The two UN definitions are different, as are the terms themselves. "Global warming" is a more general term that addresses the global average trend of increasing surface temperatures, while "climate change" refers to that trend and its consequent impact on global climate patterns- rainfall, desertification, etc, etc. "Global climate change" is being adopted throughout the field more consistently as it is a more comprehensive term.

I have no doubt that political considerations determined the president's choice of words. I refuse to defend the president's environmental policies in any way, but I do think that the phrase "climate change" is probably a more appropriate scientific description.

Rising temperatures are only one possible symptom of increased levels of greenhouse gases. Different precipition patterns, increased sea levels, even localized temperature drops (a theoretical consequence of thermohaline circulation failure in the North Atlantic) are all possibilities that may be more problematic than the original temperature rise itself, and, are better characterized by the broader notion of "climate change".

Semantics aside, I just wish this country would get serious about the whole issue.

Byron - I understand the differences between global warming and climate change - what bothers me is that two branches of the same organization (the United Nations) have two different definitions of climate change. Also, including "human activity" in the definition of climate change seems to unnecessarily politicize the term.

Pluto is undergoing global warming, researchers find October 9, 2002

BIRMINGHAM, Ala.--Pluto is undergoing global warming, as evidenced by a three-fold increase in the planet's atmospheric pressure during the past 14 years, a team of astronomers from Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Williams College, the University of Hawaii, Lowell Observatory and Cornell University announced in a press conference today at the annual meeting of the American Astronomical Society's (AAS) Division for Planetary Sciences in Birmingham, AL.

Pluto isn't a planet, Robert.

Bob - Pluto has yet to make one revolution around the sun in the time since it was discovered in 1930. It takes Pluto 248 years to orbit the sun. I don't think we have anywhere near enough information about Pluto to discuss its climate.

Bob:
Obviously, humans are contributing so much CO2 that they have caused global warming on all the planets! I guess we should all just hold our breath for the next few years...Right, Neil?

Can anyone say "the sun is HOT, and its output is not a constant"

Anthropogenic global warming is a fantasy created by government funded pseudo-scientists.

Long live the Martians!
Mork

I finally became convinced that the global warming scam was a scam when it's adherents started using the term 'global climate change' instead of 'global warming'. How convenient, dont you think? Every time the weather changes, the fearmongers can scream about 'climate change'. Yet the Earth's climate has been changing constantly since the day it cooled.

They have set up a logical situation where if the climate changes (something that it is *always* doing, even before man arrived on the scene), they are 'correct', and they can only be proven 'incorrect' if the climate doesnt change and stays completly static (which is a situation the Earth has never experienced). Nice, huh? That there can not be a provable negative tells me that their assertions are meaningless.

Zimbabwe gets 2 extra inches of rain one month - oh-uh - thats climate change. You better give me a $150 million grant so I can study it, and sign on to a complex carbon trading scheme (and please ignore that the end effect of said scheme is income redistribution from rich to poor countries, and happens to coincide with the goals of socialists). What, you dont want to do that? DENIER!

It is hard to believe that some people still buy into the global warming 'caused by man'.

Proves these people are idiots.

Is man on every other planet? Hmmm, why are they all heating up? DUH.

These people need to go to school or do some research.

Wake up idiots. Nature does what it wants and the useless humans have nothing to do with it.

Laura,
Could it be that the entire debate is slowly evolving into "Climate Change", and away from Anthropegenic Global Warming? As an expirenced meteorologist, you know more than most that the day to day weather is constantly changing, as is the climate in general. By framing the argument in terms of Climate Change, many partisans can point to any anamoly be it temperature, precipitation, or storms and demand that "we do something about it."

I'm reminded of a conversation I had with my nieces (both in thier early 20s), and it revolved around the winters I had growing up during the 60s and 70s. They just couldn't imagine living with snow on the ground from mid November through late February and early March (I live in the Great Lakes area). "That's like almost half the year", they said. Since they were born, we're lucky to have snow on the ground past mid January. Only those areas that are geographically favored (lake affect snow) usually get any appreciable snow.

This January is the latest cold outbreak we've seen here since 1992-93 (Mt Pinatumbo erruption).Normally, the January Thaw begins right after New Years, and all the snow is gone by Feb 1st.

Just the same, one of my great grandparents moved from Western Iowa to here around 1929 because of our mild winters. To his surprise, 11 years later this area began seeing cold, long bitter winters. It wasn't until the early 1980s did that change.

In a period of 80 years, North America has seen 3 major Oscillations in temperatures. It is only now that people demand we do something about them.

Glad to see the discussion allows me to continue to prefer to use "climate change" as "global warming" is so politically fraught and confusing that I have always preferred the former.

Comments by those who appear not to follow science often refer to facts on the ground, such as cold and lack of hurricanes, as proof that science is wrong. The effect of climate change that is least ambiguous is an increase in extremes. Global events include a lack of hurricanes on the US East Coast this year past, due primarily to a lot of dust off the coast of Africa, but storms worldwide include many huge catastrophic storms in the Pacific last year and unprecedented hurricanes turned towards northern Europe. Excessive dust in Africa appears to me to be part of the worldwide phenomenon which includes both floods and drought, but I'm open to correction on this. I keep forgetting to mention wildfires, which are not only disastrous but contribute to overall warmth and pollutants.

A little perusal of world weather, the deaths and homelessness resulting from it, and connected political events (Darfur) can be painful to one who feels compassion. It is sad that imitation of our prosperity and lifestyle is leading to larger abuse of the planet, and that we all have a NIMBY approach to true conservation (For example, I plan to cross the Atlantic in an airplane sometime in the next year or so, regardless of my concerns for the planet.)

