Is environmentalism the new religion? (with 'Must See' Illustration!)

National Post - Canada ^ | Saturday, February 10, 2007 | Joseph Brean

[phillyfanatic]

Both and right on about a secular leftist religion. They will go to a Biblical, saving the whales and stopping global warming. Or not on saving and stopping.

[NYer]

Thanks for the post.

It is very creepy to me. So is he, for that matter.

Even more so to parents of children growing up and being indoctrinated into this mode of thinking by state and national educational institutions. It can be worse at the private level.

[Mrs. Don-o]

"Environmental Inquisition" --- I see what you mean, and it's a good phrase-- My only regret is that it's kind of an insult to the real Inquisition..."
Yes, but the connotation is perfect

True. It's like calling the Gorebots the "Climate Evangelicals" or Climate Fundamentalists." Everybody knows what you're getting at, but still, it's unfair to actual (Christian) Fundamentalists, who historically (since the publication of "The Fundamentals" in 1915,) have had neither the power nor the inclination to coerce and bully non-believers, as the --- er --- "Climate Fundamentalists" do.

Hm. "Climate Jihadis," maybe?

[Frank Sheed]

In a 2003 speech in San Francisco, best-selling author Michael Crichton was among the first to explicitly close the circle, calling modern environmentalism “the religion of choice for urban atheists ... a perfect 21st century re-mapping of traditional Judeo-Christian beliefs and myths.”

The more this author-physician utters, the more my admiration rises for his intellect. He is going to be the sage of the early 21st century. His stance on many things is dead on.

When people see no disconnect in killing their pre-born children, but consider it a capital crime to fell a tree in an "old stand" forest, there is some serious schizophrenia going on. We aren't at rock bottom yet, but I can see it from here.

Speech on Global Warming in 2003

[Convert]

"Environmental Inquisition" --- I see what you mean, and it's a good phrase-- My only regret is that it's kind of an insult to the real Inquisition..." Yes, but the connotation is perfect

True. It's like calling the Gorebots the "Climate Evangelicals" or Climate Fundamentalists."

Acually the cooperation the EI's receive from Jesuit Colleges and Universities makes the inquisition term even more appropriate.

Like a priest friend of mine once said when I told him someone had asked if he was a Jesuit: "Did you tell her, no, that I'm Catholic?"

[e_castillo]

"higher standards of procedural due process"

Ouch... The second article is interesting and comes form a trusted source. The article makes the liberals out to be tha bad guys. Imagine that! Thanks for the info. Now I'm not so sure about the phrase!

It does make a good tagline :)

[e_castillo]

"THE ENVIROMENTALIST INQUISTION"

I like it. Use at will...

On a serious note the effects of this inquisition on Scientific discussion are going nowhere but downhill. It seems that every day we here about the need to fire some local weather caster because he brings up inconvenient truths about climate change. I find myself looking for articles that have some scientific basis in order to make good judgments and rarely find anything.

Had to modify the tag line..

[Mmmike]

Government school, the Grand Secular Inquisitor, is its most influential evangelist; by inoculating children against genuine religious faith, it leaves them hungering to suck up whatever they are fed.

[qam1]

Have climatologists learned anything from their seesawing predictions of global cooling, global warming, global cooling, global warming?

Yes, they learned to do what's right out of The Charlatan's 101 Handbook, What every fake psychic and would be prophets have learned a long time ago.

Instead of one or two specific predictions that should occur in the near future, instead they

1) Make dozens to hundreds of predictions
2) Make them over a long period of time

You make a lot predictions because just by pure chance some of them are bound to come true, when they do you highlight your "hits" (even if you hit only last a year or 2) while downplaying your misses, but if you are called out on your misses that's why you make them over a long period of time because then you can just claim "Well, it just hasn't happened yet" and by the time your time frame is up you and everyone else is long dead and gone.

[Convert]

Could the EIB network stand for Enviromental Inquistion Busters network?

[gondramB]

>>We're taking the fight to the ecco-imperialist, social fascist vermin:
The above article, along with the illustration, ran on the front page of today's National Post which backed it up with the Editorial "The folly of Kyoto" & several opinion pieces including "Kyoto is economic suicide as is: Liberal adherence makes no sense unless all countries are signed on". <<

The Kyoto agreement is foolish and its not nearly all the anti-industrialists seek - they want 80% reduction in CO2 emissions. They used to want 80% reduction in particulates and other pollutants as a way to cut back the modern economy but since the U.S. has shown we can clean the air and still grow they seek a new method to reduce the economy.

How should conservatives fight this? Calling extreme environmentalists worshipers in a new religion isn't very effective. Its much better to point out their ulterior motives.

Denying global warming and denying that it will be a real problem if global warming continues at the current trend is useless because the data from a dozen seperate scientific disciplines in 20 different countries all say the same thing - that global warming is real and has been increasing since 1976.

What conservatives need to do is change the focus to the causes of global warming and encourage more study of causes while reminding the public that the scale of the warming is one degree since 1900. We have time to study the causes.

[Convert]

What do you think their ulterior motives are?

[GMMAC]

"Calling extreme environmentalists worshipers in a new religion isn't very effective."

A - it's not a new tactic.
B - it's certainly not an inaccurate accusation.
C - I could hardly disagree more & would deem doing so highly effective:

"Its much better to point out their ulterior motives. "

Coulter has done so - in spades!

"How should conservatives fight this? "

If you haven't already, read Ann's book cited above.

