"Beat me to it."
Posted on 05/26/2007 8:24:56 AM PDT by Fiji Hill
Meteorologist Likens Fear of Global Warming to 'Religious Belief'
By Marc Morano
CNSNews.com Senior Staff Writer
December 02, 2004
Washington (CNSNews.com) - An MIT meteorologist Wednesday dismissed alarmist fears about human induced global warming as nothing more than 'religious beliefs.'
"Do you believe in global warming? That is a religious question. So is the second part: Are you a skeptic or a believer?" said Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor Richard Lindzen, in a speech to about 100 people at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C.
"Essentially if whatever you are told is alleged to be supported by 'all scientists,' you don't have to understand [the issue] anymore. You simply go back to treating it as a matter of religious belief," Lindzen said. His speech was titled, "Climate Alarmism: The Misuse of 'Science'" and was sponsored by the free market George C. Marshall Institute. Lindzen is a professor at MIT's Department of Earth, Atmospheric, and Planetary Sciences.
Once a person becomes a believer of global warming, "you never have to defend this belief except to claim that you are supported by all scientists -- except for a handful of corrupted heretics," Lindzen added.
According to Lindzen, climate "alarmists" have been trying to push the idea that there is scientific consensus on dire climate change.
"With respect to science, the assumption behind the [alarmist] consensus is science is the source of authority and that authority increases with the number of scientists [who agree.] But science is not primarily a source of authority. It is a particularly effective approach of inquiry and analysis. Skepticism is essential to science -- consensus is foreign," Lindzen said.
Alarmist predictions of more hurricanes, the catastrophic rise in sea levels, the melting of the global poles and even the plunge into another ice age are not scientifically supported, Lindzen said.
"It leads to a situation where advocates want us to be afraid, when there is no basis for alarm. In response to the fear, they want us to do what they want," Lindzen said.
Recent reports of a melting polar ice cap were dismissed by Lindzen as an example of the media taking advantage of the public's "scientific illiteracy."
"The thing you have to remember about the Arctic is that it is an extremely variable part of the world," Lindzen said. "Although there is melting going [on] now, there has been a lot of melting that went on in the [19]30s and then there was freezing. So by isolating a section ... they are essentially taking people's ignorance of the past," he added.
'Repetition makes people believe'
The climate change debate has become corrupted by politics, the media and money, according to Lindzen.
"It's a sad story, where you have scientists making meaningless or ambiguous statements [about climate change]. They are then taken by advocates to the media who translate the statements into alarmist declarations. You then have politicians who respond to all of this by giving scientists more money," Lindzen said.
"Agreement on anything is taken to infer agreement on everything. So if you make a statement that you agree that CO2 (carbon dioxide) is a greenhouse gas, you agree that the world is coming to an end," he added.
"There can be little doubt that the language used to convey alarm has been sloppy at best," Lindzen said, citing Nazi propagandist Joseph Goebbles and his famous observation that even a lie will be believed if enough people repeat it. "There is little question that repetition makes people believe things [for] which there may be no basis," Lindzen said.
He believes the key to improving the science of climate change lies in altering the way scientists are funded.
'Alarm is the aim'
"The research and support for research depends on the alarm," Lindzen told CNSNews.com following his speech. "The research itself often is very good, but by the time it gets through the filter of environmental advocates and the press innocent things begin to sound just as though they are the end of the world.
"The argument is no longer what models are correct -- they are not -- but rather whether their results are at all possible. One can rarely prove something to be impossible," he explained.
Lindzen said scientists must be allowed to conclude that 'we don't have a problem." And if the answer turns out to be 'we don't have a problem,' we have to figure out a better reward than cutting off people's funding. It's as simple as that," he said.
The only consensus that Lindzen said exists on the issue of climate change is the impact of the Kyoto Protocol, the international treaty to limit greenhouse gases, which the U.S. does not support.
Kyoto itself will have no discernible effect on global warming regardless of what one believes about climate change," Lindzen said.
"Claims to the contrary generally assume Kyoto is only the beginning of an ever more restrictive regime. However this is hardly ever mentioned," he added.
