Global Heating or What's in a Name?

As the global warming / climate change debate has become stuck in an intractable rut, people have started looking for different words that more accurately convey what is going on. Tom Friedman, for example, has proposed 'global wierding'  in order to focus attention on the proliferation of unusual and extreme climate events. Over at Tumblr, Andrew Revkin has suggested the term global heating and provided a wonderful graphic to back up the choice.

The diagram/term have two big benefits. First, it dramatically emphasizes the importance of the ocean as repositories of heat energy relative to the land and atmosphere. Second, it focuses attention on changes to the system  -- accumulation of heat energy -- rather than attempting to describe the consequences of that change.