Climate scientists use more cautious language in scientific reports than do climate-change sceptics, even though the sceptics often accuse the scientists of being alarmist.

Srdan Medimorec and Gordon Pennycook at the University of Waterloo in Canada used software to analyse the style of language in a report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in 2013 and in a response written by a sceptic group, the Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change (NIPCC). The researchers did not assess the scientific accuracy of the reports but found that the NIPCC report used emotional language and the IPCC report contained more neutral and formal phrasing.

The authors hypothesize that the IPCC uses such language because of scrutiny from the media and sceptics.

Clim. Change http://doi.org/7mb (2015)