Climate change is an altered term from a focus group tested phrase for global warming

Climate change

"according to an assessment of 21 surveys encompassing almost 20,00 people in 46 states, . . . found ample agreement about global warming and what to do about it. In each state a majority of those polled believe that temperatures are rising and that human actions are part of the cause– . . ."

Mark Fischetti, "On Climate the People Agree," Scientific American, April 2014, p. 92.

Climate change as a phrase replaced global warming based on a conservative, if not a reactionary use of focus group responses to varies ways to describe the "greenhouse effect." Members of any focus group are usually paid for their time and opinions.

Thus this media experience created a replacement term for global warming because from many of the respondents in the focus group, these two words climate and change sounded much less threatening than did global warming. [*]

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A contemporary journalist distinguishes the two phrases .

The political intent to misrepresent the urgency was deliberate since the focus group was hired as part of a marketing approach to explaining policies to the public. Among the policies that affect air pollution that in part drives climate change are both direct and indirect policies. Direct policies are related to energy, electrical generating, and fuel efficiency standards but indirectly government programs for farm price supports, gasoline taxes, or subsidies for nuclear or coal fuel use all influence conditions we associate with abrupt climate change.

terms | greenhouse gases | geology | history | impacts | nations | action | sources

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Defining terms.

Climate Change means:

• the long-term, ongoing alteration of local weather, temperature, soil moisture and precipitation patterns as a result of added carbon dioxide exhaust becoming trapped in the oceans and atmosphere. The Earth’s atmosphere acts like heat trapping glass by absorbing solar radiation. Global temperature anomalies

• the more accurate terminology for global warming, Global Climate Change , or the "greenhouse effect" as an appreciable increase in the so called greenhouse gases due, in most part, to industrial exhaust.

Do see also.

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• by green house gases the term includes the following molecules: nitrous oxide N2O methane CH4 carbon dioxide CO2 Although water in the form of water vapor, H2O, is a heat trapping gas, it responds to temperature increase or decrease and does not trigger such changes. Clouds and the Earth's Radiant Energy System.

• Those key greenhouse gas increases were without question caused by human activities. . . . The spike in those concentrations–carbon dioxide and methane––came with the rise of industrial human activity is absolutely striking. And we know in fact that humans are responsible for the CO-2 spike, because fossil CO-2 lacks carbon-14, and you can actually see the signal of the dilution of the atmospheric concentration of carbon-14 overtime as fossil fuel burning grew."

John Holdren, "Meeting the Climate Change Challenge," January 17. 2008, pp, 7-8.

• under the recently negotiated, Kyoto Protocol (1998) regulated emissions to include these six greenhouse gases controlled by the Kyoto Protocol: Carbon dioxide CO2 methane CH4 nitrous oxide N2O * hydrofluorocarbons HFCs perfluorocarbons PFCs (CF4, C2F6) SF6 * The last three are produced in tiny quantities for industrial purposes, but can be very, very powerful per kilogram.

• the last in a series of dramatic, usually -- but not necessarily -- abrupt, prolonged reconfiguration of recurrent weather patterns based on the increased long wave radiation retained (heat) in the atmosphere and the seas due to the gaseous release of once fossilized carbon molecules. NOAA/OGP El Ni—o-Southern Oscillation Page

One signature of unusually warm periods is the increase in the volumetric concentration of carbon dioxide gas or CO2.

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"A quick word here about definitions: although the terms global warming and climate change are often used interchangeably, a critical difference exists between them. In this book, global warming refers to the man-made rise in temperature caused by excessive amounts of carbon dioxide, methane, and other greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. Climate change, on the other hand, to the effects these higher temperatures have on the earth's natural systems, and the impacts that can result:"

p. 5. Mark Hertsgaard. Hot: Living through the Next Fifty Years on Earth. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, Harcourt, 2011.

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Geology

During the geological past the Earth’s surface temperatures have varied due to natural conditions such as the distending of the planetary orbit or the wobble of the earth on its axis. Only since the recent industrial revolution based on use of fossil fuels (high in solid carbon when burned produces CO2) has the temperature been rising due to an additional human contribution of greenhouse gases.

When climate has changed in the past serious consequences occurred for inhabitants of vulnerable areas. Sourcebook on Economic Losses

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Past examples which abruptly altered ecological and social stability due to climate include:

• interglacial warming 30,000 years ago ( high CO2 levels ).

• end of the Wisconsin glaciation 10,000 years ago.

• deterioration of the ancient climatic optimum 1,700 years ago.

• alteration of the flow of the Hwang-Ho (Yellow) River: c. 600 AD.

• prolonged drought in the U.S. Southwest: 1200 - 1270 AD.

• onset of the "little Ice Age" in the North Atlantic: 1300 - 1870 AD.

• dust bowl; US Great Plains drought: 1930s, Dust Bowl:

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Climate change or "global warming" has serious consequences for salmon streams.

