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Environmentalist Fanatics Seek a New Global Warming Inquisition

by: tim dunkin | published: 10 12, 2014

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Anyone who has followed the debate over climate change in recent years has probably noted the seemingly religious fervor with which the pro-alarmist crowd approaches the subject. Opposition to the environmentalist agenda of deindustrialization is not just viewed as wrong policy, but the rankest heresy. To deny that man-made global warming is going to destroy the Earth is tantamount to spitting upon the holy scriptures of the “green” faith. Opposition is not just misinformed or wrong-headed, but is actually sinful and evil, unholiness that cannot be allowed to continue by the Disciples of Gaia. 

So it is in this context that we must understand the recent call by Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. – scion of the Kennedy fortune and born-again environut – to prosecute and jail climate change “skeptics.” You didn’t read that wrong – Kennedy was actually lamenting the fact that the US government currently does not have any laws on the books that would allow for the prosecution of people who dispute the global warming dogma of the environmentalist movement. Forget free speech and all that other earth-hating heresy – if you deny global warming, you should be tried for treason. Treason against Holy Mother Gaia.

Kennedy isn’t the only one who wants to do away with all of the “freedom” and “individual rights” garbage for the sake of the environmentalist creed. The Australian Broadcasting Corporation, smarting from that nation’s repeal of its self-defeating and self-destructive carbon tax, recently opined that democracy gets in the way of “responding to climate change,” and wondered if we shouldn’t get rid of all that nonsense about letting “the people” have a say in their own government. And who can forget left-wing columnist Thomas Friedman’s swooning over China’s authoritarian regime, because of its superficial introduction of electric cars and renewable energy sources? Or what about the recent “climate march” in NYC, where thousands of astroturfing paid volunteers came out to condemn capitalism, fossil fuels, climate “deniers,” and the democratically-elected representatives who enable them?

No, it’s quite obvious that for the pious among the environmentalist movement, if it’s a choice between freedom or orthodoxy, freedom is going to have to go.

The indignation that is felt by those on the Left whenever someone brings up inconvenient facts against the canon law of global warming exists because environmentalist is a religion, not a science. Along with evolution and the existence of the “gay gene,” global warming forms part of the canon of revealed truths that are held as gospel by adherents of SCIENCE!. 

There is a tremendous difference between science and SCIENCE!, as many practitioners of science can tell you. I do science. That’s my job. I perform experiments, obtain data, draw conclusions, construct hypotheses, and all that other stuff you learned was part of the “scientific method” in school. Hundreds of thousands of scientists do this every day, all around the world. Science deals with actual observations, evidence, data. It’s what moves our knowledge of the world around us, and our knowledge of how to apply that knowledge in the form of technology, ahead incrementally, step by step. 

But SCIENCE! Is something totally different. SCIENCE! is a dogma, something that exists to provide a common ideological framework to its adherents, allowing them to define what is “consensus” and thus lawful, as opposed to dissenting ideas which are then heretical. SCIENCE! isn’t about doing actual science, but is instead about believing the “right” things, showing that you are orthodox, a right-thinker who is able to selectively dismiss whatever doesn’t fit into the worldview. SCIENCE! is not interested in facts, reason, evidence, thinking critically, or any of that other jazz. It’s interested in enforcing a left-wing political, ideological, and social orthodoxy, and the things that SCIENCE! is interested in and talks about – things like promoting atheism, scaremongering about global warming, and the like – coincide with that ideological worldview. Indeed, many of the people who love SCIENCE! don’t really know or care about actual science – SCIENCE!, for them, is just a way to lend emotional and social credibility to their ideological agenda. SCIENCE! allows pre-conceived notions and even wishful thinking to drive its approach. In other words, SCIENCE! is the embodiment of the worse aspects of all those Enlightenment-era criticisms of “religion,” the dogma, the blind adherence to things that empirical evidence and reason have shown to be false. 

