climatechangeとは 意味・読み方・使い方

名詞

climate change (usually uncountable, plural climate changes)

1. Natural large-scale and long-term change in the Earth's climatic system, as brought about by ice ages.
2. Rapid, large-scale, and long-term change in the Earth's climatic system produced by global warming; anthropogenic climate change.
   • 2013 September-October, Michael Sivak, “Will AC Put a Chill on the Global Energy Supply?”, in American Scientist:

     Nevertheless, it is clear that the global energy demand for air-conditioning will grow substantially as nations become more affluent, with the consequences of climate change potentially accelerating the demand.

   • 2015 June 18, Jim Yardley, Laurie Goodstein, quoting Pope Francis, “Pope Francis, in Sweeping Encyclical, Calls for Swift Action on Climate Change”, in The New York Times‎, →ISSN:

     “Climate change is a global problem with grave implications: environmental, social, economic, political and for the distribution of goods,” he writes. “It represents one of the principal challenges facing humanity in our day.”

   • 2017 May 25, Mark Zuckerberg, “Mark Zuckerberg’s Commencement address at Harvard”, in The Harvard Gazette‎:

     It’s time for our generation-defining public works. How about stopping climate change before we destroy the planet and getting millions of people involved manufacturing and installing solar panels?

   • 2019 October, Roger Ford, “WCP award - victory for DfT reactionaries”, in Modern Railways, page 31:

     If you are serious about climate change a rolling programme of electrification is the only rational policy.

   • 2023 December 27, Richard Foster, “Building a greener future”, in RAIL, number 999, page 34:

     Both the UK and Europe have experienced record summer temperatures in the past couple of years, which have brought home the fact that climate change is happening.

   • 2025 October 11, Simon Kuper, “A utopian future is still, just about, possible”, in FT Weekend (Life & Arts section), London: The Financial Times Ltd., →ISSN, →OCLC, page 20:

     In short, mainstream parties no longer offer an element that every successful political project requires: a promise of a better world. But nativists still offer it. They solve the problem of climate change by pretending it doesn't exist.

使用する際の注意点

• May be treated (in the sense “anthropogenic climate change”) as a synonym of global warming in informal contexts, particularly in regions where climate science is contested by political actors. This conflation is not widespread in scientific contexts, where it may be regarded as incorrect.
• Some newspapers and journalists now prefer the terms climate crisis, climate emergency, or climate breakdown.

派生語

参照

Further reading

• climate change on Wikipedia.Wikipedia
• “climate change, global warming”, in Google Books Ngram Viewer.

アナグラム

• chemical agent