Tuesday, March 19, AD 2024 6:26am

Climate Cult

Princeton Professor of Physics William Happer has long been skeptical of the climate change movement, viewing it as largely a religious, I would say substitute religious, cult.  He set forth a summary of his views in an article in First Things in 2011:

There are many honest, hardworking climate scientists who are trying to understand the effects of CO2 on climate, but their work has fallen under suspicion because of the hockey-stick scandal and many other exaggerations about the dangers of increasing CO2. What has transformed climate science from a normal intellectual discipline to a matter of so much controversy?

A major problem has been the co-opting of climate science by politics, ambition, greed, and what seems to be a hereditary human need for a righteous cause. What better cause than saving the planet? Especially if one can get ample, secure funding at the same time? Huge amounts of money are available from governments and wealthy foundations for climate institutes and for climate-related research.

Funding for climate studies is second only to funding for biological sciences. Large academic empires, prizes, elections to honorary societies, fellowships, and other perquisites go to those researchers whose results may help “save the planet.” Every day we read about some real or contrived environmental or ecological effect “proven” to arise from global warming. The total of such claimed effects now runs in the hundreds, all the alleged result of an unexceptional century-long warming of less than 1 degree Celsius. Government subsidies, loan guarantees, and captive customers go to green companies. Carbon-tax revenues flow to governments. As the great Russian poet Pushkin said in his novella Dubrovsky , “If there happens to be a trough, there will be pigs.” Any doubt about apocalyptic climate scenarios could remove many troughs.

What about those who doubt the scientific basis of these claims, or who simply don’t like what is being done to the scientific method they were taught to apply and uphold? Publications of contrary research results in mainstream journals are rare. The occasional heretical article is the result of an inevitable, protracted battle with those who support the dogma and who have their hands on the scales of peer review. As mentioned above, we know from the Climategate emails that the team conspired to prevent contrary publications from seeing the light of day and even discussed getting rid of an editor who seemed to be inclined to admit such contentious material.

Skeptics’ motives are publicly impugned; denigrating names are used routinely in media reports and the blogosphere; and we now see attempts to use the same tactics that Big Brother applied to the skeptical hero, Winston Smith, in Orwell’s 1984 . In 2009 a conference of “ecopsychologists” was held at the University of West England to discuss the obvious psychological problems resident in those who do not adhere to the global warming dogma. The premise of these psychologists was that scientists and members of the general population who express objective doubt about the propagated view of global warming are suffering from a kind of mental illness. We know from the Soviet experience that a society can find it easy to consider dissidents to be mentally deranged and act accordingly.

A mortal enemy of true science is the urge of those on the left to politicize everything they touch in their zeal for their substitute religion.  In a video at the Powerline blog Professor Happer discusses the death threats he routinely receives.  Go here to view it.  Free inquiry, like free markets, are hated by those on the left who seek to control every aspect of life, and woe to dissenters.  That is the most interesting aspect of the battle against the junk science presented by the climate change zealots.  I take comfort in the thought of the eventual discrediting of Trofim Lysenko, the ideological forefather of those who would debase science before the altar of politics.

 

 

 

 

 

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T. Shaw
T. Shaw
Wednesday, November 19, AD 2014 7:18am

There remains a month of Fall before Winter actually arrives. In merely 24 hours a Buffalo, NY suburb had dumped upon it six feet of snow. Why? Global Warmiing! Brilliant!!!
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We have lived through the dawn of the idiotocracy: And, scientific detachment and the free exchange of ideas are dead.
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Which product was more dishonestly marketed: Amazing Live Sea Monkeys or anthropomorphic global warming (AGW)?
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In the 1950’s, AGW was invented (it is “settled science”) and funded by nascent UK atomic energy special interests.
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Climate change and green/renewable energy programs have utterly failed everywhere. They helped to bankrupt Spain. Why repeat them here? Because there are huge opportunities (Solyndra comes to mind) for graft wherein the boondoggles are highly lucrative.

Philip
Philip
Wednesday, November 19, AD 2014 8:06am

The Glacier Bay remark can not be debunked by the ruthless greenies.
How could they? Have the greenies explained the expansion of ice in Antarctica?

