From the AP Blog: (h/t to Thomas Hogg)
An addition to AP Stylebook entry on global warming
The AP Stylebook editors today informed AP staff about a change to the entry on global warming. In addition, they described what goes into keeping the Stylebook up-to-date, including their outreach to experts.
AP science writer Seth Borenstein was among those who provided guidance during the discussion that resulted in today’s change, which adds two sentences to the global warming entry.
Here is the staff memo from Stylebook editors Sally Jacobsen, Dave Minthorn and Paula Froke:
We have reviewed our entry on global warming as part of our efforts to continually update the Stylebook to reflect language usage and accuracy.
We are adding a brief description of those who don’t accept climate science or dispute the world is warming from man-made forces:
Our guidance is to use climate change doubters or those who reject mainstream climate science and to avoid the use of skeptics or deniers.
Some background on the change: Scientists who consider themselves real skeptics – who debunk mysticism, ESP and other pseudoscience, such as those who are part of the Center for Skeptical Inquiry – complain that non-scientists who reject mainstream climate science have usurped the phrase skeptic. They say they aren’t skeptics because “proper skepticism promotes scientific inquiry, critical investigation and the use of reason in examining controversial and extraordinary claims.” That group prefers the phrase “climate change deniers” for those who reject accepted global warming data and theory. But those who reject climate science say the phrase denier has the pejorative ring of Holocaust denier so The Associated Press prefers climate change doubter or someone who rejects mainstream science.
To describe those who don’t accept climate science or dispute the world is warming from man-made forces, use climate change doubters or those who reject mainstream climate science. Avoid use of skeptics or deniers.
Read more: https://blog.ap.org/announcements/an-addition-to-ap-stylebook-entry-on-global-warming
Statement from Anthony Watts:
I would like to say we’re at a point where global warming is impossible to deny. Let’s just say that global warming deniers are now on a par with Holocaust deniers, though one denies the past and the other denies the present and future. – Ellen Goodman, Boston Globe, February 9, 2007 “No change in political climate” (non-paywalled here)
Anthony, I think that AP has it wrong and the quote from the “skeptical” society is what’s important. If you wish to ban “denier” so be it but that isn’t even as important as hanging on with both hands to the notion that the science is fundamental to you opposition to alarmism or CACC. We are not “climate change doubters”! We are not “opposing established science”! Ideologues in lab coats do not a scientists make! I think your concession to AP newspeak is ill advised.
There’s no concession here your opinion is ill conceived
Well we may both have ill adjectives but thankfully those don’t get in the way of exchanging ideas!
In my view, this is neither a good development, nor a fair bargain.
We’re being hornswoggled again by the mindbenders as they seek to control the words we use, shape the discussions. and define the way we think.
Now, in this ploy by the AP, the bargain is being made that the news organization will stop using that particular magic word, and in exchange will put into play new magical words, which they have coined, and which can be used in any situation to their advantage, because they are so vague, and essentially meaningless.
The AP will additionally stop using the term – s k e p t i c – not because it is magical, but because it is too accurate.
We are not obliged or obligated in any way to let the media tell us what words to use, what to believe, or how to think.
Think for Thyself
Nullius in Verba
Problem is, what they call “climate science” isn’t.
False bargain.
In return for not being called deniers, we are to be called doubters of mainstream science in order the “real” scientists be differentiated from doubters. It is a clever attempt to trade an insulting and bigoted term in return for us defining ourselves as being non scientific. Which is the direct opposite of what skeptics of CAGW in general are.
Anthony
Well done taking a step toward toning down the heat of the rhetoric.
AP could be more interested in the politics of the words. Lots of politics coming with Paris, elections, and more. Their news stories cover many topics, as does your site, but your readers are more focused on the science. The media and internet apply the issue of this dispute to topics ranging from health to infrastructure, from resource management to gardening, and from education to product labeling.
The old Alfred Hitchcock construct of the “MacGuffin” comes to mind. “National Defense” (1970s), “Drug Related” (1980s), “The Economy Stupid” (1990s) (one of my personal favorites), “Homeland Security” (2000s), and now “Global Warming” (2010s). In order to grab a headline, or funding, and with trillions of dollars involved across so many sectors, people resort to using the current issue for a variety of purposes regardless to the harm done to people or anything else.
Global Warming has as much to do with Earth Science as Crop Circles have to do with Agriculture.
My point is, it never really did.
To your readers I say, keep up the spirited debate.
To you I say again, well done.
