Has global warming become the new global religion?

Question

And are us unbelievers being shunned as the new heretics?

Answer 1

It is exactly like religion.

Talking to AGW believers is exactly like talking to religious fundamentalists.  

Everything is prooven because the concensus (or the bible) says it is so.

Answer 2

Well if you think that Global Warming is unreal then get out  of ur AC rooms. Visit the Indian Subcontinent visit Africa, watch the Glaciers. Believe it or not but its no tym to discuss Global Warming but to take actions to reduce its harm.

Answer 3

Just the opposite.  The scientific process is behind the global warming conclusions.  Unbelievers cling to faith.  Unbelieving is a religion.

Answer 4

You might have some problems as you are emotional over a scientific theory which is being proven right as we speak (melting of icecaps and glaciers).

Name-calling has never solved a scientific debate. But maybe that is your way to shy away from scientific facts?

Answer 5

Personally, I think it's ridiculous that so many people can criticise your opinion. There is, of course huge evidence to suggest global warming is happening, yet are we to blame? We should not be 'shunned' for questioning global warming and the narrow-mindedness of some people is very wrong.

To answer the question, I feel that relating it to a religion could be true in the way that people's views and opinions should be respected and questioning something is not always wrong.

I am now expecting somebody to come back with some kind of angry answer to the 'blatant' obviousness that global warming is caused by us. No matter what they say, there is no hard evidence and personally I will keep my mind open to the idea, not be labelled a 'non-believer' and perhaps make small, non-problematic changes to my lifestyle 'just in case'!

Answer 6

How can you be an 'unbeliever'? Seriously, outside of the US, there's none of this 'its a conspiracy - its not real' bullshit.

Yeah, perhaps carbon emissions aren't the only cause, but they certainly contribute.

Answer 7

Why bring in religion into this scientific happening? Nature has its own way of taking care of itself from the onslought by curel human beings.   You can say your prayers of whatever belief when another tsunami hits your neighborhood.  Till such time, please be practical and do something worthwhile to reduce global warming.

Answer 8

I don't understand how you can make the connection between global warming, which may mean the end of the human race, and religion. There is incontrovertable scientific proof that global warming exists, while religion is pure opinion, smoke and mirrors.  By the way, Al Gore rocks! without his help, many people would be unaware and ignorant of global warming. Stop shooting the messenger!

Answer 9

Your "hereticism"  is why global warming will continue to worsen before we can slow it down - there exists ignorant people like yourself blind to everything going on in our planet.

Perhaps you think that you are some badass rebel, when in fact you are acting an apathetic ("whatever"?), careless, uneducated and treacherous (to the well being of the planet) fool refusing to see the harm in your thoughtless actions.

What a shame.

Answer 10

first of all u must know that....GLOBAL WARMING IS REAL

it is increasing in a high pace...

it been danger to arctics...danger 2 numerous species.....scientifically proven....

WE MUST DO SOMETHING................

Answer 11

no coz coz few ppl know about it

<in poor countries and poor parts of rich countries stomach warming really cares not global>

Answer 12

You want to disregard the evidence and hang behind the curve, it's your prerogative.  I do not shun you, nor do I embrace any religion, global warming or otherwise.  What I embrace is the concept that the cumulative effect humans have had on the planet is often detrimental.  Since we claim to be smarter and educated, we should strive not to foul our nest, but to keep it in good stead, so future generations can enjoy a lifestyle similar to what we have enjoyed.

We know so much more now than we did when the industrial revolution started.  Technology has taken us a long way from the primitive start up years.

Get off the GCC as religion kick.  It's non productive.  Focus your energies on solutions, because even if you don't acknowledge the theory of human-induced climate change, if you listen to the news these last 25 years, our air, water and soils have some issues we need to deal with ASAP.

Answer 13

No.  Unbelievers are not "heretics". they're just denying scientific fact.

This is science and what counts is the data, not people's intuition.

"I wasn’t convinced by a person or any interest group—it was the data that got me. I was utterly convinced of this connection between the burning of fossil fuels and climate change. And I was convinced that if we didn’t do something about this, we would be in deep trouble.”

Vice Admiral Richard H. Truly, USN (Ret.)

Former NASA Administrator, Shuttle Astronaut

Here are two summaries of the mountain of peer reviewed data that convinced Admiral Truly and the vast majority of the scientific community, short and long.

http://www.globalwarmingart.com/wiki/Ima...

http://ipcc-wg1.ucar.edu/wg1/wg1-report....

summarized at:

http://www.ipcc.ch/pdf/assessment-report...

