Global Warming, first of all, is the name for a scientific theory to describe reality according to sets of data. Many other possible names could have been chosen to articulate this data into an easy to communicate theory.

Why then, were these two words - “Global Warming” - chosen?

Would be interesting to try and trace the actual evolution of that term, who is credited with originating it, and to study its distribution across media channels (charted alongside ownerships and associations amongst those channels and their members).

Aside from that though, we can unpack the two words, “Global Warming”, altogether outside of the realm of the scientific theory they describe. We could easily look at it as a marketing slogan: which it 100% is, even if it’s a scientific theory. As a marketing slogan, we’ll need to zoom out a little bit and look at the emotional evocations of this phrase. “Global” tells you who the audience for the product or service is: everyone. It would almost be like calling it “Universal Warming” or maybe “Everyman Warming” in other contexts. So what does it mean though, that everyone is subjected to this “warming”? We could think of temperature like awareness. As temperatures rise, so does awareness. Awareness of what? Of the global impact and interlinking of our actions.

Therefore, one could say that “global warming” as a phrase indicates that awareness of individuals as being part of a collective globe or world, which is subject to universal conditions is growing. Phrased that way, the scientific theory loses a little bit of its bite, because it is revealed for what it is: a marketing slogan designed to instill a certain response and encourage thought and discourse within certain areas: Global Warming is meant to be a unitive crisis.