The New York Times recently added a new feature called Chronicle, which allows anyone to do a keyword search of Times copy back to the paper’s founding in the mid-19th century.
That makes possible such questions as this: How often has the Times used “breakthrough,” a word nearly forbidden in science writing?
Alarmingly, the use of the word is on the rise. This could also reflect stories about breakthroughs in labor negotiations, in Congressional deadlocks, and in, say, Faulkner studies. But we ought to be concerned.
Here’s what you get when you chart a few phrases related to climate:
It’s interesting that “greenhouse effect,” after getting a bit of use in the late 1980s, nearly disappeared, and that climate change is currently more commonly used in the Times than global warming.
I’m not sure what we can conclude from this, or where to go next.
Try it yourself and send me any interesting graphs you come up with–and I will share them and discuss them.
Happy hunting.
-Paul Raeburn
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