Michael Barone at the Washington Examiner does the right,
honorable and accurate thing: He equates belief in man-made global
warming to a religious conviction. Actually, that’s not entirely
accurate. Barone equates belief in global warming to a Christian cult. It’ a compelling, must-read.
An excerpt:
In 1212, or so the legends go, thousands of Children’s Crusaders set off from France and Germany expecting the sea to part so they could march peaceably and convert Muslims in the Holy Land. It didn’t, and many were shipwrecked or sold into slavery.
In 1898 the cavalrymen of the Madhi, ruler of Sudan for 13 years, went into the Battle of Omdurman armed with swords believing that they were impervious to bullets. They weren’t, and they were mowed down by British Maxim guns.
A similar but more peaceable fate is befalling believers in what I think can be called the religion of the global warming alarmists.
They have an unshakable faith that man-made carbon emissions will produce a hotter climate causing multiple natural disasters. Their insistence that we can be absolutely certain this will come to pass is based not on science — which is never fully settled, witness the recent experiments that may undermine Einstein’s theory of relativity — but on something very much like religious faith.
All the trappings of religion are there. Original sin: Mankind is responsible for these prophesied disasters, especially those slobs who live on suburban cul-de-sacs and drive their SUVs to strip malls and tacky chain restaurants.
The need for atonement and repentance: We must impose a carbon tax or cap-and-trade system that will increase the cost of everything and stunt economic growth.
Ritual, from the annual Earth Day to weekly recycling.
Barone’s piece is worth reading in its entirety, because this sensible and respected columnist of the MSM notes that the evermore-crazy rhetoric and actions of the warmists reveal the obvious: This is crazy talk. For instance:
… climate is affected by many things, many not yet fully understood, and implausible that SUVs will affect it more than variations in the enormous energy produced by the sun.
Don’t tell that to a warmist. Man has power over earth … and the heavens! In truth, man — or some men and women, usually in unaccountable places like the UN — has power over how we will organize ourselves as a society. And the idea of imposing even more misery on our lives in service to faith-based “science” is madness.
It is a great development that Barone, as mainstream as they come, has come to realize this to the point of dedicating one of his well-read columns to the cause of common sense.
