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Washington Post Op-Ed: It’s time for conservatives to end the denial on climate change
Washington Post ^ | 06/26/2015 | Michael Gerson

Posted on 06/26/2015 8:49:52 AM PDT by SeekAndFind

Reducing Pope Francis’s encyclical “Laudato Si” to a white paper on global warming is, in George Weigel’s fitting analogy, “akin to reading ‘Moby Dick’ as if it were a treatise on the 19th-century New England whaling industry.” The whole spirit and story of the thing are missed.

The pope’s sprawling, ambitious statement — setting out a theory of nature and of the human person — will be profitably scrutinized for decades. Environmentalists who like some of Francis’s conclusions will find, if they sit quietly with the text rather than rummage through it for the politically relevant bits, that the pope is making a frontal assault on a technological and utilitarian worldview that treats creation as “raw material to be hammered into useful shape,” reduces humans to mere consumers and treats inconvenient people as so much refuse.

SNIP

Many conservative Republicans now deny the existence or danger of human-caused warming and routinely question the motives of scientists who speak up on the issue. For a conservative to stray from skepticism is regarded as ideological betrayal.

In a recent National Affairs essay, Jim Manzi and Peter Wehner provide an explanation: “The Republican position — either avowed ignorance or conspiracy theorizing — is ultimately unsustainable, but some still cling to it because they believe that accepting the premise that some climate change is occurring as a result of human action means accepting the conclusions of the most rabid left-wing climate activists. They fear, at least implicitly, that the politics of climate change is just a twisted road with a known destination . . . ceding yet another key economic sector to government control.”

This is the temptation of the ideologically intense on the left and right: Truth exists to serve the narrative rather than the narrative arising from truth.

(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...


TOPICS: Constitution/Conservatism; Culture/Society; News/Current Events
KEYWORDS: climatechange; conservatives; envirowhackos
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To: SeekAndFind

Why not? We’re getting our asses handed to us on every other issue that matters.


21 posted on 06/26/2015 9:01:17 AM PDT by Buckeye Battle Cry (Hillary - Ethically sleazy and politically stupid)
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To: SeekAndFind

The earth has been warming and cooling for 4 billion years.
Get over it, Mike.


22 posted on 06/26/2015 9:06:29 AM PDT by Eric in the Ozarks ("If he were working for the other side, what would he be doing differently ?")
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To: SeekAndFind

Newspapers have a huge carbon footprint.


23 posted on 06/26/2015 9:08:25 AM PDT by central_va (I won't be reconstructed and I do not give a damn.)
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To: WayneS

Agreed.


24 posted on 06/26/2015 9:12:15 AM PDT by b4its2late (A Liberal is a person who will give away everything he doesn't own.)
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To: SeekAndFind

Next the SCOTUS will rule that a 10% flat “climate change” tax surcharge executive order is enforceable.
The first Americans were shooting over a 2% tax on tea. You don’t think Obama is thinking about it?


25 posted on 06/26/2015 9:13:07 AM PDT by tumblindice (America's founding fathers: all armed conservatives.)
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To: Buckeye Battle Cry

I want real evidence. Until the I am a skeptic.


26 posted on 06/26/2015 9:13:21 AM PDT by refermech
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To: WayneS

Dint ding! Winner!


27 posted on 06/26/2015 9:32:07 AM PDT by JaguarXKE (n1973: Reporters investigate All the President's Men. 2013: Reporters ARE all the President's men d)
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To: SeekAndFind

For all conservatives supposed support of “big business,” big business has been the most effective enforcer of left position in the last ten years. We only have gay marriage today because big business enforced it. Climate change is being pushed by big business.


28 posted on 06/26/2015 9:35:13 AM PDT by nickcarraway
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To: NohSpinZone; virgil; originalbuckeye; mojito
"Eh, take it up with the SCOTUS, WaPo, I'm sure they'll agree with you."

The article is published in WaPo, but it was written by Michael Gerson, who was a speech writer for George Bush.

As for SCOTUS, they have all ready handed down three important decisions on CO2:

Massachusetts v EPA(2007)
AEP v Connecticut(2011)
Utility Air Regulatory Group v EPA(2014)

In August, EPA will issue their final rule on Obama's Clean Power Plan and there will be lawsuits filed over that, which will have to ultimately be ruled on by SCOTUS.

