Scientific terms, like all words, can take on a life of their own. They emerge and stick through historical accident. The term “big bang” to describe a prevailing theory of cosmology, for example, has come in for years of criticism because, among other reasons, the birth of the universe would not have made any noise. But as science writer John Horgan put the matter in a 1995 issue of Scientific American, “Words are like harpoons. Once they go in, they are very hard to pull out.”
According to Dennis Overbye’s book “Lonely Hearts of the Cosmos,” a subsequent, more refined theory of our universe’s origin, inflation, was named by its primary inventor, Alan Guth, after the economic inflation that was going on at the end of the 1970s.
Mammals were named by Carl Linnaeus during the 1700s, and while there are many traits that make our kind of animal distinct from other vertebrates, he chose to label us with the Latin word for breasts. And really, if we’re honest, there’s no evidence that our species, Homo sapiens (wise man) was any wiser than Homo erectus or Homo neanderthalensis.
Nonetheless, these terms are locked in. In 1993, Sky and Telescope Magazine held a contest for readers to replace the big bang with something that better described the origin of the universe. While they got more than 1,000 entries, nothing stuck. And so there’s not much hope in getting scientists or the public to start calling the result of carbon emissions “global heating,” as James Lovelock has suggested, or “global climate disruption,” as former president Obama’s science adviser John Holdren once proposed.
But “global warming” does resonate with the public, it’s scientifically accurate, and it should be revived. It correctly implies a serious problem and creates a helpful sense of urgency. “Climate change” might still be useful in some contexts, but we should make sure that harpoon doesn’t get stuck.
This opinion piece was provided by Bloomberg News.