Way back in the 1980’s I was working for a Democrat Congressman and Al Gore was a first term senator. Even then there was talk that he could one day run for president. I was just a kid so I naturally assumed it was true and paid attention to his career. When he ran in ’88 for the Democratic nomination, my impression was that he was a very weird dude. He reminded me of a distant cousin who came back from Vietnam with a heroin problem. Even after he got clean, he was still screwed up.
When Gore ran for President in 2000, I was pretty sure he was having some sort of nervous breakdown around the time of the debates. In the first debate he carried on like a child, making weird noises and faces trying to distract Bush. He was criticized for it, especially after the VP debates, which everyone thought were great. What made me think he lost his marbles was that he dressed like Dick Cheney and aped his tone and mannerisms in the second debate. Al Gore had become Zelig.
Of course, any doubts about his sanity were settled after the election when Gore dropped out of sight and went on some sort of spiritual pilgrimage. He got fat, grew a beard and walked the earth like Kwai Chang Caine, only to come back as an Old Testament prophet, instead of a Shaolin master. His preaching about global warming is, aesthetically, right out of the Hebrew Bible. Al Gore is Ezekiel telling you eco-sinners to repent or face the wrath of Gaia. Instead of idolatry, the sin is enjoying modern conveniences.
If you listen to Gore’s sermons on global warming, you can’t help but see them as sermons. He is preaching a faith that is not based on science, even though it borrows jargon and concepts from legitimate science. This TED Talk is a pretty good example.
We now have a moral challenge that is in the tradition of others that we have faced. One of the greatest poets of the last century in the US, Wallace Stevens, wrote a line that has stayed with me: “After the final ‘no,’ there comes a ‘yes,’ and on that ‘yes’, the future world depends.” When the abolitionists started their movement, they met with no after no after no. And then came a yes. The Women’s Suffrage and Women’s Rights Movement met endless no’s, until finally, there was a yes. The Civil Rights Movement, the movement against apartheid, and more recently, the movement for gay and lesbian rights here in the United States and elsewhere. After the final “no” comes a “yes.”
When any great moral challenge is ultimately resolved into a binary choice between what is right and what is wrong, the outcome is fore-ordained because of who we are as human beings. Ninety-nine percent of us, that is where we are now and it is why we’re going to win this. We have everything we need. Some still doubt that we have the will to act, but I say the will to act is itself a renewable resource.
Even if we assume anthropogenic global warming is a real thing, an assumption that is increasingly dubious, “solving” it is an engineering problem, not a moral one. To be a moral problem makes assumptions about the future that are matters of preference, not moral certainty. The Mesozoic Era was much warmer than today, with little difference between winters and summers on most of the earth. The planet was teaming with life, including the dinosaurs. Life, including humans, may flourish in the balmy future.
The science is not the point, of course. This is a crusade for guys like Gore and the others in the New Religion. The point of the crusade is to fail, which is inevitable with something like climate change. There is no “perfect” climate or even a correct range. Climate is by definition a dynamic thing. No matter what happens to temperature data, the weather and government policy, the global warming cult will be out on the streets, banging their pots and pans, telling us to repent. For these people, we are always eco-sinners in the hands of an angry Gaia.
As with all iterations of the New Religion, the struggle is a central part of the cult of climate change. The truest believers are all members of the ruling elite, yet they carry on like they are plucky underdogs fighting mysterious dark forces that secretly control society. The strange thing you see with guys like Gore is the sacralizing of suffering on behalf of the cause. The whole climate change racket is shot thought with whining about the need to give up the comforts of modernity.
Even weirder, they have no intention of actually suffering for their faith. Instead, they want to make you suffer. Al Gore can buy “green credits” like indulgences because he is worth close to a billion. That means he gets to live like a royal, enjoying your suffering as you try to work the new gas can. His mansion is lit up like Versailles, while you squint in the florescent haze of your eco-friendly CFL. It’s suffering by proxy, where they sacrifice their time to watch you suffer as a result of their policies.
What strikes me about it is the utter pointlessness of it. The endless posing and posturing has no end because it has no end point. A faithful Christian at least has the serenity of his communion with God. The Muslim, at the click of the detonator, knows he will be with Allah. Climate change fanatics have nothing but a hopeless misery. Even if all of their policies are enacted, nothing comes of it.
