Anthropogenic global warming and climate change are aspects of one of the most contentious and far-ranging public policy debates of recent history. The significance of scientific rhetoric plays out in no greater forum today than in the arena of global climate change. The area commonly treated monolithically as the “rhetoric of science” in fact consists of a family of related yet distinct practices. Explicating the relationships between rhetoric and science demonstrates that rhetoric is intrinsic to science, it is used in talking about science, and it is employed by those using science to advocate a position; therefore, there is a rhetoric of science, a rhetoric about science, and a rhetoric that uses science.

To account for and explicate these distinctions, I propose a tripartite model that assesses first the role of rhetoric in the practice of science, second the use of rhetoric for creating understandings by and for consumers of science, and third the role, in partisan ideological debates, of a discipline that values its ostensibly objective nature. In considering each of these situations, the function of specific topics from rhetoric and from science is addressed as informed by discussion of works by Lloyd Bitzer and Thomas Kuhn. Further consideration is given to rhetoric's epistemic, hermeneutic, and persuasive function in each respective role, as informed by rhetorical theorists including Robert Scott, Stephen Mailloux, and Aristotle.

Anthropogenic climate change, or global warming, is a primary concern of the age, with consequences that promise to develop and persist over generations. It is significantly rhetorical in nature. Using global warming as a test case shows that the proposed model successfully describes three distinct intersections of rhetoric and science.