What’s in a name? When the issue is “climate change,” plenty, linguist says
by Robert McClure | Dateline Earth as reported on Investigate WEST | February 22nd, 2010
It’s been apparent for some time that the public is not understanding the potential magnitude of the threat of climate change. The percentage of Americans saying it’s even taking place was recently measured at 57 percent, down 14 points since October 2008, according to what appears to be a series of climate stories running this week on National Public Radio. (Recall that we’ve described before how even expert “skeptics” admit the warming is taking place; that big chunks of the public misses that is remarkable.)
So would calling climate change “the climate crisis” make a difference? That’s the contention of cognitive linguist George Lakoff, who was featured on one NPR segment. Lakoff says people think of the “climate” as something positive. And “change” is not bad. “Global warming?” Maybe that’s an even worse term, Lakoff tells host Guy Raz…
Read on: http://invw.org/2010/02/whats-in-a-name-when-the-issue-is-climate-change-plenty-linguist-says/
Climate Change is really scary, now we have super typhoons and a lot of flooding going on some countries..”"`