Dangerous climate “cult” ignores science

MADRID — Numerous scientists and experts have argued that the alarmists peddling hysteria about the man-made global-warming hypothesis are behaving as members of a religious cult while claiming to be acting on the basis of science. Instead of rejecting or revising their earlier dire warnings of climate catastrophe based on the growing body of scientific evidence arguing against their alarmism, they cling to their discredited dogma that environmental doomsday is fast approaching.

(Article by Alex Newman republished from TheNewAmerican.com)

For example, according to the alarmist theory, increasing the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere by a certain percentage will not simply cause a corresponding increase in temperature — it will cause runaway global warming. That is what the alarmists’ models have forecast, but that is not what has happened. Scientists may debate how much global temperature has increased in recent years (satellite readings show almost no warming since 2000), but it is uncontested that runaway global warming has not occurred as the alarmists predicted. Same for United Nations claims of more hurricanes, more fires, less snow, and so on. Not surprisingly for a cult, this reality has not caused the climate cultists to reconsider their claims. The supposed environmental tipping point, when it will no longer be possible to prevent the impending catastrophe, is always just a few years away.

Back in 1989, the Associated Press reported: “Noel Brown, director of the New York office of the U.N. Environmental Program, or UNEP … said governments have a 10-year window of opportunity to solve the greenhouse effect before it goes beyond human control.” U.S. Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez was born in 1989. Last year, she warned, “The world is going to end in 12 years if we don’t address climate change.” Oh well, at least she gave humankind two more years than the UNEP’s Brown did 30 years earlier. And perhaps she does not know that before she was born, in the 1970s and even into the early ’80s, “experts” were warning that a man-made global-cooling trend could trigger another ice age.

But the alarmists of recent decades continue to not only claim that they are right about catastrophic global warming, they also claim that the “science” purporting to establish a “climate emergency” is “settled.” In reality, as this magazine has repeatedly documented, the scientific evidence  is overwhelming — that there is no climate emergency.* But cults do not need evidence, science, reason, logic, or any of the tools traditionally associated with the honest pursuit of truth. Instead, they depend on deception, irrational faith, peer pressure, and a total concealing of the truth to advance and keep their members in line.

COP25

The cult-like nature of climatism was on full display at last December’s United Nations COP25 “climate” conference in Madrid attended by this author, whose cover-story report on the craziness appeared in the February 3 issue of TNA under the title “Climate Alarmists Unmasked.” Absent from the UN circus were scientific realists, who held a “Climate Reality Conference” elsewhere in Madrid hosted by a coalition of environmental groups that reject global alarmism, including the Heartland Institute, the CO2 Coalition, the Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow (CFACT), and the European Institute for Climate and Energy (EIKE). Not surprisingly, their alternative conference, where evidence debunking the alarmism was presented, was ignored by the mainstream media.

One of the speakers was Dr. William Happer, an internationally renowned Princeton physicist who served President Trump on the National Security Council until resigning recently. Happer, who did not mince words, used the occasion to identify the alarmists as a cult. “I hope sooner or later enough people recognize the phoniness of this bizarre environmental cult and bring it to an end,” he declared.

Happer also suggested that the climate cult’s “crusade” against CO2 would end badly for everyone. “We have a climate crusade…. This is not science, it’s a religion,” he declared. “Crusades have a bad way of ending. Typically, many, many people are hurt, no good is done, but a few cynical opportunists profit and most people pay the price. The same thing will happen with the climate crusade if we permit it to go forward. I pray that we can stop it before it does too much damage.”

The entire premise around which the cult has rallied is phony, Happer explained. “We are here under false pretenses, wasting our time talking about a non-existent climate emergency,” said the world-renowned scientist, who previously told The New American that more carbon dioxide in the atmosphere would be good for the planet and the people who inhabit it. “It’s hard to understand how much further the shrillness can go, as this started out as global warming, then it was climate change or global weirding, now it is climate crisis and climate emergency. What next? But stick around, it will happen.”

Of course, Happer is hardly the first world-renowned scientist to call the climate-alarmist movement a cult. MIT meteorologist Richard Lindzen has frequently referred to the warmists as a “cult” because they refuse to change their beliefs in response to evidence and proof.

“As with any cult, once the mythology of the cult begins falling apart, instead of saying, oh, we were wrong, they get more and more fanatical,” Lindzen explained in a January 2015 radio interview. “I think that’s what’s happening here. Think about it: You’ve led an unpleasant life, you haven’t led a very virtuous life, but now you’re told, you get absolution if you watch your carbon footprint. It’s salvation!”

And in December of that year, outside the UN COP21 climate summit in Paris, the late Dr. Ivstan Marko, a chemistry professor at the Catholic University of Louvain and the head of the European Chemical Society, told The New American that the climate cult had perverted Christianity to develop its dangerous theology. Instead of repenting of sins, climate cultists want you to believe that you must repent of your “carbon footprint” — by giving them money and surrendering your freedom.

“It’s a new religion going on,” he explained. “We call it climatism around here. That new religion is there to make sure that people will pay — you will pay for carbon dioxide, you will pay for heating your home, you will pay for everything that touches far or close to climate.” It is also a religion that does not brook dissent. “If you want to have research grants, you have to abide by the current dogma. If you don’t do that, you will never be funded.”

Read more at: TheNewAmerican.com