Briefly, here is my version of the story. Originally it was called climate change, mainly because the people who studied it were looking at the long term, and warming was only one direction in which climate changed. Then a subset of people started looking much more closely at anthropogenic global warming, and started to use that term where appropriate. But even then, the basic theory and much of the empirical evidence related to the study of global warming came from the broader field of climate science, which studies change in climate and its causes (aka climate change). So, there are two axes of understanding here. One is the broader field of climate change of which global warming study is a part, and the other is the broader theoretical framework of climate change, of which global warming is a more narrowly defined application.
But that’s not what anybody else says, and most of the origin stories are much sexier, involving secret meetings and conspiracies to control the message pro or against the science of climate change, er, global warming. And I do not doubt that at least some of these stories are at least partly true. But they are not stories that accurately describe or explain the origin of the uses of either term. At best, they are stories about attempts to shape the narrative by emphasizing or choosing exclusive use of one term or another for one reason or another.
The term “climate change” clearly predates “global warming.” This is because paleoclimatologists and the like were studying climate change for a long time. In the Google Ngram view, below, you can see spikes in “climate change” that related to key events in this study, including mainly its use in official government publications. In my own memory, climate change was used in scholarly work because those studying it were often looking at long term natural change.
As noted, every culture seems to have its own origin stories. Note that most cultures have multiple origin stories. For example, the six days of creation is the Abrahamic origin story for all things, the Garden of Eden story is the origin of sin and key moral distinctions, while the story of Noah is the origin of geographical diversity, and the tower of Biblos is the origin of linguistic diversity, etc.
This is a nice origin story, but there are a couple of things wrong with it. For one, the recognition of the phenomenon mentioned in story is very recent, dating to just the last few years, so it can not possibly explain anything about the two terms’ use. Second, even the phenomenon itself, the rise of quasi-resonant rossby waves caused by arctic amplification, is recent, much more recent than all the different stories about the origin of these terms, or changes in their use.
So what is this an introduction to? I plan to systematically go through a number of topics related to Global Warming (and more broadly climate change, to some extent) and provide up to date information and description. What are the components of “forcing,” what are the greenhouse gases, and why do some matter more than others? Why is sea level so important, and so incredibly interesting? What is the link between overall climate pattern and important events such as hurricanes and tornadoes, or whether we have a lot of snow or very little in a given winter? And so on.
I’ve always viewed this whole issue as a major distraction, but one I’ve always wanted to do a quick blog post on. So there it is.
A much more important point than all of this is to use, in developing messages, clear, strongly worded, scientifically accurate phases with action words in them. Like, “human-caused climate chaos” and “greenhouse gas pollution, released by humans, causing our planet to overheat” and so on.
Feel free to suggest your own ideas in the comments below!
Someone, I can’t think who at the moment, likes “HIRGO” — for Human-Induced Rapid Global Overheating.
I don’t like overheating too much because it sounds mild and easily fixed.
I think the late Dr. Stephen Schneider would have agreed with your version. He was involved in the formation of the Intergovernmental Panel — which was not named the IPGW when it was formed in 1988.
Frank Luntz’s well-known memo was not written until mid-2002.
Yes indeed, and note that both terms are used there.
As a rule, in science, subtract a few years from anything the ngram viewer gives you. Wally’s article is in a peer reviewed journal, not covered by that Google database. You need to wait for the book, which is not as timely!
Broeker nailed it, didn’t he? Not bad at all for 1975.
I agree that Broeker had nailed it his warnings about prodding the beast went unheeded by those with the influence to do something.
As politically events across the globe take a decided downturn with a strengthening of right wing even fascist grip on the zeitgeist I am not sanguine about humans getting to grips RSN (Real Soon Now) with the multiple wicked problems we have created.