Also, with respect to "Denying global warming and denying that it will be a real problem if global warming continues at the current trend is useless because the data from a dozen seperate scientific disciplines in 20 different countries all say the same thing - that global warming is real and has been increasing since 1976."
You seem to be missing the distinction that few are denying cyclical global warming - e.g. it obviously wasn't Hummers & Escalades which ended any of the planet's numerous earlier ice ages.
Rejecting the left's shameless political opportunism & campaign to promote related self-serving mass hysteria is another matter entirely ... especially when, barely 3 decades ago, these same folks & their msm fellow travelers were similarly obsessing about what they then alleged to be the onset of cataclysmic global cooling.

[Convert]

Good points - but e_castrillo's term "enviromentalist inquistion" is on the money

[gondramB]

>>You seem to be missing the distinction that few are denying cyclical global warming - e.g. it obviously wasn't Hummers & Escalades which ended any of the planet's numerous earlier ice ages.<<

Let me take this part since I think there is agreement there. Previous global temperature cycles are exactly the kind of thing we (conservatives who want to avoid needlessly crippling the economy) need to talk about. We have been at about this temperature three times in the last 10,000 years and each time it cooled back down.

>>especially when, barely 3 decades ago, these same folks & their msm fellow travelers were similarly obsessing about what they then alleged to be the onset of cataclysmic global cooling.<<

This is another good point of yours. Global warming stopped between 1945 and 1976 leading some to predict a coming ice age. In retrospect I think the lesson there is that CO2 production cannot be simply controlling global warming because CO2 levels went up significantly during that time. That's another point we should be making.

On one level I really want to stop here with our areas of agreement. But I think the tactics issue is too important. I also hate to criticize Ann Coulter because it upsets people and we invoke the required pictures rule.

But...

1. As a Christian I don't feel empowered to judge other's relationship with God. She is free to do so but I don't think it helps. You don't change people's minds by calling them Godless. The atheists dont care and the Christians hear the insult not the argument.

2. I think the global warming aspect of her presentation mainly marginalized her and the effort to refocus on causes of global warming.

3. You (and she) are obviously free to feel that environmentalism is a religion but that's not the way to win a scientific debate. The far left has done an excellent "OJ glove job" - they have linked the existence of global warming with human causation. We need to concentrate on delinking those issues.

4. We need to use numbers that the public can understand... I'll bet you the average person who thinks Al Gore is right has no idea that the temperature change is one degree in 100 years. We have time to study the causes.

5. We should decide on a main objective. My personal opinion is that the best outcome we can hope for is to emphasize how slow global warming and convince the public that we can easily take 10 years to examine its cause and see if it stops or at least slows down.

My best to you. Its nice to have a rational discussion/debate about this.

[Candor7]

The question of whether The Global Warmer movement is a religion is a very apt question. They are not yet a religion, beciase they have no prescribed method of "salvation " of the individual yet. But just give them a little time, and that will likely evolve, as they raise their hands in parayer to G-D to implore him to cool off the sun, and damn all the polluters to hell, casting them from our garden of Eden.

I have thought a lot about the Global Warmer movement from a historical perspective.

When man feels threatened by nature in ways that leaves him disempowered, he often makes a sacrifice to placate the forces of nature. This is a common theme in historical anthropology. For example, polynesians might sacrifice virgins to a volcano to keep it from erupting. Global warmers wish to sacrifice our industrial progress and our economy using a tyranny which is unacceptable to the free world, justifying it by "survival" of the human race. Man has been bad ( evil) by disregarding his environment for the sake of ease, wealth,, and material well being. Now man has sinned , polluting the garden of eden , and now our environmental priests say that man must pay by retreating from his evil materialism and environmental pollution.This sacrifice is fairly well defined.

Global Warmers and the ancient polynesians have a lot in common.

The most recent moralistic movement to influence US politics was the prohibitionist movement, when a similar religious fervor sought to deny free men and women access to alcoholic beverages. All commercial sale of alcohol was banned. Millions of gallons of drink were dumped, but the sinners went underground, spawning an organized crime syndicate and smugglers ( of home Joseph Kennedy was one), many of whom became millionaires. The country woke up and free men and women exercised their vote to end prohibition.

The Global warmers are also very similar to prohibitionists. Politicians are making the mistake of singing their song so as to curry their block vote. Its an exercise in illogic, as the sun warms not only the earth, but all of the planets in our solar system. Politicians who seek the support of these illogical folk are carpetbaggers, seeking any means they can to gain power, many have little to offer. such as Al Gore , who is a dismal failure as a politician, so now he is getting righteous, so as to carpewtbag those who have the fear of chicken little.

Logical free men and women understand global warming, and the de minimus role that man has to play in it. They prepare to adapt to the 4 to 5 degree Fahrenheit rise in temperature that the world may have. But it depends little on man's activity, but rather depends on the suns activity.

A proper sacrifice to the sun might be to load up all the carpetbagging politicians we have, Al Gore foremost, on a NASA rocket, and plunge it into the sun as a sacrifice, so that the sun will not increase it's disruptive activity. Who knows, it was said to work for the polynesians!

Environmentalism a Religion? Almost. When you see the televised prayer meetings invoked to gain devine intervention in the environment, we will have arrived.

Thats not far away. A local physician here in Vermont. left his medical practise for the purpose of become a zealot in the field of environmental evangelism. There is a movement now afoot, so it IS almost a religion, and one which does not bode much good for America as a Republic, much the same as Prohibition.

Religion and Politics too often make poor bed partners, and even as a Republican who loves Christianity, I must say so for the sake of preventing a tragedy of vast proportions if the Environmental religion sweeps our nation in its Star Chamber like mentality of the Inquisition.

[wintertime]

A very thoughtful essay. It is too bad that it is buried among all these other posts. It deserves greater exposure.

[Candor7]

Thanks winter. I guess I got to post earlier in the threads!

[Bernard]

And so scientists use theoretical concepts like “flux adjustments” to make the models agree with reality.

Sounds like we need to use our flux capacitor to make this theory work.

[GMMAC]

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