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Hitwise Intelligence - Sandra Hanchard - Asia Pacific
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Climate Change and Global Warming - The Luntz Factor
May 03, 2007
Last night I saw on LateLine an entertaining interview with US political consultant, Frank Luntz, who is an expert in helping clients "speak in the language of their target audience". Our Hitwise data set has direct applications for this type of market research; over the past 4 weeks alone, for example, we tracked 4,852,899 unique search terms by Australian consumers.
The topic of climate change was raised by Tony Jones in the interview, as it's an important issue leading up to the Australian federal election. Luntz was quizzed on his prior advocacy of the term, 'climate change' as opposed to 'global warming', given the emotional nuance of the latter term.
I was interested to see which term Australian Internet users were more likely to reference:
You'll see that both terms are used by Australian Internet users, but 'global warming' is by far more referenced. Further search analysis is telling, revealing that searches for 'climate change' are more likely to result in visits to News & Media and Government websites; while users more commonly visit Education and Environment online industries when they search for 'global warming'. Could it be that 'climate change' is in fact now the more emotional term, given its prominence in the media?
Next week I'll be hosting a webinar on the online Government sector, where I'll be covering Australian consumer search behaviour and measuring public sentiment online.
Posted by Sandra Hanchard at 01:15 PM
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I see it as 'climate change' since some areas may actually become colder due to the shift of the ocean currents and salinity according to the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute - check out their site. http://www.whoi.edu/page.do?pid=12455&tid=282&cid=9986
Also storms may be more severe and "climates" of different areas will change possibly from wet to dry or dry to wet making current farming areas unsuitable for food production. Our problems will be finding fresh water and food.
Posted by Linda | February 5, 2008 03:18 AM
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My favourite exchange from that interview :
"TONY JONES: OK. But you know, because in 2002 that memo was revealed in the New York Times, that it appears to have been the template for the Bush Administration and certainly for example President Bush stopped using the term 'global warming' and started using the words 'climate change', apparently because in your advice was it was more benign.
FRANK LUNTZ: Well, I've got to tell you something, George W Bush wouldn't know me if I walked into a room. And, as they say about the President, in his mouth the English language goes to die. So I have no idea what language he chose to use. The document that you refer to was written about 10 years ago. It's interesting it took the New York Times five years to get a hold of a memo that had been written so much before that - "
[http://www.abc.net.au/lateline/content/2007/s1912828.htm]
Posted by wioota | May 3, 2007 06:23 PM