The article talks about climate change. You might want to learn the difference between climate change and global warming before you dismiss it with a one-liner.
Regardless of the verbal purity and political correctness the point from the OP is: someone was trying to force the conclusion than the climate is warming more than it is.
What's clear that this tampering should not be fodder for a flippant response about being the "new swine flu". If we can't trust scientist to do their job without "fudging" the numbers, then who are we to trust? I want my tax money going to more research, but now I am not so sure and thats the real tragedy.
Now, its clear what you were getting at with the reference to the swine flu. As far as carbon tax, its good and bad. Good that it will supposedly encourage competitiveness. Bad that most companies will just move to a state or country that doesn't have the tax.
I'm afraid that in some parts of the world it will encourage corruption instead.
It can also hurt developing countries where better energy sources are not available or insanely expensive. I specifically mean eastern part of the EU where carbon tax is likely to be forced.
That's my point: mistrust to organizations who try to push certain conclusions in order to gain profits, in a similar way as it was swine flu & vaccines. That's the meaning of my comparison.
Btw if you care about your taxes, what about Carbon tax?
Verbal purity? They are two totally different concepts. This isn't about making sure you use the right term, it's making sure you understand the difference between the two.
And yes it was clear. I think anyone reading the article should come to that conclusion. Your comparison was shallow and silly and I called you on it.
Please tell me about the difference. As far as I know climate change is the more general term while global warming can be used to refer to the current climate change. Both terms are equally valid, even if global warming might fall a bit short in describing all the effects of climate change. (It will get warmer, but there will likely be other effects that are often less well understood.)
There is hardly any harm done in using both terms interchangably.
(Edited out ocean acidification - I guess that one is strictly speaking neither an effect of climate change nor of gloabal warming. It's rather just caused by the same thing that also causes the current climate change.)
> There is hardly any harm done in using both terms interchangably.
The only caveat is that Global Warming has been intrinsically linked to the word "Man Made" by various people. Rightly or wrongly the phrase has a much more specific connotation than just a subset of climate change.
Sure it has been. At the moment most scientists think that the current crop of climate change is man made. That's just how it is and that's the reason why the term global warming currently usually implies man made.
You will not change that by complaining about definitions and how words are used. In the 19th century light implied aether. No change of the dictionary could change that, there had actual scientific work to be done to change that.
> At the moment most scientists think that the current crop of climate change is man made.
This is the part of the issue under debate...
However: the world appears to be warming up - that is why the phrase global warming was used. There was no man made connotation either way when it was first used. The linking has been made for various reasons.
Aw, now that sounds so devilish. I don't think so. I would guess that most climate scientists were just fed up with saying "global warming that is caused by humans ..." and shortened that to "global warming". No big deal, and happens all the time. Scientists that don't think so must now say "global warming that is not caused by humans ...", but if they are convincing they surely will be able to shorten their version :)
I always thought that global warming was a subset of climate change. The fact that the title of the article included climate change made me puzzled as to why global warming was used.
Because I'm commenting article content, not the title. Of course the global warming is the subset of a climate change -- the subset most relevant in the article.
And like I said before, your comment was poor. You said it was the new swine flu when it's been around far longer. It was disingenuous and apparently calling you on it is a no no; so be it.
Yeah I bet you would say it's poor also if I said it differently, "global warming is overhyped" or whatever, probably because you just don't agree with it.
Speaking of poorness of comments, I guess in this matter you can rely on how they are upvoted. No offense, just see for yourself..
I don't agree with it, but that's not the issue. Your comment wasn't worthwhile. You're arguing ad hominem and haven't even backed up your silly point still and it's four or five comments later.
Flipping it over on me doesn't change the fact that your comment was poor. There are also obvious counterarguments to your point that popularity means you're right but I don't need to go into them.
Yes, technically, "global warming" refers to modern, human-induced climate change. But outside of paleontological circles, they are the same thing.
There's certainly no need to be criticizing people for that usage, since there's no possibility of confusion; we're always talking about modern climate change.
> I always thought that global warming was a subset of climate change.
Not at all. The term "climate change" didn't come into the discussion until the temperature data started to diverge from the predictions. The terminology change was one of many things done to "hide the decline".
