Was "global warming" changed to "climate change"?

04-22-2009, 09:51 PM

It's seemed to me the terms have always been used interchangeably.

From 1975: "Climatic Change: Are We on the Brink of a Pronounced Global Warming?"
http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/189/4201/460

From 1979: "if carbon dioxide continues to increase, [we find] no reason to doubt that climate changes will result"
http://globalclimatechange.jpl.nasa.gov/news/index.cfm?FuseAction=ShowNews&NewsID=32

Why do so many people insist on giving so much significance to whether one term is used over another? People say it's so scientists can say that even if it gets cold, they can still say they were right, completely ignoring the actual definition: that climate change is the effect of global warming. If the planet changes its temperature, other changes in the climate system result:
http://dels.nas.edu/dels/rpt_briefs/climate_change_2008_final.pdf
http://www.epa.gov/climatechange/fq/science.html#2

I've asked this before. Can anyone provide a scrap of evidence that the above sources are wrong, and that the name was in fact recently changed?

Can anyone provide me with a single source showing how a scientist decided to start calling it 'climate change' because he/she wasn't sure if it was going to get warmer or colder? Isn't every AGW scientist saying it will get warmer, and only saying it will get warmer?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Global_Warming_Predictions.png

Is this quite possibly the single worst argument the skeptics make?
Oh, sorry: "That is the question"

**panurge2** · 04-22-2009, 09:52 PM

Actually, global warming causes climate change, not the other way around.

04-22-2009, 09:52 PM

either is fine. or you could use B.S., hoo doo, flim flam, or made up crap.

04-22-2009, 09:52 PM

either is fine. or you could use B.S., hoo doo, flim flam, or made up crap.

04-22-2009, 09:53 PM

It will always be global warming

04-22-2009, 09:53 PM

global warming is the same thing as climate change. if the earth gets a lot warmer, the climate has changed. climate change is just a more general way of naming the problem, for instance, it could aloso mean, say, the climate got waaaay colder, like another ice age, which, ironically, according to some, global warming could cause.