The cult of climate change is a church with no sanctuary, so everyone assembles in the nave for no reason other than to be seen by the other believers. These are people suffering from a form of phantom limb syndrome. Instead having had a leg chopped off that they can still feel, it is their sense of the divine that has been amputated. The result is this weird nature cult run by billionaires.
Pingback: On Global Warming – Theological Geography
Pingback: Global Governance: We Have It Already – Theological Geography
Pingback: VDH Pondering Globalists’ Metaphysics – Theological Geography
Pingback: Typical Globalist Self-Delusion, Circa January 2001 – Theological Geography
Pingback: Global Warming – Theological Geography
Pingback: Gaslighting The Aghast – Theological Geography
Pingback: The Panache, An Elegant Symmetry – Theological Geography
Pingback: The "I'm Just Going To Leave This Here" Thread - Please Add Your "Finds" - Page 54
The eco movement has three objectives:
– Empower and enrich elites.
– Demean and diminish middle and lower classes.
– Create an unaccountable, tyrannical global government.
Now the rubes in the eco movement would disagree saying it’s all about ‘saving’ the planet but strangely all their policies promote the objectives listed above.
Pingback: “Sinners in the hands of an angry Gaia” | Junior Ganymede
Very good essay. Only one problem: the reason behind the sermons is to convict people of their sins, for which the only atonement is to give political power to Al Gore and his fellow travelers. When Al becomes Kim, of course he still won’t be satisfied. But he’ll be comfortable, more comfortable that we will be, or perhaps more alive.
You have to understand that these people really want a big die-off. I guess it’s their version of the Rapture. I once got into an argument on a Peak Oil list about the End of the World as We Know It. I told her that the locals had a bridge to the outside world that they would blow, if such a thing happened. It really ticked off this woman from Missouri. She tried to tell me that the people from Portland would go up into the wood and cut down all the trees! Now, I have at least driven through Missouri, so I know a bit more about her trees than she knew about the PNW forests. And…she obviously didn’t know much about the folks from Portland! It just turned into an insane argument and I was asked to leave the list because I was disruptive.
as predicted: http://www.engadget.com/2016/04/10/18-rotor-electric-helicopter-in-manned-flight/
I’m still going to say No. Anyone who had a geology course in college knows the truth, not Al Gore’s version of the truth. Don’t they teach geology anymore?
Apparently not. There’s quite a list of things that were once important but now seem inconvenient, to those academics who make the decisions about what to teach. Belief as “science” is the order of the day.
Forward!
You say High (as in HIGH Man!) Priest, I say Con Man and control freak and totalitarian. (Pine) Tar isn’t a fossil fuel so I guess it would be alright to Tar and Feather these POS.
Every religion has a body of the faithful and a body of opportunists. You are not going to change that. But what you can change is who you have faith in. Worshipping a god of love, truth, and justice is going to produce some different outcomes than worshipping a morally ambiguous god (or goddess) of weather or nature.
When we run out of oil (in the not so distant future) it will be interesting to see how their religion changes. For these people, there’s always a crisis in their minds. Fossil fuels increase CO2, wind turbines kill birds, solar requires deadly chemicals to make the panels, geo-thermal unbalances the core of the earth…blah, blah, blah. Meanwhile they fly their jets to their vacation homes and there and we’re supposed to ride bikes to our two part-time jobs in the snow.
No doubt in a future century or two oil will be little used in the ways it is now, but it is a mistake to think it is finite. It’s volume, by any practical measure, is unlimited. The lakes of it at the surface of the earth are mined out, but that is only a clue to what lies deeper, and how it is actually formed. Oil is not a fossil fuel.
“When we run out of oil…”
Ahhh, the old canard of “Peak Oil” once again.
You, Karl, have been duly absorbed into the Green Blob.
BTW, how are you enjoying the highest electirical bills in all of Europe? Guess all those windmills aren’t working out too well.
Oh well, off to the lignite mines for you.
Next time you run into a human caused / the end is night / we are all dead / global warming zealot, ask them to guess what percentage of the atmosphere is composed of CO2.
Ask them to guess, because they have no idea what is the answer.
