There's plenty of confusion — and misinformation — about what the terms "global warming" and "climate change" really mean. Still unsure? One Ph.D. student is breaking it down so you can talk about the climate with confidence and clarity.
Science communication Ph.D. student Sara (@francelot_) took to TikTok to answer a follower's question about why the term "global warming" was seemingly changed to "climate change" by scientists and activists.
@francelot_ Replying to @user314284123 TLDR: The term hasn't change. They mean seperate things but are used interchangebly by most. #climatechange #globalwarming #climateliteracy #scicomm #science #scienceeducation #climateaction #globalwarmingawareness #climatescience ♬ original sound - Sara | PhD Student
In the video, Sara said that there's a general misunderstanding that the phrase "global warming" has been replaced by "climate change." She explained that some climate change skeptics often use this as a talking point to deny the reality of pollution-driven climate shifts, claiming that climate activists have stopped using the term "global warming" because colder weather events weaken their arguments.
These skeptics imply that if the planet were truly warming, we wouldn't still experience such cold temperatures.
"In reality, those two terms just have different meanings, different uses, and different contexts in scientific literature," Sara said in the video. "Anthropogenic global warming refers to the upward trend of global surface temperature. That's it. Climate change is all the effects that global warming is going to have on the bigger climate system."
She explained that these terms have been used interchangeably so often that the difference may not be so apparent at first.
"The term hasn't changed," she wrote in the video's caption. "They mean different things, but are used interchangeably by most."
NASA backs up Sara's explanation, as do scientific journals.
As NASA explains on its website, the term "inadvertent climate modification" was first used in the 1970s to describe human-caused changes to the climate. At the time, there was uncertainty about whether such changes would result in surface warming or cooling. In 1975, the term "global warming" was used in a scientific paper, marking a shift in terminology and knowledge.
In 1979, the National Academy of Sciences adopted "global warming" to describe surface temperature increases and "climate change" to describe the broader range of climate impacts.
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While scientists have long been aware of this distinction, the general public has not. That's why "global warming" was once the singular term used in much cultural conversation around planet-warming pollution and climate shifts. NASA credits the term's popularity with scientist James Hansen's 1988 congressional testimony about global warming, which introduced much of the general public to the realities of climate change.
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Definitely 💯 Needless to say, it's easy to see how the terms became conflated. But as awareness of the changing climate expanded in the decades following, more accuracy in terms and their meanings followed. After all, with greater conversation comes greater understanding — and greater need for more precise terminology.
While some climate skeptics took to the comments of Sara's video to assert climate change isn't real, others thanked her for providing such an easy-to-understand myth-busting explanation.
"Extremely well explained," one commenter wrote.
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