There's a lot less controversy about this is the real world than there is on Yahoo answers:

http://www.worldpublicopinion.org/pipa/a...

And vastly less controversy in the scientific community than you might guess from the few skeptics talked about here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_...

http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/fu...

EVERY major scientific organization has issued an official statement that this is real, and mostly caused by us.  The National Academy of Sciences, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the American Institute of Physics, the American Chemical Society, the American Geophysical Union, the American Meteorological Association, etc.

Good websites for more info:

http://www.nrdc.org/globalWarming/f101.a...

http://www.ucsusa.org/global_warming/sci...

http://www.realclimate.org

"climate science from climate scientists"

http://environment.newscientist.com/chan...

Answer 14

Wow, this certainly hit a nerve in the global warming drones.

"The lady doth protest too much, methinks."

The question certainly proves the point by the attacking tone of the answers of the gw faithful.

They use words like deniers and believers.  Can they really fail to acknowledge their own use of religious terms?

Answer 15

I found an interesting article over the net, it's by Brian Durrant

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Global warming...a New Religion

By Brian Durrant

There was an article in Newsweek which reported that 'there are ominous signs that the earth's weather patterns have begun to change dramatically, and these changes may portend a dramatic decline in food production with serious implications for just about every nation on earth'. 'What's new about this?’ you might ask. After all, we are bombarded daily with scare stories about the future of the planet. But this article is significant because it came out in April 1975 - and the fear expressed in the text was not about global warming, but about global cooling!

For several years in the 1970s the fear of global cooling continued to inspire a spate of articles and books, including Climate Change and World Affairs, by British diplomat Crispin Tickell. But then quite suddenly, around 1978, global temperatures began to rise again. The panic over global cooling quickly evaporated.

There is a simple explanation for this temporary hysteria. In imagining the future, human beings like to extrapolate an exaggerated version of a tendency they are experiencing at the time. What commentators were noticing in the 1970s was that the average temperature of the earth had been in decline for 30 years. But the one certain thing about the climate is that it is always changing.

Ten years on from the end of the global cooling panic, scientists were saying unless urgent and drastic action was taken to curb CO2 emissions, the temperature rise would soon be so great as to unleash catastrophic consequences. The ice caps would melt. Sea levels would rise. Deserts would expand. The world's climate systems would be thrown into chaos. The fear of global warming was born.

And it was truly remarkable how quickly this became the prevailing orthodoxy. So strong were the convictions of the adherents that their case was so self-evident that scientifically it was no longer open to question. The transcendent importance of the cause was buttressed by insisting repeatedly that their view was supported by the overwhelming 'consensus' of scientists.

But 'consensus' is a political concept, not a scientific one. Consensus finds a way through conflicting opinions and interests. Consensus is achieved when the outcome of discussion leaves everyone feeling they have been given enough of what they want. The accomplished politician is a negotiator and conciliator. The process of scientific enquiry could not be more different. The accomplished scientist is an original, an extremist and iconoclast. Good science requires perpetual open debate, in which every objection is aired and dissents are sharpened, not smoothed over.

The response to the threat of global warming has been a political one. In 1988 the United Nations assumed responsibility for the collective response of the human race to this threat. The UN set up the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Unbelievably, an active lobbyist for the planned IPCC had been Sir Crispin Tickell, previously of global cooling fame.

In 1989 a group known as the 'Union of Concerned Scientists', which originally campaigned for nuclear disarmament, organised a petition urging the recognition of global warming as potentially the greatest danger to mankind. Of the eventual 700 signatories, amongst whom included Nobel Prize winners, only three or four were climatologists. The consensus of scientists was a purely political contrivance.

The cause quickly became fashionable with Hollywood, with the likes of Robert Redford, Barbara Streisand and Meryl Streep jumping on the bandwagon. Suddenly there was a great deal of money available for research into climate change, particularly for those who could make the case for man-made global warming. At the same time those who came up with inconvenient results were ostracised. The self-proclaimed high priest of global warming, Al Gore, compared 'true believers' such as himself to Galileo, bravely standing for the truth against the blind orthodoxy of the time.

