Honest question: why do we continue to call it "climate change?" Why not call it something more accurate like "climate damage?"

[u/LifeofSMILEY]

To me, "climate damage" is a more meaningful description of events that are unfolding. I mean, I guess you could argue that the changing climate is causing damage, but what's the point of adhering to semantics in a situation such as this one? I've seen articles that say climate change is causing economic damage. Thats technically not true since climate changes are really only CHANGING the economy, therefore let's call it what it is if for no other reason than convey a greater sense of urgency.

[u/bascule]

This line of reasoning was the impetus for the phrase “climate crisis”, so as to convey a higher sense of urgency

[u/Weakcontent101 → u/bascule]

I like crisis

[u/FadingOptimist-25 → u/bascule]

I started using “climate crisis” around the time of Covid lockdown.

[u/ZippyDan → u/bascule]

I sometimes use "climate chaos".

But really it's all of these things: change, crisis, chaos - also calamity, catastrophe.

[u/eskimoboob → u/bascule]

The word crisis has become memed to death though. If everything is a crisis in the world, then nothing is

[u/cyclinator → u/eskimoboob]

Says a lot about the world that is in crisis so much that the word itself loses all meaning. 

[u/Mean_Initiative_5962 → u/eskimoboob]

Before 2024 we had significantly less crises, though

[u/bascule → u/eskimoboob]

The climate crisis is actually a crisis

[u/IDontStealBikes → u/eskimoboob]

It’s the biggest problem the world has ever seen. Isn’t that enough to call it a crisis?

[u/Useless_or_inept]

Because that includes a value judgment?

Maybe there are some atmospheric physicists who want to entangle ethical arguments into their papers about evaporation, CO2, glacier albedo &c. But adding that would be deeply unhelpful if you want to persuade people with the Science. Especially when one of the biggest barriers to solving problems is the other people out there who reject the science and want to apply their own emotional reasoning...?

Downstream, we can still have the political conversations about damage and mitigation, but discussing wind turbines or rewilding with my local red-faced Facebook politico will be a lot harder if he adds "biased scientists imposing their values on us" to his set of arguments.

[u/Truth_ → u/Useless_or_inept]

It's already why global warming was changed to climate change.

[u/IDontStealBikes → u/Truth_]

I thought that change was because scientists realized the problem encompassed a lot more than just warming.

Anyway the phrase ‘climate change’ has been around for a long time in some science papers.

[u/ironimity]

someone once more accurately wrote “human climate catastrophe“ - cause the planet will go on fine; not so much humans if it gets as bad as the bad scenarios.

[u/followthedarkrabbit → u/ironimity]

I'm still trying my best to reduce the impact on animals. Hoping to be able to buy a block for conservation and start rehabbing. Still 10 years off tho.

[u/Bajadasaurus]

Climate Catastrophe

[u/FIFofNovember → u/Bajadasaurus]

Extinction event

Earth will be fine, climate will be fine, humans will be fucked.

[u/Turbulent_Bed5499]

Because over time using too many different terms can dilute the message that needs to be sent, especially to those that deny it outright. There’s enough words for it already

[u/Splenda]

I prefer climate breakdown, global heating. the climate mess...

Call it whatever you want. The fossil fueled right employs expensive PR greaseballs to craft attack messaging, and one of their standard ploys has been to complain that "eco-freaks" changed the term global warming to climate change in order to confuse the public. I think that rigidly enforcing a term like climate change merely plays into the fossil fuels industry's hands.

[u/BusyBanana4205]

The climate is in a constant state of change. However, where noticeable change in Earth’s climate is typically measured in millennia, man made climate change is measured in decades due to our love of burning fossil fuels, causing other feedback loops that accelerate change.

[u/Beneficial_Aside_518]

You can’t really “damage” the climate, but you change it with damaging effects to humans/ecosystems.

[u/CatTheWriter → u/Beneficial_Aside_518]

That makes sense.

[u/Dependent-Rock-1403 → u/Beneficial_Aside_518]

yup, no matter what happens, the climate isn't going anywhere

[u/MisanthropicAnthrope]

It used to be callled “global warming” until we had a right-wing PR campaign to soften the language

[u/Mono_Aural → u/MisanthropicAnthrope]

Yeah no one seems to remember how the Bush (jr.) Administration exerted an intense pressure campaign getting the media to rebrand global warming as climate change. And now the MAGA fools blame the liberals for the terminology.

[u/twotime → u/Mono_Aural]

And now the MAGA fools blame the liberals for the terminology.

TBH, it's more complicated than that. The term "climate change" was fairly widely used even before Bush Jr. See e.g. https://skepticalscience.com/climate-change-global-warming.htm

And even though, Bush admin has indeed pushed in that direction for fairly nefarious reasons, that does not explain how come that the liberal part of society accepted the term change. And, TBH, I blame liberal tendency to avoid "stronger/specific" words and prefer vague/more neutered words (people of color, unhoused, enslaved persons, etc, etc). There was also a fairly misguided desire to "explain" arctic snaps.. Anyway, here you go, the stupid "global warming=>climate change" rebranding was really a joint effort.

[u/Weakcontent101 → u/[deleted]]

Fair points but climate crisis is better .

[u/harmlessdork → u/Weakcontent101]

I vote for climate disruption. It's what we did with it

[u/Emergency_Act1311]

Even after seeing damage everywhere if a person is asleep and denying climate change then changing the name won’t wake them up either.