Man-made global warming – by which is meant the idea that man-made carbon dioxide production (from industry, transportation, etc.) is creating a steadily increasing warming of the earth and will eventually destroy the world we live in – is hooey. Objectively so. As I pointed out earlier, much of the “science” that environmentalism rests upon has either been refuted scientifically, or else had been shown to rely on false and spurious data. Such is the case with the arguments for global warming. They rely on spurious climatological computer models whose guiding principles are suspect, and whose input data have repeatedly been shown to either be incorrect or falsified. The famous “hockey stick” supposedly showing rapidly accelerating global temperatures due to CO2 emissions, has been decisively debunked, having been founded upon purposefully cherry-picked and misleading data.

Now, this is not to say that there is no such thing as “climate change.” Obviously, the Earth’s climate changes all the time. We’ve had ice ages and we’ve had warm periods – a thousand years ago, Europe was warm enough for people to grow wine grapes in Sweden. Some places on Earth add forest or jungle while others undergo desertification. So yes, the climate changes all the time. And it does so because – get this – the Earth and its combined bio/atmo/geosphere is a complex system. It depends on all kinds of variables and variable inputs. The sun, the primary source of heat energy into this system, undergoes short and long-term fluctuations all the time. Cosmic rays are thought by some to induce cloud formation. Aerosols in the atmosphere, variable albedo, volcanoes spewing millions of tons of particulates into the atmosphere, and so many more variables all combine to create this complex system. 

This doesn’t mean, of course, that the actions of mankind cannot negatively impact the natural world around us. The Soviets managed to pretty much destroy the Aral Sea through over-irrigation, and the phenomenal population growth in the American Southwest has almost done the same to the Colorado River. Acid rain is a real and destructive phenomenon. In the exercise of our stewardship over the Earth, there are things that we can do wrong, and which harm rather than help it. Who knows, carbon dioxide and other so-called greenhouse gases may contribute to temperature fluctuations in the Earth’s complex system – but to what extent and in what ways, we do not know. Yet, the idea that we can pin down one, single variable out of thousands, and dogmatically attribute one specific phenomenon (global warming) to this variable, is simply ludicrous. Talking about “climate change” is not the same thing as talking about “global warming” in the sense that the Church of SCIENCE! means it. But yet, climate alarmists try to conflate the two terms, knowing that the more neutral “climate change” is essentially inarguable, yet not really descriptive of what they have in mind. 

I’ve been subtly alluding throughout this article to the notion that environmentalism, SCIENCE!, and so forth are really a religion, as the reader has probably noticed by now. Those who disagree with me will tend to want to scoff at this characterization, if for no other reason than because it assaults their own self-inflated notion of being “rational” and part of the “reality-based community,” however wrong that self-perception may actually be. In fact, characterizing SCIENCE!, and especially its environut component, as a religion is quite correct. And further, I observe that greenie SCIENCE! is susceptible to many of the same criticisms that secular humanists have traditionally hurled at religion (keep in mind that what follows is not criticism of religion, but is simply turning the criticisms that they’ve used against religion back against their own side).

First, there’s the simple fact that what the global warmer SCIENCE! crowd believes about mankind’s impact on climate change is flatly contradicted by actual empirical evidence. Far from the polar regions being ice-free by 2020, we are actually seeing Antarctic sea ice (relevant right now because it is winter in the southern hemisphere) reach record highs for coverage – there is a greater amount of the Earth’s surface covered by this sea ice than there has been at least since we’ve had satellites in orbit and have been recording it. The Earth’s temperatures have been holding steady for 19 years now, even though 2013 saw the largest increase in atmospheric CO2 concentration yet recorded. This is not surprising, since the amount of published data continues to mount showing that the Earth’s climate is not nearly as sensitive to carbon dioxide levels as previously thought. And so on and so on. The dogmas of the Disciples of Gaia are flatly contradicted by actual science, just as were previous dogmas about geocentricity and the Earth riding on the back of a giant turtle.

