Global warming religion

Australian geologist Ian Plimer says that global warming is the new religion of First World urban elites.

It is, of course, not new to have a highly qualified scientist saying that global warming is an entirely natural phenomenon with many precedents in history. ...

But most of these scientific and academic voices have fallen silent in the face of environmental Jacobinism. Purging humankind of its supposed sins of environmental degradation has become a religion with a fanatical and often intolerant priesthood, especially among the First World urban elites. ...

Plimer presents the proposition that anthropogenic global warming is little more than a con trick on the public perpetrated by fundamentalist environmentalists and callously adopted by politicians and government officials who love nothing more than an issue that causes public anxiety.

While environmentalists for the most part draw their conclusions based on climate information gathered in the last few hundred years, geologists, Plimer says, have a time frame stretching back many thousands of millions of years.

The dynamic and changing character of the Earth's climate has always been known by geologists. These changes are cyclical and random, he says. They are not caused or significantly affected by human behaviour.

Plimer is not the first to observe that environmentalism is a religion rather than a science, nor even the first scientist to say so. No less a physicist than Freeman Dyson says so, too.

There is a worldwide secular religion which we may call environmentalism, holding that we are stewards of the earth, that despoiling the planet with waste products of our luxurious living is a sin, and that the path of righteousness is to live as frugally as possible. [from, "The Question of Global Warming."]

Although, if you read the article, Dyson somewhat approves of the religiosity of environmentalism. Plimer's other point, that "global warming" conveniently provides governments with an "issue that causes public anxiety" is also well taken. As I wrote in March ("Crisis is the health of the state") and July ("Emergency driven central planning"), the most common feature of Western governments today, especially that of the United States, is the invention of crises or the exploitation of real ones to solidify government's control and regimentation of the lives of the people.

This is what is really behind religious environmentalism. H.L. Mencken observed, "The urge to save humanity is almost always a false front for the urge to rule it." And that is the true foundation of environmentalism today: the desire of its gurus to regulate the way others live. British editorialist George Monbiot wrote:

We can deal with climate change only with the help of governments, restraining the exertions of our natural liberties.

Dyson wrote that, "Environmentalism has replaced socialism as the leading secular religion." I demur. Environmentalism has not replaced socialism at all. Instead, the old-line socialists, faced with decades of the failure of political socialism, have jumped on the environmentalist bandwagon to keep socialism alive. Environmentalism has become a much better vehicle to achieve a rigid regulation of people's lives than political socialism ever was. After all, the fate of the entire planet is at stake! Environmentalism has already led some British members of Parliament to propose that the government regulate almost every aspect of buying and selling by private individuals. If this is not socialism, it is a distinction without a difference.

So there you are. At bottom, modern environmentalism has discarded scientific rigor to embrace something not much different than Leninism, the desire to control the major components of the way individuals live. From there it is a short step for environmentalism to Leninism's successor: Stalinism, the desire to control every aspect of the way we live. That's our future, minus the gulags. We hope.

This seems an apt time to quote the old liberals' bumper sticker: "If you're not outraged, you are not paying attention."

Update: Don Blankenship writes, "... 'global warming' is neither a reality nor a religion. It is instead a "superstition." ... A "superstition" is a fear founded on irrational feelings and marked by credulity -- i.e. a willingness to believe in the improbable or the marvelous. "

Also, see, "British Judge Sees Belief in Global Warming as Religion."

Because it's religion for the Left and mere science for the Right

Study: Global warming skeptics know more about climate science

Are global warming skeptics simply ignorant about climate science?

Not so, says a forthcoming paper in the journal Advances in Political Psychology by Yale Professor Dan Kahan. He finds that skeptics score about the same (in fact slightly better) on climate science questions.

The study asked 2,000 respondents nine questions about where they thought scientists stand on climate science.

On average, skeptics got about 4.5 questions correct, whereas manmade warming believers got about 4 questions right. ...

 The study’s author, Kahan, also says that the global warming debate has become so politically polarized that people pick their side based on politics rather than what they know about science.   

And all this, especially that last excerpted paragraph,  will make a lot more sense once you read my 2008 essay, "Environmentalist religion explained," in which I pointed out that,

[Physicist Freeman] Dyson wrote that, "Environmentalism has replaced socialism as the leading secular religion." I demur. Environmentalism has not replaced socialism at all. Instead, the old-line socialists, faced with decades of the failure of political socialism, have jumped on the environmentalist bandwagon to keep socialism alive. 

Environmentalism has become a much better vehicle to achieve a rigid regulation of people's lives than political socialism ever was. After all, the fate of the entire planet is at stake! Environmentalism has already led some British members of Parliament to propose that the government regulate almost every aspect of buying and selling by private individuals. If this is not socialism, it is a distinction without a difference.

And now, just this week, voila! "U.N. Official Reveals Real Reason Behind Warming Scare"

The alarmists keep telling us their concern about global warming is all about man's stewardship of the environment. But we know that's not true. A United Nations official has now confirmed this.

At a news conference last week in Brussels, Christiana Figueres, executive secretary of U.N.'s Framework Convention on Climate Change, admitted that the goal of environmental activists is not to save the world from ecological calamity but to destroy capitalism. 

"This is the first time in the history of mankind that we are setting ourselves the task of intentionally, within a defined period of time, to change the economic development model that has been reigning for at least 150 years, since the Industrial Revolution," she said.

This seems an apt time to quote the old liberals' bumper sticker: "If you're not outraged, you are not paying attention."

Update: Thomas Sowell, "Global Warming Hysteria Has Problem: It Doesn't Fit With Facts"

And here is a prime example of such hysteria: "Animated map of what Earth would look like if all the ice melted." "Gloom! Depair! And agony on me! Deep dark depression! Excessive misery!"

Understand that absolutely no one of the global-warming hysteria movement, nay not even them, has ever said that all the ice on the earth will melt. There is not one climatology study that makes such a prediction, even at their funding-grubbing alarmist worst.

Why not, "What the earth would look like if all the liquid water froze?" After all, only 40 years ago were were supposed to be headed for a new ice age.

 

The global warming cash cow

The Daily Tech asks, "Will the UN's scenario for AIDS repeat for global warming reports?"

A new report from the United Nations acknowledges the agency has routinely overstated both the size and growth rate of the AIDS epidemic. ...

Critics have long maintained the U.N. overstated cases to gain political and financial support. "There was a tendency toward alarmism, and that fit perhaps a certain fundraising agenda" said author and AIDS expert Helen Epstein.

Daily Tech goes on to report,

Climatologist and IPCC expert reviewer Vincent Gray has called the IPCC process "fundamentally corrupt" and its predictions a fraud. Dr. Madhav Khandekar, another IPCC expert reviewer, has called the review process scientifically unsound, and notes the latest report fails to acknowledge a growing number of scientists now question the theory of greenhouse gas-based climate change.

