3 ms·

This is tangential, but I don't like this word "heating" -- and not for the political reasons you think. I know why we use it. It sounds more severe than "warm

This is tangential, but I don't like this word "heating" -- and not for the political reasons you think. I know why we use it. It sounds more severe than "warming", and more active. That's not my problem with it. My problem is that it misleads about the physical mechanism. Temperatures don't go up because of additional heat inputs to the system. They go up because of the greenhouse effect. A better description would be something that evokes, somehow, that you are wrapping something in insulating blankets until it overheats and dies. It's less "heating", more "smothering". "Heating" conjures this mental image of the Earth in a pot on the stove. That's dramatic but not how it works. It's more like the Earth is your beloved dog, who you've just locked in the car with the windows up on a hot day. Additionally, a phrase like "2.7C degrees of heating" has a little of the problem that popular science-speak often does, where it insists on saying, say, "power", where "force" would have been a more accurate word, and no less communicative to those who don't know any physics anyway. Because "heat" is measured in units of energy, while "2.7C" is in units of temperature. Granted, if you multiply this temperature delta by the thermal capacity of the Earth, you do get a change to thermal energy. But again, what's misleading is the idea that humans are directly injecting that energy. They -- we -- aren't. We're shifting an equilibrium, in an energy flow -- from the Sun to the Earth, and radiated from the Earth to space. A good thing about the focus on temperature, though, is that that's more directly relevant to the environmental issues. The thermal energy of the Earth is not really relevant. The temperature is. Anyway, I wish that our efforts at communicating urgency could also embed some communication of the underlying scientific concepts, the causal mechanisms. Maybe "smothering" does it.

ASalazarMX 5y ago
I think we are beyond semantics. Calling it smothering, greenhouse, warming, climate change, etc. doesn't make a difference. The only people who still want to believe that it isn't happening won't be convinced by names. They'll be convinced only when it (drought, desertification, flooding, hunger, etc.) affects their own neighborhood.
- pjc50 5y ago
  Not even then. The pandemic has made it very clear how good people are at ignoring a disaster happening around them. And look at the Texas response to its power crisis last winter.
- splistud 5y ago
  Or, you know, people who can read the data. And no, you can't convince me with names, threats, warnings, tears or any amount of nonsense.
  - ASalazarMX 5y ago
    In my country we say "Estás viendo, pero no ves" (You're seeing, but you're not seeing). The data is clear. It has been a warning for 50 years, now it's been proven not only right, but conservative. The more data there is, the more people who want to disbelieve will refuse to see it.
deelowe 5y ago
My issue is that the problem is more about "energy" than heat. While the average over time will be a gradual warming, the impacts locally will be much different on the time scales normal people care about. We should be talking about weather extremes, not "heat." When we say the earth is going to get warmer, people think "fine, Canada is kind of nice anyways." In reality, we'll also see extreme blizzards, floods/rain, tornados, insect swarms, mass deaths of flora/fauna, and more. Pretty much all natural phenomena will be amplified both in terms of frequency as well as severity. And we may have many years before that 2.whatever C warming trend is realized, extreme weather events are increasing now. My home was almost leveled this year by an F4/5 tornado this year in an area where tornados are typical but never much more than an F2.
ziddoap 5y ago
I think you're making a pedantic mountain out of a molehill. For Mr. and Ms. Average Person, what do they gain in understanding by you saying "smothering" or "warming" over "heating"? Do you think that will lead to increased activism? More efficient activism? Or is it solely to satiate the scientists who already understand the difference of heating vs. warming? While I think precision in speech is a good thing, there is a point where it really just doesn't matter anymore - because the end result remains exactly as intended. When I'm explaining security concepts in a security awareness presentation, for example, I sometimes make a non-perfect analogy to get my point across. Anyone who understands why the analogy isn't perfect probably doesn't need the talk. Anyone who doesn't understand why the analogy isn't perfect probably doesn't care about the nuance. The average person doesn't care if it's a gigabit or a gigabyte of data stolen, they just care about the end result - data was stolen. The same applies here. I personally don't care whether the earth is technically "heating" or "warming" - I only care about the end result and what I can do to help.

ASalazarMX 5y ago

I think we are beyond semantics. Calling it smothering, greenhouse, warming, climate change, etc. doesn't make a difference. The only people who still want to believe that it isn't happening won't be convinced by names. They'll be convinced only when it (drought, desertification, flooding, hunger, etc.) affects their own neighborhood.

pjc50 5y ago
Not even then. The pandemic has made it very clear how good people are at ignoring a disaster happening around them. And look at the Texas response to its power crisis last winter.
splistud 5y ago
Or, you know, people who can read the data. And no, you can't convince me with names, threats, warnings, tears or any amount of nonsense.
- ASalazarMX 5y ago
  In my country we say "Estás viendo, pero no ves" (You're seeing, but you're not seeing). The data is clear. It has been a warning for 50 years, now it's been proven not only right, but conservative. The more data there is, the more people who want to disbelieve will refuse to see it.

deelowe 5y ago

My issue is that the problem is more about "energy" than heat. While the average over time will be a gradual warming, the impacts locally will be much different on the time scales normal people care about. We should be talking about weather extremes, not "heat." When we say the earth is going to get warmer, people think "fine, Canada is kind of nice anyways." In reality, we'll also see extreme blizzards, floods/rain, tornados, insect swarms, mass deaths of flora/fauna, and more. Pretty much all natural phenomena will be amplified both in terms of frequency as well as severity. And we may have many years before that 2.whatever C warming trend is realized, extreme weather events are increasing now. My home was almost leveled this year by an F4/5 tornado this year in an area where tornados are typical but never much more than an F2.

ziddoap 5y ago

I think you're making a pedantic mountain out of a molehill. For Mr. and Ms. Average Person, what do they gain in understanding by you saying "smothering" or "warming" over "heating"? Do you think that will lead to increased activism? More efficient activism? Or is it solely to satiate the scientists who already understand the difference of heating vs. warming? While I think precision in speech is a good thing, there is a point where it really just doesn't matter anymore - because the end result remains exactly as intended. When I'm explaining security concepts in a security awareness presentation, for example, I sometimes make a non-perfect analogy to get my point across. Anyone who understands why the analogy isn't perfect probably doesn't need the talk. Anyone who doesn't understand why the analogy isn't perfect probably doesn't care about the nuance. The average person doesn't care if it's a gigabit or a gigabyte of data stolen, they just care about the end result - data was stolen. The same applies here. I personally don't care whether the earth is technically "heating" or "warming" - I only care about the end result and what I can do to help.