Does Global Warming Need a P*rn Name?

half comical, half shrewd...global warming/climate change needs a good meme

Excerpt from the New Scientist, 22 September 2009

"What's in a name?," Juliet famously asked of Romeo. Rather a lot, according to Rajendra Shende, head of the UN's OzonAction.

The war on ozone-depleting CFCs was only won when the media coined the 'scientifically imprecise, but emotionally powerful' term, the 'ozone hole', Shende said at an event at Peking University to celebrate Ozone Day.

'It made people feel there was a hole in the roof of their home,' said Shende, pointing out that it wasn't actually a hole, but a 'higher rate of depletion in the Antarctic sky.'

So, what should we call global warming to provoke a similarly passionate response from the apathetic masses, asks The Guardian? Global melting? Global boiling? Global burning?

James Lovelock likes 'global heating'. Then there's 'global burning', which has found favour with Christian groups.

Then again, maybe we should just stick with global warming, or even switch to something less provocative. Research suggests that alarmist, cataclysmic language on climate change leaves readers feeling helpless and unmotivated...

And this 2006 report by the Institute for Public Policy Research in London went so far as to prudishly dismiss alarmist language as 'tantamount to climate porn, offering a thrilling spectacle but ultimately distancing the public from the problem.'

All in all, I don't think giving global warming a scarier, more scintillating name will solve the problem. And anyway, can any single phrase neatly and glibly encapsulate the multifarious ramifications of climate change?

Unlikely - but if you do come up with a good name, let us know. Who knows, it might catch on.'