Is there a linkage between the UN's handling of AIDS and global warming? According to journalist Claudia Rosett, the UN routinely overstates crises to generate funding, then uses it to fund a massive system of kickbacks, payoffs, and lavish expense accounts. According to Rosett, IPCC climate pronouncements are just part of this long-standing pattern.

The idea of the bureaucracy of the United Nations being made up of selfless, altruistic servants of humanity, who toil tirelessly for the benefit of all humankind, simply can't be held by objective people. In fact, corruption of the highest order pervades almost everything the UN touches.

That aside, there are compelling (IMO, convincing) reasons to assert that global warming alarmism is really nothing more than the latest cash cow to milk. Consider the view of Dr William Gray, "a pioneer in the science of seasonal hurricane forecasts," reports the Sydney Morning Herald.

Dr William Gray, a pioneer in the science of seasonal hurricane forecasts, told a packed lecture hall at the University of North Carolina that humans were not responsible for the warming of the earth. ...

"We'll look back on all of this in 10 or 15 years and realise how foolish it was," Dr Gray said. ...

"It bothers me that my fellow scientists are not speaking out against something they know is wrong," he said. "But they also know that they'd never get any grants if they spoke out. I don't care about grants."

As I wrote last February, environmentalism is not merely a religion, it is an apocalyptic religion. And just like the sleaziest televangelist's pleas, this religion requires massive cash inflows to survive.

Another thing - if global warming is the dire crisis the UN says it is, then why is the UN doing this?

Endnote: for more on the UN's corruption, read , "Seeing the UN Plain: Corruption as a Way of Life," by a US State Dept. official and this essay by Richard Sanchez at Belmont Club.

Environmentalist religion explained

Freeman Dyson:

There is a worldwide secular religion which we may call environmentalism, holding that we are stewards of the earth, that despoiling the planet with waste products of our luxurious living is a sin, and that the path of righteousness is to live as frugally as possible. [From, "The Question of Global Warming."]

Freeman Dyson is one of the most highly-regarded physicists in the world. Wikipedia introduces its entry on him thus:

Freeman John Dyson FRS (born December 15, 1923) is an English-born American theoretical physicist and mathematician, famous for his work in quantum mechanics, solid-state physics, and nuclear engineering. He is a lifelong opponent of nationalism and a proponent of nuclear disarmament and international cooperation. Dyson is a member of the Board of Sponsors of The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists.

A true intellectual heavyweight, his essay in the New York Review of Books this month is a very important analysis that I urge you to read in full.

Dyson is not the first to point out that environmentalism has morphed into an actual religion in its own right. In Global Cooling Ain't so Hot, Either, I pointed out:

Michael Crichton and J.R. Dunn have written highly insightful essays about how environmentalism is a religion in its own right. See “Environmentalism as Religion” by Crichton and Dunn’s piece, “A Necessary Apocalypse,” in which he shows how gobal-warming environmentalism is not merely a religion, it is an apocalyptic religion. Its deity is Mother Earth (Gaia), for whom human beings are mortal enemies. NBC’s Matt Lauer inadvertantly gave away Gaiaism’s central article of faith thus:

Earth’s intricate web of ecosystems thrived for millions of years as natural paradises, until we came along, paved paradise, and put up a parking lot. Our assault on nature is killing off the very things we depend on for our own lives … The stark reality is that there are simply too many of us, and we consume way too much, especially here at home.

My second son was required to take ecology his junior year in high school; he related to me that the curriculum basically said there was nothing wrong with earth that the disappearance of humanity wouldn’t cure.

Jonah Goldberg wrote recently of the "Church of Green."

"At its core, environmentalism is a kind of nature worship. It’s a holistic ideology, shot through with religious sentiment. ...

Environmentalism’s most renewable resources are fear, guilt, and moral bullying. Its worldview casts man as a sinful creature who, through the pursuit of forbidden knowledge, abandoned our Edenic past. John Muir, who laid the philosophical foundations of modern environmentalism, described humans as “selfish, conceited creatures.” Salvation comes from shedding our sins, rejecting our addictions (to oil, consumerism, etc.) and demonstrating an all-encompassing love of Mother Earth. Quoth Al Gore: “The climate crisis is not a political issue; it is a moral and spiritual challenge to all of humanity.”

I heard Gore on NPR recently. He was asked about evangelical pastor Joseph Hagee’s absurd comment that Hurricane Katrina was God’s wrath for New Orleans’s sexual depravity. Naturally, Gore chuckled at such backwardness. But then the Nobel laureate went on to blame Katrina on man’s energy sinfulness. It struck me that the two men are not so different.

As Crichton pointed out, "environmentalism is in fact a perfect 21st century remapping of traditional Judeo-Christian beliefs and myths." Let me elucidate.

---

There are other religions than Judaism and Christianity, of course, but modern environmentalism was born in the West, whose cultural heritage and common languages are steeped through and through in Christian tradition, which was itself a daughter of Judaism.

The common themes of both scriptural Judaism and Christianity deal with deity, the natural world (existing first in a purity state), a corruption of the purity state (Augustine: "fall from grace,"), redemption and liberation/salvation. Then follows paradise. A prominent, though not universal, strain in both Judaism and Christianity is a looming apocalypse that in potential or in fact destroys enormous swaths of humanity.

Modern environmentalism has all these elements, with an emphasis on apocalypticism. I'll examine these religious elements in turn.

Deity: That would be the earth itself. "Mother Earth" is a term tossed about among the religion's adherents, thus personalizing what is really only a gazillion-ton hunk of rock. Personalization of the planet is necessary to deify it. Adherents often call this new deity, “Gaia,” the name of an ancient Greek earth goddess. The Gaia hypothesis was first proposed by NASA scientist James Lovelock, who introduced it thus:

What is the hypothesis of Gaia ? Stated simply, the idea is that we may have discovered a living being bigger, more ancient, and more complex than anything from our wildest dreams. That being, called Gaia, is the Earth.

The most important tenet of Gaiaism is that the earth is itself alive and is a being in its own right.

Creation: Environmentalism offerns no real theory of how the earth came to be, it focuses on the biosphere. In that manner it does echo the Jewish Scriptures, once removed. The Scriptures do inquire how the earth came to be, but not how God came to be.

As for the appearance of life, environmentalism drops the Bible's creation stories and substitutes evolution. Now, I am not arguing here against the theory of evolution. I am simply pointing out that evolution theory is environmentalism's explanation of life on earth and its diversity. The earth's biodiversity is extremely important for environmentalism, since evolution-driven biodiversity undergirds the apocalypticism of religious environmentalism. The apocalypse of "climate change" is predicted to destroy the evolutionary niches of various species. They won't be able to adapt.