Al Gore would make a great villain in Batman! He could play the conniving money hungry “penguin.” Art imitating Life? 🙂

Paul W Primavera
Wednesday, November 19, AD 2014 8:25am

First of all, it is a dangerous experiment with unknown results to dump hundreds of millions of tons of fossil fuel pollutants into the atmosphere every year. Whether that causes warming or cooling or just more chaos in the weather remains to be seen. What we do know is that particulate pollution, SOx, NOx and COx all have deleterious health impacts on humans and animals alike (not to mention the nickel, cadmium, vanadium, selenium, mercury and other metal wastes that coal plants dump).
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Second, the doctrine of anthropogenic global warming (AGW) is just another face to the same old pagan nature religions that existed millennia ago. It is the elevation and deification of the creature above the Creator exactly as St Paul wrote in his epistles. In fact, St Paul would be dismayed and dishearten to see how we have reverted back to what he fought against in the pagan Roman Empire.
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Third, the ONE thing that can avert the need to burn fossil fuels for energy – safe, clean energy from heavy metal fission – is opposed with great vehemence and invective by all these so-called nature lovers. Nuclear energy releases no particulate pollution and no SOx, NOx or COx, and the radioactivity that it does emit is < than that from radon in some people's houses, and far < than what equivalently rated coal fired power plants routinely dump to the environment in ash and sludge. Coal naturally contains uranium and thorium – these should be consumed in nuclear reactors instead of dumped into the environment willy nilly (but ironically, that's where they came from in the first place).
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Fourth, these so-called environmentalists, all so concerned with following what is best according to nature, demonstrate the greatest hypocrisy by going against what is natural in human sexuality and moral behavior. How can one say one loves nature but defy her laws in one's personal sexual behavior?
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Fifth, AGW is as religious and political a doctrine as Islam is religious and political. In the case of the former, its adherents refuse to listen to any counter arguments and denigrate anyone who thinks differently as being anti-science. Nothing could be further from the truth. The scientific evidence speaks for itself – walls of snow fall in Buffalo, NY and near 0 F temperatures in North and South Carolina in mid-November.

William P. Walsh
William P. Walsh
Wednesday, November 19, AD 2014 12:57pm

Philosophically, we can look at our use of fossil fuels as historically necessary to modern human development, in terms of population growth and the quality of life. Nuclear energy is indispensable to future human development and will be until the God-given intelligence with which we were created devises something better. Fossil fuels do produce particulate pollution but so do forest fires and volcanos. Kilauea, on the eastern side of Mauna Loa, has been in a state of eruption since 1983. Much of the State of Hawaii is adversely affected by almost continual Vog. Paul, have you an estimate of the worldwide ratio of natural to manmade particulate generation?

Paul W Primavera
Wednesday, November 19, AD 2014 2:50pm

William Walsh is 100% correct.
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No electricity kills.
Coal kills < no electricity.
Oil kills < coal.
Gas kills < oil.
Solar and wind and hydro kill < gas
Nuclear kills least of all.
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Having an option between no electricity and coal, I shall choose coal every time.
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To all those environmentalists out there typing on computers, 50% of the electricity for your computers comes from coal. You are hypocrites. Why? You pay for electricity that comes from the very fossil fuel you dread. You pay for hydrocarbon liquid fuel for your motor vehicle while you condemn with greatest invective Shell, Exxon-Mobil, BP, Chevron and the rest, not to mention Dick Cheney, George Bush and the wars in the Middle East that you say is for oil. it's oil you want because you pay for it! If you believed in what you say, then you would stop buying electricity from fossil fuel, and you would stop purchasing gasoline for your automobile. But you have no principle. You stand exposed.
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The right solution is this: level the regulatory playing field. No one gets to dump his garbage into the air, water or ground – neither fossil nor nuclear nor solar nor wind nor hydro. And no one gets govt money. And everyone is held accountable to the same regulations for ensuring public health and safety. Fracking for natural gas and burning of coal should get held to the same radiation protection standards as nukes. Guess what will happen? Coal and gas shutdown because they can't stop emitting. Solar and wind go out of business because at < 30% capacity factor they can't make electricity and stay in business without tax money. Hydro and nukes win. Just level the regulatory playing field and let the free market work. That's all. Be fair!
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One other thing – using nukes and the Fischer-Tropsch process, we can make all the hydrocarbon liquid fuel we need from coal. We should also help Canada to build the newest generation of Candu heavy water reactors whose steam heat can be used to obtain oil from the tar sands in Alberta, and we should buy it from them. After all, we are supposed to be friends. Then we can tell the Islamic jihadists to go drown in their mineral slime.

