Global warming is the latest cause célèbre for activist movie stars and politicians. Things sure change quickly though as environmental doomsday scenarios seem to morph from one generation, and extreme, to another. For all the apocalyptic forecasts of melted icecaps and flooded American metropolises on the horizon, it was only in 1974 that TIME and Newsweek reported on an alarming consensus among the “experts” of the day that the world was facing the imminent threat of a new ice age. That never came to pass, so it’s on to the alternative calamity. In-between flying from coast to coast on private jets, or cruising the nation’s highways in gas-guzzling SUVs, environmental fear-mongers like Al Gore routinely lecture Americans on ways they should conserve energy and cut down on “dangerous” greenhouse emissions. Equating the fight against global warming with a “moral crusade,” Gore and the rest of the apostles of environmentalism are surreptitiously cloaking their cause in what can only be described as religious parlance. I’ve long believed that for radical liberals, environmentalism is something of a religion and my experience of living in a heavily secularized Europe has only confirmed my initial suspicion. The wave of hysteria currently slamming into the shores of Western society over global warming is sad and pathetic, as it evinces a completely roundabout, topsy-turvy arrangement of priorities by a post-Christian culture searching for purpose, forgiveness and absolution. Another striking feature of the pseudo-religion of radical environmentalism is the ferocity with which its proselytes attack and suppress arguments that arrive at conclusions other than their own. The environmentalist’s hyper-defensiveness and anger, unleashed at the doubting Thomases of the man-made global warming theory, reveal the ideological and emotional underpinnings of the entire movement: a stinging irony for a “crusade” alleging strict fidelity to science and empiricism.
The vitriolic assault on global warming skeptics is extraordinary. Scott Pelley of CBS’s 60 Minutes compared skeptics of global warming with deniers of the Holocaust. Dr. Heidi Cullen, who works for the Weather Channel, advocates that the American Meteorological Society strip their seal of approval from any weatherman publicly expressing doubts about man-made global warming. Probably the most bizarre threat came from the popular environmentalist blogger, David Roberts, who wrote that war crime trials, (what he coined a “Climate Nuremburg”) eventually be brought against skeptics as punishment. Such threats and intimidation tactics call to mind the modus operandi of Communist dictatorships: so much for the renowned “tolerance” of the left.
In fact, Dr. Roy Spencer, a highly acclaimed climatologist and former NASA scientist, currently at the University of Alabama at Huntsville, is quite critical of the “experts” and celebrities who caterwaul ad nauseam about supposed man-made global warming. The characteristic action line on global warming asserts that humans (Americans in particular) because of their avaricious consumption of fuel and energy are directly responsible for the higher quantities of carbon dioxide in the air. This, consequently, leads to an increase in the greenhouse effect in the earth’s atmosphere and, since the natural atmospheric filtration has been weakened by human activity, infrared sunlight radiation “overheats” the earth. Taking a different approach, Dr. Spencer believes that stabilizing, atmospheric precipitation systems and weather patterns have everything to do with natural climate change and that these factors are not endangered or effected by human activity. He suggests that the green house effect is determined by precipitation systems (whereas the global warming crowd believe it to be the other way around) and that together, they keep the earth’s climate naturally balanced. He believes that these precipitation systems keep the earth cool, as they compensate for the heating resulting from the greenhouse effect, which exists naturally as a result, principally, of evaporated water. Dr. Spencer’s sophisticated understanding of the true reasons behind climate change eviscerates the smoke and mirrors sophistry of the global warming crowd. But for radical environmentalists, irrevocably convinced of the righteousness of their “moral crusade,” rational or scientific proofs play second fiddle to their insatiable need to fill the void in their hearts for something that can give greater purpose to their lives.