• an environmental problem with technologically based causes that can be addressed in a series of personal, social and technical measures thereby insuring against risks associated with flooding, health threats, temperature inversions, and stormy weather.

EPA Global Warming Site: Site Map

• countries differ greatly in the per capita emission of carbon dioxide, averaging 1.15 tonnes of CO2 per person annually.

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Carbon dioxide emissions by nations every year:

	places	tonnes/ person annually
1	Qatar	10.3

2	USA	5.37

3	Canada	4.32

4	Czech Republic	3.95

5	Russia	3.63

6	United Kingdom	2.70

7	Cambodia	.02

8	Bangladesh	.03

Imagery showing the proportional increases in population in seventy-five years

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The recommended actions include three degrees of responses.

These are three graduated steps to reducing risks from abrupt climate change:

1) Minimal - reduce consumption, plant trees, car pool, walk, bicycle.

2) No regrets - increased fuel efficiency of appliances and motor vehicles, develop alternative fuels for electrical generation and transportation, true cost accounting techniques applied to water and energy resources, CO2 reduction plans, utility rebates for using energy saving appliances.

3) Reindustrialization - cluster heat using and dispensing operations, urban transportation redesign for mass efficiency and safety, sea walls and flood plain zoning, hydrogen fuel, solar and thermal waste recovery systems, energy efficiency rebates, pollution and carbon fuel taxes, investment incentives.

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Zero emission society!

Join the national campaign to have candidates address these issues in the coming election. Information available from: Web Sites Master directory
The Global Change Master Directory

Long term consequences

links

Hadley Center (UK)
UK Climate
National Academy of the Sciences
NAS Council Statement on Petition on Global ChaÉ U.S. EPA Global Warming: Climate Change and Florida FICUS Florida Internet Center for Understanding SustaÉ
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change
IPCC Working Group II Home Page

Natural Resources Defense Council
NRDC Online's Homepage
World Wildlife Fund
Welcome to WWF: saving life on earth

Florida Solar Energy Center
Florida Solar Energy Center
Friends of the Earth
News Update
PIRG Public Interest Research Group
PIRG: Global Warming
FCAN Florida Consumer Action Network
HREF="http://www.fcan.org/">Click here: Florida Consumer Action Network Home Page
Join the national campaign to have candidates address these issues in the election.

TAKE ACTION
Write Congress to support the Carbon cap and trade laws:
Congressional Directory -- Congress.Org

You can and should make a difference.

"Clearly, citizens of industrialized countries have much more substantial, per capita CO2 emissions from fuel combustion than do citizens of poorer countries."

Freedman, p. 47.

"It is well established that human activities have caused a large reduction in the global coverage of mature forest and that this effect has resulted in a large flux of CO2 to the atmosphere."

Ibid., pp. 47-48.

"In the last three decades, for example, the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has increased more than 10 per cent, from about 315 to more than 350 parts per million."

McKibben, p. 5.

"All of these escalating climate extremes share a common source, according to the overwhelming consensus of scientific thought: they are nature's expression of the early stages of the heating of the atmosphere."

Gelbspan, p. 3.

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For further information read:

Frank Luntz, Straight Talk (a political phrase analyst and Republican campaign consultant).

"We have spent the last seven years examining how best to communicate complicated ideas and controversial subjects. The terminology in the upcoming environmental debate needs refinement, starting with “global warming’’ and ending with "environmentalism,’’ It’s time for us to start talking about “climate change” instead of global warming and “conservation” instead of preservation.

1. 'Climate change' is less frightening than 'global warming; ' As one focus group participant noted, climate change “sounds like you’re going from Pittsburgh to Fort Lauderdale.” While global warming has catastrophic connotations attached to it, climate change suggests a more controllable and less emotional challenge."

Frank Luntz, Straight Talk, The Luntz Research Companies: 2004, p. 142.

Print sources are:

Bill Freedman, Environmental Ecology, (San Diego: Academic Press, 1989) pp. 46-61.

Houghton, R. A. "The Role of Forests in affecting the greenhouse gas composition of the Atmosphere," Global Climate Change and Life on Earth, ed. by R. C. Wyman, (New York: Routledge, 1991), pp. 43-56.

Keeling, & Whorf, "Mauna Loa." in Trends '91. A Compendium of Data on Global Change, (Carbon Dioxide Information Center: Oak Ridge, Tennessee. 1991), pp. 12-15.

Ross Gelbspan, The Heat is On, (Reading, Mass.: Perseus Books, 1997-98).

Bill McKibben, The End of Nature, (New York: Anchor: Doubleday, 1989).

IPCC, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Climate Change, 1995, 3 Volumes (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1996).

A. J. McMichael, Planetary Overload, (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1993), pp. 132-173.

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Online Sources are:

The Global Warming Debate
Library of Congress Home Page
PBS Online
Energy Note
U.S. Geological Survey
The Committee for the National Institute for the Environment
Environmental Working Group
State & Local Climate Change
Environmental Resources
EnviroLink Home Page
Welcome to EnviroWorld

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