Two Concepts One Issue: A Bibliometric Analysis of Climate Change and Climate Crisis Concepts

Abstract This research aims to analyse and discuss the different conceptualization of anthropogenic global warming (AGW) in academic publications. The main question is to understand how different approaches to climate change is addressed in the literature. In order to answer this research question, a sample was created from Scopus literature database. Analysis was performed using the VOSviewer program on a data set consisting of keywords and citation information. The findings show that the perspectives of the studies that adress the same topic with different terms such as “climate change” and “climate crisis” are fundamentally different. Studies using the concept of “climate change” take a more techno-scientific methodological approach linking AGW to concepts such as drought, sea level changes, extreme weather events and agriculture. In contrast studies that use the concept of “climate crisis” relate the AGW to climate justice and concepts such as neoliberalism. It is noteworthy that studies using the concept of “climate crisis” are mostly studies carried out by social sciences studies that deal with the problem in an interdisciplinary political and social context whereas “climate change” is used by physical science studies including climatology, earth science and ecology. Given the traditional separation of these disciplines it is not surprising that two different nomenclatures were used to address the AGW problem. We argue that the concept “climate crisis” is capturing the urgency of the AGW and that in order to find interdisciplinary solutions both insights from physical and humanity sciences must be combined.