Global warming is a topic of contention for many people. This winter has skeptics high on their soap boxes spouting phrases such as “I thought this was global warming, why is the temperature outside negative 45°?” And when researchers studying global warming get stuck in Antarctic ice, skeptics are given a little more fuel for their fire.
Global warming refers to surface temperature increases, while climate change includes global warming and everything else that increasing greenhouse gas amounts will affect. The Earth’s temperature has risen about 2°, while this may not seem significant it is enough to contribute in climate changes such as the number or warm and cold days, the level of the sea, widespread decreases in snow and ice, as well as some extreme weather conditions such as hurricanes, tornados, droughts and flooding.
When NASA scientist James E. Hansen testified to Congress about climate he used the term “global warming” and the popularity of the term exploded. Unfortunately these phrases are casually used interchangeably although they are not the same. But would skeptics listen if it wasn’t called Global Warming? What if it was called solely climate change?
Well, it depends. There is a lot of ignorance to global warming because of the name, those people could possibly be persuaded to the facts of global warming if the “climate change” became the buzz, but there are many skeptics with valid points. The informed skeptics are quite knowledgeable and a name change won’t influence them.
Global Warming vs Climate Change
