“Global Warming” is the Wrong Term for What’s Coming Down

The words we use are like the whiskers of a catfish. They bounce into things and transmit signals up to our brains as we make our way through the world.

In that regard, terms like “global warming” and “climate change” are leading us to believe the channel we’re swimming in is much deeper and gentler than it actually is. We need more sensitive whiskers.

What we have started to see more plainly than ever is unpredictability and disruption. “Change” makes it sound as if we’re evolving from one state to another, and that’s not the right picture. We are disrupting one pattern, but we’re not replacing it with a new one, especially since we are still adding carbon to the atmosphere. As unstable as 2021’s weather was, 2022’s promises to be a little more unstable. There’s no reason to believe otherwise, as long as carbon continues to build up.

Even if carbon weren’t getting further concentrated in the atmosphere, we’re also facing the slow unwinding of irreversible processes that have only just begun. The prime example of this would be the changes in ocean currents. With the cooling south of Greenland, who’s to say what will happen, even if we stopped adding carbon to the system tomorrow? “Change” just doesn’t cut it to describe an ongoing increase in instability. It isn’t a singular thing, but a process of indeterminate length, no clear beginning and no defined end.

“Warming,” as I’ve talked about before, is a far too benign-sounding word. “Warm” is pleasant. “Warm” is mild. To most of us, a few degrees “warmer” sounds quite inviting. We’re afraid of the cold for good reasons. We herald the arrival of “warm” weather. It grows our crops. It makes the outside air survivable for us without shelter or extra layers of clothes.

Closer to the truth might be a term like “climate disruption.” We aren’t simply changing the climate — we are derailing it. We are taking the old rules and throwing them away. We are taking planetary principles we have relied upon for millennia and replacing them with…nothing. The new climate may simply be a constant barrage of unpredictably violent extremes.

“Climate destruction” might be a fairer description for that. We are destroying the climatic system. It might be fairer to say that if things continue on their current path, we will get to a point where we can’t say any place has a climate per se. A place may swing back and forth between such extremes that it destroys the concept of a norm. We’ve already seen this, too. Half a continent has swung from mega-drought to tropical moisture and back again in the span of a week. What kind of “climate” is that — desert rainforest? That same continent has seen record-breaking cold in Texas and record-setting winter heat in Minnesota. “Temperate tundra” is an oxymoron.

As scornful as the deniers were when the so-called alarmists migrated from “global warming” to “climate change,” the simple truth is that even “global warming” wasn’t nearly alarmist enough…or really at all. We started with a normalizing term that fell far short of helping us feel in our gut the full reality of what’s headed our way.