The Kyoto Protocol, which Russia recently ratified, aims to reduce the emission of greenhouse gases to 1990 levels by the year 2010. But Lindzen claims global warming proponents ultimately want to see a 60 to 80 percent reduction in greenhouse gasses from the 1990 levels. Such reductions would be economically disastrous, he said.
"If you are hearing Kyoto will cost billions and trillions," then a further reduction will ultimately result in "a shutdown" of the economy, Lindzen said.
Actually, I would differentiate between religion and superstition. The age of enlightenment grouped them together, but history suggests that superstition becomes MORE prevalent when religion is less widely accepted.
Chesterton nailed it when he said that those who cease to believe in God don’t believe in nothing. Rather, they will believe in anything. New Age, crystals, channeling, Scientology, marxism, nihilism, postmodernism, the Age of Aquarius, Wicca, Gaia, global cooling, global warming, Al Gore, Paris Hilton, Nancy Pelosi.
Once rationality based on religion is gone, there is a vaccuum. As soon as one superstition is driven out, a dozen others take its place.
High Priest Gore and priestess Laura David
Dirt worshipers.
“When a man ceases to believe in God, he will believe in anything.”
We are all doomed Bump.....
Bookmark.
.
No doubt mankind has an impact on the planet and its climate, but that impact is minuscule compared to nature’s. Don’t forget, Greenland was a once a sunny clime where woolly mammoths have been found frozen in the the ice with flowers in their stomachs.
The world rapidly cooled for an unknown reason (meteor strike?). Possibly, it has been warming back since, or more possibly, the sun is warming our planet as it does every day, but more vigorously now than at other times for unknown reasons. The fact that other planets appear to be presently warming is more credible evidence for that truth than those Al Gore inconveniently states!
Equivalent to the FATHER, SON and HOLY SPIRIT.
A very wise post.
107 years ago California had only 1 toilet that flushed. It was in the governors mansion yet, they want to believe we could effectively monitor the temp which at the time, no one did.
“Chesterton nailed it when he said that those who cease to believe in God don’t believe in nothing.”
Really? My agnosticism is driven by scientific method. Still waiting for proof, from either side.
In the mean time, I’ll agree that the rabid anti-religionists do tend to run from reason towards bizarre, often violent superstition. I also understand the Judeo-Christian tradition and its role in the formation of Western Philosophy. The world has benefitted greatly from the practice of it. The further we stray from the basic tenets, the worse our world becomes. However, that does not prove anything except that it is a civilizing force in the world of men.
That pretty much nails it.
Although this isn't the pre-enlightenment middle ages, it comes close.
There is no excuse for the abysmal ignorance of presumed adults, in elementary science that would reveal this megalomania about climate. All the factors are known, as well as the ignorance among scientists and ordinary people alike.
The computer age has made us slaves to the tenth decimal place, where the premise itself is flawed.
Thinking and reasoning skills are becoming extinct. Garbage in Garbage out (GIGO) used to be a term of derision. "Computer Models" has become the mantra of the new religion. And the rubes don't have the smarts to see through the scam, even if they wanted to.
Well, I can’t argue with that, since you evidently understand the historical role that Christianity has had in spreading the philosophy of rationalism and free will, and the part it played in the rise of science and technology in the medieval world.
But it’s very hard even for scientists to stay rational and remain within the bounds of what science can properly demonstrate without something further to base that rationality on. It takes an act of faith to presume that the universe is rational, for instance.
I should perhaps have added that some religions contribute to a rational approach to reality, while others work against it—Islam being the most obvious example of the latter.
But without religion, even scientists, at least those who do not have an active religious faith, often put their faith in some secularist system or other—Marxism, Freudianism, Darwinism, or militant atheism, as we have seen from the recent rash of books by famous scientists attacking Christianity.
You forgot gender bending and sexual perversion.
Click on POGW graphic for full GW rundown
New!!: Dr. John Ray's
GREENIE WATCH
Ping me if you find one I've missed.
Ping!
“But without religion, even scientists, at least those who do not have an active religious faith, often put their faith in some secularist system or other—Marxism, Freudianism, Darwinism, or militant atheism, as we have seen from the recent rash of books by famous scientists attacking Christianity.”
They are blinded, desperate and insane.
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