The Church of Global Warming
One needn’t be a world-class intellect to spot holes in global warming theory, so it’s baffling that many otherwise-functioning adults of average intellect cannot, or, more likely, won’t.
Many intelligent people acknowledge that climate changes, but remain skeptical that it’s man-made or apocalyptic.
"Catastrophic" global warming isn’t "settled science." It’s become an evangelical religious movement outside normally-accepted skeptical approaches to the rest of science.
Satellite records of atmospheric global temperatures have discredited the "97 percent consensus" parroted by the climate zealots. Statistically, temperatures have flat-lined for eighteen years. Alarmism is based on human models; the models are demonstrably wrong; but true believers won’t risk apostasy by openly questioning warming dogma.
Galileo and Pope Urban VIII disagreed about the nature of the cosmos. Galileo’s observations prevailed, however, on global warming, modern counterparts have reversed Galileo’s and Urban’s roles.
Self-superior acolytes indulge in adolescent, condescending derision, but their climate clerisy, like the intolerant Renaissance church, excommunicates heretics. Some demand corporal punishment for climate "deniers."
In 2012, Donald Brown, Professor of "Climate Ethics" at Widener University, declared skeptics to be guilty of a new "crime against humanity," the universal penalty for which is death. In the same year, Professor Richard Parncutt of the University of Graz, Austria, demanded the death penalty for skeptics — a modern Inquisition.
Clearly, they’re worried, but not about climate.
Since 1989, despite pricey "education" campaigns by government agencies, subsidized industries, wealthy environmental organizations, public schools, higher education, Hollywood and the Democratic Party, the general public’s concern about global warming hasn’t risen.
The Federalist’s David Harsanyi explains:
"During this era, [special interests have] gone from gentle nudging to stern warnings, to fearmongering, to conflating the predictive abilities of scientists with science itself, to launching ugly campaigns to shame and shut down anyone who deviates from liberal orthodoxy"…
"The static polls are a pretty devastating indictment of effectiveness of the environmental movement…"
"[I]f you haven’t been able to win over the public over in 25 years of intense political and cultural pressure, you are…down to two options: …[R]evisit your strategy, open debate to a wide range of ideas… Or, you can try to force people to do what you want."
Politically-motivated and career-invested climate interests have chosen force.
NASA’s Gavin Schmidt warned dissenting climate scientists: "Groups perceived to be acting in bad faith should not be surprised that they are toxic within the science community. Changing that requires that they not act in bad faith and not be seen to be acting in bad faith."
It’s instructive that the right to research and interpret climate science is subject to "faith" tests. The climate clerisy’s fear of doubters exposes their weakness and illustrates how completely climate "science" has devolved into "theology."
If the left were truly concerned about future generations, they’d turn their attention to more immediate, correctable problems such as the $18 trillion-plus national debt that has increased by eighty percent in only six years.
But climate alarmists dismiss near-term fiscal problems, suggesting that, rather than altruistic, their interests are political and financial.