Well, the answer is 0.04%; that is 0.0004 in decimals, or as a fraction 4/10,000; that’s right, 4 parts in 10,000.
For every 10,000 cubic meters of atmosphere, FOUR are CO2.
It is a trace gas in the atmosphere.
Now check out CO2 levels over time – I mean geologic time, not the last 30 years or 50 years or 100 years; the earth is a few billion years old, and comparing today’s CO2 levels with levels over the last 30 to 50 to 100 years is totally meaningless.
If you bother to check historic CO2 levels over time – meaningful time periods, millions of years, and divide the CO2 levels into deciles; you will find that today’s CO2 levels are in the LOWEST DECILE; the lowest 10% in all of geologic time. In fact, you would be 100% correct in stating that we are presently experiencing a CO2 famine.
The climate folks cannot explain at all the historic climate; what caused the initiation of, and what caused an end to the several ice ages, the many warm periods, the Little Ice Age, the Medieval Warm Period, etc. They have zero idea.
So, if they cannot explain the historical climate, how can they presume to predict the climate 1 year, 10 years, 25 years, 50 years, 100 years hence?
By the way, the most abundant green house gas – actually, it constitutes about 95% of ALL green house gases – is
WATER VAPOR. Isn’t it weird you never hear any mention of this green house gas?
Humans are warm weather creatures; that’s one reason we are not covered in fur.
The scientifically literate (not me) like to express it in parts per million–ppm–mole fractions. We are at 400 ppm, up from 320 due to the industrial age. That much is true. Life flourished in the various zoics at 2,000 to 4,000 ppm, topping out at 6,000 ppm. The way to cause fear in the Cultists heart is to advise him that humans are currently surviving in a CO2 desert, and no life on earth can exist below 180ppm–no root, or blade of grass. Not only is the metaphorical sky not falling on us, it is in danger of running away.
Levels of 10,000 ppm cause drowsiness in some humans. 50,000 ppm is lethal. That was the game they were playing for their lives on Apollo 13.
I sometimes like to think that we’re nature’s way of unlocking all of that carbon in those pesky coal deposits and coral reefs. I really like to say that to greens and watch their heads explode.
BTW, I think that the current over under for when the fraction of CO2 in the atmosphere becomes too low to sustain photosynthesis is 600M years. So we’re roughly at the half-way point for multi-cellular life on this planet.
Since blacks are a tropical people, fighting Global Warming is racist. Reducing carbon emissions is just more oppression of Sun People by Ice People. It’s climate colonialism.
“…The cult of climate change is a church with no sanctuary, so everyone assembles in the nave for no reason other than to be seen by the other believers.”
SEE: Tommy, the movie.
Also see: Almost ANY broadcast,(and some not) “award” ceremony.
You’ll be familiar with late author Michael Crichton’s remarks on this subject in 2003? ‘Environmentalism as Religion’: https://web.archive.org/web/20070611005318/http:/www.crichton-official.com/speeches/speeches_quote05.html
Complimenting this is Leon Festinger et al’s ‘When Prophecy Fails’ (1957; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/When_Prophecy_Fails), who found that failure, rather than weakening the believers’ faith, actually strengthens it. This helps to explain why the pseudo-religions (environmentalism, communism, etc.) continue to flourish despite their repeated failures, either of prediction or practice.
White people love taking on problems that have no solution. Climate-change, racism, environmental protection, ending poverty, the war on guns, the war on drugs, homosexual acceptance. They know they cannot win because they know deep down that there never will be a finish line. But they can, however, wave their fingers at the dirt people who were too damn stupid to listen. That for them is reward enough.
I’ve offended many a “warmist” by calling it a cult and a replacement for the Judaism and Christianity they dropped like all the cool kids.
What it is not is a “nature cult”. “Environmentalists” are not conservationists and seem to care nothing about nature. I refer anyone with doubts to the Lowell Mountain wind project.
http://vtdigger.org/2013/07/04/lowell-mountains-wind-project-the-great-divider/
I direct ours here:
http://transmission.bpa.gov/business/operations/wind/baltwg.aspx
It’s always nice to show them how unreliable wind is and how little of our power comes from it.
