Arguments
Fact brief - Was 'global warming' changed to 'climate change' because Earth stopped warming?
Posted on 31 May 2025 by Sue Bin Park
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Was 'global warming' changed to 'climate change' because Earth stopped warming?
Both "global warming" and "climate change" continue to be used as global temperatures continue to rise.
The two terms refer to different but related phenomena. Global warming captures increasing average global temperatures observed since the Industrial Revolution. Climate change speaks to the various environmental outcomes of this warming.
The last ten years (2015-2024) were the ten hottest on record, with 2024 breaking the record set in 2023. The last colder-than-average year was 1976. Climate scientists calculate global temperatures by averaging readings from thousands of weather stations, ships, buoys, and satellites around the world.
The 1956 paper "The Carbon Dioxide Theory of Climatic Change" outlined CO2’s role in altering climate. Google Books indicates usage of "climate change" predated and surpassed "global warming" since the 1980s.
The only notable political push to favor "climate change" was a 2002 Bush administration memo that claimed the term was "less frightening" than "global warming."
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This fact brief is responsive to quotes such as this one.
Sources
The Washington Post Debunking the claim ‘they’ changed ‘global warming’ to ‘climate change’ because warming stopped
CNN Is it climate change or global warming? How science and a secret memo shaped the answer
Tellus Journal The Carbon Dioxide Theory of Climatic Change
IPCC History of the IPCC
Google Books Ngram Viewer Climate change, global warming
The Luntz Research Companies The Environment: A Cleaner, Safer, Healthier America
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It was also called "The Greenhouse Effect" earlier, but I think that was replaced with global warming because it might be confused with the natural greenhouse effect. But I sort of thought climate change was preferred by Bush and those skittish about global warming because it detracted from the warming aspect, made it easier for deniers to claim the climate has always changed, as if "no problem."
I still use the terms somewhat interchangeably, but opt for global warming when I want to stress the warming aspect, climate change when I want to bring in enhanced storms, hurricanes, wildfires, floods, droughts, etc.
There are, or at least there should be, technical differences between the terms. The greenhouse effect results from the presence of greenhouse gases and natural concentrations keep the Earth from being an ice rock planet. Global warming results from increasing the concentration of greenhouse gases. It upsets the global energy balance and results in accumulated energy. Climate change results from an uneven distribution of accumulated energy around the globe. Major atmospheric and oceanic circulation patterns are changed. There have been large climate changes in history from natural causes, but this time the cause is emissions from anthropogenic use of fossil fuels and fossil rock. Severe weather results from localized and sudden changes in the uneven distribution of energy.
Depending on the message, the terms global warming and climate change might be used interchangably, but I prefer being clear with the technical distinction. Sometimes it seems appropriate to use them together, as in increasing GHG concentrations cause global warming and climate change.
Greenhouse effect, global warming, and climate change do indeed have different technical meanings, but common simplified usage does tend to add obfuscation - er, sorry, make things more confusing.
The Greenhouse Effect, as lynnvinc mentions, exists as a natural phenomenon. It relates to the atmospheric influence, as discussed by Charlie Brown, that leads to warmer surface temperatures than we would observe if there was no atmosphere.
It is a somewhat unfortunate term, as "the label "greenhouse" implies a similarity with actual greenhouses - and that was based on a misunderstanding of what keeps greenhouses warm. (Trapping air is more important than trapping IR radiation.)
At times, people have suggested using "the atmospheric effect" instead, but that has never caught on. At times, the human-cause changes in greenhouse gases have been referred to as "the enhanced greenhouse effect", but that is rather cumbersome and the "enhanced" part gets dropped.
As for "global warming" - that is the key easily-observed result of an enhanced greenhouse effect, but also can be caused by other factors. (CO2 dominates the current trends). On a global mean basis, surface temperatures will rise. It is not the only effect of an enhanced greenhouse effect, though. Precipitation changes are also critical. And many other weather phenomena. Seasonal changes and timing. Extreme weather events. Etc. Hence "climate change" is a much broader, more encompassing term. In the Venn diagram of climate, "Global warming " is a subset of "climate change", and "global warming" overlaps both the greenhouse effect and other causes of climate change.
On the myth of "they changed the name...", I took undergraduate climate science in the 1970s. The textbook we used was Sellers, W.D., 1965, Physical Climatology, U Chicago Press. Changes in atmospheric carbon dioxide are discussed in that book, along with other factors, under the chapter titled "Paleoclimatology and Theories of Climatic Change". My copy of the book is the one that I bought in 1978, so if "they changed the name..." then someone must have taken my copy off my bookshelf, altered the printing, and replaced it without me noticing.