Damage Control: CNN Explains “Global Warming” Does Not Always Mean Warming

Guest essay by Eric Worrall

According to CNN we should remember global warming also causes global cooling, and that any confusion is the fault of the Republicans.

Is it climate change or global warming? How science and a secret memo shaped the answer

By Jen Christensen, CNN
Updated 1423 GMT (2223 HKT) March 2, 2019

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It’s complicated

“The term ‘global warming’ confuses people because it triggers thoughts about warmth, and it sort of lends itself to misinterpretation when it also impacts the cold,” said Mike Hulme, a professor of human geography at the University of Cambridge whose work focuses on the way climate change is discussed in public and political conversations.

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“You could think of global warming as the large macroperspective phenomenon,” said Naomi Oreskes, a professor of the history of science and an affiliated professor of Earth and planetary sciences at Harvard University who focuses on climate change. “Climate is more complicated.”The term ‘global warming’ also doesn’t get at how it impacts weather locally and regionally.”

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In 2002, GOP strategist Frank Luntz sent a memo to Republican candidates to create an environmental strategy. He argued that the environment is “probably the single issue on which Republicans in general — and President George W. Bush in particular — are most vulnerable.”

The memo suggests that candidates express their “sincerity and concern” about the environment, but he also wanted them to downplay concerns.

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So, which is it?

When people ask Yale’s Leiserowitz whether it’s climate change or global warming, he tells them he uses both. 

“The key thing about terms like this is, they are plastic. Or, well, maybe since we are talking about the environment, we should say words are renewable organic latex or something,” Leiserowitz joked. “Essentially, meaning changes.”

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Read more: https://edition.cnn.com/2019/03/02/world/global-warming-climate-change-language-scn/index.html

The CNN article left out another interesting memo from Climategate, in which the climate scientists themselves discussed the marketing advantages of switching from using “Global Warming” to “Climate Change”;

date: Sat, 21 Feb 2004 10:53:26 -0000
from: “Bo Kjellen” [redacted]
subject: RE: FWD: Abrupt Climate Change
to: “‘Asher Minns'” [redacted], [redacted], [redacted]

Dear Asher, and all,

I think this is a real problem, and I agree with Nick that climate change might be a better labelling than global warming. But somehow I also feel that one needs to add the dimension of the earth system, and the fact that human beings for the first time ever are able to impact on that system. That is why the IGBP in a recent publication “Global Change and the Earth System” underline that we now live in the anthropocene period. Climate change is one of the central elements of this process, but not the only one: loss of biological diversity, water stress, land degradation with loss of topsoil, etc etc all form part of this – and they are all linked in some way or another. Therefore a central message probably has to be that humans are now interfering with extremely large and heavy global systems, of which we know relatively little: we are in a totally new situation for the human species, and our impact added to all the natural variations that exist risks to unsettle subtle balances and create tensions within the systems which might also lead to “flip-over” effects with short-term consequences that might be very dangerous.

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Climategate Email 4141.txt

It is possible that when climate scientists wrote the 2004 Climategate email they were worried that the abrupt drop in temperatures since 1998 would continue.