Blog Action Day: Polluters’ Spin Doctors Laid a Trap!
October 7th, 2009 | 
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Blog Action Day is October 15!
October 15 is Blog Action Today. I’m going to post more than a week in advance to try to prevent thousands of well-meaning bloggers all around the world from falling into a trap laid for them years ago by a spin doctor working on behalf of polluters and their political allies.
The topic for Blog Action Day this year is climate change, so here’s my (advance) post about it: For the love of god, don’t call it climate change. Please please please call it “global warming” instead.
Guess who wants you to use the word “climate change?” G.O.P pollster and spin doctor Frank Luntz. In his famous memo to G.O.P candidates, he urged them to use it because:
‘Climate change‘ is less frightening than ‘global warming.’ As one focus group participant put it, ‘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, in plain English, is what Mr Luntz really meant: If we use the word “climate change” instead of “global warming,” people will pay less attention to it. And that is precisely what you, my polluter-bankrolled clients, want.
And that is also precisely what has happened. In the years since Al Gore worked so hard to make global warming a household word, green groups and news media have pretty much dropped the term in favor of the more scientific-sounding “climate change,” — and the public has paid steadily less attention to it.
The chart below proves Mr. Luntz’s point: There are far fewer Google searches for this issue now than there was just a few years ago – and this decline coincides with the adoption of “climate change” as the preferred term of the news media.
Blog Action Day: Click the chart to see it in full size.
Regular readers of this blog know that I don’t believe you can scare or guilt very many people into action — but boring or lulling them into complacency with scientific vocabulary that fails to evoke any sense of urgency is even less effective.
On Blog Action Day, let’s not play into the hands of people who to stop us from doing something about global warming. On October 15, let’s all blog together to warn our readers about the grave danger that global warming poses - and encourage our fellow citizens that it is not yet too late to make a difference… if we act fast and work together.
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Thanks Eric, for helping settle a dispute we’ve been having in our shop. If Luntz wants us to do it, I’ll certainly think twice!
Keep up your great work.
Thanks Eric. I’ll make sure I’ll mention Clobal Warming on Blog action day.
Thanks again. Take care.
Thanks for the comment. I’ll definitely be mentioning global warming for my post. Great article.
Cheers
Hmmm. That’s interesting. I wonder how it plays out up here in the Great White North, where some people see ‘Global Warming’ as a positive thing? When it snows on Aug. 31, as it did last year, it’s hard to convince some Canadians that Global Warming would be bad. But if that snow in summer and hurricanes in Halifax are harbingers of the wacky weather to come due to Climate Change, then are we more likely to get on board?
Two weeks ago it was 30 degrees. Today there’s snow pelting my window but the leaves on the trees are still green. Global Warming doesn’t describe this experience, but Climate Change does.
Update: a search of Google.ca for pages from Canada brings up almost three times as many entries (2,920,000) for Climate Change as does one for Global Warming (1,090,00), with David Suzuki at the top of the list. I guess there are cultural differences with this terminology. Good to know. It wouldn’t have occurred to me! Interesting that a nefarious plot has had the opposite effect up here.
Good points, because our planet is affected by both, depending were we are located. Pollution abuses disturbed the natural cycles of seasons and temperatures. But really the global damage and peril comes from the rise of temperatures brought by power plants, live stocks etc….I would say that if we have a global awareness of the situation Global Warming is the cause of all other climatic effects.
Seems purely political, Jackson. Uuse of the term “Warming” pits one irrevocably in only one direction. After all, change is change. The hottest year on record globally was 1999. You seem bent on proving a point solely with the use of terminology. Just like actions, facts speak louder than mere words. Some would like to use statistics boxed in by intent to portray mankind’s industrialization of the planet as having more influence on global temperatures than the Systems put in place by The Creator of All that Exists. Use science for its intended purpose: learning and understanding, not as a tool to politically persuade others to think in your intended direction. This goes for all sides in the “Battle of the Words.” Politics has ruined many a scientific study.
“Environmental Writing Guy” seems wee bit naive on this. Our purpose here is to bring about social change on a global scale. We must not limit our position to testable arguments. As Tom pointed out we are in the tenth year of a cooling trend. What if this continues? We can’t go back to 1979 and talk about cooling. No,we must focus on our stewardship of the planet, revealing only data when the changing winds of popular science will not contradict our goal.
I find it interesting the commenter are yes-men (or women)
While the environment deserves better attention and stewardship, much scientifically valid opposition work is conveniently swept under the rug.
Most tellingly in this, and other issues, is the preponderance of “shout downs” over debate, insults hurled at those that don’t “believe.
And, before you scream out at me for pointing this out (as will inevitably happen).
Will delving into this blog reveal the propagandistic changes made to the global warming crowds data? Will any searching of the alarmist data reveal the possibility that in addition to Man’s influence, there has hardly been an accounting for non-minor influences like SOLAR ACTIVITY, cosmic bombardment?
And, perhaps the greatest crime of all, spending ungodly amounts of money for lobbying that could be better spent on advertising campaigns designed to make people more conscious of their environmental impacts.
Maybe, in the name of global warming, climate change, or whatever you want to call it, the green-weenies can look into breeder reactors, and other tech more efficient than fossil fuels and solar panels (which doen’t even achieve a 50% efficiency
Doesn’t matter what you call it. Mother nature has proven AGW to be a scam.
Please, don’t! I search for “global warming” to find climate science. Googling for “climate change” only turns up fluff articles.
I think we should all reach out and touch Frank Luntz until he listens to reason. That said, I’m using the term “climate change” for Blog Action Day because that’s the official term they use. However, I’m also including global warming and green energy in my posts.
By the way, we don’t have to wait until October 15 to get started. I’m blogging on this topic the entire week. The most recent post is “The Green Energy Fairy Tale is Real” at http://t1rex.blogspot.com/2009/10/green-energy-fairy-tale-is-real.html
Hi Eric,
thank you for your realist post on the matter.
Global Warming is the precise term for what is happening and I think that in order to raise the awareness more should be done.
We constantly talk of citizens putting pressure on leaders (which of course is necessary) but very seldom do you see calls asking citizens to put pressure on brands.
I am part of an initiative called addsmore.org – and our method is to get brands to open their ad space for climate messages.
Brands are the biggest communicators out there and if they were willing to include climate preservation messages in their ads, the impact would be huge. People would be able to learn quite quickly about the little gestures necessary to preserve the environment such as “recycle more”, “turn off your electronic devices”, “prefer showers to baths”, etc
Just like Hopenhagen & tck tck tck: Time for Climate Justice that are trying to get citizens to put pressure on their leaders, we on addsmore.org are trying to gather citizen support in order to convince brands that they should also get involved.
How can people help us? By writing on their hands, arms climate preservation messages and send to us the pics – either via http://www.facebook.com/addsmore and/or http://www.twitter.com/addsmore
Once we get as many pictures as possible we shall send them to all big brands and try to get to use their advertisement space… just for the planet!
A thousand years from now or less, maybe mankind will be extinct, but the earth will still exist, and guess what, mother earth will repair itself. Mother earth doesn’t the stupidity of manking to theroize the science of its maintenance program. BJ