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Comment by fsloth | Hacker News Reader

You could start calling it global warming. Climate change was brought forward as a term to make it sound less frightening to the voting population.

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Average people don't understand local variability or averages. They hear "global warming" and think that means every place must be hot at once. There's the stellar example of a congress critter bringing a snowball in and claiming that disproved global warming. Now, climate chaos or something like that might be a better way to convey what's in store. Average people need to understand it better as simply energy added to a system making it increasingly unstable and unpredictable.

Correct – more effective terms are climate crisis, climate chaos, climate emergency.

That particular ship, and the inherent confusion caused by people not understanding that weather isn't climate, has long sailed.

Recently people have been suggesting "climate crisis" which isn't going to help on the "less frightening" aspect, but I think that's a feature.

I thought climate change was preferred as being more accurate than global warming, since not all regions will be warmer, some will actually become colder as things like the jet stream evolve.

Global warming is accurate, the problem is people confuse weather with climate.

A global warming trend means more energy in the atmosphere, which in turn leads to higher weather variability, bigger storms etc. It doesn't mean everywhere on the planet will get a higher (pick your temperature statistic).

I always thought that "climate change" was coined to be harder to dispute for laypeople. A global warming denier can point to a chilly day, or a day of snow, and say "some global warming, huh?" because they are ignorant of the concept of global average temperature. Much harder when the it's phrased as climate change — snow certainly isn't warm, but can one really argue that it is a counterargument to the existence of change?

Maybe climate war? That should start a fight and open pockets..

Sadly half kidding..

The Guardian’s current styleguide suggests “global heating” instead of “global warming”, and “climate emergency” to replace “climate change”.

I think more semantic arguments only detract from action at this point. It's already an "emergency" according to a number of official organizations.

Showing more physical evidence and pushing developed plans is the only way forward I can see.

How concepts are communicated matters a great deal, because one of the primary obstacles is simply lack of awareness and education about the graveness of the threat facing humanity. We have decades worth of very good physical evidence that hasn't changed much yet on its own. Disinformation tactics have been very effective so far. I'm sure people will start paying attention more when the northern ice cap goes away (though since we live in an age where flat earth theories are gaining followers, it's easy to dismiss anything as fake for some conspiracy nuts). However, waiting at all for more dramatic physical manifestations is far too long. There are also many solid plans being worked on that simply need money and support. So again, what matters is how the concepts are conveyed to the lay public. Politicians are not going to fix this until they're afraid of losing elections over it. And even then it's more likely that they'll make token gestures such as declaring emergencies without making any real, drastic changes.

> You could start calling it global warming.

Except that the planet has been warming and cooling for millions of years.

To put into perspective:

Age of Earth: 4.6 billion years

How long Dinosaurs lived: 400 million years

Age of humans: 200,000 years.

The human species is literally less than a blip on the earth's historical radar. I'm convinced whatever we do to the planet, it will recover, like it always has. Humans not adapting? That's the real problem.

This sort of perspective, while true, doesn't seem very germane to the conversation of our current, rapid, and human caused climate change. We collectively will have to deal with that (or die out, I suppose) and understanding it and how to mitigate effects seems to be the sensible response.

Understanding that the planet, if not the current biological configuration, is likely to be around much longer that we are doesn't seem to add much; at least to me.

> Except that the planet has been warming and cooling for millions of years.

This does not invalidate calling it "global warming". Just because it's happened before doesn't mean it's not happening now. When you hit the gas, do you restrict yourself from saying that the car's speed is increasing just because it's increased before?

Then what name would you suggest?

Climate apocalypse.

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