Jan
For the love of God: Support Climate Change
Not sure why, but we received an email from the Environmental Defense Fund. It began:
Dear Friend,
A number of religious leaders of Christian, Jewish, Islamic, Buddhist, and other faiths have formed a growing movement to transform society from their pulpits by emphasizing the connection between ecology and religion.
We couldn’t help it, and had to see what this was about. We followed the link to Dominique Browning’s Personal Nature blog post, on the EDF website. She is moved and inspired to hear that the clergy are bringing their flocks into the climate change camp.
The conflict between politics, religion and science has been with us for centuries; think of Copernicus, Galileo, Darwin. Today there is rampant confusion between faith, something you believe in, and science, something that requires only connective leaps between hypotheses and demonstrable evidence. We seem to have lost our trust in the authority of scientists, no matter how impressive their level of training and achievement. A fascinating new Pew poll showed that Republicans are overwhelmingly less likely to “believe” the science of climate change than Democrats, who aren’t entirely persuaded either.
With every passing week, the scientific data gets more precise, and more frightening. Yet this has proven insufficient to move people to action. All the more fascinating, then, to watch the growing movement among religious leaders who use their pulpits to venture into environmental action. More than 10,000 congregations of Christian, Jewish, Islamic, Buddhist and other faiths are working in 30 states as members of Interfaith Power & Light (IPL). These religious leaders are clearly having an impact on people across the country who would never call themselves environmentalists.
The article goes on to make climate change analogies to civil rights and slavery, and it even includes an photo of Martin Luther King, and more bullshit about healing the planet, blah, blah, blah. You have to read it though–if we were to excerpt all the crazy parts of the article, we’d have to paste in the whole damn thing. Read it yourself and post your thoughts.
By the way, what is this Interfaith Power & Light (IPL), an electric company? Maybe this is the new electricity company that Google and Al Gore (shhh) are planning.
This is funny. I’m one of those people who is “are overwhelmingly less likely to “believe” the science of climate change” because I’ve looked at the science and found that it was almost entirely fake. I’ve read studies where the conclusion was in clear contradiction to the evidence presented and seen assertions (such as “CO2 is the most important greenhouse gas”) that were flat out lies.
So is it really that Republicans are more likely to disbelieve, or is it that the people who see through the fraud are more likely to become Republicans?
LOL — I’m with ya 100%, there, irving. Good comment.
Here’s the comment I posted over at the Bible-thumper’s site. The first paragraph is in response to someone who quoted Diderot about how “…the world will never be at peace until the last King is strangled in the entrails of the last priest,” but attributed it to Voltaire:
“@ Cathbad –
I’m right there with ya. My new year’s resolution was to try to be not-so-hard on my Christian brothers and sisters in 2010. They’re making that a bit difficult with all this prattling about climate change.
The quote is a great one, but Voltaire sort of borrowed it. It goes back a little further than him, to Diderot.
I’ve altered it yet again, sort of an update, you might say: ‘America’s thoughts will be truly free only when the last televangelist is strangled with the intestines of the last country singer.’ (Lacks sonority, but, believe me, it is heartfelt, lol!)
CAGW is bogus from start to finish. You religious folk who accept it are being sold a huge bill of goods. The entire concept was dreamed up in 1975, when Margaret Mead (eugenicist extraordinaire — read that “genocidal maniac), John Holdren (President Obongo’s Science Advisor), Stephen Schneider (climate wacko at Stanford) and others met to hatch the hoax. They all agreed that the accuracy of the science was secondary. The main points were: 1) a united front, no chinks in the armor; and, 2) to have the science point inescapable toward CAGW.
Stephen Schneider was such a scoundrel that he went out and proclaimed global cooling for three years after he signed onto the then-secret hoax of Catastrophic Anthropogenic Global Warming.
Wake up, all ye faithful! Show us you’ve got more than rocks in them there heads of yours.”
I’m sure it won’t make any difference, but I was kinda proud of my restraint, lol.
How do you trust a scientist who makes a statement like this? This was Stephen Schneider, being interviewed for Discover magazine, in October 1989. This was after he’d left the global cooling movement and went over to the global warming camp.
“To capture the public imagination, we have to offer up some scary scenarios, make simplified dramatic statements and little mention of any doubts one might have. Each of us has to decide the right balance between being effective, and being honest.”
Well, at least the sorry turd put it out there back in the day, so we could take a look at it in the here and now. This turd needs to be on the endangered feces list.
Climate Change scientists and clergy both want us to take everything they say on faith.
