Washington Post Op-Ed: It’s time for conservatives to end the denial on climate change

Washington Post ^ | 06/26/2015 | Michael Gerson

[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.

[dearolddad]

Maybe the Washington Compost should ask all of these "scientists" how much grant money they are getting from the govt.

[Fred Nerks]

http://www.egs.edu/library/giordano-bruno/biography/

Giordano Bruno was a follower and supporter of Copernicus’ theories believing that the Earth did in fact revolve around the sun and that the daily rotation of the heavens was a result of the Earth’s own rotation around its axis.

[Fred Nerks]

In 1600, after 8 years of repeated and hideous torture, "heretic" Giordano Bruno was burnt alive at the stake - for his belief and teaching that the Earth was not fixed at the center of the universe with everything revolving around it, including even the sun, but that it revolves around the sun, around which the other planets also revolve; and that the stars were not pin-holes in some sky-vault through which heavenly light shone, but are themselves distant suns around which other planets may revolve. He could have saved himself by recanting, but he steadfastly refused. He basically allowed himself to be burnt - for truth.

[GeronL]

How dare he stand against the consensus!

[windsorknot]

I’m still waiting for the hard evidence, bucko.

[Tolerance Sucks Rocks]

Thanks for the lecture.

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[The Toll]

Or you could use science and prove your theory.

[vpintheak]

Just ignore facts, human history, God; you know, things that actually make good sense.
Instead believe lies, propaganda, and mob-thought; because that’s what really makes sense. Right?

[dila813]

I haven’t heard a single conservative deny climate change or global warming, I have only seen them respond in denial to the question posed as it relates to human causation.

[Candor7]

Washington Post Op-Ed: It’s time for conservatives to end the denial on climate change>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

NEVER:

http://www.lordmoncktonfoundation.com/

[uglybiker]

The STUPID is strong in this one.

[antceecee]

Actually no.. it is time for WAPO and their fellow travelers to admit this is a complete hoax meant to control the masses.

[A CA Guy]

Of course there is climate change. Due to the sun by the way and we now have very low solar spot activity.

Man can do nothing but watch and keep warm or cool depending on what the earth hands you.

[GeronL]

lol

[hal ogen]

What a bunch of pathetic fact-haters disguised as “journalists”. If people didn't need garbage-wrap, bird-cage-liner or fish-wrap, the Wash Pest would be out of business. It is so sad that they kill innocent trees in order to produce a Wash Pest.