The Purity State: Take your pick:

• Gaia before the appearance of human beings or,
• Gaia after we showed up, but before we invented civilization. (The anti-civilization theme is present in the Hebrew Scriptures, too.) This aspect romanticizes pre-civilizational peoples, often portraying them as gentle souls "living in harmony" with nature and imagining that they worshiped the earth, too, which in fact some did. (However, this notion is rebutted by contemporary researchers.)

The Corruption of (or Fall from) Purity: This is easily defined. It was the invention of the internal-combustion engine and the use of fossil fuels that followed. Burning coal also. More broadly, though, the Fall is consumerism and international industry, especially chemical industries.

Redemption: There is no savior per se in environmentalism. We have to save ourselves. Barack Obama sings the same song; one of his stump themes is, "We are the change we have been waiting for." And just as one wonders whether Obama is running for office or creating a cultic following, environmentalism relies on its own cultic leaders to guide the masses and give enlightenment to them. Like the Law of Moses, their commandments are to be obeyed from faith rather than inquiry: recycle, drive less, eat organics, drive hybrids, etc.

Paradise: Sorry, environmentalism offers not. There is no longing for "life more abundant," since abundancy is exactly what environmentalism uses for original sin. Instead of paradise, environmentalism promotes stasis:

Folks my age and maybe a little younger can remember when the Environmental Apocaplypse was not global warming but global cooling. So let us suppose two things: first that global warming really is occurring and human attention to it can reverse it, and second, that we do reverse it. Are we then to agree that a cooler earth really is in our best interests? Why?

I’ve always kind of suspected that underlying much of environmentalism is a desire for the impossible: stasis.

Moreover, environmental stasis can be accomplished only by human austerity. Environmentalism's New Jerusalem is not prosperity, but decline, presented as a return to humanity's purity state: the simple life arranged around a village-type lifestyle where everything is within walking distance of everything else. Who else but George Monbiot to explain?

Everything we thought was good turns out also to be bad. It is an act of kindness to travel to your cousin's wedding. Now it is also an act of cruelty. It is a good thing to light the streets at night. Climate change tells us it kills more people than it saves. We are killing people by the most innocent means: turning on the lights, taking a bath, driving to work, going on holiday. Climate change demands a reversal of our moral compass, for which we are plainly unprepared.

Apocalypticism: Like religious apocalypticism, environmental apocalypticism - in fact, the whole movement - is predicated on the imminent, substantial destruction of the natural world and its inhabitants. This from no less a personage than United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, who just five months ago said that "humanity faces oblivion if it fails to confront global warming." Oblivion, he said. Rising seas, expanding droughts, melting sea ice, increased desertification, scorched crops, mass human suffering and death - all inhabit the same enviro-religious space as Revelation's horsemen of the apocalypse.

Important in Jewish and Christian apocalypticism was the concept of "children of light" versus the "children of darkness." The children of darkness were those who rebelled against God, who turned away from righteousness and embodied evil. Children of light were those who apprehended the truth of God and cleaved toward spiritual purity. This notion has been adopted wholesale by environmentalism. Dyson again:

Scientists and economists can agree with Buddhist monks and Christian activists that ruthless destruction of natural habitats is evil and careful preservation of birds and butterflies is good. The worldwide community of environmentalists—most of whom are not scientists—holds the moral high ground, and is guiding human societies toward a hopeful future.

Catch that? This is a clear delineation of the realm of light and of darkness, and whom inhabits each. "The worldwide community of environmentalists ... holds the moral high ground," and thus are the children of light. Who are the children of darkness? They are the "evil" ones who conduct or permit the "ruthless destruction of natural habitats." Dyson continues,

Unfortunately, some members of the environmental movement have also adopted as an article of faith the belief that global warming is the greatest threat to the ecology of our planet. ... Much of the public has come to believe that anyone who is skeptical about the dangers of global warming is an enemy of the environment.

(Italics added.) "Enemy of the environment" = child of darkness. (Dyson does not himself promote such a belief, but certainly it is out there.)

Another tenet of religious apocalypticism is that things will get worse before they get better. And so it is with environmentalist apocalypticism. No matter what we do now, greenhouse gases, and therefore climate change, will intensify until at least mid-century, and only then might be abated.

Still skeptical that environmentalism is a religion in its own right? Then peruse, "Nature is not your friend."

Then Scott Lancaster, 18, was killed and eaten by a mountain lion.

Scott’s friends and family consoled themselves that his death, sad and untimely though it was, had somehow been kind of fitting for him. As James Valdez put it, "He was a real outdoorsy guy."

"It felt natural," said Abby Heller. "It felt like it was part of nature, and part of the way the cycle happens. It seemed kind of pure."

It was "natural," part of the pure cycle of life for a young man to suffer a gruesome, horrifying, massively painful death by means of the "red in tooth and claw" of one of Gaia's creatures. And so the case that environmentalism is a religion in its own right is hereby closed.

---

But there is more than mere religiousity at work in religious environmentalism. H.L. Mencken observed, "The urge to save humanity is almost always a false front for the urge to rule it." And that is the true foundation of environmentalism today: the desire of its gurus to regulate the way others live. Monbiot again:

We can deal with climate change only with the help of governments, restraining the exertions of our natural liberties.

Dyson wrote that, "Environmentalism has replaced socialism as the leading secular religion." I demur. Environmentalism has not replaced socialism at all. Instead, the old-line socialists, faced with decades of the failure of political socialism, have jumped on the environmentalist bandwagon to keep socialism alive. Environmentalism has become a much better vehicle to achieve a rigid regulation of people's lives than political socialism ever was. After all, the fate of the entire planet is at stake! Environmentalism has already led some British members of Parliament to propose that the government regulate almost every aspect of buying and selling by private individuals. If this is not socialism, it is a distinction without a difference.

So there you are. At bottom, modern environmentalism has discarded scientific rigor to embrace something not much different than Leninism, the desire to control the major components of the way individuals live. From there it is a short step for environmentalism to Leninism's successor: Stalinism, the desire to control every aspect of the way we live. That's our future, minus the gulags. We hope.

This seems an apt time to quote the old liberals' bumper sticker: "If you're not outraged, you are not paying attention."

Updates:

The originator of the Gaia theory, which pretty much kicked off the environmentalist movement, now says it's a load of crock and that environmentalism is a totally unscientific religion.

Arthur Chrenkoff elaborates more on Environmentalism as a religion. Excellent essay!

March 2020: Now the Judeo-Christian template Crichton spoke of is being abandoned for full-up paganism and the practice of child sacrifice to achieve religious goals: "Bernie Sanders: Abortion And Population Control Are Important Parts Of Addressing Climate Change."

IPCC Former Chair Admits It's All About the Money

Another Climate Alarmist Admits Real Motive Behind Warming Scare

"One has to free oneself from the illusion that international climate policy is environmental policy. This has almost nothing to do with the environmental policy anymore, with problems such as deforestation or the ozone hole," said Edenhofer, who co-chaired the U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change working group on Mitigation of Climate Change from 2008 to 2015.

