On September 15, Pulitzer-prize winning Inside Climate News reported that Exxon had known about the dangers posed by global warming due to fossil fuels since at least 1977, and spent several years engaged in serious scientific research before abruptly switching into the denialist mode, where it became a leading force for disinformation and denial. This stunning new revelation of just how long oil companies have known the truth about global warming while promoting denial and lies about it should have served as a wakeup call for the media to re-examine how it has naively misread decades of climate disinformation, and failed to adopt a sufficiently critical perspective. But not for the Associated Press Instead, the next week AP announced it was extending further journalistic cover for the still ongoing deception.

On the one hand, AP took a big step forward by deciding to stop using the term “climate change skeptic”, following concerted pressure from scientists and activists. But they also took a big step backward by deciding to not use the term “climate change denier” instead, and to actively nix it as well. “Climate change denier” sounded too much like “Holocaust denier,” AP explained, so it was out, too. They added the following to their style guide (which many journalists outside AP use as well):

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

This is, quite simply, wrong. Wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong.

You can tell it’s wrong because of just how pleased the deniers are with AP’s decision, as Science magazine reported:

Meanwhile, some traditionally associated with the “skeptic” or “denier” side are claiming victory. Marc Morano, who runs the contrarian site Climate Depot, told National Journal that he preferred the term “skeptic,” but that “doubter” still suggests there’s room for debate. By ditching “denier,” AP is “entering the realm of objectivity,” Morano said. Meanwhile, Anthony Watts, a former TV meteorologist who runs the popular contrarian blog Watts Up With That?,also praised AP’s decision as a “positive and long and overdue change” to ditch the “ugly climate term ‘denier.’”

Meanwhile, ScienceBlogs writer Greg Laden tweeted: “The term ‘denier’ is a widely used term [in] social science research. AP is being anti science,” and at Media Matters, researcher Denise Robbins referenced Laden in a collection of scientists, climate communicators and journalists criticizing AP in similarly harsh terms. This included leading climate scientist Michael Mann, who said that “To call them anything else [than ‘science deniers’], be it ‘skeptic’ or ‘doubter,’ is to grant an undeserved air of legitimacy to something that is simply not legitimate;” the Washington Post‘s media reporter Erik Wemple, who wrote that AP “succumbed to a specious argument” by suggesting that the term “denier” always implies a connection to Holocaust denial; the Huffington Post‘s Washington Bureau Chief, Ryan Grim, who wrote that the term climate change “doubters” is “almost always simply false;” and ThinkProgress climate blogger Joe Romm, who wrote, “Does the AP recommend newspapers use the phrase ‘smoking health risk doubters’ or ‘tobacco science doubters’? Of course not…. 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?”

When the reality-based community is giving you harsh reviews like that, and “those who reject mainstream climate science” are congratulating you for “entering the realm of objectivity,” you know you’re doing something seriously wrong. The only real question is, “What?” I wanted to answer that question on a detailed micro-level, so I contacted AP to interview the panel who made the decision. For all I knew, there may have been thoughtful deliberations behind the scenes, despite the end results. Sometimes well-intentioned people simply focus on the wrong thing. Minority views in one deliberation may hold the seeds of future wisdom. I wanted to know more than the public record told, but AP was not talking. “We have done interviews about our amended Stylebook entry and now we’re done,” was the one-sentence explanation offered by Paul Colford, Director of AP Media Relations.

Add that to what was already known, and it’s hard not to conclude that AP knows they stepped in it. The earlier report from Inside Climate News should have alerted them in advance, and if not, the warm embrace of denialists Morano and Watts surely removed all doubt. If they won’t less us understand their reasoning process by looking inward at it, we can still learn something by looking outward, at the social and scientific context they have chosen to further obfuscate, for who knows how many crucial years to come. This wasn’t just a one-time error in judgement. It’s an ongoing journalistic sin we’re talking about, a sin of commission, a continuing misrepresentation of reality, something that no journalistic entity worth its salt ought to be a party to.

AP’s new style guidance clearly resulted from a letter to the media last December asking journalists to “stop using the word ‘skeptic’ to describe deniers.” [letter/press release] It came from the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry and was signed by 48 of its fellows, including Nobel laureate Sir Harold Kroto and philosopher Daniel Dennett. AP referred to them specifically (though a bit inaccurately) in its announcement:

Scientists who consider themselves real skeptics – who debunk mysticism, ESP and other pseudoscience, such as those who are part of the Center [sic] 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 it’s more than a preference. It’s a matter of accuracy, something that science and journalism are supposed to have in common. And it’s downright inaccurate for AP to pretend it’s simply a matter of preference. Having diminished CSI’s objection, AP then elevated the deniers:

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.

