The Guardian’s editor has just issued this new guidance to all staff on language to use when writing about climate change and the environment…and it is full-on alarmism. No holding back punches now, because it’s a crisis, so let’s start writing like one! Josh helps us understand the real message.
HT/Willie Soon via Leo Hickman
Josh has interpreted this new policy:
James Delingpole notes:
There is, in essence, no such thing is a ‘climate science denier’ because not even the most ardent sceptic denies the existence of ‘climate science’.
Even more problematic is that use of the word ‘denier’, which implicitly invokes the Holocaust – and in doing so, weirdly and irresponsibly puts ‘being sceptical about anthropogenic global warming’ in the same category as ‘denying that Hitler murdered six million Jews.’
In recent years, climate alarmists have tried to backtrack on the origins of the ‘denier’ slur by pretending that they never intended to invoke Holocaust denial.
But here is Guardian environment journalist George Monbiot writing in 2006:
Almost everywhere, climate change denial now looks as stupid and as unacceptable as Holocaust denial.
Maybe Ms Viner should pay more attention to Thomas Sowell on this subject:
The next time someone talks about “climate change deniers,” ask them to name one — and tell you just where specifically you can find their words, declaring that climates do not change. You can bet the rent money that they cannot tell you.
Why all this talk about these mythical creatures called “climate change deniers”? Because there are some meteorologists and other scientists who refuse to join the stampede toward drastic economic changes to prevent what others say will be catastrophic levels of “global warming.”
There are scientists on both sides of that issue. Presumably the issue could be debated on the basis of evidence and analysis. But this has become a political crusade, and political issues tend to be settled by political means, of which demonizing the opposition with catchwords is one.
Sowell’s point is well made – and goes to the heart of what is wrong with the Guardian‘s new lexicon for its climate change reportage.
The Guardian is tacitly admitting that this is not an argument it is capable of winning on the science or indeed the facts. Therefore, it has decided to ramp up the rhetoric instead.
Shame on you sceptics for scoffing at the evidence of climate change. The sea near us has risen some 6 feet in just a couple of hours. What is that if its not clear evidence of rampant and dangerous sea level rise?
What? Its just the tide coming in? Denier!.
tonyb
Climate solutions
Taking psychotropic drugs and rebuking the carbon demon on twitter to ward off impending climate nervous breakdown
Climate science denier. Not accidentally, this is what voices of sanity like Judith Curry, Roger Pielke jr, Bjørn Lomborg, and John Christy are called by climate alarmists.
This resembles every day more and more the seventies where people were divided to right-minded progressives (socialists or communists of various atheist flavours) and regressives (West minded market-oriented businessmen and Christians).
Today, many hateful words have replaced ‘regressives’. One of them is deniers, others include misogynes, racists, white, privileged, homophobes, *phobes, Republicans, far-right, conservatives, hate speakers, nationalists, you name it. But the intent is the same. To paint ‘regressives’ a group of people one should not listen to, a group that should not be heard, not have a voice at all. In some yet extreme cases, the audience applauds when they call impeachment and death on people they tried to frame guilty to treason.
Of course, like most lefty labels, the opposite is the reality. It’s the so-called progressives who want human civilization to regress back to a state that greatly resembles feudalism, albeit with modern-day amenities for the lords of the manor.
Interesting article:
George Orwell Explains How “Newspeak” Works, the Official Language of His Totalitarian Dystopia in 1984
http://www.openculture.com/2017/01/george-orwell-explains-how-newspeak-works.html
“In other words, Newspeak isn’t just a set of buzzwords, but the deliberate replacement of one set of words in the language for another. The A class contains “everyday life” words that have been mutated with cumbersome prefixes and intensifiers: “uncold” for warm, “pluscold and doublepluscold” for “very cold” and “superlatively cold.”
Viner was installed at the Guardian by the powers that be after the Greenwald Snowden debacle that embarrassed the intelligence agencies.
The Guardian was threatened by the UK gov, and then it’s editor was replaced a year later, with Viner.
Since then the Guardian has penned propaganda pieces about the white helmets, fabricated stories about Assange meeting with Manafort and several propaganda pieces where they painted Al Qaeda as victims of Russia and Assad in Idlib.
Viner serves the UK establishment, she was placed to make sure the guardian never stray ever again and allow another Greenwald to wander off the reservation.
Never click a Guardian link, ever.
Please, Anthony, get this delay in posting comments sorted. It never used to happen. Has your site been ‘got-at’ to try and dissuade posters coming her? It’s beginning to work…
I recall reading where people are being reported to the police for all sorts of nonsense, like referring to a transexual using the wrong pronoun, and the police investigate it as a hate crime (safer than investigating knife crimes, I guess).