Does anyone know if earthquakes and volcanoes are affected by world weather in any way? I'm guessing only obscurely, but would like to know.

read my blog and weep

While you say the term climate change leaves the door open for them to back down if it can ever be proven mankind isn't responsible for it, the real reason for the change is so they can take any weather scenario, hot or cold, rainy or dry an say "see?...look at what we've done to the climate!"
What it closes is the door when we start our natural cooling period in a few short years. They'll still be saying it's our fault. It's like losing at a casino and demanding, and getting, your money back...you can't lose!

Mork:

Just because temperature trends have been seen on other planets doesn't mean that human activities aren't playing a role in terrestrial climate change.

My personal belief is that the impact of solar activity is underestimated. However, that doesn't change the fact that adding CO2, methane, CFC's etc to the Earth's atmosphere will have a very real effect on climate. That effect may be limited or it may be catastrophic. I'm just not prepared to take the chance that it's the latter....

Whatever the oil industry stooge in The White House meant by saying "global climate change", I think the term "climate change" is better than the term "global warming".

I spent 10 days from 2006.12.26 in Hawai'i and had occasion to watch and listen to US TV. I was dismayed to find that the news networks were rather behind the rest of the English speaking world by still referring to "global warming".

On the positive side, I reflected, as I left the USA and re-entered the Free World, at least this phenomenon is being discussed in the mainstream media there.

To elaborate on why "climate change" is a better term than "global warming". Without insulting the US President or US media this time.

In general, all the graphs you will see showing this or that temperature effect are wiggly. Not neat, smooth, analytical curves. Sometimes there is cooling. Sometimes warming. More rain somewhere. Less rain somewhere. And so on.

The phenomenon of "global dimming". How cleaning the air of pollutants may accelerate warming. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_dimming http://www.bbc.co.uk/sn/tvradio/programmes/horizon/dimming_prog_summary.shtml

Warming in the Arctic circle may soon cause the Greenland ice cap to begin to irreversibly melt. The table on this link estimates that all the water in the ice cap is equal to 10 metres of sea level rise http://pubs.usgs.gov/fs/fs2-00/, were it to melt.

So local to Greenland, there would be _cooling_ effects associated all that cold water flowing into the North Atlantic and the Arctic. Global warming causes local cooling.

But because the water is fresh water, it won't mix so well with the salt water of the ocean. This _might_ cause the so-called Atlantic Conveyer to shut down. If that happened, the Northern Hemisphere _could_ go into an Ice Age. A cooling event, wouldn't you agree?

So here we see how warming causes an Ice Age. "Warming" causes "cooling". Obviously, a term like "global warming" doesn't carry the connotations of an Ice Age!

But the term "climate change" implies, well, changes in climate. Warmer, colder, wetter, drier, windier, more still. Glaciers form somewhere, glaciers retreat elsewhere.

Why do we continue to colour the debate with at best ambiguous means and reasons to define specific terms. In doing so all energies, ideas and reasonings become lost in context. No matter what you decide to call "what is happening" it will and is continuing to happen. Is it not time to place our focus and energy on the cause and effect and stop this argument over what to call it?

I read somewhere that there are a few ancient maps in museums showing the land mass, mountains and rivers of Antarctica as would be shown without the ice cap. Would this have been during a period of climate change and well before the industrial era?

It is pretty well known that scientists tend to slowly shift their ideas about every 20 or so years and migrate to the camps that dole out the grants. There is a lot of money being thrown around right about now for studies, trips, a few years of employment, start a new green business, patent a new emission system and watch your business grow, etc, etc, and all you have to do is jump to the left and keep the cash cow alive.

Even the major oil and electric corporations that were shying away a few years ago are jumping on the bandwagon with involvement in wind farms and such. There are huge profits to be made once the dollars start flowing in a particular direction. You can't stop a naturally occurring planetary event, but you can sure benefit from the spin-offs, eh!

Hmmm.... man, I've been reading so many comments on this issue today that I have a headache!!! We have people saying that the conditions that our world is experiencing is a "scam"; we have people saying that it is caused by humans,then we have a "mork" who I assume, believes in Martians!!(Just kiddin' mork)!!
So first, if it's a "scam", explain all the "unnatural" weather that has increased each year! Explain the rapidly melting ice caps! Are we all so blind to the truth that history even proves to us that back before the industrial era began, the weather was more close to "normal" than today! Even when I was a child, I remember having snow in Corning, New York, that actually amounted to a measurable amount...and it was a constant occurance every winter! Second, if humans haven't caused it, then what has???? And if we did cause it, what are we going to do about it(if we even can)!? Listen people, does it really matter WHO caused this mess...we need to FIX the problem. I have little children, as I'm sure some of you do, do we want them to have to deal with messes that we have created?? I personally would be pretty embarrassed to have my 1 and a half year old having to come up with a solution to a serious problem that we created! Yeah I know we had to deal with our parents(grandparents,etc) messes, so when is "passing off the buck" to the next generation gonna change??? Maybe it never will, but if we as humans, are as smart as we claim to be, maybe we should at least take the first step and try so we can find out! I personally believe that we have caused this...who else did??? Our world has become so overly populated that we have a great demand for many things that are produced in factories. We punch holes in the atmosphere on a regular schedule and claim the "intelligence" of that is "in the name of science". C'mon everyone, we screw this planet up to where it can't be fixed, where are we going to go? You don't really believe that EVERYONE will be able to afford to get off this planet. We can't even feed the starving children in the world AS A GLOBAL TEAM EFFORT!!!! We are in serious trouble boys 'n girls!!!!