Which do you prefer? Which has the biggest impact on people to make them wake up and do something about this rapidly approaching disaster? Whatever you want to call it, it's the effects that we have to make clear to people, and we shouldn't get too hung up about the terminology.
So if you want to have the biggest impact, according to a study by Yale University, Global Warming has the bigger impact on the uninformed.
But before we get into the specifics of the study, lets look back and see how we got into this mild debate in the public forum.
Both "Global Warming" and "Climate Change" have been used in the scientific community for many decades, but "Global Warming" was far and away the term of choice a decade or 2 ago. So how did "Climate Change" start getting used so much in the public lexicon? You can thank the right wing propaganda machine for that.
It was the linguistic propagandist Frank Luntzwho encouraged Republicans to use the more benign sounding "Climate Change".
Luntz’s recommendation to Republicans was to use the term climate change instead of global warming:
“It’s time for us to start talking about ‘climate change’ instead of global warming…‘climate change’ is less frightening than ‘global warming’. As one focus group participant noted, climate change ‘sounds like you’re going from Pittsburgh to Fort Lauderdale.’ While global warming has catastrophic connotations attached to
it, climate change suggests a more controllable and less emotional challenge.”
Here are some of the very interesting
findings from the Yale report.
This report provides results from three studies that collectively find that global warming and climate change are often not synonymous—they mean different things to different people—and activate different sets of beliefs, feelings, and behaviors, as well as different degrees of urgency about the need to respond.
...
almost without exception, global warming is more engaging than climate change. Compared to climate change, the term global warming generates:
Stronger ratings of negative affect (i.e., bad feelings), especially among women, Generation Y, the Greatest Generation, African-Americans, Hispanics, Democrats, Independents, Moderates, conservatives, and evangelicals.
...
Greater certainty that the phenomenon is happening, especially among men, Generation X, and liberals.
• Greater understanding that human activities are the primary cause among Independents.
• Greater understanding of the scientific consensus among Independents and liberals.
• More intense worry about the issue, especially among men, Generation Y, Generation X, Democrats, liberals and moderates.
...
Higher issue priority ratings for action by the president and Congress, especially among women,
Democrats, liberals and moderates.
• Greater support for a large or small-scale effort by the U.S. (although climate change generates more support for a medium-scale effort, especially among Republicans).
• Greater willingness to join a campaign to convince elected officials to take action, especially among men, Generation X, liberals and moderates.
Now here is what the study found for the effects of using "Climate Change".
By contrast, the use of the term climate change appears to actually reduce issue engagement by Democrats, Independents, liberals, and moderates, as well as a variety of subgroups within American society, including men, women, minorities, different generations, and across political and partisan lines. In several cases, the differences in the effect of the two terms are large. For example, African Americans (+20 percentage points) and Hispanics (+22) are much more likely to rate global warming as a “very bad thing” than climate change. Generation X (+21) and liberals (+19) are much more likely to be certain global warming is happening. African-Americans (+22) and Hispanics (+30) are much more likely to perceive global warming as a personal threat, or that it will harm their own family (+19 and +31, respectively). Hispanics (+28) are much more likely to say global warming is already harming
people in the United States right now. And Generation X (+19) is more likely to be willing to join a campaign to convince elected officials to take action to reduce global warming than climate change.
So both terms are correct and interchangeable from a laymen scientific perspective, but if you want to have a political impact on the voting population, this study says "Global Warming" wins hands down.