This is a mistake! By going along with this you’re giving up an accurate scientific description (with positive connotations) in exchange for the ditching of a laughable pejorative (and its replacement with a less extreme pejorative). In fact, I have personally found the term “denier”, when levelled against me, to be quite useful, that is, when the accuser is simply ignorant of the facts and not a raging “ends justifies the means” statist. For example, “Really, you’re equating someone who thinks that if the models upon which all the doomsday scenarios are based don’t actually match the observations for the past 20 years, then perhaps the science isn’t settled after all, with a holocaust denier?” It’s made a couple of my left leaning friends a bit embarrassed and actually ask if it’s really true that the models don’t match the observations. I’m a big fan of this website (normally just a lurker), but I really think you’ve got this one wrong.
Beware of warmists bearing gifts!
“Doubter” is neither accurate nor neutral. This change of heart by the AP is simply a reflection of the fact that the pejorative abuse of the word “denier” has become rather too transparent with repetition.
I stand proud as a skeptic! Indeed, I am highly skeptical of the AP’s motives here!
Mike Smith is right, we are not ‘doubters’.
We are skeptical of the ‘dangerous man-made global warming’
conjecturehoax.I am certain their motives are not based on doing right by those they denigrate, but some calculation.
Of which we should all be wary.
DB, few are willing to call it what it is.
It may not have started as such for everyone involved, but at this point the CAGW meme does match the definition of the H word.
My first comments here and on several other blogs, earlier this year, upon reengaging in the debate after a many year hiatus, was to suggest that we turn this pejorative around, and see how they like it, by adopting the phrase “Hoax denier” to refer to proponents of CAGW.
I got exactly zero traction though.
Anyway, I kind of like warmista better, because it reminds me of the Sandinistas.
Only one way to end this nightmare: elect a skeptical or realist president of the US. Here is one such candidate, from years ago:
Call me dubious.
http://www.thesaurus.com/browse/dubious
What do I doubt?
Do I doubt the radiative physics that underlie the GHE? No.
Do I doubt Stefan-Boltzmann Law? No.
Plank? No.
Satellite data? No.
Instrumental data? I don’t even doubt that. I’m skeptical of the adjustments though.
IPCC reports? I don’t even doubt them. Carefully explained, they are the best weapon there IS when discrediting CAGW.
Doubter of mainstream science? That describes the IPCC itself which in AR5 admitted that the models run hot and doubts, DOUBTS I SAY that we understand why!
I win most CAGW arguments, not by doubting the science, but by embracing and explaining the science and showing people where the misrepresentation of that science is what gives the false impression of impending doom, not the science itself.
The next stop is plug-and-play journalism. It’s a feature in Windows 11.
“DoubterGoneWild”? No. I don’t think so.
Call me “victim” of CAGW mack truck policy over reach mission and leave science out of it.
Epiphany – Journalists have a style guide that describes what terms they should use to describe what?
Suddenly, political correctness, group think, and journalistic outrage at usage of the “wrong” terms makes perfect sense to me.
In their world, there is a correct term they must use to describe any particular thing, and using the wrong term gets them in hot water with the boss. This is their natural working environment.
How easy it is to expect the outside world to work like their work world. Call it by the wrong name? “If I said that, I would be in such hot water!” Major sin. Firing offense. Gotcha!
Just a theory, but it totally explains to me the way the media gets all excited about trivial offenses against PC dogma.
The AP staff would do well to read the story of the WV engineer that proved the VW lie. They are calling him a David vs. Goliath today. http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/09/23/us-usa-volkswagen-researchers-idUSKCN0RM2D720150923
Was he a mainstreamist, doubter, denier, skeptic, or anything other than persistent in a technical and scientific manner?
I first saw that news release at Poynter.org :
http://www.poynter.org/news/mediawire/374470/ap-memo-instead-of-climate-change-skeptics-use-those-who-reject-mainstream-climate-science/
and what I found interesting is the fact that the Poynter Institute – “A global leader in Journalism” – in collaboration with Participant Media (the producers of the movie) and the Omidyar Network wrote a 12 page study guide for high schools with the release of the Naomi Oreskes inspired documentary ‘Merchants of Doubt’:
http://www.poynter.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/2014-03-06-Merchants-of-Doubt-High-School-Study-Guide.pdf
if you do a search with the keyword Climate Change you’ll find many anti-skeptics pro-AGW articles posted on their website.
and the same institute in collaboration with the Omidyar Network again and the dubious National Endowment for Democracy has recently launched something called the International Fact-Checking Network, a network of 64 organizations dedicated to fact-checking journalism:
http://about.poynter.org/about-us/press-room/poynter-names-fact-checking-expert-alexios-mantzarlis-director-and-editor-new-in
quote:
“The IFCN will support and study the work of 64 fact-checking organizations spanning six continents, and it will be based at Poynter’s headquarters in St. Petersburg, Florida. The International Fact-Checking Network project is being funded by grants from the Omidyar Network and the National Endowment for Democracy.”