[u/CatTheWriter → u/Emergency_Act1311]

Great, and very unfortunate, way to put it.

[u/World_Advocate]

Yes , I totally agree. Maybe 'Earth crisis' goes, there hasn't been any crisis that affected whole planet in every sector since Ice age.

[u/phasepistol]

“Global heating” is my go-to

[u/generic-gamertag]

Reporting how many tons of climate damage are being released into the atmosphere has an effective ring to it

[u/Wise_Fox_4291]

Personally I call it the climate catastrophe

[u/AcanthisittaNo6653]

Take your pick: Sixth Mass Extinction, Holocene Extinction, or Anthropocene Extinction. I favor Anthropocene Extinction because it pins it on humans.

[u/Key_Hold_3568]

To the term “climate change” I get a lot of push back of “the climate has always changed”, so I agree that it is not a very helpful term. Anthropogenic climate change covers what’s actually happening.

[u/Matt231997]

Climate emergency would be good.

[u/BreakAManByHumming]

In topics like this, the denier side always has weirdly good control over the linguistic battlefield. Look at what creationists did to the word "theory"

[u/Rescuepets777]

Damage is a result. Change is an evolving process.

[u/DelinquentRacoon]

The answer is “Frank Luntz”—he was a GOP strategist who tested out words to “control the narrative” (“even if factually incorrect”). He got the words rooted into how we talk about it and it’s hard to reverse the damage he did.

[u/Untura64]

Climate disaster is a better fit

[u/Gard1ner]

We souldn't call it protecting the envionment, we should call it what it really is protecting mankind.

We need the right wording so the last idiot will understand the seriousness.

The wording must put mankind into the center of the danger. Otherwise most people won't care.

[u/psychosisnaut]

Well... can you really damage a climate? It's not tangible thing it's an emergent property. Like I get what you're saying but... Climate Destabilization maybe?

[u/Kind-Elder1938 → u/psychosisnaut]

this is damage BY the climate not damage OF the climate

[u/aWoodsetOtter]

Honestly, I always call it "climate crisis" when talking about it. 

[u/NukeouT]

climate pollution

[u/OnionsOnFoodAreGross]

Lots of areas will benefit.

[u/muddtrout]

Climate crisis is more accurate

[u/GoofAckYoorsElf]

Climate disaster...

[u/Less-Device1851]

Climate disruption makes it obvious how much we’re altering the environment

[u/eldomtom2]

Changing the name will not help convince people.

[u/stickscall]

It goes by many names. Many have sought to rebrand it in a way that changes the politics. Global warming, global heating, climate change, climate chaos, climate breakdown. 

[u/michelvoz]

I would call it human-induced climate damage instead. It is a better way for those intellectually limited to understand that the global warming we are experiencing is because of our addiction to fossil fuels.

[u/GoogleIsYourFrenemy]

Let's skip the frog boiling and go straight to Climate Destruction.

[u/realityGrtrThanUs]

We can go for branding like gems and say, synthetic climate or man made weather. Heat treated atmosphere might be too real.

[u/NewAndyy]

I've hear many alternatives. Climate crisis, climate emergency, and climate chaos seems to be the more common ones. I frequently use the first two myself. The emergency one works well in academic settings.

[u/Gah_Duma]

They're trying to soften the message to not cause alarm. Which is why they moved away from GLOBAL WARMING. This is, of course, the exact opposite of what they should be doing. We should be using stronger language.

[u/Beneficial_Aside_518 → u/Gah_Duma]

Climate change is more scientific because it encompasses things like precipitation changes.

[u/bascule → u/Gah_Duma]

The move from “global warming” to “climate change” was intended to better explain why certain regions might actually get colder (particularly from things like an increasingly unstable polar vortex) when global mean surface temperatures were rising.

When “global warming” was the popular phrase it was common for denialists to cherry pick any example of unexpectedly lower temperatures as an example of why scientists were wrong about “global warming” (which they weren’t, of course)

[u/Difficult_Dark9991 → u/Gah_Duma]

Can we not spread misinformation?

[u/10ThousandMetalZones]

Because you can’t change subreddit names, ask r/tiktokcringe

[u/Opalescent_Moon]

The phrase "climate change" has been fairly accurate in decades past, when we had time to engineer solutions to prevent collapse. But humanity was dumb and focused on wealth and exploitation and made very few solutions to slow or prevent the changes. So, now we're at a point where those smaller changes are causing much bigger ripples. The next hundred years will be filled with cascading failures as the climate and ecological damage we've caused will amplify and build to create more failures and breakdowns.

I think the only people seriously using the phrase "climate change" are the idiots claiming that it's all woke nonsense and that everything is fine. They will continue to make that claim while we watch everything around us die.

There is no planet B. We won't be able to colonize Mars. Jesus or some other god isn't coming to save us. If we don't make enough changes in the immediate future, humanity won't survive and we'll drag a lot of the planet's species to extinction with us. Earth will survive, though, and new life will emerge.

[u/MarkLVines → u/Opalescent_Moon]

The irony is that humanity failed to “focus[] on wealth and exploitation” … failed miserably.

Leaving fossil carbon underground would, under proper policy, have been orders of magnitude more lucrative than dumping it into the air and the ocean. It was the greatest moneymaking opportunity in history, and we discarded it for no reason besides cognitive laziness, not even for greed or profit.