Ah yes, the global warming religion. Rush Limbaugh summed it up and is the best analysis I’ve heard so far. He said “The only difference between global warming and any other major religion is that its god is tangible. (It’s the earth.) Otherwise everything in every major religion is present. You’ve got the Garden of Eden (i.e., the pristine planet). You have taking the bite out of the apple, sin, disobeying — and that is what? Cutting down trees! It’s driving SUVs and so forth. You’ve got destruction, destroying the planet which leads to what? The apocalypse! You have fear, which is a fundamental part of many religions: scaring you into behaving a certain way or else you are going to hell. Global warming has fear: “You’re going to destroy the planet! Your kids and grandchildren will have nothing. You will burn in hell on the surface of the earth because of global warming.” It’s got guilt. As you know, many major religions get what they want with guilt. They guilt people into behaving: “Do this, do that.” This is the same thing: guilt for driving SUVs; guilt for having your air-conditioning on; guilt for having too large a “carbon footprint”; guilt for not buying carbon offsets, all this — and it has salvation: accepting the blame.
You are responsible for destroying the planet, but you can be absolved from this “sin” if you agree to higher taxes and roll back your lifestyle — and let others in positions of government tell you what to do and when to do it and where you can live and can’t live and how big your house can be, and all these things. That’s how you absolve yourself of the sin. You can also go around and buy little cars that won’t make a bit of difference in the environment, but you will feel better and you will be absolved of your sin. You can carry your own little bags to the grocery store rather than using paper bags or plastic bags. You will not be making one bit of a difference to the earth’s climate, but you will feel better because you will be told you are saving the planet and preventing the apocalypse. You can be told to do any number of these things. You can change your light bulbs to compact fluorescents. You can use ethanol — which is causing rising prices and food shortages all over the world — but you can feel better about that because you are somehow polluting less, and then you can start criticizing people who don’t believe this and you can become an evangel! You can become a preacher! You can become a priestess — and you can condemn the sinners who are not paying attention. Every aspect of every major religion is right in the middle of global warming.
Global warming is nothing more than a disguised liberal plot to advance their politics. So global warming is simply a masked and camouflaged way to get liberals to where they want to be: power over as many aspects of your life as possible. “
He’s the MahaRUSHi, and that’s a fact, fo’ sho’, fuh rill dough.
It’s amazing to me that he can get away with some of the stuff he says. As you know, a large percentage of his audience is religious. However, as you said, he absolutely nailed this one.
you people would be truly laughable if it weren’t for the seriousness of the situation and the urgency of any attempts at mitigation..
http://climateprogress.org/2010/01/04/the-year-in-climate-science-scientists/
You’d think that, with such a serious topic, given such serious consequences, the “scientists” would’ve been a bit more serious in the way they went about doing business. Their filing systems wouldn’t pass muster with a first-year business intern.
Oh, and how about that peer-review system? Perhaps they should’ve called it friends-and-family review.
Sorry, the time for treating CAGW and the promoters of CAGW seriously is past. If we have catastrophe, they are to blame. Not that I think for a minute that we’re in any danger at all.
Further, you’d think that these serious-minded scientists would stay the hell away from and disavow the likes of aging hippie / wealth redistributionist John Holdren, President Obongo’s Science Advisor. He’s proved to be a megalomaniacal eugenicist (advocate for genocide), in the mold of Margaret Mead and Margaret Sanger before him. Not to mention, his good buddy and co-author, Paul Ehrlich, got it wrong again and again on the subject of catastrophe in the making.
These people, the alleged scientists, were paid a good wage to do a professional job. They weren’t able to do the professional job for which they were paid. Let me rephrase: They were either unwilling or unable to do the job for which they were paid. They certainly weren’t paid to become prima donnas or to develop some weird sort of bunker mentality, where they were hunkered down against the world, such fragile flowers that they couldn’t take the slightest criticism of their shoddy work.
Screw the scientists. I’ll take my chances with frog entrails or tea leaves or just plain old dice.
Jeeeeezus…this vile fulminaton brings up such images of you humanpersonjr…squattin’ by your campfire, squirrel gun in one hand, bible in the other..pokin’ around in the frog entrails and lookin’ up at the stars..glancin’ at the bright eyes peerin’ at ya from beyond the firelight..them pointy-headed faggoty scientists…
Sweet baby jesus on a bed of Romaine lettuce!!!
Are you psychic, Steve Mennie? Are you having me followed? Because I don’t know how you could’ve so accurately portrayed me otherwise.
Looks like I’m gonna have to arm the kids, too, if you’re gonna be out there poking around in the dark beyond the campfire.
I’m telling Gavin what you said about him, by the way. He’s not pointy-headed. I don’t know why you’d say such a THANG!!
