Archive for the ‘Words’ Category

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.