Posted on 08/26/2015 8:45:34 AM PDT by Signalman
This is the opinion of Nobel Prize Winning Physicist Dr. Ivar Giaever , Prof. Richard Lindzen, and many others. Climate change alarmism has a surprising number of attributes of a medieval or even ancient religion. Nevertheless, real religions have some pre-requisites, like a tradition spanning at least few generations. So the proper name for climate alarmism is a cult. And these are the telltale attributes:
1) Climate alarmists pretend to possess indisputable truths about the past, present, and future. From minute details of the paleoclimate to the world state 200 years in the future, alarmists know everything.
2) The alarmist movement stubbornly refuses to debate its dogma, calling it “settled science” and viciously attacking its critics. The attacks are not limited to name calling but include prohibiting scientific research that contradicts this dogma. Significant figures within the movement call for criminal persecution of those who publicly disagree with the dogma and, in some cases, for those who do not follow it. Proposed punishments for “heretics” and “infidels” include prison and even death.
3) The alarmist movement has a formal doctrine-setting body — the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). The reports and summaries by this body are considered by the alarmists to be the main source of authority on all things related to climate, energy, the biological cycle, and consequentially, everything else. The cult followers (individuals, organizations, and even governments) regularly quote these unholy texts and use them to justify their decisions.
4) The alarmist movement has its own priest class: taxpayer-funded impostor “climate scientists” who have no independent (of the climate alarmism) scientific achievements.[1]Frequently, they do not even have scientific degrees.[2] The alarmists sincerely believe that only members of the priest class are capable of understanding and seriously discussing “climate science.” Physicists, biologists, meteorologists, engineers, mathematicians, and other outsiders need not apply.
It is worth noting that this priest class was appointed by politicians (mostly from developing countries) and is completely disconnected from the eminent scientists who founded climate change research at the peak of their scientific careers and produced the most results prior to 1985. All the eminent scientists who have publicly spoken on the topic since the early 1990s strongly opposed climate alarmism and were attacked or defamed by the alarmists. The list of these “sceptics” and “deniers” includes Freeman Dyson, William Nierenberg, Frederick Seitz, Richard Lindzen, Fred Singer, and Roger Revelle. None of the founders of climate change research support the alarmism.
5) The climate change cult appears to worship the computer models that its shamans built with their own hands — literally man-made idols. Needless to say, much of the content of IPCC’s texts comes from these computer models.[3]
6) The alarmists deny, ignore, or distort elementary scientific facts, some of which should be known even to kids:
– Photosynthesis. Plants grow by converting atmospheric CO2 into biomass. Significant parts of the world agricultural output are due to additional CO2 fertilization.[4]
– Archimedes’ principle. Melting of Arctic ice cannot increase the sea level because Arctic ice floats in water.[5]
– Sunspots and the effect of solar activity changes.[6]
7) The alarmists appeal to medieval science errors. These errors can be described as beliefs that nature has existed forever in some unchanged state. The inability of a common man or a medieval scientist to observe such changes was the cause of these beliefs. The alarmists revive these errors by denying, ignoring, or underestimating natural climate change; evolution (including species’ disappearance and adaptation); higher CO2levels in the geological past; natural sea level increases in the current interglacial period; tectonic movement; the complex trajectory of the Earth’s motion around the Sun; and the astronomic observations of stars similar to the Sun.
8) The alarmists have created and spread climate mythology, sometimes intentionally modeled on archaic misbeliefs that many alarmists attributed to religion. The common logical fallacy can be described as an appeal to everyday experiences, not applicable to the discussed natural processes (the “Flat Earth fallacy”). Some samples:
– Incorrect association of CO2 with warming because of the word “greenhouse”—the mother of the global warming scare. Most city dwellers only know that greenhouses are warm and contain elevated levels of CO2 and easily led to believe that CO2 causes warming. Most farmers also know that CO2 is added for fertilization and does not cause greenhouse warming. This is why states with many farmers (like Oklahoma) are skeptics of the climate change cult and states with many professors (like Massachusetts) arebelievers.
– Incorrect claim that (allegedly anthropogenic) global warming causes glacier melting or Antarctic ice sheet collapse. Ice cream does melt faster in a warmer room, but glaciers and ice sheets are influenced by totally different physical processes and on a totally different timeframe. See West Antarctic glacier likely melting from geothermal heat and The Arctic is especially sensitive to black carbon emissions.
– Incorrect claim that global warming causes droughts. Droughts are popularly associated with high temperatures but not caused by them. See Weaker solar activity means colder, and colder also means drier.
– False attribution of wildfires, New Orleans’ devastation from Hurricane Katrina, current California water shortages, and various disasters to global warming. These disasters are caused by environmentalist politics, not by global warming. Hurricane Katrina was only Category 3 upon landfall. New Orleans was supposed to withstand all hurricanes up to the highest Category 5, but the required barriers were not built because of the resistance by environmentalists.
– Time scale confusion. Processes that take hundreds of years are described as if they happen overnight.
9) Like an established religion, the climate change cult has its own “start of the time”—usually 1880 (sometimes the 1880s), which is allegedly the beginning of instrumental temperature records.
10) Climate change cult has its own eschatology—calamities, catastrophes, and the end of the world caused by global warming. To avoid this horrible end, we have to repent (i.e., accept the climate change cult dogma), stop sinning (releasing CO2), and generously pay whomever the IPCC or UNFCC will tell us.
11) The climate change cult calls its dogma science but fails to make any scientific (i.e., non-trivial and testable) statements. For example, “Climate change is real” is a trivial statement. The statements about temperatures in 2100 are not practically testable. When alarmists were making testable statements (such as the infamous 1988 James Hansen testimony before Congress and early IPCC reports), they were proven to be incorrect.
12) The climate change cult seeks and actually exerts control over governments.
To add to the above, the climate change cult has survived multiple exposures of its frauds—something that a normal fraud cannot survive. Nevertheless, many cults involve fraud, and even true believers are not against profiting from their position in their cult. The climate change cult has been elevated by the Obama administration into state religion. Both the White House and NASA appear to have converted to this cult.
Caroline Kennedy. Another “Catholic” for Birth-Canal Brain Suctioning.
There is a psychological term for the behavior exhibited by the author: projection.
Misdirection...keep the minions outraged about the Climate so they do not see the babies being harvested for transplant and socialism destroying our country.
The Warmist cult is as dangerous as The People’s Temple and as psychotic as Westboro.
Love it, thanks for posting!!
What are you talking about?
Watts is reknown for helping expose the Gorebull Warming fraud.
Are you posting on the wrong thread? WTH are you talking about?
The author is a Climate Scientologist.
Mea culpa. My reading comprehension was lacking. What little I read sounded like an attack on skeptics like me.
No harm no foul.
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