"Words matter," says Jonathan Schuldt, lead author of the study. For the research, Schuldt and his colleagues conducted an experiment on question wording in the American Life Panel , a survey conducted by RAND via the Internet, with a nationwide sample of 2,267 American adults. Participants were asked to indicate whether they considered global climate change to be a serious problem. Seventy-four percent of the participants believed that the problem was real when it was mentioned as "climate change," but only 68 percent thought it was real if the words "global warming" were used. "Whereas when we talk about global warming we focus on rising temperatures , the term climate change refers to more general changes," says Schuldt.
As part of the study, the researchers also analyzed the use of these two terms on the websites of different political groups, and found different trends between liberals and conservatives. Conservatives tend to call the phenomenon "global warming", while liberals call it "climate change ."