Penguins Fan
Penguins Fan
Wednesday, November 19, AD 2014 4:26pm

Natural gas (methane) ain’t going away. Fracking has led to much energy related employment in Pennsylvania – all this as the Obumbler Regime has sought to eliminate coal. Natural gas is a superior fuel to heat homes, cook food, dry clothes and power vehicles. Natural gas is also used in vast amounts in steelmaking and other industries.

Between them all we can make ourselves energy independent and almost immediately.

As for the enviornment – it wasn’t so long ago that people emptied their chamberpots in the streets. Horse drawn buggies left their excrement on streets and roads. Everybody heated their homes with wood. Water, air, food and people were ALL a lot dirtier not so long ago.

Paul W Primavera
Wednesday, November 19, AD 2014 4:31pm

Penguins Fan is also correct: “Natural gas is a superior fuel to heat homes, cook food, dry clothes and power vehicles.”
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As such, it should NOT be used to generate electricity. It is too valuable of a resource to use in that manner. Use nuclear to generate electricity, supplemented by hydro. Use gas to provide residential and industrial heating. Use coal via nuclear steam heat and the Fischer-Tropsch process to produce liquid hydrocarbon fuels. Everybody wins! Except the environmentalists and the Islamic fanatics. My heart bleeds!
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🙂

Elaine Krewer
Admin
Wednesday, November 19, AD 2014 10:41pm

Here’s a very interesting blog post on the same subject by meteorologist Mike Smith, quoting at length a member of the British Labour Party who does NOT share the enthusiasm of his fellow liberals for the climate change “creed”:

http://meteorologicalmusings.blogspot.com/2014/11/climate-science-has-become-climate.html

the Old Adam
Wednesday, November 19, AD 2014 10:57pm

The eco-nuts will not be happy until everyone is paying through the nose to breathe…and living in pup tents.

Except for them, of course.

Michael Paterson-Seymour
Michael Paterson-Seymour
Thursday, November 20, AD 2014 2:14am

In Europe, the Hard Left, has always been sceptical of climate change.
This, from the Tarnac 10 Anarchist group, is typical: “Without ecology, nothing would have enough authority to gag any and all objections to the exorbitant progress of control. Tracking, transparency, certification, eco-taxes, environmental excellence, and the policing of water, all give us an idea of the coming state of ecological emergency. Everything is permitted to a power structure that bases its authority in Nature, in health and in well-being.”

Mary De Voe
Thursday, November 20, AD 2014 11:04am

Volcanoes in Alaska, New Zealand, the Arctic and Hawaii are contributing to climate change. Taxing people for the planet’s convulsions is taxation without representation, especially since citizens in America have been prohibited from praying “deliver us from evil” in public. Some politicians may be afraid that prayer to God to “deliver us from evil” may result in removal from their public office.

T. Shaw
T. Shaw
Thursday, November 20, AD 2014 3:55pm

What did liberals use before candles? Light bulbs.

Philip
Philip
Thursday, November 20, AD 2014 4:48pm

Mary DeVoe’s comment regarding “deliver us from evil may result in removal from their public office,” is not too far from the truth!
Good on ya.
btw….physicians used to swear an oath.
Can’t imagine why it ceased!!
1973 was the beginning of the END.

William P. Walsh
William P. Walsh
Thursday, November 20, AD 2014 5:22pm

Donald: When I attempt to follow a particular discussion, and perhaps respond to the latest comment, I find that whether I click on the latest link or the “see all” link, I am brought back to my initial post. This impedes conversation with others participating in a given thread. Am I doing something incorrectly or is there a need to exorcise some devilish glitch? Nonetheless, may I say to all interested in the “Climate Cult” problem, that I think it goes beyond even the obvious paradigm of “Green is the new Red”. It goes all the way to Idolatry, from worship of Deo to Gaia, from the Divine to the mundane, from Spirit to mere flesh, from Good to evil, and ultimately from Life to death. ~Bill

Phillip
Phillip
Thursday, November 20, AD 2014 6:16pm

The site has been acting weird for the past two weeks or so. Don’t know why but I have to refresh the comments to get new comments up. Sometimes I have to refresh the whole site to see new posts.

William P. Walsh
William P. Walsh
Friday, November 21, AD 2014 4:07pm

Thanks Donald. If my observation has been helpful, I’m happy to be of some small service.

exNOAAman
exNOAAman
Friday, November 21, AD 2014 8:11pm

Here in Prince George’s County, we have the gov’t trying to change church preaching to eco-fraudism:
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http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/dgreenfield/churches-wont-be-charged-rain-tax-if-they-preach-global-warming/
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http://dailycaller.com/2014/11/19/maryland-county-to-churches-preach-environmentalism-and-get-a-tax-break/
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Sorry I couldn’t post sooner; after I heard it on WCBM Wednesday. It’s quite germane to this thread.