So what is the goal of environmental policy?

"We redistribute de facto the world's wealth by climate policy," said Edenhofer.

Then there's this: "Diminishing solar activity may bring new Ice Age by 2030"

A lot more about that here: "What Happened to Spot? A Solar Update"

Solar image on May 31 of this year. Fewer sunspots mean a colder Earth.
This has been tracked going back hundreds of years.

The “Little Ice Age” was actually a significantly extended cool period lasting several centuries, and no less than FOUR extended minima occurred during its “tenure.” These include, in order, the Wolf, the Spörer, the Maunder, and the Dalton minima. These extended minima were not all of the same “depth,” in that the minimum numbers of sunspots were not the same across all of them — the Maunder was far deeper than the rest — but there are indications that we are hitting numbers in the range of the Dalton already.

Note that, during the Maunder Minimum, sunspots became so rare that a grand total of only ~50 were observed over 28 years — this corresponds roughly to two and a half solar cycles. In a “normal” cycle, we would expect to see around 50,000 sunspots in that same timeframe, some THREE ORDERS OF MAGNITUDE MORE than were observed during the Maunder Minimum. Entire month spans went by with NO sunspots. Also understand that, when sunspots resumed, they did not pick up mid-cycle, despite the fractional-cycle timeframe; the extended minimum was, effectively, a reset.

I find it impossible to believe that the sophisticated computer global-warming models do not account at all for solar activity or for the increased cosmic-ray bombardments the Earth receives during solar minimums (because decreased solar strength means a weaker solar "wind" passing our planet). Not, surely it just can't be that global-warming "science" pays no attention at all to that fusion reactor 93 million miles away and what effect its output could have on the actual climate, not the modeled one.

But when all you want is Other People's Money, why bother with, you know, actual empirical data when GIGO works even better?

But moving on: "The Paris Climate Deal Was A 'Fraud' And A 'Sham' ... Until Trump Decided To Ditch It." It is amazing how many global-warming advocates fiercely opposed the Paris Accords - until Trump ditched it. Now we are all going to die!

Yet it was only a little more than a year ago that climate scientists and environmentalists were viciously attacking the Paris agreement itself. The goals were too low to make a difference. There was nothing binding any of the signatories to live up to their promises, and no enforcement mechanism if they didn't. It just kicked the can down the road.

James Hansen, the undisputed hero of the climate-change movement, called the Paris deal "a fraud really, a fake. … It's just worthless words. There is no action, just promises."

A joint letter signed by nearly a dozen top climate scientists said the agreement suffered "deadly flaws lying just beneath its veneer of success." These scientists complained that the agreement could actually be counterproductive, since it gave the impression that global warming was being dealt with when in fact it wasn't.

A study in the peer-reviewed journal Global Policy said that even if every country lived up to its CO2 emission reduction promises through 2030, the Paris deal would "likely reduce global temperature rise about 0.17°C in 2100."

And the WSJ: Trump Skips Climate Church -- Paris exists to provide an imprimatur to what politicians would do anyway. Funny about that "climate church" thing, since environmentalism long ago became a religion in its own right.

We are being played, people. But fortunately, not everyone is being rolled: MIT Climate Scientist Dr. Richard Lindzen: Believing CO2 controls the climate ‘is pretty close to believing in magic’

Doubling CO2 involves a 2% perturbation to this budget. So do minor changes in clouds and other features, and such changes are common. In this complex multifactor system, what is the likelihood of the climate (which, itself, consists in many variables and not just globally averaged temperature anomaly) is controlled by this 2% perturbation in a single variable? Believing this is pretty close to believing in magic. Instead, you are told that it is believing in ‘science.’ Such a claim should be a tip-off that something is amiss. After all, science is a mode of inquiry rather than a belief structure.

The accumulation of false and/or misleading claims is often referred to as the ‘overwhelming evidence’ for forthcoming catastrophe. Without these claims, one might legitimately ask whether there is any evidence at all.

And just this year: 80 Graphs From 58 New (2017) Papers Invalidate Claims Of Unprecedented Global-Scale Modern Warming 

Last year there were at least 60 peer-reviewed papers published in scientific journals demonstrating that  Today’s Warming Isn’t Global, Unprecedented, Or Remarkable.

Just within the last 5 months,  58 more papers and 80 new graphs have been published that continue to undermine the popularized conception of a slowly cooling Earth temperature history followed by a dramatic hockey-stick-shaped uptick, or an especially unusual global-scale warming during modern times.

  

Yes, some regions of the Earth have been warming in recent decades or at some point in the last 100 years.  Some regions have been cooling for decades at a time.  And many regions have shown no significant net changes or trends in either direction relative to the last few hundred to thousands of years.

Like this chart of European summer temperatures over the last 2,000 years:

So what is the point of all this? As the IPCC's Edehofer said, We just want your money.

The whole climate-change enterprise is simply scientific prostitution.

Tuesday Time - let's talk about religion

There is no such thing as no religion. There is only a choice of which one. For in Europe, Christianity has been Routed by liberalism, and it is not an improvement.

As I have stated for many years, environmentalism is a religion in the full sense of the word, based on a Judeo-Christian template. It has now moved through apocalypticism to millenarianism, "the belief by a religious, social, or political group or movement in a coming major transformation of society, after which all things will be changed." Just read, "How to Join the Global Youth Climate Strike."

“September 20 is only the beginning,” reads the event’s website. “We must carry this energy to the 2020 elections, and beyond to ensure real, bold action is taken to address the climate crises. This is history in the making, and it’s time we take back the narrative to save our futures.”

More? Greta Thunberg's angry, teary appearance at the UN Climate Summit, where she yelled at the assembly and bluntly threatened,

'Right here, right now is where we draw the line. The world is waking up and change is coming whether you like it or not,' she said to uproarious applause. 

That's pure millenarianism, folks. But really, isn't is already time to call "Enough with the Adolescent Human Shields"?

Finally, though, more and more ordinary people are coming to realize that climate science and climate alarmism are a con game, nothing but an enormous money grab. .

And no, the science is not settled: ‘Propaganda’: Top MIT climate scientist trashes ‘97% consensus’ claim -- in fact, the "consensus" on human-caused global warming is ... wait for it!  -- about one percent. 

So, the science is not settled. But its money stream is, and that's what counts. Climate Science’s Myth-Buster - It’s time to be scientific about global warming, says climatologist Judith Curry.

Dr. Curry "is a true climatologist."

She once headed the department of earth and atmospheric sciences at the Georgia Institute of Technology, until she gave up on the academy so that she could express herself independently. “Independence of mind and climatology have become incompatible,” she says. Do you mean that global warming isn’t real? I ask. “There is warming, but we don’t really understand its causes,” she says. “The human factor and carbon dioxide, in particular, contribute to warming, but how much is the subject of intense scientific debate.”

