Watch your language when topic is climate

WASHINGTON — As Congress considers legislation to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions and slow global warming, delegates from around the world are in Bali, Indonesia, attending a U.N. conference on climate change.

They're all choosing their words carefully.

The phrases "climate change" and "global warming" carry different — and often loaded — meanings, depending on who's speaking.

" 'Global warming' gets people's attention more," said Frank O'Donnell, president of Clean Air Watch, a nonpartisan advocacy group based in Washington, D.C. " 'Climate change' is softer. It's why General Motors says 'climate change' and why the Sierra Club uses 'global warming.' "

Republicans abandoned "global warming" and started using "climate change" in 2002 after a memo from political consultant Frank Luntz. His advice, aimed at giving Republicans strong language to dominate the debate on environmental issues, served to politicize the terms.

"Climate change" has evolved into the preferred Republican term when political leaders talk about the effect of greenhouse gases. Democrats and many environmentalists continue to use "global warming."

While Republicans may have been deliberate about making "climate change" part of their political vocabulary, it also has become the preferred scientific parlance.

"The reason it's important to say 'climate change' is because it's an all-encompassing term," said Brenda Ekwurzel, a climate scientist with the Union of Concerned Scientists, an environmental-advocacy group.

But it remains a partisan issue, colored by political semantics. The language has allowed some skeptical leaders to differentiate between climate change — which has multiple causes — and global warming, which generally is described as being caused by human activity.

When Sen. Ted Stevens, R-Alaska, headed the Senate Commerce Committee in 2005, he created the now-defunct Global Climate Change and Impacts subcommittee. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., had just as emphatic a name for the House committee that was created this year when Democrats took over Congress: the Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming.

As the Senate debated legislation this week that would slash greenhouse gases by 60 percent in the next four decades, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., criticized President Bush's previous approach to the problem by zeroing in on his use of language.

"President Bush would not acknowledge the words 'global warming' until the past six months," Reid said Wednesday on the Senate floor. "He's now at least been able to say the words and is doing some futile things to help."

There's "certainly not any concerted effort" to use one phrase over the other when it comes to talking about the issue, said Kristen Hellmer, communications director for the White House Council on Environmental Quality. That's partly because "global warming" has become the unscientific shorthand for the whole debate.

"I think that the president uses both," Hellmer said. "I can recall him saying both 'global warming' and 'climate change.' And I know that the president has said 'global climate warming.' "

Hellmer noted that the main global scientific body on the issue — which recently shared a Nobel Peace Prize with former Vice President Al Gore — is known as the International Panel on Climate Change.

Most scientists call it "climate change" unless they're specifically talking about the warming of Earth.

"Global warming was the phrase used back in the 1980s and 1990s, when the initial focus was on the globally averaged temperature of the planet," said Richard Rosen, senior adviser for climate research within the climate-program office of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

Scientists since have come to realize that "the issue involves much more than the globally averaged temperature," Rosen said.

"It also impacts other parts of the climate system. Precipitation, Arctic sea ice, snowpack and glaciers," he said. "It's sort of a recognition that a lot more is going on than the globally averaged temperature."