C
Captain Compassion
Guest
GLOBAL WARMING AS RELIGION AND NOT SCIENCE
Number Watch, June 2007
http://www.numberwatch.co.uk/religion.htm
By John Brignell
It was Michael Crichton who first prominently identified
environmentalism as a religion. That was in a speech in 2003, but the
world has moved on apace since then and adherents of the creed now
have a firm grip on the world at large.
Global Warming has become the core belief in a new eco-theology. The
term is used as shorthand for anthropogenic (or man made) global
warming. It is closely related to other modern belief systems, such as
political correctness, chemophobia and various other forms of
scaremongering, but it represents the vanguard in the assault on
scientific man.
The activists now prefer to call it "climate change". This gives them
two advantages:
It allows them to seize as "evidence" the inevitable occurrences of
unusually cold weather as well as warm ones.
The climate is always changing, so they must be right.
Only the relatively elderly can remember the cynical haste with which
the scaremongers dropped the "coming ice age" and embraced exactly the
opposite prediction, but aimed at the same culprit - industry. This
was in Britain, which was the cradle of the new belief and was a
response to the derision resulting from the searing summer of 1976.
The father of the new religion was Sir Crispin Tickell, and because he
had the ear of Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher, who was engaged in a
battle with the coal miners and the oil sheiks, it was introduced into
international politics with the authority of the only major political
leader holding a qualification in science. The introduction was timely
yet ironic since, in the wake of the world's political upheavals, a
powerful new grouping of left-wing interests was coalescing around
environmental issues. The result was a new form of godless religion.
The global warming cult has the characteristics of religion and not
science for the following reasons.
Faith and scepticism
Faith is a belief held without evidence. The scientific method, a
loose collection of procedures of great variety, is based on precisely
the opposite concept, as famously declared by Thomas Henry Huxley:
The improver of natural knowledge absolutely refuses to acknowledge
authority, as such. For him, scepticism is the highest of duties;
blind faith the one unpardonable sin.
Huxley was one of a long tradition of British sceptical philosophers.
From the Bacons, through the likes of Locke, Hume and Russell, to the
magnificent climax of Popper's statement of the principle of
falsifiability, the scientific method was painfully established, only
to be abandoned in a few short decades. It is one of the great ironies
of modern history that the nation that was the cradle of the
scientific method came to lead the process of its abandonment. The
great difference, then, is that religion demands belief, while science
requires disbelief. There is a great variety of faiths. Atheism is
just as much a faith as theism. There is no evidence either way. There
is no fundamental clash between faith and science - they do not
intersect. The difficulties arise, however, when one pretends to be
the other.
The Royal Society, as a major part of the flowering of the tradition,
was founded on the basis of scepticism. Its motto "On the word of no
one" was a stout affirmation. Now suddenly, following their successful
coup, the Greens have changed this motto of centuries to one that
manages to be both banal and sinister - "Respect the facts." When
people start talking about "the facts" it is time to start looking for
the fictions. Real science does not talk about facts; it talks about
observations, which might turn out to be inaccurate or even
irrelevant.
The global warmers like to use the name of science, but they do not
like its methods. They promote slogans such a "The science is settled"
when real scientists know that science is never settled. They were
not, however, always so wise. In 1900, for example, the great Lord
Kelvin famously stated, "There is nothing new to be discovered in
physics now. All that remains is more and more precise measurement."
Within a few years classical physics was shattered by Einstein and his
contemporaries. Since then, in science, the debate is never closed.
The world might (or might not) have warmed by a fraction of a degree.
This might (or might not) be all (or in part) due to the activities of
mankind. It all depends on the quality of observations and the
validity of various hypotheses. Science is at ease with this
situation. It accepts various theories, such as gravitation or
evolution, as the least bad available and of the most practical use,
but it does not believe. Religion is different.
Sin and absolution
It is in the nature of religion to be authoritarian and proscriptive.
Essential to this is the concept of sin - a transgression in thought
or deed of theological principles.
Original sin in the older religions derived from one of the founts of
life on earth - sex. The new religion goes even further back to the
very basis of all life - carbon. Perhaps the fundamental human fear is
fear of life itself. The amazing propensity of carbon to form
compounds of unlimited complexity made the existence of life possible,
while its dioxide is the primary foodstuff, the very start of the food
chain. Every item of nutriment you consume started out as atmospheric
carbon dioxide. It is therefore the ideal candidate for original sin,
since no one can escape dependence on it. This manna that gave us life
is now regularly branded in media headlines as "pollution" and
"toxic": surely one of the most perverse dysphemisms in the history of
language.
The corrective to sin in religion is absolution, and the power of most
religions comes from their claim to have the monopoly on absolution.
So it is with the new godless religion. Furthermore, it is in the
nature of religion to create false markets. In the time of Chaucer the
Pardoner sold papal indulgences, which freed the prosperous from the
consequences of sin. Likewise, the new pardoners sell carbon offsets.
As in so much of both ancient and modern society these activities
divert effort from wealth creation and so act as a drag on the
economy. They also grant to the rich a comfort that is not available
to the poor - a sure road to success.
Proselytes and evangelists
Most religions seek to grow by means of proselytism. Science does not
seek or need converts. It teaches those that are willing to learn, but
it does not impose itself on those who are indifferent. Religions (at
least those that are successful) have a different imperative. A
growing cohort of believers reinforces the beliefs of existing
adherents and participating in the quest for converts helps assuage
the inevitable doubts they might harbour. Successful religions are
structured to encompass this expansionary mechanism. Those who can
recruit others to the cause are therefore held in high regard.
