The more I know, the more I doubt

Oops - Global Warming Paradox at the NY Times Science Blog.

If only the masses could understand the science of global warming, they’d be alarmed, right? Wrong, according to the surprising results of a survey of Americans published in the journal Risk Analysis by researchers at Texas A&M University.

After asking a national sample of more than 1,000 Americans how much they knew about global warming and how they felt about it, the researchers report that respondents who are better-informed about global warming “both feel less personally responsible for global warming, and also show less concern for global warming.” Another unexpected result: “Respondents who showed a great deal of confidence that scientists understand global warming and climate change showed significantly less concern for the risks of global warming than did those who have lower trust in scientists.”

An Inconvenient Snafu

NASA says that 1998 is actually not the warmest year on record? How does this affect all those climate models championed by prophet Al Gore and his merry band of followers? How does it change their rhetoric?

Coyote Blog is all over it:

Climate scientist Michael Mann (famous for the hockey stick chart) once made the statement that the 1990's were the warmest decade in a millennia and that "there is a 95 to 99% certainty that 1998 was the hottest year in the last one thousand years." (By the way, Mann now denies he ever made this claim, though you can watch him say these exact words in the CBC documentary Global Warming: Doomsday Called Off).

Well, it turns out, according to the NASA GISS database, that 1998 was not even the hottest year of the last century. This is because many temperatures from recent decades that appeared to show substantial warming have been revised downwards. Here is how that happened (if you want to skip the story, make sure to look at the numbers at the bottom).

Scientific Consensus = the law of thermodynamics, evolution of species, the periodic table of the elements, the speed of light, and global warming

Power lust will make you say some pretty stupid things...

Yahoo:

"There has been an organized campaign, financed to the tune of about $10 million a year from some of the largest carbon polluters, to create the impression that there is disagreement in the scientific community," Gore said at a forum in Singapore. "In actuality, there is very little disagreement."

"This is one of the strongest of scientific consensus views in the history of science," Gore said. "We live in a world where what used to be called propaganda now has a major role to play in shaping public opinion."

"I want to believe in climate change"

"I am a partisan democrat - and climate change is good for my candidates. I am very clever. I am an advocate for science and reason."

- roughly 25% of the US population

The sun appears to drive climate change

The sun? What does the sun have to do with any of this? Are you serious?

Professor Tim Patterson of the University of Carleton explains why he believes sun spots and solar activity are central to the Earth's climate change. Occam's razor at work.

National Post: Read the sunspots

Religion

From the Global Warming is a Neo-Religion files; It gets more overt every day.

Bloomberg News:

Visitors to the Gaia Napa Valley Hotel and Spa won't find the Gideon Bible in the nightstand drawer. Instead, on the bureau will be a copy of ``An Inconvenient Truth,'' former Vice President Al Gore's book about global warming.

They'll also find the Gaia equipped with waterless urinals, solar lighting and recycled paper as it marches toward becoming California's first hotel certified as ``green,'' or benevolent to the environment. Similar features are found 35 miles south at San Francisco's Orchard Garden Hotel, which competes for customers with neighboring luxury hotels like the Ritz-Carlton and Fairmont.

Global Warming is a Neo-Religion

This topic has been a constant source of posts on this blog through the years and it is encouraging to see a lot of other opinionated folks are picking up on this as well.

See here, here, here, here, here, here, and here.

My question is, how did so many in this generation get duped into becoming so religious? And how come these people have the gall to call it undisputed science? It strikes me funny in the same way when I listen to the laughable "creationist scientists" (the folks who believe the "earth is 6000 years old and we have proof").

Just like the Church banned heretics in the dark ages, so too would the greens like to shut down dissenting voices. The mentality boils down to: "There is no debate - there is only consensus. Think otherwise, and you are going to hell." The environmentalists just have changed who is who.

God = Gaia
Messiah = Al Gore
Holy Spirit = The Atmosphere
Original Sin = man as consumer
Repentance = carbon offsets

There is ample proof that this movement, just like any other religion, is primarily a tool for controlling people. If carbon dioxide is the big worry, there is a safe, inexpensive alternative - nuclear power. But these people are against the most rational answer to their supposed problem. Until their religion gets behind nuclear power, nothing good will come of their prayers.

Not many people deny the greenhouse effect exists or that the earth hasn't warmed up over the past 100 years - that is science. What no one in the religious global warming community can answer is how much of that warming is due of mankind, how much is from the sun, how much is from cow farts. There is not a single model that can explain or forecast this phenomenon. When they figure that out, perhaps they will have something real to say on the topic. Until then, "100% consensus" type rhetoric/lies is meaningless and only serves the political elites who seek to command and control through fear.

The answer to my above question is:
Earth worship is perhaps the only place remaining for the old left to hide their agenda of command and control. And that is the funny thing about the old left - Marx recognized religion as the opiate of the masses. Communism kicked out the Church and put the State in its place. If global warming is the best God the old left can come up with now, I'm feeling pretty good about things.

The lesson of the 20th century is that free markets, private property, and individual rights is better than anything the left can serve, 100% of the time, on every last patch of earth, even where the ice is melting.



Update: The NY Times is even getting in on it:

Al Gore’s "Faith-Based Initiative"

Jonah Goldberg:

Global warming is what William James called a “moral equivalent of war” that gives political officials the power to do things they could never do without a crisis.

As liberal journalist James Ridgeway wrote in the early 1970s: “Ecology offered liberal-minded people what they had longed for, a safe, rational and above all peaceful way of remaking society … [and] developing a more coherent central state.”

This explains Gore’s relentless talk of “consensus,” his ugly moral bullying of “deniers” and, most of all, his insistence that because there’s no time left to argue, everyone should do what he says.