I failed to use a capital “J” in the word “Jesus” above. I do apologize. While I am an atheist, I don’t wish to offend my Christian brothers and sisters, especially considering they’re some of the finest people I’ve known in my entire life.
humanpersonjur..
I must say that is quite an enthusiastic rejoinder..And forgive me if I mis-represented you..As I said..your comments conjured up the images I described and were in no way meant to accurately describe your self as I have no idea if you would be carrying either a squirrel gun or a bible. This digital world eh? Custom built for mis-understanding. I guess the fact that you are placing so much emphasis on what is essentially a non-issue..(the purloined emails) is what helps create this image of an anti-scientist, socialist horde-overrunning the planet stereotype.
@ Steve Mennie
It aint’ nut’n but a thang. Don’t worry ‘bouddit.
You know I don’t hate you. Hell, I never hated the little ol’ widder lady next door who sent $150.00 a month to Oral Roberts, before he mercifully died.
She was a victim. So are you.
“…this vile fulminaton brings up such images of you humanpersonjr…glancin’ at the bright eyes peerin’ at ya from beyond the firelight..them pointy-headed faggoty scientists…”
Within my circle, we don’t say faggoty, or any derivation of that cruel word. We’ve lived through the death of too many good friends who succumbed to AIDS. We also had to live through idiots like Jerry Falwell spouting hatred on television, repeatedly driving home the fact that AIDS is God’s punishment for a human sin (that is, having the temerity to differ from the good Reverend in his or her sexuality).
So, no, if all the wrong-headed scientists were gay, they’d still be liars, but you wouldn’t hear me using cruel epithets against them.
I was going to say someting about the “faggoty” comment but I was at a loss for words. I must agree with humanpersonjr that this has no business being here. One’s sexual persuasion shouldn’t have a damn thing to do with anything nowadays, includiing science. For shame Mr. Mennie.
humanpersonjr..
I must explain the ‘faggoty’ comment..I have nothing against those of the homosexual persuasion..some of my best friends etc..I used the term to further embellish the view that most right-wing conservative types have of liberals..you know…that they are soft, limp-wristed anti-war and just generally of questionable character..nothing else meant or implied.
As you seem to be a reasonable sort..totally unlike the characterization conjured up by your comments regarding global warming..what do you base your categorical dismissal of AGW on? And what evidence would or could convince you otherwise?
Well, Steve Mennie, I don’t know what to tell you. The basis of your question is wrong, making it pretty much impossible to give a good answer.
You use terms such as “vile fulmination,” “right-wing conservative types,” and, “the characterization conjured up by your comments regarding global warming.”
The leftward side is supposed to be oh-so-compassionate. In the U.S., it’s widely “known” that the liberal Democrats care about the little guy, unlike those nasty right-wing conservatives.
I didn’t say anything that a reasonable person could construe as “vile.” I don’t do vile. Does it render me instantly ignorant to resist the flim-flam artists you call scientists?
I’ll be more than happy to jump on the AGW bandwagon, when the arguments for it become straightforward and honest, you know, less like a breathless salesman saying the “sale” is for one-day only, now or never. I also realize that we might, by waiting, allow a dangerous runaway effect in the Earth’s warming (an inner tipping point, not the one Al Gore mentions).
That’s too bad. That would be a catastrophe, one justifiably laid at the feet of the men who performed science with an agenda in mind. There is ample evidence that the IPCC knew what the desired result was before ever a computer model of the climate was run.
The process has been shot through with fraud, aimed toward the gullible.
And what I said about aging hippies is absolutely true. Are you aware that the WWF had a non-reviewed paper published in an IPCC assessment? What the hell do they know? There’s a difference between an environmentalist and a scientist. If you can’t recognize that simple fact, you’ve made yoursef a victim of the CAGW hoax.
The headband-wearing dumb masses were clamoring, 40 years ago, for massive handouts to the third world, as reparations for the scars of colonialism. Now that these hippies are all grown up, getting old, CAGW is their refuge, their cause, their purported reason for the same massive handouts they wanted back in the day.
I’ll give CAGW a chance, when the CAGW hoaxers give everyone else a forthright, open description of what they’ve done. You want to blame the oil companies, do it. The oil companies will make money in any environment. They won’t have to pay the cap and trade taxes. Corporations can’t pay taxes; they can only collect them for the government and hand them over. And from whom do they collect the taxes? Why, conveniently enough, it’s the same source of all tax payments, me and every other little guy scratching for his daily bread.
The Communists re-formed as the Green Parties. Greenpeace was taken over by the b*st*rds, to the point where the original idiots were forced out of their own organizations by idiots even more radicalized.