And then some religions become cults. And right now, Greta Thunberg is a cultic center.

https://www.spiked-online.com/2019/04/22/the-cult-of-greta-thunberg/

https://quillette.com/2019/04/23/self-harm-versus-the-greater-good-greta-thunberg-and-child-activism/

https://spectator.us/problem-greta-thunberg-sea-crossings/

Children's crusades medieval or modern do not end well.

And by the way, Dr Mark Imisides, an industrial chemist, explains why carbon dioxide cannot warm the oceans or cause melting of icecaps.

The closing smile:

No money in studying natural causes

Natural causes of global warming, that is.Writes Roy Spencer, Ph.D, climatologist and former NASA scientist,

Believe it or not, very little research has ever been funded to search for natural mechanisms of warming…it has simply been assumed that global warming is manmade. This assumption is rather easy for scientists since we do not have enough accurate global data for a long enough period of time to see whether there are natural warming mechanisms at work.

The United Nation’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) claims that the only way they can get their computerized climate models to produce the observed warming is with anthropogenic (human-caused) pollution. But they’re not going to find something if they don’t search for it. More than one scientist has asked me, “What else COULD it be?” Well, the answer to that takes a little digging… and as I show, one doesn’t have to dig very far.

Read the whole thing. And in, "An Expensive Urban Legend," he concludes,

If you submit a research proposal to look for alternative explanations for global warming (say, natural climate cycles), it is virtually guaranteed you will not get funded. Is it any wonder that scientists who are required to accept the current scientific orthodoxy in order to receive continued funding, then later agree with that orthodoxy when surveyed? Well, duh.

Climate science is more heavily politicized than any area of inquiry. As I explained before, global warming is a religion of political absolutism much more than a supported scientific theory.

Torture still endorsed by US government

Geologist Professor Ian Plimer, describing the computer models used by global warming alarmists:

‘I’m a natural scientist ... collecting raw data. And that’s why I’m so sceptical of these models, which have nothing to do with science or empiricism but are about torturing the data till it finally confesses. None of them predicted this current period we’re in of global cooling. There is no problem with global warming. It stopped in 1998. The last two years of global cooling have erased nearly 30 years of temperature increase.’

Meanwhile, two US scientists have explained the severe shortcomings of computer climate models.

Gary Strand, a software engineer at the federally funded National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR), admitted climate model software “doesn't meet the best standards available” in a comment he posted on the website Climate Audit.

“As a software engineer, I know that climate model software doesn't meet the best standards available. We've made quite a lot of progress, but we've still quite a ways to go,” Strand wrote on July 5, 2009, according to the website WattsUpWithThat.com.

Strand's candid admission promoted WattsUpWithThat's skeptical Meteorologist Anthony Watts to ask the following question:

“Do we really want Congress to make trillion dollar tax decisions today based on 'software [that] doesn't meet the best standards available?'”

Meteorologist Watts also critiqued the current climate models, noting, “NASA GISS model E written on some of the worst FORTRAN coding ever seen is a challenge to even get running. NASA GISTEMP is even worse.

Another Plimer quote:

Eco-guilt is a first-world luxury. It’s the new religion for urban populations which have lost their faith in Christianity. The IPCC report is their Bible. Al Gore and Lord Stern are their prophets.

See my own post, "Environmentalist religion explained." As I wrote then, it's appropriate to quote the old liberals' bumper sticker: "If you're not outraged, you are not paying attention."

Update: What about 55 million years ago?

A runaway spurt of global warming 55 million years ago turned Earth into a hothouse but how this happened remains worryingly unclear, scientists said on Monday.
Previous research into this period, called the Palaeocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum, or PETM, estimates the planet's surface temperature blasted upwards by between five and nine degrees Celsius (nine and 16.2 degrees Fahrenheit) in just a few thousand years.

The Arctic Ocean warmed to 23 C (73 F), or about the temperature of a lukewarm bath.

How PETM happened is unclear but climatologists are eager to find out, as this could shed light on aspects of global warming today.

I blame the cave men. Don't try to object that there were no cave men 55 million years ago. Doesn't matter. It's still humans' fault.

Oh, and did you know that the earth has had polar ice caps for only about 20 percent of its age? "Normal" temps, on geological scale, are those too warm to support polar ice.

Global Warming! Come back! Come back!

Despite predictions at this time last year that 2007 would be the warmest year ever, it wasn't. In fact,

[A] funny thing happened on the way to the planetary hot flash: Much of the planet grew bitterly cold.

In South America, for example, the start of winter last year was one of the coldest ever observed. According to Eugenio Hackbart, chief meteorologist of the MetSul Weather Center in Brazil, "a brutal cold wave brought record low temperatures, widespread frost, snow, and major energy disruption." In Buenos Aires, it snowed for the first time in 89 years, while in Peru the cold was so intense that hundreds of people died and the government declared a state of emergency in 14 of the country's 24 provinces. In August, Chile's agriculture minister lamented "the toughest winter we have seen in the past 50 years," which caused losses of at least $200 million in destroyed crops and livestock.

Latin Americans weren't the only ones shivering.

University of Oklahoma geophysicist David Deming, a specialist in temperature and heat flow, notes in the Washington Times that "unexpected bitter cold swept the entire Southern Hemisphere in 2007." Johannesburg experienced its first significant snowfall in a quarter-century. Australia had its coldest ever June. New Zealand's vineyards lost much of their 2007 harvest when spring temperatures dropped to record lows.

Closer to home, 44.5 inches of snow fell in New Hampshire last month, breaking the previous record of 43 inches, set in 1876. And the Canadian government is forecasting the coldest winter in 15 years.

Severe cold is far more lethal to people than high temps. Read the whole piece. It's an excellent synopsis of the ojections of credentialed scientists around the world to global warming alarmism. The writer, Jeff Jacoby of the Boston Globe, finishes,

Climate science isn't a religion, and those who dispute its leading theory are not heretics. Much remains to be learned about how and why climate changes, and there is neither virtue nor wisdom in an emotional rush to counter global warming - especially if what's coming is a global Big Chill.

Well, climate science may not be a religion, but environmentalism is the hippest po-mo religion. Author Michael Crichton has noted rightly that environmentalism is now a fundamentalist religion, too.

And remember, global cooling ain’t so great, either.

The invention of global warming

A peer-reviewed Study Finds Temperature Adjustments Account For ‘Nearly All Of The Warming’ In Climate Data.

A new study found adjustments made to global surface temperature readings by scientists in recent years “are totally inconsistent with published and credible U.S. and other temperature data.”

