Anthropogenic Climate Disruption
Frequent commenter Cameron Atwood writes: For those concerned about how messaging is communicated, I’d suggest that people need to replace the ambiguous and lukewarm phrases “climate change” and “global warming” with the far more accurate, evocative and impactful words “anthropogenic climate disruption.”
I know you feel that we need the new moniker “anthropogenic climate disruption,” and I agree with your reasoning. However–and this may sound cowardly–but I refrain from using that phrase until Bill McKibben, James Hansen, et al., are calling it that. In other words, I let the climate scientists name the phenomena they are studying.
I’m reminded of my soccer coaching days, when my son would complain about a ref’s call, and I’d yell to him from the sideline, “Jake. Knock it off. He’s the ref. You play. He refs.”
The problem is this: every time the wording shifts, that’s a win for the denialist camp… They get the screeching points for forcing a language change in an attempt to win people over, and they get to hit the community of informed persons (it’s more broad than the scientific community) over “changing the story”, and “ever-changing theory”…
I wish that Cameron’s idea could have been floated/accepted when they shifted the language from AGW (which I still use) to the far less threatening/far more mousy “climate change”…
But that’s an opportunity lost. I don’t think we can sacrifice the years needed to change the name again.
🙂