Barbara Gordon
Barbara Gordon
Friday, November 21, AD 2014 9:25pm

It is all about money, power, politics, & population control of the “little” people–mostly the money & control.

Mary De Voe
Saturday, November 22, AD 2014 6:05am

Churches are attended by parishioners who have paid their fair share of taxes as citizens. Non-profits are tax exempt because their people have already paid their share of taxes. To tax a church or non-profit is taxation without representation, two taxes, one vote. Taxing churches violates the First Amendment: “or prohibit the free FREE free exercise thereof.”
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Government accreditation, or licensing, monitoring or regulation of an entity described legally as a “legal person”, that is a corporation, does not allow the intrusion of an anti-ethical, anti-personal, anti private third party not legally affiliated with that legal person, that corporation. Government is not authentically authorized or empowered to impose demands of the person unless a crime has been committed. Any law passed after the corporation legally submitted to incorporation is “ex post facto” law criminalizing the normal acts of the corporation in existence.

Our civilization is based on law that includes “power of attorney” and “proxy”. Our political system includes constituency, that is, representation by our elected officials. Nowhere in our legal system or civilization does the intrusion of others, others than ourselves, into our personal privacy, our countenance, our personal space, in public, as in corporations, or in private, as in bodily integrity, allowed, without the commission of assault and battery and/or trespassing. Our representatives in Washington D.C. are not empowered to violate an human being’s personal integrity.

“Or prohibit the free exercise thereof.” “under God” remarkably reminds atheists that man has all unalienable rights infused into the human soul in whom atheists refuse to believe.

Atheists must be tolerated. Atheism is patently unconstitutional.

Thomas Jefferson said that the rights that the state gives, the state can take away. The absence of God is an “engine of tyranny”, Donald McClarey’s term for corrupt legislation.

Mary De Voe
Saturday, November 22, AD 2014 6:26am

Thank you, exNOAAman. I have just read the links and it has occurred to me that Obama means to revolt against and betray our Constitution by causing unrest and riot, the work of the devil.

Mary De Voe
Saturday, November 22, AD 2014 7:52am

exNOAAman: God wills it to rain or not. The “rain tax” is taxing an act of God and causing God to withhold the rain to prevent the unjust, evil tax. Will the government subsidize the Churches when there is a drought??? The devil always talks from his a$$. The atheist is subliminally admitting to the existence of God. ho ho ho.

Michael Paterson-Seymour
Michael Paterson-Seymour
Sunday, November 23, AD 2014 4:20am

Mary de Voe wrote, “Thomas Jefferson said that the rights that the state gives, the state can take away.”

Indeed he did. “It enters into the resolution of the questions, whether the nation may change the descent of lands holden in tail; whether they may change the appropriation of lands given anciently to the church, to hospitals, colleges, orders of chivalry, and otherwise in perpetuity; whether they may abolish the charges and privileges attached on lands, including the whole catalogue, ecclesiastical and feudal; it goes to hereditary offices, authorities and jurisdictions, to hereditary orders, distinctions and appellations, to perpetual monopolies in commerce, the arts or sciences, with a long train of et ceteras”

The rights the state gives and can take away are very extensive indeed.

Mary De Voe
Sunday, November 23, AD 2014 10:01am

Michael Paterson_Seymour
Michael means “WHO IS LIKE UNTO GOD” El is the name of God. Your name, Michael, means: “the thought of God.” God’s thought. Very nice for you.
Now, that government may ratify those freedoms and institutions that God gives to man does not make those freedoms and grants theirs. The government oversees their just stewardship. You and I, “We, the people…” are government and “We, the people,” must insure that our neighbor is not cheated, ruined, or suffer any undue hardship. People must insure the sovereignty of his neighbor, his dignity, his personhood… Read the “undue” and know that the neighbor must be innocent, and not breaking any just law.
Lands and tithes are held in trust for our constitutional posterity, those souls to be brought into existence at God’s will, from our constitutional ancestors, those souls already in heaven. When “We, the people,” act, “We, the people”, must act for public domain and only public domain, that is, even the sacrifice of the loser benefits him. See our Fifth Amendment. Violations of our Fifth Amendment are unconstitutional.

Mary De Voe
Sunday, November 23, AD 2014 8:40pm

Michael Paterson-Seymour

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