“Thus, it is impossible to conclude from the three published GAST data sets that recent years have been the warmest ever – despite current claims of record setting warming,” according to a study published June 27 by two scientists and a veteran statistician.

The peer-reviewed study tried to validate current surface temperature datasets managed by NASA, NOAA and the UK’s Met Office, all of which make adjustments to raw thermometer readings. Skeptics of man-made global warming have criticized the adjustments.

Climate scientists often apply adjustments to surface temperature thermometers to account for “biases” in the data. The new study doesn’t question the adjustments themselves but notes nearly all of them increase the warming trend.

Basically, “cyclical pattern in the earlier reported data has very nearly been ‘adjusted’ out” of temperature readings taken from weather stations, buoys, ships and other sources.

The text of the full study may be read here. Its conclusion  is,

In this research report, the most important surface data adjustment issues are identified and past changes in the previously reported historical GAST data are quantified. While the notion that some “adjustments” to historical data might need to be made is not challenged, logically it would be expected that such historical temperature data adjustments would sometimes raise these temperatures, and sometimes lower them. This situation would mean that the impact of such adjustments on the temperature trend line slope is uncertain. However, each new version of GAST has nearly always exhibited a steeper warming linear trend over its entire history.

That was accomplished by systematically removing the previously existing cyclical temperature pattern. This was true for all three entities providing GAST data measurement, NOAA, NASA and Hadley CRU.

As a result, this research sought to validate the current estimates of GAST using the best available relevant data. This included the best documented and understood data sets from the U.S. and elsewhere as well as global data from satellites that provide far more extensive global coverage and are not contaminated by bad siting and urbanization impacts. Satellite data integrity also benefits from having cross checks between UAH and RSS as well as with Balloon data.

The conclusive findings of this research are that the three GAST data sets are not a valid representation of reality. In fact, the magnitude of their historical data adjustments, that removed their cyclical temperature patterns, are totally inconsistent with published and credible U.S. and other temperature data. Thus, it is impossible to conclude from the three published GAST data sets that recent years
have been the warmest ever –despite current claims of record setting warming.

Finally, since GAST data set validity is a necessary condition for EPA’s GHG/CO2 Endangerment Finding, it too is invalidated by these research findings.

Remember that an IPCC Former Chair Admits It's All About the Money.

"One has to free oneself from the illusion that international climate policy is environmental policy. This has almost nothing to do with the environmental policy anymore, with problems such as deforestation or the ozone hole," said Edenhofer, who co-chaired the U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change working group on Mitigation of Climate Change from 2008 to 2015.

So what is the goal of environmental policy?

"We redistribute de facto the world's wealth by climate policy," said Edenhofer.

But I wrote that years ago in, "Environmentalist religion explained:"

But there is more than mere religiousity at work in religious environmentalism. H.L. Mencken observed, "The urge to save humanity is almost always a false front for the urge to rule it." And that is the true foundation of environmentalism today: the desire of its gurus to regulate the way others live. Monbiot again:

We can deal with climate change only with the help of governments, restraining the exertions of our natural liberties.

Freeman Dyson wrote, "Environmentalism has replaced socialism as the leading secular religion." I demur. Environmentalism has not replaced socialism at all. Instead, the old-line socialists, faced with decades of the failure of political socialism, have jumped on the environmentalist bandwagon to keep socialism alive. Environmentalism has become a much better vehicle to achieve a rigid regulation of people's lives than political socialism ever was. After all, the fate of the entire planet is at stake! Environmentalism has already led some British members of Parliament to propose that the government regulate almost every aspect of buying and selling by private individuals. If this is not socialism, it is a distinction without a difference.

So there you are. At bottom, modern environmentalism has discarded scientific rigor to embrace something not much different than Leninism, the desire to control the major components of the way individuals live. From there it is a short step from environmentalism to Leninism's successor: Stalinism, the desire to control every aspect of the way we live. That's our future, minus the gulags. We hope.

This seems an apt time to quote the old liberals' bumper sticker: "If you're not outraged, you are not paying attention."

Freeman Dyson blows up global warming alarmism

Freeman Dyson is one of the most highly-regarded physicists in the world. Wikipedia introduces its entry on him thus:

Freeman John Dyson FRS (born December 15, 1923) is an English-born American theoretical physicist and mathematician, famous for his work in quantum mechanics, solid-state physics, and nuclear engineering. He is a lifelong opponent of nationalism and a proponent of nuclear disarmament and international cooperation. Dyson is a member of the Board of Sponsors of The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists.

He was one of the first scientific figures to recognize that environmentalism had become a religion in its own right:

There is a worldwide secular religion which we may call environmentalism, holding that we are stewards of the earth, that despoiling the planet with waste products of our luxurious living is a sin, and that the path of righteousness is to live as frugally as possible. [From, "The Question of Global Warming."]

From "Environmentalist religion explained."

In 2011, The Independent published, "Letters to a heretic: An email conversation with climate change sceptic Professor Freeman Dyson."

World-renowned physicist Professor Freeman Dyson has been described as a 'force-of-nature intellect'. He's also one of the world's foremost climate change sceptics. In this email exchange, our science editor, Steve Connor, asks the Princeton scholar why he's one of the few true intellectuals to be so dismissive of the global-warming consensus.

In the interview, after concise explanation of why climate modeling is useful but not determinative:

My impression is that the experts are deluded because they have been studying the details of climate models for 30 years and they come to believe the models are real. After 30 years they lose the ability to think outside the models. 

Read the whole thing.

Why Greenland welcomes warming

"How global warming is good news for Greenland's economic climate:"

RARELY a month goes by without another scientific survey proclaiming that Greenland's ice sheet is melting faster than previously thought. But for the 56,000 people who live on the giant Arctic island, climate change is now being seen as an opportunity rather than a threat: a passport to prosperity, perhaps even independence.

I posted in Feb. 2007 the question, “What if global warming is a good thing?” A return to the higher temps of the Little Climate Optimum would be a good thing, perhaps? After all, the LCO, stretching roughly from the 10th to the 13th centuries, in which the average temperature was anything from 1 to 3 degrees centigrade higher than it is today, actually impelled the formation of modern civilization.

Of course, that’s a bad thing to the global warming alarmists.

See also my essay this week on just how, exactly, environmentalism has become an actual religion in its own right, and what are the implications are for personal liberty. Hint: not good. Environmentalist religion explained.

Enuff with the doomsdaying, already

The Guardian, UK: 'Apocalyptic climate predictions' mislead the public, say experts.

Experts at Britain's top climate research centre have launched a blistering attack on scientific colleagues and journalists who exaggerate the effects of global warming.

The Met Office Hadley Centre, one of the most prestigious research facilities in the world, says recent "apocalyptic predictions" about Arctic ice melt and soaring temperatures are as bad as claims that global warming does not exist. Such statements, however well-intentioned, distort the science and could undermine efforts to tackle carbon emissions, it says.