In 1990 the IPCC produced its first assessment report. The summary was an exercise in spin that Alistair Campbell would have been proud of. It largely ignored grave reservations by some contributors and presented the expectation of substantial man-made warming as firmly based in science. The summary spawned the 1992 Rio Earth summit, which in turn paved the way for the Kyoto agreement in 1997, which called for carbon emissions to be scaled back.

The global warming lobby works on the following principles: Global warming is a fact. It is caused by man's activities. If mankind could be persuaded to alter his behaviour the planet would be saved. The goodies are those who are committed to saving the planet, the baddies are the deniers. The simplicity of the argument makes it a favourite topic in primary schools across the country.

Alarmist activists operating in well-funded advocacy groups have a lead role in creating an unbalanced story. In many cases they manipulate public perceptions with emotive and fiercely judgmental 'scientific' pronouncements, adding a tone of danger and urgency to attract media coverage.

Al Gore's film An Inconvenient Truth, is a case in point. Our government and the educational establishment appeared to be quite relaxed about this being shown in our secondary schools. That is, until a school governor from Kent contested it in the High Court. Mr Justice Burton identified nine significant errors, and said that some of Mr Gore's claims had arisen in the context of alarmism and exaggeration. He went on to say that the apocalyptic vision was politically partisan and not an impartial analysis of the science of climate change. Specifically he took issue with the claim that sea levels could rise 20 feet 'in the near future', when such a rise would only take place after over 1,000 years.

Sexing up the global warming story is seen as a legitimate tactic to hog media attention. If you exaggerate a story enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it. This leaves little space for alternative views to be aired.

However, there is an inconvenient truth for Mr Gore. Astronomers have noted in 1998 that Triton, Neptune's largest moon, seemed to have heated up significantly since it was visited by the Explorer space probe in 1989. Moreover, in 2002 it was reported that the temperature on Pluto had risen by two degrees Celsius in 14 years. Furthermore, in 2005 NASA confirmed that the CO2 'ice caps' near Mars' South Pole had been diminishing for three summers in a row. Warming, yes. Man-made? Certainly not.

Evidence that warming is taking place throughout the solar system, even though the mechanism is unclear, implies a common cause may be at work that it not limited to events on this planet. And it is the man-made element to the story that gives climate change activists their real motivation.

But one thing keeps puzzling me. The supporters of the global warming orthodoxy are only too happy to proclaim that unless drastic steps are taken to combat the threat, the earth is heading for catastrophe. However, surveying the measures that are actually being advocated, they are astonishingly trivial. Low energy light bulbs, switching your TV off at night, wind power and carbon emissions trading. Even if the aspirations of the Kyoto protocols are met in their entirety, this would only supposedly delay the global temperature rise predicted for 2100 by just six years.

To understand the emergence of the global warming activists, you have to look at the dynamics of politics, or indeed religion, rather than science. It may be no coincidence that the emergence of global warming as an issue came at the same time the Cold War ended. The fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 finally demonstrated the superiority of market-based economies over command economies in delivering prosperity. For those of a left wing disposition who thought Marxism would deliver a socialist utopia, this was tough to take. The solution was to jump on the global warming bandwagon. This helps explain the peculiar passion with which many enthusiasts for the man-made global warming thesis argued their case and advanced policy solutions. The ideological pattern is familiar. Just as blame for industrial squalor and deprivation was laid on capitalism, the blame for the ruin of our planet was laid on the greed and materialism of the developed world, particularly the US. And just as the Marxist solutions involved confiscation of the wealth of the rich, the new orthodoxy clamour for restrictions on rich lifestyles; their gas guzzling 4X4s , their polluting air travel and all other examples of self-indulgent consumption at the cost of the planet.

There is no doubt that environmentalism fulfils a political and indeed spiritual need among its adherents. The global warming narrative embraces a myth of the Fall; the loss of harmony between man and nature caused by our materialistic way of life. In reality this Eden never existed. It reminds me of one of my favourite cartoons of two cavemen talking "clean air, no pollution, unadulterated food... how come we don't live over 30?" The apocalypse myth is equally familiar. 'Our wickedness has damaged our inheritance and only immediate reform can save us'. For a long time environmentalists lacked the Apocalypse myth. The fear of acid rain came and went. But global warming fits the bill. This is why environmentalists attach so much importance to the assertion that the world is not just warming up, which is true at the moment, but that the warming is mainly our fault, which still should be a matter of debate. The connections between rising carbon dioxi

Answer 16

Amen brother and Al Gore will be the anti-christ giving us 666 so we can`t buy anything that might hurt mother nature