I think if anyone in the UK were to call me a denier, I would feel obligated to report it as a hate crime.
The Guardian, the National Inquirer of environmentalism?
Thé Guardian should be closed down.
Cancel all your subscriptions.
Deprive them of income.
Eventually, it will sing a different tune.
Can you imagine an Editor writing such a memo.
It is sheer mind control of the staff and then of the readership.
I would fire her on the spot.
Brexit; Trump; now Aus.
Who’s next?!
The proles are revolting!
Yes indeed. Just right.
According to this, The Guardian is only left-center on the political scale:
https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/the-guardian/
I worked as chief meteorologist for the local CBS station for 11 years(1982-1993) and am familiar with the media bias towards the left from having them as co-workers. I was pretty liberal myself in those days.
Actually, there’s nothing wrong with being liberal if you have ethics, sincerity, objectivity and justification for good policies, including authentic facts to back them up.
The liberal mindset of a few decades ago, however is being left farther and farther behind. And along with it, in the media, professional journalism has been discarded on most political topics, especially this one and replaced with activism.
This is not breaking news.
However, when it gets to the point of this open declaration in the Guardian, it’s diabolical thinking. They are so trapped in this climate crisis activist mindset that it blinds them from seeing the complete contradictions that their new verbiage policy causes with their commitment to provide their readers with truthful, honest, 2 sided coverage of news.
They are, in essence saying there is only 1 side to this issue, their side and their policy is to promote that side in ALL articles on this topic and discredit the other side by referring to them with a term that’s associated with Holocaust deniers.
Whats new here, in this age of escalating media leftist activism and bias, is not that it exists or is getting much worse but that its so bad, that they are just making it known publicly because of arrogance and knowing that there are no entities that can hold them accountable to following ethical standards.
How does this thing happen?
Blatant abuse of freedom of the press and again, no entity to hold the media accountable for telling the truth, stating accurate facts or telling 2 sides of any story.
Which translates from newspeak into English as
Use “fear mongering fish wrap” instead of “Guardian.”
Wrapping fish in Grauniad print is an insult to our planet’s piscene denizens.
At least they seem to be going back to the one way, temperature goes up with carbon dioxide hypothesis. After a decade of lectures on global warming and greenhouse effect, the “climate change” phrase was used to indicate any change, hot or cold, was the result of increasing carbon dioxide.
I got a laugh out of bystanders when I asked, “Does the ‘climate change’ phrase mean we can now refrigerate our food in a greenhouse?”
They want to be “precise”. Interesting choice of words since scientifically, “precision” means that a measurement shows little variation and is not he same as “accurate” which means that the measurements is close to the actual value. A “precise” measurement can be totally incorrect and that is what they are aiming for: a consistent warming apocalypse message.
“…please check with the audience team.” What in thew world is “the Audience Team” — who is on that team, and what do they do? Sounds a .ot like the “Office of Social Propaganda”
typing not my strong point today…..”What in the world is “the Audience Team” — who is on that team? and what do they do? Sounds a lot like the “Office of Social Propaganda”
More guidelines.
Apply hysteria instead of science.
Use feelings instead of thought.
Use rhetoric instead of argument.
So much for freedom of the press . This just confirms what a piece of propaganda garbage the Guardian is .
There is something seriously wrong with the ownership and senior management of the Guardian .
Who do they owe ?
I’ve received a few emails from Mozilla recently. They’re going on about the online misinformation issue and how they’re doing their bit to combat it.
In one email, they praised The Guardian for their part in fighting misinformation and even made a short video of a Mozilla guy presenting a big ‘thank you’ card to The Guardian: https://foundation.mozilla.org/en/campaigns/eu-misinformation/publisher-campaign/thanks-guardian/?utm_source=email&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=2019advocacy-en&utm_content=guardianvideo&utm_term=5056320
I’m not that familiar with The Guardian and so I didn’t think much of Mozilla’s gesture, but after I saw that guidance note on language from the editor, I became suspicious.
In another email, Mozilla takes the anti-vaccination movement as an example of misinformation. At the bottom of the email they say “Other bad actors are using the same tactics on issues from climate change to political unrest.”
Seems to me that on the climate issue Mozilla are at risk of becoming part of the problem they’re wanting to defeat.
Mozilla needs to be set straight on climate change before it starts weighing in too heavily on the issue and before it starts campaigning to censor climate emergency deniers online on the grounds of ‘misinformation’.