A welcome call, but one I do not think will be heeded. There is too much money to be made by the most strident voices. Moderated commentary is mostly ignored by the media and scientists or research centers who say that things are not really all that bad, no matter the soundness of their science, don't get big grants and awards. Why? Because the money, hence the agenda, is controlled not by scientists but by politicians. The article points out,

The criticism reflects mounting concern at the Met Office that the global warming debate risks being hijacked by people on both sides who push their own agendas and interests. It comes ahead of a key year of political discussions on climate, which climax in December with high-level political negotiations in Copenhagen, when officials will try to hammer out a successor to the Kyoto protocol.

So the Met Office's call for sanity and sound, non-politicized science is welcome, but won't be heeded. Whole careers, both scientific and political, have been made and depend upon climate alarmism.

I again commend to you my essay, "Environmentalist religion explained," which explains how environmentalism long ago became, as Michael Crichton wrote, "a perfect 21st century remapping of traditional Judeo-Christian beliefs and myths." Environmentalism emphasizes apocalypticism, which has in fact become central to its entire belief system. So it won't be surrendered easily (or, say I, at all).

The apocalyptic nature of climate alarmism forms a perfect confluence between science and politics. has there ever been a time in all history when scientists (not, mind you, actual science) have been hailed by politicians as so essential to forming policy for the future of the world? The permanent interest of politicians is to retain their power and then increase it. Environmentalism is the best vehicle going to do that.

No less a personage than physicist Freeman Dyson pointed out (cited in my essay) that, "Environmentalism has replaced socialism as the leading secular religion." I demur. Environmentalism has not replaced socialism at all. Instead, the old-line socialists, faced with decades of the failure of political socialism, have jumped on the environmentalist bandwagon to keep socialism alive. Environmentalism has become a much better vehicle to achieve a rigid regulation of people's lives than political socialism ever was. After all, the fate of the entire planet is at stake!

Environmentalism has already led some British members of Parliament to propose that the government regulate almost every aspect of buying and selling by private individuals. If this is not socialism, it is a distinction without a difference.

So there you are. At bottom, modern environmentalism has discarded scientific rigor to embrace something not much different than Leninism, the desire to control the major components of the way individuals live. From there it is a short step for environmentalism to Leninism's successor: Stalinism, the desire to control every aspect of the way we live. That's our future, minus the gulags. We hope.

Were Oklahoma tornadoes caused by global cooling?

Back in 1975, scientists blamed the previous year's huge tornado outbreak on global cooling.

The entire scanned article is at the link, but here is the key part:

Fortunately, in our more enlightened age, we know that the problem today is neither global cooling nor global warming, but the fact the the climate is not granite stable. Yes, "climate change" is what messes up our world. 

As I posted in 2007, 

I've always kind of suspected that underlying much of environmentalism is a desire for the impossible: stasis. For the earth will either get warmer or cooler, but it definitely won't stay the same. 

A commenter on the FB page where I found the scans, above, said,

It's interesting that "Climate Change" has become for the left just what the "enlightened" use to accuse theists for having - a "God of the gaps" ... no matter the empirical data, it is caused by "climate change".

Which caused me to comment there a link to my 2008 post, "Environmentalist religion explained," in which I picked up and ran with renowned physicist Freeman Dyson's observation:

There is a worldwide secular religion which we may call environmentalism, holding that we are stewards of the earth, that despoiling the planet with waste products of our luxurious living is a sin, and that the path of righteousness is to live as frugally as possible. [From, "The Question of Global Warming."] ...

My pickup theme was this:

The common themes of both scriptural Judaism and Christianity deal with deity, the natural world (existing first in a purity state), a corruption of the purity state (Augustine: "fall from grace,"), redemption and liberation/salvation. Then follows paradise. A prominent, though not universal, strain in both Judaism and Christianity is a looming apocalypse that in potential or in fact destroys enormous swaths of humanity.

Modern environmentalism has all these elements, with an emphasis on apocalypticism. I'll examine these religious elements in turn. 

Read the whole thing!

Global-Warming Alarmists and their god of the Gaps

Global-Warming Alarmists, You're Doing It Wrong - Bloomberg View: 

The arguments about global warming too often sound more like theology than science. Oh, the word “science” gets thrown around a great deal, but it's cited as a sacred authority, not a fallible process that staggers only awkwardly and unevenly toward the truth, with frequent lurches in the wrong direction. I cannot count the number of times someone has told me that they believe in “the science,” as if that were the name of some omniscient god who had delivered us final answers written in stone. For those people, there can be only two categories in the debate: believers and unbelievers. Apostles and heretics.

It's nice to see people are finally awakening to what I pointed out (and I admit I was not the first) in my 2008 post, "Environmentalist religion explained." 

And there is this comment (not mine) I found elsewhere: 

It's interesting that "Climate Change" has become for the left just what the "enlightened" use to accuse theists for having - a "God of the gaps" ... no matter the empirical data, it is caused by "climate change".

Global warmingism religion

Michael Barone on the administration's budget component of carbon cap-and-trade. "It would take some $600 billion out of the private sector economy in order to avoid an environmental crisis that is supposed to arrive in -- oh, some time around 2055."

We are dealing here with something more like religion and less like science. We are told that all argument about global warming must end. We must have faith! But it is religion that asks us to have faith; science presents us with theories that can be tested by observation and produce replicable results -- and the results for 2055 aren't in.

We are told that we must repent of our misdeeds, for driving SUVs or (unless you're Al Gore or a Hollywood liberal) flying in private jets. And we are told that we must atone for our sins, by paying more for every bit of energy we use and remembering to recycle.

It is religion that asks for repentance and offers rituals for atonement; science suggests ways we can adapt and cope with change. It makes sense to understand how the physical environment may be damaged by changes in climate and to prepare for repairs that may be needed, and we are already doing that. It makes no sense to cripple a struggling economy in order to prevent damage that may or may not occur many years from now.

I've said it before, and I'll keep on saying it. Environmentalism long ago became a religion in its own right. Environmentalism has discarded scientific rigor to embrace something not much different than Leninism, the desire to control the major components of the way individuals live. From there it is a short step for environmentalism to Leninism's successor: Stalinism, the desire to control every aspect of the way we live. That's our future, minus the gulags. We hope.

Facts and legends in climate modeling

In the motion picture, The Man Who SHot Liberty Valance, a newspaper editor learns the truth about a legendary figure of the day, Ransom Stoddard, a truth that would destroy Stoddard's entire reputation. But he burns the only written account of the truth.

"When the legend becomes fact," the editor says, "print the legend."

When it come to climate modeling, it's important to remember that models work both ways - future and past. That is, models of today predict climate conditions (we mean, of course, temperature trends) for the years to come. But models of years past made climate predictions for the future, too - a future that is now our past.