In the 2007 decision(5-4), SCOTUS ruled that CO2 was a pollutant, and if EPA found CO2 to be a threat to the US(endangerment finding), then EPA should regulate CO2 with the Clean Air Act.

29 posted on 06/26/2015 9:42:28 AM PDT by Ben Ficklin
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To: SeekAndFind

A speech writer opining on a scientific subject. Appeals to authority have been the hallmark of those who lack the ability to judge the science.


30 posted on 06/26/2015 9:47:38 AM PDT by Timocrat (Ingnorantia non excusat)
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To: SeekAndFind

What he says is true.

Being against homosexuality is hate speech.

Criticizing people who are men calling themselves women, or white people calling themselves black, or Caucasians calling themselves Native American is hate speech.

Being against all racism including black racism is hate speech.

Objecting to throwing the Confederate flag down the memory hole is not only hate speech, it is open advocacy of killing people in a church.

Why should people who criticize the global warming religion be any different?


31 posted on 06/26/2015 10:01:46 AM PDT by rlmorel ("National success by the Democratic Party equals irretrievable ruin." Ulysses S. Grant.)
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To: SeekAndFind
I agree. We should demand that NASA send rockets into outer space so seed the ionosphere with sunlight reflective particles that will reduce global warming. That way we will preserve our planets future.

If by accident we are on our way to an ice age, it will just make the ice age that much worse and millions will starve. But since they will mostly be the poor and those in 3rd worlds, well, they should have spoken up.

This would be an all or nothing basis, put lives on the line those of you who feel so strongly in global warming.

As a rich American, I have a buying opportunity when the population of many 3rd world countries dies and there is no one left to pay taxes on land or support corrupt governments.

Let's get on with it. (/sarcasm)

32 posted on 06/26/2015 10:02:55 AM PDT by Robert357 (D.Rather "Hoist with his own petard!" www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1223916/posts)
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To: SeekAndFind

The victory dance of the Emperor with “New” Clothes.


33 posted on 06/26/2015 10:10:53 AM PDT by Amagi (Lenin: "Socialized Medicine is the Keystone to the Arch of the Socialist State.")
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To: Attention Surplus Disorder

They’ll put a gun to your head and demand you embrace their religion.


34 posted on 06/26/2015 10:19:58 AM PDT by MrB (The difference between a Humanist and a Satanist - the latter admits whom he's working for)
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To: SeekAndFind

Meh. I’ll bet Mike is grateful that projection is a painless process.


35 posted on 06/26/2015 10:21:59 AM PDT by davius (You can roll manure in powdered sugar but that don't make it a jelly doughnut.)
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To: SeekAndFind

It is time for the entire world to have a FACTUAL discussion about the climate, rather than a Leftist purge of those who disagree with the fashion of the moment (which, not-so-coincidentally, happens to lead to the concentration of wealth and power in the hands of those who are doing the purging).

I hope that I live long enough to see the District of Criminals buried in 10 feet of snow during a “Global Warming” conference.


36 posted on 06/26/2015 10:29:03 AM PDT by Ancesthntr ("The right to buy weapons is the right to be free." A. E. van Vogt)
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To: SeekAndFind; LucyT

Same guys who wanted to torture Galileo and Copernicus for their outrageous and anti Science view that the earth and other planets revolved around the sun rather than the reverse.


37 posted on 06/26/2015 11:03:57 AM PDT by David
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To: SeekAndFind
CORRECTION:

We need an assault on a technological and Totalitarian worldview that treats humans as “raw material to be hammered into useful shape,” and reduces humans to mere taxpayers and servants of the State and treats inconvenient people who say that AGW is a Hoax as so much refuse.

The “cure” for globull warming is many, many thousands of times worse that even the worst scenario that they have dreamed up.

So much anti-Science from the Left makes it seem like we're living in a George Orwell play.

Hey Pontiff, 1984 was supposed to be a WARNING not a blueprint!

38 posted on 06/26/2015 11:10:38 AM PDT by PATRIOT1876
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To: SeekAndFind

“The bigger the lie, the more it will be believed.”
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Joseph_Goebbels


39 posted on 06/26/2015 11:13:44 AM PDT by PATRIOT1876
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To: SeekAndFind

what climate change?


40 posted on 06/26/2015 11:59:23 AM PDT by CPT Clay
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