“Has it ever occurred to you, Winston, that by the year 2050, at the very latest, not a single human being will be alive who could understand such a conversation as we are having now?”

That line from George Orwell’s “1984” was considered fiction when it was published, but it’s becoming eerily prescient today. If you’ve read the book, then you know that those words were talking about “Newspeak,” a form of government propaganda where language is manipulated to “narrow the range of thought.”

Far fetched? Maybe. But a recent article in Politico Magazine is getting attention after it suggested that something very similar is happening right now — and it all centers on “climate change.”

Or maybe we should say “global warming.” Nearly everyone who has followed the climate debate is aware that terms have been shifting over the last few decades, with the once-popular “global warming” terminology effectively phased out after alarmist warming predictions proved to be, err, very wrong.

(Plus there’s the pesky problem of selling “global warming” to the public when half the country is frozen and state governments are shut down over freezing temperatures. Don’t ask questions.)

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Scientists are supposed to be apolitical, unbiased, and soberly committed to facts over agendas. But to almost nobody’s surprise, they seem to have been purposely manipulating the language used to talk about the climate — and as Politico reported, that’s happening again right now.

“Scientists and meteorologists on the front lines of the climate wars are testing a new strategy to get through to the skeptics and outright deniers,” declared the subtitle of journalist Bryan Bender’s latest piece for Politico.

Let’s stop right there. That sentence by itself is terrifying if you think about it for about two seconds. Consider: If the job of scientists and meteorologists is to deal in facts and data, not propaganda, why are they “testing a new strategy” to promote their views to people? That sounds suspiciously like marketing, not science.

But it seems those oh-so-noble scientists just can’t help constantly changing the wording as they struggle to find a politically-correct message that resonates with people.

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“That means avoiding the phrase ‘climate change,’ so loaded with partisan connotations as it is,” Bender explained.

He attended the annual meeting of the American Meteorological Society to pick the brains of dozens of climate scientists. There was, of course, a lot of technical shop talk — but those scientists also seemed to admit that they aren’t just trying to conduct good science. They’re trying to lobby people to adopt policies that they want.

“The hope is to persuade the small but powerful minority that stands in the way of new policies to mitigate climate change’s worst long-term effects—as well as the people who vote for them—that something needs to be done,” Bender wrote in Politico.

Part of their solution? Take a page from Orwell’s “Newspeak” and bend language to push their goals.

“The new language taking root is meant to instill this sense of urgency about what is happening in ways to which everyday citizens can relate—without directly blaming it on human activity,” the journalist wrote. (Emphasis added.)

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But make no mistake, the frequently left-leaning climate scientists still do blame humans for their alarmist predictions. They’ve just decided that it doesn’t suit their interests to keep saying this.

In other words, scientists who we’re supposed to trust as exalted experts on truth are quietly shifting the language to move the focus away from narratives that have outlived their usefulness. And narratives — that is, stories that are repeated over and over until they stick — seem to be a big concern for the influencers within climate science.

“We are still not getting enough people to talk about it in the ways that matter to human beings in their homes,” said meteorologist Bernadette Woods Placky.

Wait, when did it become a scientist’s job to “get people to talk about” something?

“It’s a jobs story. It’s an agriculture story. Connect it to the farm bill; boom!” Woods Placky continued. It’s all about “stories,” you see. It’s narratives. That kind of talk is expected from a lobbyist or marketing firm; it’s frankly disturbing from a data-minded scientist.

In that ever-expanding quest to use narratives to push political issues, “global warming” just doesn’t work anymore. Neither does “climate change,” which — as Politico’s Bender correctly pointed out — has been largely mocked by skeptics as a redundant and meaningless term.

Nobody knows for sure what the next “narrative” in the climate debate will be, but reporter P.J. Gladnick has a hunch. The next phrase to be rolled out, he suggested for the Media Research Center, is one you might have already heard on television: “Extreme Weather.”

Here’s the thing: Scientists do have a very important role in conducting detailed research about long-term climate patterns and their implications. But at the same time, being skeptical and asking hard questions is just as vital.

History has shown that science is never truly settled. It’s a process, not a set of perfect answers. A “consensus” doesn’t actually prove something, and minority voices who refuse to stop questioning are often right.

Whenever there seems to be a focused effort to silence dissenters and manipulate language, be wary — and as always, follow the money.

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