Traditional religion, with its high demands for personal moral conversion, a lifelong commitment to living responsibly, the belief in objective truth and the subsequent conformity of one’s actions to that truth, is too onerous a path to follow for the extreme environmentalist, already seduced by moral relativism. Environmentalism sees the God of the Judeo-Christian tradition supplanted by the false god of “mother earth.” Traditional rituals and Sacraments are replaced with a litany of environmental protocols and commandments: recycle, use mass transit, buy strictly organic products, become a vegan, etc. Guilt over personal sin is eclipsed by guilt at the collective, societal level for having “destroyed” the planet. The Church is replaced by a Leviathan state that is empowered, by a guilt-ridden, or rather guilt-induced populace, to clean up the mess via excessive taxes and repressive government regulation and oversight, the inevitable consequence: less personal liberty. What’s left out though? Forgiveness. Despite their best efforts at crafting the perfect world-religion, the secularized environmentalists have nowhere to go for absolution. They cannot succeed in completely erasing their soul’s need for something greater than themselves, greater than even the created world.
The liberating, even revolutionary, message of Christianity is that the believer has, indeed knows, a Person, not merely a thing, to go to for forgiveness and lasting peace. The Catholic Church teaches that man is the earth’s steward and that he has a sacred duty to use the goods of the earth responsibly and well. This is environmentalism correctly understood. “God saw what He had created and it was good.” Indeed, the Christian understanding of the environment and man’s place in the created world is a far more elevated, beautiful and complete one than that of the secular environmentalist. In light of the Incarnation, God entered humanity, thus wedding Himself forever to creation, and supernatural grace permeates the entire world.
At least some good members of the clergy are speaking up as well:
ReplyDeleteBy + Cardinal George Pell
Archbishop of Sydney
18 February 2007
Global warming doomsdayers were out and about in a big way recently, but the rain came in Central Queensland and then here in Sydney. January also was unusually cool.
We have been subjected to a lot of nonsense about climate disasters as some zealots have been painting extreme scenarios to frighten us. They claim ocean levels are about to rise spectacularly, that there could be the occasional tsunami as high as an eight story building, the Amazon basin could be destroyed as the ice cap in the Arctic and in Greenland melts.
An overseas magazine called for Nuremberg-style trials for global warming skeptics while a U.S.A. television correspondent compared skeptics to “holocaust deniers”.
A local newspaper editorial’s complaint about the doomsdayers’ religious enthusiasm is unfair to mainstream Christianity. Christians don’t go against reason although we sometimes go beyond it in faith to embrace probabilities. What we were seeing from the doomsdayers was an induced dose of mild hysteria, semi-religious if you like, but dangerously close to superstition.
I am deeply skeptical about man-made catastrophic global warming, but still open to further evidence. I would be surprised if industrial pollution, and carbon emissions, had no ill effect at all. But enough is enough.
A few fixed points might provide some light. We know that enormous climate changes have occurred in world history, e.g. the Ice Ages and Noah’s flood, where human causation could only be negligible. Neither should it be too surprising to learn that the media during the last 100 years has alternated between promoting fears of a coming Ice Age and fear of global warming!
Terrible droughts are not infrequent in Australian history, sometimes lasting seven or eight years, as with the Federation Drought and in the 1930s. One drought lasted fourteen years.
We all know that a cool January does not mean much in the long run, but neither does evidence from a few years only. Scaremongers have used temperature fluctuations in limited periods and places to misrepresent longer patterns.
The evidence on warming is mixed, often exaggerated, but often reassuring. Global warming has been increasing constantly since 1975 at the rate of less than one fifth of a degree centigrade per decade. The concentration of carbon dioxide increased surface temperatures more in winter than in summer and especially in mid and high latitudes over land, while there was a global cooling of the stratosphere.
The East Anglia university climate research unit found that global temperatures did not increase between 1998 – 2005 and a recent NASA satellite found that the Southern Hemisphere has not warmed in the past 25 years. Is mild global warming a Northern phenomenon?
While we might have been alarmed by the sighting of an iceberg off Dunedin as large as an aircraft carrier we should be consoled by the news that the Antarctic is getting colder and the ice is growing there.
The science is more complicated than the propaganda!
Hopefully, this is a turning point. Up until now, there has been very little criticism of global warming- it has been presented as an infallible doctrine by the environmentalist crowd, but lots of scientists are starting to speak out against it now...maybe al gore's movie will serve some good after all.
ReplyDeleteThis is BS and you guys (who seem pretty intelligent) have to know it. Watch the Oscar winning film before you judge it. Google it and get the stats/facts, you will see that this is seruous.
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