climate change
English
Noun
climate change (usually uncountable, plural climate changes)
- Natural large-scale and long-term change in the Earth's climatic system, as brought about by ice ages.
- Large-scale and long-term change in the Earth's climatic system produced by global warming; anthropogenic climate change.
- 2013 September-October, Michael Sivak, “Will AC Put a Chill on the Global Energy Supply?”, in American Scientist:
- Nevertheless, it is clear that the global energy demand for air-conditioning will grow substantially as nations become more affluent, with the consequences of climate change potentially accelerating the demand.
- 2019 October, Roger Ford, “WCP award - victory for DfT reactionaries”, in Modern Railways, page 31:
- If you are serious about climate change a rolling programme of electrification is the only rational policy.
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Usage notes
- May be treated (in the sense “anthropogenic climate change”) as a synonym of global warming in informal contexts, particularly in regions where climate science is contested by political actors.[1] This conflation is not widespread in scientific contexts, where it may be regarded as incorrect.[2]
- Some newspapers and journalists now prefer the terms climate crisis, climate emergency, or climate breakdown.[3]
Translations
changes in the Earth's climate
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References
- Jennifer 8. Lee , quoting Frank Luntz (2003-03-02), “A Call for Softer, Greener Language”, in The New York Times, ISSN 0362-4331: “In his memorandum, Mr. Luntz urges that the term “climate change” be used instead of “global warming,” because while global warming has catastrophic communications attached to it, climate change sounds a more controllable and less emotional challenge.”
- Erik Conway (2008-12-05), “What's in a Name? Global Warming vs. Climate Change”, in NASA
- Damian Carrington (2019-05-17), “Why the Guardian is changing the language it uses about the environment”, in The Guardian (in English)
Further reading
- climate change on Wikipedia.Wikipedia
- climate change, global warming at Google Ngram Viewer
Anagrams
- chemical agent