The terms of the debate had to be changed, and that started just about the time of this energy panel. In February 2007, Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist Ellen Goodman entered a new and 
useful smear into the lexicon. “I would like to say we’re at a point where global warming is impossible to deny,” wrote Goodman. “Let’s just say that global warming deniers are now on a par with Holocaust deniers, though one denies the past and the other denies the present and future.”
The conversation-killer “denier” promptly became a term of art. The astute reader will note, however, that Goodman was still using the term “global warming.” That would soon morph into the all-purpose “climate change.” I have tried hard, but nowhere can I find a discussion on how this semantic shift came to be. It as if no wants to admit that it even happened.
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