This is a classic example of false balance on AP’s part, with multiple problems on both sides of the scale and one big thing wrong at the middle: “doubt” is not mid-way between “skepticism” and “denial” . It far closer to the former than to the latter, which is why the deniers were so pleased with it.

Joe Romm cited three problems with AP’s reason: First, that AP had an easy alternative, pointed out by Justin Gillis in the NY Times in February: “others have started using the slightly softer word ‘denialist’ to make the same point without stirring complaints about evoking the Holocaust.” Second, that the most prominent deniers, like James Inhofe “knowingly use phony arguments to stop the world from acting in time…. Since when should anyone care about the phony concerns of such self-destructive anti-scientific people?” Third, Romm noted that many deniers actually like the term. If they don’t have a problem with it, why should we?

All that is true, but there’s a further point worth making: climate change denial is actually much worse than Holocaust denial. Holocaust denial deals with the deaths of millions in the past, which it did nothing to cause, however morally odious it surely is. Global warming denial deals with the deaths of millions in the future, which it helps to cause, by crippling efforts to prevent them. And that’s something much worse, as is reflected in law: It’s not a crime to lie about murders in the past, except to hinder a police investigation, or prosecution; but it is a crime to tell enabling lies about future murders—it’s called conspiracy to commit murder.

The most recent estimate (2014) from the World Health Organization (a 128-page report) projects that “Under a base case socioeconomic scenario, we estimate approximately 250,000 additional deaths due to climate change per year between 2030 and 2050.” That’s 5 million deaths over just that 20 year window. Major impacts will come via diarrhea, malaria, childhood undernutrition, and heat exposure in elderly people. But the total will undoubtedly be significantly higher:

A main limitation of this assessment is the inability of current models to account for major pathways of potential health impact, such as the effects of economic damage, major heatwave events, river flooding and water scarcity. The assessment does not consider the impacts of climate change on human security, for example through increases in migration or conflict. The included models can capture only a subset of potential causal pathways, and none account for the effects of major discontinuities in climatic, social or ecological conditions.

With all those other factors added in, it’s conceivable that global warming could cost twice as many lives, or more, the equivalent of a Holocaust every decade from 2030 on. And global warming denial is a contributing cause to all those millions of deaths. This is what the best available science is telling us. But AP says we shouldn’t use the term “denier”, because it has a “pejorative ring.” Which begs the question: isn’t a pejorative ring precisely what’s called for? Isn’t it both morally necessary and empirically accurate? The problem isn’t that “denier” has a “pejorative ring,” it’s that it’s not nearly pejorative enough. “Climate holocaust co-conspirator” would be more apt.

In fact, AP’s “climate doubter” stylebook decision is a telling example of how the media itself is sleepwalking into this oncoming endless holocaust, by failing to assimilate important scientific information, critically reflect on the role it is playing, and change accordingly. Just a few days prior to AP’s announcement, Denise Robbins reported on two new media studies about climate change reporting which shed further light on this sleepwalking. The first study, from the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives “found that the media can breed cynicism about climate change when reporting emphasizes ‘the failures of climate politics,'” she reported. But it “also found that consuming stories about political activism and individual actions—’especially news that featured a local focus, a compelling narrative and an accessible “everyday hero”’—can have the opposite effect on readers.”

The second study, from Rutgers University, “examined how four major U.S. newspapers frame their reporting on climate change,” and “found that The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, and USA Today often include “negative efficacy” (framing climate change actions as unsuccessful or costly) as opposed to “positive efficacy” (framing climate actions as manageable or effective). The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times in particular framed climate action as ineffective more often than effective.”

These studies remind us that the media are not detached outside observers, however attractive that fiction might be for some. You either align yourself more or less with the climate deniers—consciously or unconsciously—or you align yourself against them. There is no “neutral” ground outside of or above the debate, however much one might wish for it. And you don’t have to be a denier yourself to effectively align yourself with them. As my recent interview with Robert Gifford underscored, there are dozens of recognized psychological barriers to effective climate action (he calls them “dragons of inaction”) which are quite distinct from denial, but still have a similar impact and result. We’re just beginning to grapple with how much the challenge of climate change is a challenge to human cognition. Which is why journalists need all the help they can get in grappling with nature of denialism, and why they should pay more attention to the social science research into it that Greg Laden pointed to.