The coal-fired Plant Scherer, one of the nation's top carbon dioxide emitters, stands in the distance in Juliette, Georgia, Saturday, June, 3, 2017.

(AP Photo/Branden Camp)

Climatescience labels really do matter, a new study says.

According to research conducted by Cornell University and ,the American public continues to have doubts about "global warming" but appears to beunified in believing in "climate change."

The contrast was most divided among individuals who identified themselves as Republicans.

In fact, the study found that 74.4 percent of respondents who identified as Republicans said they believed that climate change is really happening. In contrast, only 65.5 percent said they believed in global warming. Democrats, on the other hand, feel very differently, with94 percent replying "yes" to both questions.

Jonathon Schuldt, the study's coauthor and assistant professor of communication at Cornell, that some Republicans may discredit climate science primarily because they opposethe policies that have been proposed to address the issue.

"Acknowledging the reality of global warming or climate change may lead to new government regulations on businesses, which goes against core conservative values," Schuldt said. "So, telling a pollster that the phenomenon isn't happening may reflect something about a person's general policy preferences, not just their level of certainty that theglobal climateis changing."

While the terms are often used interchangeably, they have very different meanings.

According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, refers only to the Earth’s rising surface temperature, while climate change includes warming and the side effectsof that warming.

"Said another way, global warming is one symptom of the much larger problem of human-caused climate change," NOAA notes.

Schuldt suggests that President Donald Trump, who , consciously uses the term global warming in his tweets, despite the fact that most media uses climate change in its coverage.

"Our results suggest that Trump's emphasis on 'global warming' may be an effective rhetorical strategy that resonates with his Republican constituents, who express more skepticism in response to that term in particular," Schuldt told phys.org.

The study is an extension of a previous study conducted by Cornell students, who surveyed 1,450 adults in October 2016.When the students asked respondents whether climate change exists, 85.8 percent said "yes." But when they asked whether global warming exists, only 80.9 percent agreed.