I’ll believe in CAGW when it’s openly and honestly proved. Good example: Michael Mann still won’t admit that he KNEW the original hockey stick graph was fraudulent. I don’t know what else to say to you.
Question for you, Steve Mennie: Would you be happy to learn that CAGW was a hoax? To learn why you would not be happy, please read up on apocalypse-based religions. One great story is of the Millerites in 1844. Google this string — millerites great disappointment. After Jesus failed to come on the appointed day, as thousand anxiously waited, a Boston newspaper asked waggishly, on the front page, “What? Not gone up yet? We thought you’d gone up!”
That’s you, Steve Mennie. I believe it firmly. And now, the phony dumb masses who promulgated this hoax must first earn my trust and then, and only then, convince me that CAGW is something I should worry over.
Then..what do you base your categorical dismissal of AGW on? And what evidence would or could convince you otherwise?
Steve Mennie: I’m sure you’ve gone by now, with your apocalyptic nonsense.
One thing you got right: I am a conservative and proud of it. I’ve come to realize that progressives can only pretend to give a damn about anyone or anything. Their agenda is totally power-driven politics, for themselves and their elitist pals.
Would I be correct in assuming you’re pretty far left of center? Do you think that has anything to do with your being so willing to enact such draconian, painful changes to societies around the world? The UK “mixture” in government is mostly Socialist. In truth, the U.S. isn’t far behind them. I will resist this leftward slide with all my might. You people, for I’m sure you’re one of them, you central planners, you social engineers, are the antithesis of free men and women, and you don’t even care. You don’t even consider it shameful.
Leaving ideology aside (as if we could) for a minute, I repost one of my original comments below, truncated. You never addressed it, other than obliquely, opaquely and briefly. Anyone of any political stripe should be able to agree with it: [T]he…scientists…were either unwilling or unable to do the job for which they were paid. They certainly weren’t paid to become prima donnas or…such fragile flowers that they couldn’t take the slightest criticism of their shoddy work.”
You think the “emails” were the game-changer for me. They weren’t. (By the way, that’s another tactic, one I well recognize. The leaked material contained other significant material, not just emails.)
I’d rather die than submit. My descendants don’t deserve to be consigned to Van Jonestown, the faceless gray socialism you and yours wish to foist upon us, all in the name of being so compassionate, in the name of saving (destroying, actually) us.
Great propanda site. Joseph Goebbels would be very proud of the urgency conveyed. Seems the real urgency is to counter climategate as fast as possible.
UH OH — Here’s John. You’re gonna get my pal Steve all riled up. Just be gentle with him, lol, he’s sensitive.
You make a very good point, John. Good to see you weigh in.
Here’s a non-biased, scientific read, that most people can comprehend on our atmosphere and the climate. It only favors real science, no BS, propaganda or factoids.
http://www.junkscience.com/Greenhouse/
Heck, I’m a Christian, and I don’t believe in this climate change BS.
I think the whole religious involvement was begun by Al Gore (once again he rears his evil head).
Gonna try that again …
Heck, I’m a Christian, and I don’t believe in this climate change BS.
I think the whole religious involvement was begun by Al Gore (once again he rears his evil head).
–snip–
In his latest book, Our Choice: A Plan to Solve the Climate Crisis, the man who won a Nobel prize in 2007 for his touring slideshow on disappearing polar ice and other consequences of climate change, concludes: “Simply laying out the facts won’t work.”
Instead, Gore tells Newsweek magazine in a pre-publication interview, that he has been adapting his fact-based message – now put out by hundreds of volunteers – to appeal to those who believe there is a moral or religious duty to protect the planet.
“I’ve done a Christian [-based] training program; I have a Muslim training program and a Jewish training program coming up, also a Hindu program coming up. I trained 200 Christian ministers and lay leaders here in Nashville in a version of the slide show that is filled with scriptural references. It’s probably my favourite version, but I don’t use it very often because it can come off as proselytising,” Gore tells Newsweek.
–snip–
Good points. I saw that.
I wonder if he’s a true believer, though. He seems a bit phony, like a carnival huckster.
Jonathon Main had such a good comment on our Facebook page, we wanted to paste it here.
If religious leaders of the Christian & Jewish faith believe that human beings could destroy this earth with CO2, then their view of God is small. The Creator would not have made a world so fragile as that and it is arrogant of us to think we can control the weather in such a way as to destroy it.
I have a theory why most of this country is in such a cold snap like we are right now. It’s God’s way of laughing at them.
I am an Orthodox Jew and I am ashamed of the fact that the cheif rabbi of England was enlisted into this nonsense. This whole thing with the enviornment is nothing but idolotry.
Actually it’s paganism. No graven image involved. But you’ve right about the rest.