From his Wikipedia article:

> Although Luntz later tried to distance himself from the Bush administration policy, it was his idea that administration communications reframe global warming as climate change since "climate change" was thought to sound less severe.

The memo you are referring to happened well over 20 years later. The term was not created by Frank Luntz.

>In the 1980s, the terms global warming and climate change became more common. Though the two terms are sometimes used interchangeably,[24] scientifically, global warming refers only to increased surface warming, while climate change describes the totality of changes to Earth's climate system

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climate_change#Terminology

https://web.archive.org/web/20100809221926/http://www.nasa.g...