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Rebranding "global warming"

Posted by Chris Schults (Guest Contributor) at 10:11 AM on 01 Apr 2006

Read more about: messaging | climate

As reported in the most recent Daily Grist, a New York-based marketing firm announced that it will help with the rebranding of global warming. As we're all armchair marketers from time-to-time, how would you rebrand "global warming"?

Share your thoughts in comments and we'll send them to the experts.

Global Drowning?

A "rebranding" could be a good thing. I think the focus of the rebranding should be on the human consequences of global warming to motivate people to take action.  I  personally like "global drowning" because so many people live near the water and an additional 20 feet would make life, uh, rather uncomfortable.  Also, given that Washington, D.C. would be swamped, global drowning might motivate some lawmakers.  

Global climate disaster.

With special emphasis on the release of methane by the melting permafrost.

Explain the phenomenon in terms of exponential growth of greenhouse gas emissions as the melting continues.  Very frighteming yes, but necessary.

Maybe something like that viral video about plugin hybrids from the Union Of Concerned Scientists.

A school of fish moves in chaotic paterns that can be defined by fractals.  The fear faithbased bushco inc fractal has the human school of "fish" burning up the earth as fast as it can.

We need a countervaling fractal.  One that makes the fish swim away from combustion and consumption as sources of energy and satisfaction.

http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog

penguin melt; e la Repubblica Serenissima

I do not think "global warming" should be removed from the lead.  But added to that, I would throw in "penguin melt," "polar bear melt," and "Venice."  E.g., "global warming, Venice."  And of course it would be necessary to be prepared to say something reasonable about melting in the Antarctic, and locally its effect on penguins, and in the Arctic, and locally its effect on polar bears, and, then, more globally, about a dramatic rise in sea levels, and its  effects on the Venetian lagoon, and the incalculable architectural treasures of that place.

Everybody should understand what is right in front of us.  Probably not all species of penguins will be driven into extinction, but many will.  Polar bears look pretty doomed, as things are going now.  All coastal cities are threatened, as well as all low-lying coastal regions and countries and islands.  Venice, an especially fragile as well as especially precious place, may very well deserve to be displayed prominently as a victim of global warming.

Chickens deserve our true friendship! So do fish! So do other sentient beings! Let us learn to be kind.

Technically Over-Energizing

Technically "Global Warming" is over-energizing. Counting calories is common for diets but it is sensible for planets too. Calories are the metric heat units of energy.

Global Warming is a misnomer -- the actuality is the system does not emit energy to space at the rate energy is gained from space, due to a near-surface invisible blanket of gases.

This causes the biosphere to be pushed "far from equilibrium". When systems are far from equilibrium they create spontaneous structures for energy dissipation. Hurricanes are one such structure, which lifts heat from the surface, brings it ten kilometers high, where the radiation is released above the insulating blanket.

The net effect after major storm events is the system has regained partial equilibrium by releasing massive amounts of heat energy. The seas temperatures may be several degrees cooled, giving a net temperature over time of a lower heat energy level. The "average temperature" may be mild but your city is rubble.

The system then is not warmed or warmer, it is a lower temperature than without the hurricane, giving a false sense of what happened if you only go by temperature readings and averages of temperatures.

The mathematics was developed by Rene Thom as Catastrophe Theory, evolved into Chaos Theory, and Prigogine won the Nobel Prize for explaining Dissipative Structures. It is all very well proved and known.

The system will continue to have gyrations based on locallized hot spots far from equilbrium. These will induce non-linear effects, so that 2 degrees warmer does not mean two extra storms or ten extra mph per storm. if the seas temperatures got ten degrees hotter (celcius) the Hypercanes would be four times stronger than Katrina. You would see 500 mph winds instead of 150 mph winds, except that there would be no mammalian life left to see that if the sea temperatures got ten degrees hotter.

http:ecosyn.us PALACES for the People, H2-PV, PV-Breeders acres of PV, tons of Hydrogen

Atlantis Syndrome

I don't think the words 'global warming' will ever go away completely, but I do think that the American public needs a new understanding of the urgency of the climate crisis.

Make it sound like a movie and people remember it (Operation Freedom). Hence "Atlantis Syndrome" conjurs up images of the drowned city of Atlantis, while "syndrome" is suitably dark and scientific.

April Fools

Y'all can keep discussing how we might rebrand global warming, but I just wanted to point out that the Daily Grist news item that I referred to was an April Fools joke, gotcha!

Yuk yuk

Gosh Chris, tell me it ain't so.  I was really getting interested in them green lingerie.

Chickens deserve our true friendship! So do fish! So do other sentient beings! Let us learn to be kind.
Fool me once...

Hehe, I was fooled.  But there has been an interesting discussion about a rebranding since "marketing guru" Seth Godin posted this on March 1.

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