“Climate Change” Versus “Global Warming” — Opinion Study Says the American Partisan Divide Can Be Camouflaged by Using the Less Descriptive Phrase

10 March 2011

More people agree on “climate change” than on “global warming”

Jonathan Schuldt et al. (University of Michigan) did an online study of 2,267 people in order to examine the possibly semantic partisan divide between United States Democrats and Republicans in regard to the reality of global warming.

The paper’s abstract concluded:

An analysis of web sites of conservative and liberal think tanks suggests that conservatives prefer to use the term “global warming” whereas liberals prefer “climate change.”

Republicans were less likely to endorse that the phenomenon is real when it was referred to as “global warming” (44.0%) rather than “climate change” (60.2%), whereas Democrats were unaffected by question wording (86.9% vs. 86.4%).

As a result, the partisan divide on the issue dropped from 42.9 percentage points under a “global warming” frame to 26.2 percentage points under a “climate change” frame.

© 2011 Jonathan P. Schuldt, Sara H. Konrath and Norbert Schwarz, “Global warming” or “climate change”? Whether the planet is warming depends on question wording, Public Opinion Quarterly 75(1): 115-124 (Spring 2011) (paragraph split)

The University of Michigan’s News Service added some key details:

Participants were asked to report their level of certainty about whether global climate change is a serious problem. In the following question, half the participants heard one version, half heard the other:

"You may have heard about the idea that the world's temperature may have been going up [changing] over the past 100 years, a phenomenon sometimes called 'global warming' ['climate change']. What is your personal opinion regarding whether or not this has been happening?

Overall, 74 percent of people thought the problem was real when it was referred to as climate change, while about 68 percent thought it was real when it was referred to as global warming.

These different levels of belief may stem from the different associations carried by the two terms, Schuldt said.

"While global warming focuses attention on temperature increases, climate change focuses attention on more general changes," he said.

"Thus, an unusually cold day may increase doubts about global warming more so than about climate change.

Given these different associations and the partisan nature of this issue, climate change believers and skeptics might be expected to vary in their use of these terms."

The reporting News Service appears to have come to an unsupported conclusion

In addressing the study’s findings, the University of Michigan News Service continued:

And when the researchers analyzed responses to the survey by political orientation, they found that the different overall levels in belief were driven almost entirely by participants who identified themselves as Republicans.

While 60 percent of Republicans reported that they thought climate change was real, for example, only 44 percent said they believed in the reality of global warming.

The good news is that Americans may not be as polarized on the issue as previously thought.

"The extent of the partisan divide on this issue depends heavily on question wording," said Schwarz, who is also affiliated with the U-M Ross Business School and the Institute of Social Research (ISR).

"When the issue is framed as global warming, the partisan divide is nearly 42 percentage points. But when the frame is climate change, the partisan divide drops to about 26 percentage points."

Words matter, but not the chasm-healing extent that the News Service seems to think

The University of Michigan News Service’s conclusion goes a step too far. I mention this because other people could easily come to the same erroneous conclusion.

First, the News Service quotes co-author Norbert Schwarz as saying:

"When the issue is framed as global warming, the partisan divide is nearly 42 percentage points. But when the frame is climate change, the partisan divide drops to about 26 percentage points."

The News Service concluded from that, “The good news is that Americans may not be as polarized on the issue as previously thought.”

That thinking misses the study’s deeper point.

The partisan divide is not actually bridged. The two political parties deliberately use different phrases because the two phrases (a) point to different climate change causations and (b) imply different governmental responses.

The more general phrase, “climate change” allows many Republicans (and unscientifically-inclined skeptics) to conceptually evade the humanity-contributed greenhouse gas mechanism of change that is now almost universally thought to be the cause of “global warming.”

In Republican eyes, “climate change” merely means that climate changes. Most reasonably educated people accept the variability of climate as a manifestation of the planet’s natural dynamism.

Therefore, for skeptical Republicans and other disbelievers in anthropogenic climatic warming, the virtue of referring to global warming as “climate change” is that the more general phrase allows them to continue to think that:

(a) humanity has little or nothing to do with climate change because it is a natural process;

(b) the direction of the alleged change is scientifically uncertain, and therefore doing something about it is premature;

(c) humanity may have contributed something considerable to the alleged change in global climate, but the complexity and variability of climate are so great that attempting to do something about the perceived direction of change is scientifically unwise;

and/or

(d) “Climate changes, so what?”

“Global warming,” on the other hand, immediately implies both (i) a direction of change and, (ii) due to unending arguments over causation, an implied mechanism (humanity’s contribution of greenhouse gases to the atmosphere).

In effect, when we hear “global warming,” we know that “we” industrial humans are the bad guys and “we” need to do something about our damaging behavior.

In effect, “global warming’s” two words, used as they have been for at least a decade, (i) decide causation, (ii) assign blame, and (iii) implicitly require compensatory reaction.

The phrase “climate change” does none of this.

Conclusion — substituting one phrase for the other builds no practicable political bridges

The University of Michigan study cannot be taken to mean that it is possible to bridge the climate response gap between the political parties by using the “climate change” phrase, when speaking to the allegedly semantically amenable 16 percent.

That group, and its denial-oriented Republican colleagues, fundamentally disagree with “global warmists” about what is happening climatically and whether anything needs to be done about it.

The two groups differ dramatically regarding their perceptions of (a) scientific climate reality and (b) what, if anything, that reality implies about humanity’s responsibility to act.

At best, using “climate change” instead of “global warming” merely ferrets out some people from the political parties who are willing to believe that climate changes.

That is not the same thing as saying that the newly recruited 16 percent now agree with Democratic Party “warmists” regarding causation mechanisms and required responses.

PeteFree.com

“Climate Change” Versus “Global Warming” — Opinion Study Says the American Partisan Divide Can Be Camouflaged by Using the Less Descriptive Phrase