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Comment by bee_rider | Hacker News Reader

Maybe we should start calling it climate instability instead of climate change.

"Climate change" is already watered down from "global warming", because people were nitpicking that it wasn't always warmer everywhere. Things like the late cold snaps people mention in this thread. But: on average, it's warmer almost everywhere.

Does instability sound more watered down than change? IMO instability is more obviously bad.

Agreed.

Human factor here: Sometimes, change can be a good thing. You don't hear that instability can sometimes be a good thing.

"Global warming" is what you get when you let the scientists pick the name. "Climate change" is better but you can still get the sense that it's lacking in a solid PR person to figure this out. I'd have thought that, by now, any of the hundreds of corporations attaching themselves to Sustainability, Inc. would've solved this particular naming problem for us.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streetlight_effect

The term "climate change" usage had a PR person behind it. Republican strategist Frank Luntz pushed for politicians to use the term instead of "Global warming" has it sounds less severe.

The term is often misattributed to Luntz, but it existed before him.

Apocalypse is only 3 syllables.

"Hysteria" is 4.

In which dialect is that the case? It is certainly not one I have ever encountered.

It's pronounced "fuck fuck fuck."

‘pocalypse I guess.

If climate stability has changed I like it being called climate change.

It just sounds a little dry. I think environmentalists have done a good job drilling the fact that it is a bad thing into us, but in the face of it “climate change” sounds like a sort of generic and neutral process. Global warming was a little better (I think? Or maybe I just grew up knowing it was a bad thing).

Climate Instability sounds sort of clearly bad (I think most people consider instability bad).

If we're workshopping this for you: "climate change" has alliteration and is only 3 syllables compared to "instability" which has a mouthful of 5 syllables.

Alliteration has to do with sounds, not letters.

Someone else suggested Climate Crisis which is actually alliterative and also sounds bad rather than neutral like “change.”

Seems like you are really interested in marketing.

It’s just the way the conversation happened to flow. I think everyone has an opinion on names.

For solutions I’m in favor of really aggressive carbon taxes and sanctions/secondary sanctions against that don’t implement them. But that’s the sort of thing better left to regulators and diplomats.

I now say "climate crisis".

That seems even better, it has all the negative connotations I wanted, while remaining punchy and alliterative.

I seem to be getting lots of downvotes on what I thought was a pretty mundane and off the cuff post. Maybe there’s some history I’m not aware of.

My thought process was: Climate change is mostly bad, but it sounds like a sort of neutral, or even natural process. Environmentalists have done a good job pointing out that it is bad, but the name isn’t doing them any favors. Instability seems to be one of the major side effects and instability is very obviously bad.

I guess I’m curious if there’s a “pro-fixing the problem” argument against “climate instability.” By default I’m going to assume that I’m mostly being downvoted by climate deniers. But I’d be happy to be educated otherwise, if there’s a real argument against calling it instability.

You are being downvoted because making spurious complaints about nomenclature is a classic denialist tactic.

I've written similar comments in other forums and have gotten a similar response. To me, global warming is on average true, but doesn't encompass the full range of negative local impacts.

Climate change feels euphemistic compared to climate instability. Like, all things change, so it's chill, right? I like "instability" because it feels like the time of chaos and contempt that the scientific consensus tells us we're facing.

But... then I realize I'm wordsmithing a problem. While rhetoric is important and all, I think many of our current issues get over-talked and under-actioned. I don't know that the wording is significant relative to other barriers to bringing about change.

I think you are right.

I don’t love “climate change” because it sounds too euphemistic, IMO. But the wording isn’t the biggest problem anyway. A

nd it has solid associations at this point.

I’m not sure why this is so downvoted.

I think instability sells it better to someone who is not sure if they believe in climate change because they can personally see it (worsening hurricanes, worsening cold snaps, hotter days).

I was actually so confused that I broke the golden rule of upvote/downvote systems and asked.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40344698

I think the responses were reasonable. I’m still convinced Climate Change is not a very good name, somebody suggested Climate Crisis which just sounds better in every way. But anyway, the name is not the most pressing part of the whole thing.

Just call it "climate"

If the reliable granular data is 100 years or so, and the core samples are known to be lacking granular indication… how a you prove that the spikes and dips are atypical?

Eh, try like 300 years at least; you can get data from 1662 to now easy from NOAA. Governments love to collect data about mundane things; you could probably get a larger archive from a country that existed prior to 1781.

https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/cdo-web/datasets

Yea, I’m not sure we can rely on 1 degree of reliable resolution for when people believe in unicorns, dragons, a geocentric universe theory, and when the Celsius scale was not when water freezes at zero and boils at 100.

So you don't trust data from 2024; got it.

I don’t doubt that those records lacked quality due to inconsistent measuring equipment, standards, and practices. It has nothing to do with the beliefs of people at the time, though.

This was a time period in which scientists actually improved these technologies and practices, and we stand on the shoulders of that progress. They were doing the best they could with what they had.

Geocentrism was also well on the way out 300 years ago.

My point is mostly that people in the past did some great work, and having weird beliefs didn’t diminish that. People in the future will think we were similarly clueless for all kinds of reasons. You just do the best you can with the information and environment you’ve got.

One could use the same argument to include forest fire data prior to 1960, or to include heat/drought data prior to 1979, but climate alarmists do not want to do that because it destroys their narrative.

If you read what I said again, you should notice that I’m not saying the data from 300 years ago should necessarily be used. I’m saying that the reason not to use it has nothing to do with people believing in dragons or unicorns.

The part about measurements is fair (they weren’t standardized at the time), but the rest is irrelevant. The decision of whether or not to use data should be on the basis of its scientific rigour and veracity, not the scientist’s beliefs.

I don’t really care to prove it, I was going off that Texan’s report of their personal experiences.

If they look atypical for the last 100 years or so, and also look atypical from the less "granular", even-longer-term samples... then how do you prove that they're typical?

Does it matter if they're typical or not when plants no longer grow where they use to?

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