Global Warming vs. Climate Change
By: Amy He ’25
Toby Chen ’25 & Christine Wu ’25
Throughout the past few decades, the general public has become increasingly familiar with climate change and global warming. However, countless fail to differentiate and utilize the two terms correctly. While many believe that global warming and climate change are interchangeable, climate change is an umbrella term that encompasses global warming.
Global warming refers to the rise of Earth’s average temperature due to the heat-trapping greenhouse gasses from burning fossil fuels that get stuck under the Earth’s atmosphere. Climate change is more than just ‘warming’ temperatures, as it demonstrates how the change in one aspect of the Earth’s system can lead to long-term effects on Earth’s weather patterns (United Nations, 2020). Examples of this include extreme droughts, abnormal hurricanes, and shrinking mountain glaciers, which have become growing concerns for environmentalists worldwide. Although our planet has experienced phases of severe climates, such as the Pleistocene ice age, human activity has become the main cause of shifts in long-term weather patterns in recent years.
According to historian and physicist Spencer Weart, using different words to describe facets of the same issue aids in tracking scientists’ progress in understanding a problem. During the 19th century, the time of the Industrial Revolution, Swedish scientist Svante Arrhenius proposed the possibility of climate change caused by carbon dioxide emissions caused by humans (OpenMind, 2019). At that time, scientists were unsure whether the Earth would experience cooling, caused by the absorbance and reflection of sunlight by pollution, or warming, caused by the trapping of heat in greenhouse gasses. Towards the mid-1970s, it became evident that the temperatures would rise, hence the prevalence of the phrase “global warming” (Kennedy and Lindsey, 2015). However, a common misconception that the Earth would get hotter and hotter until winter ceases to exist began to develop. Therefore, scientists have started to use the term ‘human-induced climate change’ to describe recent shifts in long-term weather patterns and their impacts.
To summarize, global warming is a significant aspect of climate change caused by human activity that has resulted in a series of negative consequences. To understand how to combat these issues, it is crucial to recognize not just the Earth’s increase in temperature, but also how its side effects affect populations, ecosystems, and economies worldwide.
References
United Nations. (n.d.). What Is Climate Change?
https://www.un.org/en/climatechange/what-is-climate-change
Conocimiento, V. A. (2021, April 7). Svante Arrhenius, the Man Who Foresaw Climate Change.
What’s the difference between global warming and climate change? (n.d.). NOAA Climate.gov.
