USA Temperature: can I sucker you?

Re:USA Temperature: can I sucker you? by glhaynes on Sunday August 12, 2018 @02:06PM (#17745530)

"(remember when it was called global warming?)"

I keep seeing this phrase lately. What does it mean? [To clarify, I'm asking about why people keep saying "remember when it was called…" as though it proves some point about it. Global warming is still an accurate description of the predicted and confirmed phenomenon.]

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Re:USA Temperature: can I sucker you? by orf on Sunday August 12, 2018 @02:13PM (#17745569)

It's a common argument deniers make to try and spread FUD.

> They used to call it global warming, then they rebranded it to (the more accurate) climate change because their narrative was coming apart/everything is fine/elitist climate scientists trying to get money. If they can't even get their story straight why should we believe them??

> This message was brought to you by the 'Sensible Patriotic Americans Against Climate Change Nonsense' (funded by Exxon).

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Re:USA Temperature: can I sucker you? by martinpw on Sunday August 12, 2018 @02:40PM (#17745747)

The irony is that the phrase "climate change" was actually pushed initially by a Republican advisor (Frank Luntz) as it was considered less frightening to the public than "global warming".

The other irony is that this phrase was used a lot of few years back when many were claiming there was no warming going on by cherry picking the 1998 El Nino spike as a starting point for temperature graphs. Then the argument was - there is no warming, so the alarmists have stopped using the term "global warming". Of course with recent warming this particular cherry picked argument has fallen apart, but for some reason the meme persists.

I don't think the people who use the phrase even think about what they are saying. It is just part of the Gish Gallop that gets thrown out where number of words makes up for lack of solid argument (initial post that used this phrase up above being a perfect example of this)

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Re:USA Temperature: can I sucker you? by philipkglass on Sunday August 12, 2018 @03:16PM (#17745929)

The irony is that the phrase "climate change" was actually pushed initially by a Republican advisor (Frank Luntz) as it was considered less frightening to the public than "global warming".

Academic publications were using the phrase "climate change" to discuss the warming effects well before Frank Luntz. He may have been important to putting that phrase in front of the general public, but "climate change" isn't a euphemism invented by PR hacks. The foremost summary assessments are assembled by the IPCC -- Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, whose first report came out in 1990.

Here are publications from 1980 and 1970 also using the phrase to discuss warming phenomena.

"On the Distribution of Climate Change Resulting From an Increase in CO2 Content of the Atmosphere", Journal of the Atmospheric Sciences, January 1980

https://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/pdf/10.1175/1520-0469%28198...

"Carbon Dioxide and its Role in Climate Change", Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, October 1970

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC283289/?page=1

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Re:USA Temperature: can I sucker you? by martinpw on Sunday August 12, 2018 @03:30PM (#17746004)

I don't think we are disagreeing. I'm just pointing out that the phrase was deliberately pushed out into the wider public discourse for specific political motivations, and it is ironic that this phrase is now being used by those same political forces to cast aspersions on scientists.

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Re:USA Temperature: can I sucker you? by philipkglass on Sunday August 12, 2018 @03:42PM (#17746068)

It appears that I was trying to correct a misconception you do not actually hold. I've seen apparently well meaning people claim that "global warming" was rebranded "climate change" by Frank Luntz to make it sound less scary, while both terms have been in widespread use among scientists since before the issue became widely known among the public.

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Re:USA Temperature: can I sucker you? by canhascodez on Monday August 13, 2018 @12:33AM (#17748019)

Yes, but more to the point, they are not synonymous except in very recent history. Theories of climate change were needed to explain evidence of the Ice Age long before anyone thought that warming was a concern, back in the early 19th Century. The evidence that climate could change was also generally distinct from the evidence which established that CO2 could change the climate. Global warming is a subset or result of climate change.

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Re:USA Temperature: can I sucker you? by glhaynes on Sunday August 12, 2018 @02:18PM (#17745596)

Thank you, that's exactly what I was trying to get at. Maybe it's just the Baader-Meinhof phenomenon but I feel like I'm seeing the exact phrase "remember when it was called global warming?" a lot lately and I'm having trouble accepting that we're all being subjected to this stupid ploy again. Obviously I shouldn't have such trouble at this point, but there you go.

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Re:USA Temperature: can I sucker you? by bibixii929 on Sunday August 12, 2018 @02:18PM (#17745593)

Most likely it is meant to imply that scientists have retreated from saying "global warming" exists. This is of course false, and that's why it's a dogwhistle and not said directly.

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