How well did those predictions hold up? Not too well, as it turns out. But no matter: climate models are sacred.

Reading between the lines of the new Thompson et al. Nature paper suggests that once they get the details worked out, the “updated” observed global temperature history is going to fit climate model hindcasts even better than it does now, and embolden confidence in their future projections.

The majority of the alarm raised over global warming stems from climate model projections. And thus it is largely inconceivable that there is going to be a major finding published in a journal such as Nature that is going to call into question one of the fundamental results from climate models—that is, climate models accurately simulate the “known” temperature history. The “known history” may change, but you can rest assured that it isn’t going to change in such as way as to make the climate models look like they aren’t doing so well after all. ...

Ah, yes, not only are they going to tweak the mid-century temperatures, but they are also going to make recent temperatures warmer than they are currently being reported. This will kill two birds with one stone.

It will serve to (more than?) compensate for any mid-century temperature corrections, and it will take some of the wind out of the sails of the good ship “Global Warming Stopped 10 Years Ago.” Again, the models will come out of this like shining stars.

Call us skeptics, but we have grave doubts that the corrections to the observed global temperature history will result in a lessening in the overall confidence that is proclaimed that climate change is manifesting itself even worse than we imagined. After all, there is an overwhelming, odds-busting tendency for publications in the journal Nature to report that things are tending worse (rather than better) than we ever imagined. In an unbiased world, the expectation should be 50-50 that publications in Nature would find things either better or worse than the expectations. In reality, the publication ratio is about 10 to 1 for the worse side. We have a bad feeling, that despite the initial optimism, that the outcome of the Thompson et al. findings will ultimately prove to increase the tally on the worse-than-expected side of things.

Yes, indeed, when the legend becomes fact, stick with the legend. It no longer matters what is empirical, that is, what is scientifically factual. It only matters what people believe. But, as I have explained, we are no longer dealing with science now, we are dealing with religion.

Gimme that Old New- Time Religion

Noted Physicist Says Multiverse Theory Of Creation Is Religion, Not Science

The very existence of the universe is so vexing to comprehend (see "anthropic principle") unless one posits a creator thereof, that determined atheists have come up with many ways to avoid a deity. That there are countless billions of universes, all existing apart from one another, is one proposition. Our universe only appears inexplicable without a creator because it is the only universe we apprehend. But universes are actually common and ours is just one of them; the rest are different and not anthropic at all. So they say.

But there is zero scientific evidence for the existence of any other universes. I remember reading an article some time ago by a physics professor of the University of Toronto, who said she believes that multiverses are real, but said it was time for scientists to state plainly that there was no evidence of them.

But wait! It's all unreal anyway! New Technology Makes It Plausible the World Is a Simulation. But that means the technology is only simulated, too, amirite?

But let's move on to The Most Post-Christian Cities in America: 2019

Hat tip to Glenn Reynolds, who commented,

Six of America’s 10 most “post-Christian cities” are in New England, once the “City on a Hill” of the Puritans, and all 10 are in deep blue states, according to The Barna Group’s latest annual survey results for the top 100.

Not surprisingly, perhaps, seven of the 10 least post-Christian are in the states of the old Confederacy or border states that were culturally attached to the South. All of those, of course, are today either mostly or deeply red.

Which leads me to politics as religion, and who best to explain that (unintentionally) but Piers Morgan?

Piers, being from across the pond, might want to explain just what it is about Europeans that makes them so, well, enduringly European: Europe Considers The Nazi Idea Of Requiring Jewish Businesses To Identify Themselves On Labels. I only slightly paraphrase Goerthe: Inside the breast of every European beats the heart of a barbarian.

Speaking of new-time religion and Europeans, let's turn to environmentalism, the hip religion for people who want other people to make huge sacrifices in the way they live, but not themselves because hypocrisy, it turns out, is a status symbol among the environmentally woke.

And who knew that religious environmentalism (there is no other kind, though) is a religion of human sacrifice? Well, thousands and thousands of sacrificed Europeans did, and some may have figured out right before they died what altar they were being sacrificed on, because Environmentalists Killed More Europeans Than Islamic Terrorists Did.

A 2003 heat wave killed 15,000 people in France. And, in response, the authorities have deployed Chalex, a database of vulnerable people who will get a call offering them cooling advice.

The advice consists of taking cold showers and sticking their feet in saucepans of cold water.

Desperate Frenchmen trying to get into any body of water they can have led to a 30% rise in drownings. The dozens of people dead are casualties of the environmentalist hatred of air conditioners.

Only 5% of French households have air conditioning. Even in response to the crisis, the authorities are only deploying temporary air conditioning to kindergartens.

The 2003 heat wave killed 7,000 people in Germany. And, today, only 3% of German households have air conditioning. Germany’s Ministry of the Environment refused to back air conditioning as a response to global warming. 

Ending air conditioning in America has long been a goal of the American environmentalist Left, to which I say, Stop using air conditioning? Washington first! But that'll never happen.

It's a meme!

I posted last week about just how environmentalism is an actual religion in its own right. Now here's the UK's Telegraph:

if you really want to know what it's like to be a 16th-century heretic, try saying you're a bit sceptical about man-made global warming.

Temperatures do seem to have gone up a little, even though environmentalists acknowledge that we might be in for a cool spell now. And we've certainly had our fair share of tsunamis, hurricanes and typhoons recently. Still, no one has convincingly proved that all this is definitely man's fault. Try saying that in polite circles and it's like saying you're partial to roasted babies. ...

understand people disagreeing with global warming sceptics, but not the jeering, ridiculing way they do it. I'm not sure I'm right; they're convinced I'm wrong. They're convinced, too, that they have the moral high ground, that all sceptics are sworn enemies of nature, flowers and puppy dogs.

Environmentalism is the new secular faith - school prayer for liberals, as an American philosopher put it. The faith is a strict one. You're not allowed to join if you think that it's sensible to keep an eye on the environment but don't think that man is to blame for changes in world temperature.

You must believe in the full package. If you do, you are blessed, free from sin and allowed the pious smugness you find in the worst sort of religious believers. It's not enough to believe in these things yourself; you must condemn others for not sharing your belief.

The latest carbon credits scheme - published in a parliamentary committee report - is squarely on the side of the believers. The idea is that everyone gets an annual carbon ration to spend on fuel and energy bills and, if you want to overspend, you buy credits from low carbon emitters.

It's just like the medieval trade in indulgences, where remission for sins was granted by the Church once the sinner confessed and received absolution. By the late Middle Ages, the system had grown corrupt, with professional pardoners selling indulgences by the bucketload.

The medieval market in indulgences ended with the Reformation. You can imagine the outcome of this market in modern sin. Oceans of sackcloth-and-ashes piety from those who underspend their carbon credit, and badly informed abuse for people who like flying abroad on holiday.