In a recent post, I referenced an article by Alexander Cockburn in the leftist publication The Nation wherein he posits that history will view today's global warming discourse as today's religion, not science. An article in the May 7, 2007 online edition of Der Spiegel by Olaf Stampf suggests much the same point:
It was not until the rise of the environmental movement in the 1980s that everything suddenly changed. From then on it was almost a foregone conclusion that global warming could only be perceived as a disaster for the earth's climate. Environmentalists, adopting a strategy typical of the Catholic Church, have been warning us about the horrors of greenhouse gas hell ever since -- painting it as a punishment for the sin of meddling with creation. What was conveniently ignored, however, is that humanity has been reshaping the planet for a very long time, first by clearing forests and plowing fields, and later by building roads, cities and factories.
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Largely unnoticed by the public, climate researchers are currently embroiled in their own struggle over who owns the truth. While some have always seen themselves as environmental activists aiming to shake humanity out of its complacency, others argue for a calmer and more rational approach to the unavoidable.
One member of the levelheaded camp is Hans von Storch, 57, a prominent climate researcher who is director of the Institute for Coastal Research at the GKSS Research Center in Geesthacht in northern Germany. "We have to take away people's fear of climate change," Storch told DER SPIEGEL in a recent interview. "Unfortunately many scientists see themselves too much as priests whose job it is to preach moralistic sermons to people."
Storch and the article in general thus raise questions discussed in this blog before--assuming global warming is occurring, is is caused by man or is it naturally occurring? Even if the phenomenon is caused by man, is there anything we can do about the situation without throwing the world into depression? That is, is the cure worse than the disease?
These issues will not go away because the high priests of the global warming Apocalypse--such as Al Gore-- preach at us. The Der Spiegel article points out that apocalyptic portraits of such things as the inundation of cities by rising oceans makes for good novel reading and movie going-- but has little to do with reality.
In the unlikely event that the race for the Democrat's Presidential nomination becomes stalemated and Mr. Gore does step into the fray, he would be doing everyone (but perhaps not himself) a big favor. His fire-and-brimstone visions, now feted by the trendy and the Hollywood elite as the warnings of a savior, wold actually have to undergo intense scrutiny and be subject to rational debate.
Parenthetically, I am not a cynic in my view of the Catholic Church. But it's my guess (and it is a guess) that many global warming advocates-- who comfort themselves with reference to so-called scientific consensus-- are religious cynics. Ironic, because such advocates may be the biggest proponents of religion on the planet today.