convey that there are changes in addition to rising temperatures,” it said.
Shortly thereafter, in 2006, the Environmental Protection Agency changed the name of its popular website on the issue from its “global warming” to “climate climate” site. It plastered the National Academies quote on climate change’s superiority on the front page as rationale.
“The contentious phrase global warming, first used by United Press International in 1969, seems to be undergoing a certain cooling; contrariwise, the more temperate phrase climate change is getting hot,” wrote the New York Times’ late William Safire, in his On Language column in 2005.
In the years prior, the George W. Bush administration had also expressed a clear preference for the term “climate change.” In speeches on the issue, Bush referred to “global climate change” and never mentioned global warming. His administration formed “climate change” science and technology programmes. There may well have been political motivation to change the name, as The Washington Post’s Philip Bump wrote:
“In 2002, Republican consultant Frank Luntz wrote a memo arguing that Republicans start using the latter term. ‘Climate change’ is less frightening than ‘global warming,’ “ he wrote. ‘While global warming has catastrophic connotations attached to it, climate change suggests a more controllable and less emotional challenge.’ “
Even years before this, international institutions had paved the way for climate change to eventually become the prevalent term. The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change was negotiated in 1992 and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change was established in 1988.
Global warming saw its ascension in 1988 when Nasa scientist James E. Hansen testified before Congress that “global warming has reached a level such that we can ascribe with a high degree of confidence a cause and effect relationship between the greenhouse effect and the observed warming.” His testimony generated massive media coverage and popularised the term.
While global warming was eclipsed by climate change decades later, it remains a valuable term that accurately and directly describes what’s happening to the planet’s temperature over time.
— Washington Post
Jason Samenow is weather editor of the Washington Post. From 2000 to September 2010, he worked as a climate change analyst for the US government.
