>>890152Presumably there's no disagreement that the Earth is currently warming. But let's discuss that for a moment.
"Global warming" refers to the increase in the global average surface temperature of the Earth, which is a simple way of expressing the Earth's energy balance. So the overall heat content of the Troposphere (the lower part of the atmosphere where most weather occurs), the oceans, the Cryosphere (all the ice sheets and shit) and the land surface, they are all increasing. It's not alarmist, it's a statement of fact.
Of course, fossil fuel combustion has impacts that go beyond just the temperature increases. Weather patterns are changing, sulphates pollute the air as smog and stop some of the warming, the oceans are acidifying, and the sea level is rising. Overall, we could call this climate change. A separate cause of climate change would be like the natural Milakovitch Cycles, changes in the properties of Earth's orbit which are thought to have caused the glaciation cycle of the Holocene ice ages.
It was actually Frank Lutz who did some research on how voters respond to language, and he discovered that "global warming" freaks people out more than "climate change" does. He wrote a memo to the Bush administration encouraging them to only use the latter term and not the former.
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