More proof that “environmentalism” is just anti-prosperity signaling. “France has pledged to cut its reliance on nuclear energy from more than 75 percent to 50 percent by shutting 24 reactors by 2025.”
http://phys.org/news/2016-04-luxembourg-cash-ageing-french-nuke.html
Climate change just IS. It is what has always happened; it is what will continue to happen. It IS. Climate changes. Period.
Man-made Climate Change, the stuff on which this cult pontificates, is absolute bunkum
I love this post, Z, but I wonder if you’re giving them a bit too much credit in this case. The eco-scam has always struck me less as a religion and more of a cruel and unusual punishment for people they dislike (that would be normal folks). The hypocrisy of the eco-priestly caste is a feature, not a bug, because to the Leftist, that’s what all religions are — televangelists bilking the morons in order to live like kings. In the meantime, the proles suffer… as they should. Henry Hazlitt put it best: “The whole gospel of Karl Marx can be summed up in a single sentence: Hate the man who is better off than you are.” Values of “better off” can equal “happier with life,” “less self-loathing,” “capable of honest enjoyment,” etc.
It sure was convenient that global warming was caused by all the things the left already hated – SUV’s, the energy industry, manufacturing, suburbia, and eating meat.
Globull Warmists, just another sect of useful dupes of the human extinction movement that grew a beard.
A cultural marxist proxy for short. They pogrom and Kulak everything and everyone, it is what they do. Liquidation of vast swaths of the human race is their trademark through history since the Fabian’s and Jocobin’s. And liberty is their existential enemy. Even if it means the extinction of civilization as we know it in the west. It is a perverted cargo cult, if such an oxymoron can be applied. Notice the similarities and parallels to islam? Kissing cousins.
This post demonstrates why this is the best blog in the blogosphere.
I agree. This post is full of great insights beautifully put, of which this is arguably the best: “These are people suffering from a form of phantom limb syndrome. Instead having had a leg chopped off that they can still feel, it is their sense of the divine that has been amputated.” We all need a sense of the divine. It is hard-wired in us. For most of us the journey is inward, hoping to access the soul. For the crazies in the cult it’s outward, in the thing they call science. It will end for them in madness, as it ended for the astronauts in 2001: A Space Odyssey.
Amen, Michael. I’ve read hundreds of blogs during the last 15 years searching for someone as brilliant as this guy. Only Richard Fernandez (Belmont Club, PJ Media) comes close.
As for the eco warriors; maybe I’m full of it, but I suspect the root cause of the alienation is a failure to accept or come to terms with the knowledge of inevitable death. We’re all going to die. That’s either a natural part of the devine order or a terrible mistake, depending on how you look at it.
Also, and maybe this is crazy too, but I have never met a true believing leftist who didn’t hate their parents. And I have known many such people. Is this a false observation?
Two favorite blogs going, Belmont Club and the Zman. No one (other than Spengler in his prime) is even close.
Gotta add the Sultan to your two.
I do suspect that when our new RoP overlords take control, the issues around global warming (or whatever the latest catch phrase is) will be dropped.
In the meantime I am always amused by the idea that the polar bears are clinging to shrinking lumps of ice because the seas are so hot. Given that we had warmer periods in the recent past as far as the planet is concerned, then either the polar bears had somehow survived even hotter seas around them already or — the best bit of this — the polar bears had arrived in the past 100,000 years. That might be a very rapid evolution which makes Darwin’s theories less watertight, or they were brought here by a space-travelling life form. Perhaps even the polar bears themselves are capable of space travel.
This global warming hysteria is giving us so many new avenues to explore if the warmists didi but know it.
I’ve frequently mentioned to my friends and anyone else who will listen that the eco-struggle is one – but not the only example – that we in the West have a new and very powerful religion (science) and priesthood (the transnational community of scientists and academics). Both groups argue they have the answers to eternal truths based on their knowledge of certain arcane areas of human knowledge. Both groups also share a belief that anyone who disagrees with their views is at least wrong-headed to the point of being fundamentally immoral. There is and has been for the last century or so a serious competition between the two groups and the priests of the new religion of ‘science explains all’ are winning new converts with each passing year while traditional religions in the West are seeing their congregations decline in numbers.
Just as a point of clarification:
“Climate science” is not really science. The violations of scientific method are numerous, and in some cases have crossed the border into criminal fraud.
All great, but killer last paragraph. Might be a hate crime.