The man they named at the head of IFCN – Alexios Mantzarlis – seems to be some kind of green activist from Italy.
Now the question is: who’s going to fact-check the fact-checkers?
and the Poynter Institute has a course entitled “Covering Climate Change” created by Tom Yulsman of the Center for Environmental Journalism in Colorado. It’s free (for journalists at least). I don’t know if it’s good or bad or a mixed bag:
https://www.newsu.org/node/168382
“Covering Climate Change was developed in partnership with Internews, an international media development organization. The course author is Tom Yulsman, an associate professor at the University of Colorado’s School of Journalism & Mass Communication, where he co-directs the Center for Environmental Journalism. You can also follow his blog about science, the environment, policy and journalism at CEJournal.”
Just call us the Climate Whistleblowers.
Those who have a genuine interest in climate research, familiarize ourselves with the underlying concepts and data, and then see the misleading and inappropriate way the science is being twisted for consumption by the public and governmental institutions.
‘Whistleblowers’. I like that one.
Controlling the Terminology is an old Marxist trick. The term Bolshevik, ( the Majority”) was used to cause a impression that they were the main stream political party. They labelled their rivals as Mensheviks (the few)
Giving your opponents a negative definition is used so as to discredit them rather then their views. Poisoning the Well.
michael
I don’t think climate change doubter is an accurate label. The argument comes down to people who don’t believe that the majority of recent climate change was caused by man vs. those who do. To believe recent climate change is caused by man is to doubt it was caused by nature. The labels should be as follows.
Skeptics – “Human Caused Climate Change Doubters”
Alarmists – “Natural Caused Climate Change Doubters”
Or “suspicious”, with the 97 usual suspects creeping about. There’s Mann hiding behind a tree, there’s Kevin in the dark alley, there’s Cook wearing a disguise, there’s Lew being disreputable and just plain scary.
The real problem is not the names they call us, it is what they do not ever call us: “scientists”.
Some of those they do call scientists must have gotten their “scientist” badge out of a cereal box.
Notice how they call Curry a ‘scientist’ when she agrees with their dogma, but the second she variies just a bit, the cutting language and labels are quickly applied!
The use of “climate change doubters” as opposed to “deniers” is not “a positive and long overdue change.” Virtually no one previously referred to as “denier” (a word ridiculously flagged for moderation) doubts that climate changes. This is just another attempt to pervert the definition of “climate change” to imply “impending catastrophic environmental changes caused by greenhouse gas emissions that require immediate, expensive, and ineffective mitigation.”
AP Style Guide editors:
Which ones? How many? And why should they determine acceptable use of a general term not limited to debunkers of some subset of supposed pseudo-science? No one group has a monopoly on the word “skeptic.”
George Santayana:
Careful, folks, you’re being seduced. It is the height of credulity to condone sweeter-sounding shorthand terms that continue to force people into one of two camps as a “positive change.”
“To describe those who don’t accept climate science or dispute the world is warming from man-made forces, use climate change doubters or those who reject mainstream climate science.”
And here again they show us that they simply do not get it. I wonder what the world looks like in black and white. How dull it must be not to see the infinite shades between.
Right choice for the wrong reason?
Let me get this right – Am I being told that because I don’t have letters after my name, I can’t be skeptical? And I’m not allowed to use that word? Excuse me?
Whether you have letters after your name or not seems irrelevant to those who want to marginalize skeptics.
In fact, if you do have letters after your name, you are public enemy number one as far as they’re concerned.
http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2015/sep/18/world-court-should-rule-on-climate-science-quash-sceptics-philippe-sands
“Scientifically-settled questions such as whether climate change is even happening are still being challenged by “scientifically qualified, knowledgeable and influential persons”, he said.”
How dare ‘scientifically qualified, knowledgeable and influential persons’ weigh in on the climate scam?
Yes, I agree. They are clearly in panic mode. It must be terrifying knowing that the whole world is waking up to it and that names are known. I would not like to be any one of them.
Seems like the schoolyard bullies are reaching Kübler-Ross bargaining stage. With all due respect to our host, better not to interfere with their healing process. Two more steps to go.