Many scientists have come to prefer the term “climate change” over “global warming.” Climate change is a broader term that encompasses not only the warming of the planet in recent years but also the rise of severe storms, droughts and damaging winds. The choice of terms has important implications for polling because Americans give different answers to questions depending on which is used.
According to a report by the Yale Project on Climate Change Communication this week, the terms “are often not synonymous — they mean different things to different people, and activate different sets of beliefs, feelings, and behaviors.” While “climate change” makes many people think of general weather patterns — and natural fluctuations in temperature and precipitation — “global warming” tends to produce connotations of extreme weather.
When asked if climate change was a good or a bad thing, 63 percent of Americans said it was a bad thing, while 76 percent perceived global warming as a bad thing, a 13-point difference.
Global warming also conjured stronger negative responses in an open-ended question, especially among self-identified political moderates. Similarly, in another question, 60 percent of Hispanics said global warming would harm them personally, compared with 30 percent who said climate change would hurt them personally. One exception was self-identified Republicans; most are unconcerned about the issue, and their views do not change significantly based on the language used.
But Republican politicians clearly grasp the difference. In 2002, Frank Luntz, the Republican strategist, wrote a memorandum urging fellow Republicans to use the term “climate change.” He wrote that “while global warming has catastrophic communications attached to it, climate change sounds a more controllable and less emotional challenge.”
For pollsters, there is no perfect solution. We strive to design questions using wording that is technically accurate, politically neutral, and perhaps most important, easy for average people to comprehend. In the end, we’re attempting to measure public opinion based on what the public knows and understands.
Of course, people of different views disagree on the definition of politically neutral. For now, Anthony Leiserowitz, director for the Yale Project, said he would continue to use global warming in his polls because more Americans are familiar with it. Climate change remains more common in academic literature than public discourse.
But that may be changing. When the Yale Project began polling in 2008, global warming was clearly the dominant term. But since then, climate change has become more popular. The Yale Project’s report found that Americans are four times more likely to report that they hear the term global warming in public discourse, and twice as likely to personally use it. Yet they are equally familiar with both terms.
In the pages of The New York Times, climate change has already overtaken global warming. Last year, 959 articles mentioned climate change, compared with 463 articles that cited global warming. In 2006, by contrast, climate change was mentioned in 341 articles, and 750 articles mentioned global warming.
Mr. Leiserowitz thinks that in the future, the two terms may become interchangeable. If so, the gap in poll responses they produce is likely to narrow.
(For the record: global warming was used 13 times in this article; climate change was used 14 times.)