In the effort to rally US citizens and others around the globe, the White House's science advisor last week repeated his call for leaders in the battle against greenhouse gas emissions to adopt a new phrase in place of "global warming" or even "global climate change." The new "in" term: global climate disruption.
The term "global warming" took something of a credibility hit with evidence that some of the research supporting it may have been tainted and nasty winters last year in many parts of the world, while the term "global climate change" perhaps doesn't sound quite scary enough.
So, in a speech two weeks ago in Oslo, Norway, John Holdren, Assistant to the President for Science and Technology and Director, Office of Science and Technology Policy, repeated his call that the term "global climate disruption" become the favored phrase to describe what is happening and the potential risks, saying "global warming" is a "dangerous misnomer" for something as fearsome and complex is what is happening now as a result of CO2 and other emissions.
Holdren said in his speech last week that the impact from greenhouse gas emissions are causing a wide range "disruptions" in climate patterns ranging from both greater precipitation and drought to storms to more extremes of hot and cold temperatures to insect infestations. Those changes, he said, will potential effect the availability of water, productivity of farms, spread of disease and other many other undesirable changes.
NASA, which now has its sights set in part on addressing climate change, echoed a similar these in a 2008 report: "Changes to precipitation patterns and sea levels are likely to have much greater human impact than the higher temperatures alone."
In Oslo, Hodren argued that the term "global warming" is not a good one because it implies something that is uniform across the planet, that the issues were mainly about temperature, that the effects would be gradual and quite possibly benign.
Instead, he said, what is happening is highly non-uniform, not just about temperature, likely to be rapid compared to globe's capacities for adjustment, and harmful for most places and times.
He added that what is happening are changes in many climate patterns, which may be devastating and only modestly reflected in what look like minor changes in temperature readings.
The Five Climate Disruption Myths
In his Oslo, presentation, Holdren said there were five key myths with regard to climate change/disruption that need to be addressed:
1. A little global warming can’t hurt anything.
2. The Earth is no longer warming anyway.
3. Even if it is, humans aren’t the main cause.
4. If there is any danger, it’s far in the future.
5. The CRU e‐mails and IPCC mistakes have shown that mainstream climate science is deeply flawed.
Holden's full Oslo presentation (available here: Climate‐Change Science and Policy: What Do We Know? What Should We Do) attempts to refute each of those myths.
He cited evidence from a 2010 research study by The National Academies that found Americans were highly supportive of a broad array of tactics to address climate change, as shown in the graphic below:
As can be seen, that survey found 58% of Americans supported implementation of a cap and trade system for carbon emissions, and 34% support a 25-cent increase in the federal tax on gasoline.
Would you like to see adoption of the phrase "global climate disruption" versus global warming or global climate change as the lead term for what is happening? Let us know your thoughts at the Feedback button below.
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