AP Stylebook Switches Climate ‘Skeptics’ to ‘Doubters’ — I Deny that Makes Sense - by Joe Romm

The Associated Press just made one of the most pointless — if not most senseless — moves in the storied history of its widely used AP Stylebook:

Our guidance is to use climate change doubters or those who reject mainstream climate science and to avoid the use of skeptics or deniers.

The half good news is that the phrase “those who reject mainstream climate science” is not half bad.  But the fully bad news is that the phrase is so clumsy, the many newspapers who follow the Stylebook may simply fall back on the senseless phrase “climate change doubters.”  Let’s hope they don’t.

Does the AP recommend newspapers use the phrase “smoking health risk doubters” or “tobacco science doubters”?  Of course not — and yet scientists have the same level of certainty about human-caused climate change as they do that cigarettes harm your health. Indeed the AP itself explained that very point in a 2014 Seth Borenstein article that began, “Top scientists from a variety of fields say they are about as certain that global warming is a real, man-made threat as they are that cigarettes kill.”

The media doesn’t even pay attention to people who deny the health dangers of tobacco smoke anymore.  So why treat those who deny the reality — and danger — of human-caused climate change any differently?

“As they say, if the shoe fits, wear it.  Those who are in denial of basic science, be it evolution or human-caused climate change, are in fact science deniers,” as leading climatologist Michael Mann emailed me.  “To call them anything else, be it ‘skeptic’ or ‘doubter,’ is to grant an undeserved air of legitimacy to something that is simply not legitimate.”

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