Our media peddles more propaganda with each passing year.
In 2013, the AP Stylebook told news outlets to stop using the legally appropriate term “illegal alien” or “illegal immigrant” and to start calling them “undocumented immigrants” to avoid hurtful labels.
Now The Guardian wants to change the language surrounding climate change, which used to be global warming or global cooling depending on the decade. The news outlet published an article on Friday from its environmental editor, Damian Carrington, saying the outlet would now write “climate emergency, crisis, or breakdown” instead of climate change and “global heating” instead of “global warming.”
The original terms have not been banned, Carrington wrote.
“We want to ensure that we are being scientifically precise, while also communicating clearly with readers on this very important issue,” Editor-in-Chief Katharine Viner said in a statement provided in the article. “The phrase ‘climate change,’ for example, sounds rather passive and gentle when what scientists are talking about is a catastrophe for humanity.”
“Increasingly, climate scientists and organisations from the UN to the Met Office are changing their terminology, and using stronger language to describe the situation we’re in,” she added.
The Guardian based its decision on the use of these terms by several prominent climate scientists, without noting that studies that find a possibility of catastrophe rate that possibility at a low percent. No change or a beneficial change are also possible due to some aspects of climate change, yet the hysteria sells more papers and gets more clicks.
The Guardian is not stopping at these terms, however, and will also change some other words and phrases.
“Other terms that have been updated, including the use of ‘wildlife’ rather than ‘biodiversity,’ ‘fish populations’ instead of ‘fish stocks’ and ‘climate science denier’ rather than ‘climate sceptic,’” the outlet wrote.
Ryan Maue, a meteorologist with a Ph.D., mocked The Guardian on Twitter for the changes.
“Of course, from a scientific and literal point of view, this is idiotic. But if you read the Guardian for your climate change news, then you deserve to be misinformed,” he wrote.
Michael Bastasch, who writes about climate science for The Daily Caller (pointing out that the hysteria surrounding the issue often ignores what’s in the actual studies) suggested an alternate headline for The Guardian’s article about writing changes.
“ALT headline: The Guardian will now only use activist talking points meant to scare people,” Bastasch wrote.
One should also point out that not a single person who uses phrases like “climate crisis” lives the way a person who truly believes destruction is imminent would live. Hollywood celebrities and politicians still take private jets to climate meetings and put forth a bigger carbon footprint than the average American.