Then there is the superstitious response to incidental events that nevertheless evokes great outpourings of religious sentiment among the acolytes of the Church of SCIENCE! A slightly warmer than average summer in one region of one country of the world? Obviously, it’s GLOBAL WARMING! A worse than expected winter with more snow and ice than usual? It’s GLOBAL WARMING! Everything, no matter how trivial, incidental, short-lived, or contradictory to other events is considered to be a harbinger of GLOBAL WARMING! It’s not unlike those people who get all worked up because they saw an image of the virgin Mary in their toast. It’s all silly superstition.

Further, the wild-eyed prophecies of impending doom, so commonly associated by secularists with religion, are part and parcel for the Church of SCIENCE! And they are all wrong. Archbishop Al Gore’s prediction of ice-free poles by 2020 appears to be as well-predicted as was the end of the world in the year 1000. The warnings that we were going to see more and larger hurricanes due to global warming appears to be falling flat as well – in fact, the hurricane season this year is the tamest since 1992. Likewise also with the claims that we would see more tornados and other extreme weather events. “Climate change” was supposedly going to destroy the Great Lakes – nevertheless, in defiance of the Word of Gaia they are actually at or above their normal water levels for the first time in 14 years. SCIENCE!’s predictions do not stand up when put to the test.

Then there is the Church of SCIENCE!’s effort to claim that there is a “consensus” on climate change, and that only a few, fringe heretics and unbelievers challenge the orthodoxy. This claim exists so that the faithful can feel better about themselves because of their presumed superiority over the heathen, while also shoring up the flagging doubts that all of the empirical evidences may be causing in some of their minds. In short, the “consensus” argument is an argument from authority, much like those typically criticized by opponents of religion. Yet, the consensus doesn’t actually exist, being based on a shallow and fraudulent survey of the scientific sources (sound familiar?). Indeed, more and more scientists in the relevant disciplines are stepping forward to voice their disagreement with the “consensus,” including one who was the undersecretary for science in the Department of Energy during Obama’s first term. Surely these brave Galileos will face the Inquisition for their temerity, but eventually the dogmatic stranglehold on the study of the Earth’s climate will be broken by the twin lights of fact and reason. 

That SCIENCE!, especially relating to global warming, is a religion can even be seen in the terminology used by warmists to refer to their opponents – “skeptics.” If you deny the reality of global warming, you are a “skeptic,” and this is a very, very bad thing. To be a “skeptic” means to deserve to be cast out of polite society. Which brings us back to the Inquisition that the Church of SCIENCE! would like to institute against the heretics and skeptics. This is probably the worse aspect of man-made religion – the apparent need to punish and destroy those who don’t get into line. The Muslims did and continue to do it everywhere they live. The Catholic religion did it all through the middle ages. And the Church of SCIENCE! wants to do it today. Indeed, they’ve already started, if the efforts by Michael Mann (a Cardinal in the Church of SCIENCE! and professor at Pennsylvania State University) to shut down his critics via predatory lawsuit is any indication. So far, much to Robert F. Kennedy’s chagrin, there is no statutory sanctions against climate heresy. But they’d like for there to be, and if they have their way, there will be. 

Yet, those of us who care about the future have a duty to oppose the dogmatists on the Left, and especially those in the anti-human, anti-progress, anti-science environmentalist movement. To quote Neil deGrasse Tyson, himself an Archbishop in the Church of SCIENCE!,

“If your belief system is not founded in objective reality, you should not be making decisions that affect other people.”

I completely agree, Neil, which is why you and your fellow SCIENTISTS! have no business having any say in public policy matters that are going to influence not only the quality of life of people in the West, but even whether starving people in Africa can get enough to eat. If we’re going to pursue policies regarding our climate that will impact the lives of real people, then these need to be based on science, not SCIENCE!.   

 
 
 
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