Demagogues and hypocrites
Demagoguery is also, therefore, a feature of religion. Some people
have the capacity to hold the masses in their thrall. It is a
mysterious art, as their skills of oratory do not often stand up to
any sort of critical examination. They are idols of the moment, who
often turn out to have feet of clay, as so frequently seems to happen
with charismatic TV preachers.
One of the most notorious demagogues of the godless religion is Al
Gore. He is certainly no great orator, but he makes up for it with
chutzpah. His disregard for truth is exemplified by his characteristic
and ubiquitous pose in front of a satellite photograph of hurricane
Katrina. Even some of the most vehement climate "scientists" refrain
from connecting that particular isolated and monstrously tragic event
with global warming. Likewise his Old Testament style prophecies of
further disasters, such as floods due to a rise in sea level, greatly
exceed the more modest claims of the "professionals". As in the
overthrow of the cities of the plain and other biblical prophecies,
Gore promises a rain of fire and brimstone on us, unless we change our
ways.
Gore also displays all the characteristics of the classical religious
hypocrite. He disregards his own proscriptions with abandonment and
ostentation. By his own measure (carbon footprint) his sins are great;
at least twenty times those of the average American. It is all right
though, because he purchases absolution (carbon offsets) through his
own company. As he is a private individual it is not known whether he
profits directly, but at a minimum he does not pay out of his taxable
income and, worst of all, he demonstrates that the rich are immune
from any of the actual privations that attachment to the new religion
visits upon its poorer adherents. This is also not unknown in
traditional religions and has been a source of material for satirists
throughout the centuries.
Infidels and apostates
Religions vary in their treatment of unbelievers, which ranges from
disregard to slaughter. The new religion relies at present on verbal
assault and character assassination, though there are those who would
go further. They call the infidels "deniers" - a cheap and quite
despicable verbal reference to the Holocaust. There is a sustained
campaign to deny the deniers any sort of public platform for their
views.
Apostates are universally even more reviled than infidels. They have
turned their backs on the true faith, whichever that might happen to
be. Partial apostates, or heretics, are even more loathed and through
the ages have been subjected to the most appalling punishments and
deaths. In the case of the "sceptical environmentalist", Bjorn
Lomborg, he is of the faith. In fact he is a serial believer;
accepting, for example, that eating celery causes two percent of all
cancers and, of course, that global warming is man made, but he
rejects the sacrificing of humanity to the belief. This is
unacceptable! What are a few million deaths from dirty water, mosquito
bites and other hazards so long as people can be made to conform? So
far he has only been assaulted with insults and custard pies. Patrick
Moore, a founder of Greenpeace, broke with the movement over its
growing anti-human, anti-scientific tendencies and drift into
extremism. The last straw for him was the campaign against chlorine,
not only an essential component of human life but also the basis of
one of the most dramatically life-saving hygienic interventions. He
has, consequently, been subjected to a prolonged campaign of
vilification, described as an eco-Judas, turncoat and traitor. Every
minor commentator or blogger who manifests disbelief can expect to be
the target of abuse from self-appointed protectors of the creed.
Sacrifice and ritual
It is part of human nature that we do not like to admit making a
mistake, even to ourselves. So if, for example, we buy a magic device
that by some mysterious means improves the fuel efficiency of our car,
we drive a little more conservatively in order to prove that we have
not been had. Religions exploit this weakness as a means creating and
reinforcing commitment. If someone can be induced or coerced into
making a sacrifice they then have a stake in the cause.
Windmills, for example, are the symbols of power, not physical power
(of which they are derisorily short) but political and religious
power. They are like the great domes of temples, the statues of Saddam
or the big "M" arch of MacDonald's. Windmills are ugly: they destroy
the visual (and aural) landscape, but that is their purpose. They are
part of the sacrifice. It would not be so bad if they were simply
useless, but it is worse than that. Conventional generating systems of
equivalent power have to operate for 80% of the time, while the wind
is blowing too soft or too hard, and then be switched to warm standby
when it is just right, an expensive and wasteful process. Windmills
are there to remind us of our commitment, willing or not, to the
cause, both in excessive taxation and loss of visual and aural
amenity.
As in other forms of mental conditioning, continued reinforcement is a
necessary part of the process and that is where ritual comes in.
Ritual comprises tiny sacrifices infinitely repeated. Going round the
house switching off standby lights performs the same function as the
repetitive chanting of mantras. The fact that it is pointless is the
whole point.
One of the most valuable ideas of modern engineering, lost in the
noise, has been lost in the noise. In most applications a change of,
say, one part in ten thousand is too small to be measured and
therefore not worthy of concern. If standby in domestic devices ever
were a problem, it is now a rapidly diminishing one. In the old days
of thermionic devices (valves or tubes) it was necessary to keep
cathodes heated to avoid a prolonged warming up period, but
transistors and LCDs do not have cathodes and are therefore instantly
available. Present standby powers are about five watts. In the
temperate zone that is transferred from your central heating bill for
half the year, though it is barely enough to keep your big toe warm.
In fact, it would be relatively easy to make the standby power
microwatts, just enough to power an optical sensor and decoder, though
until now nobody thought such a pointless exercise necessary.
Prophecy and divination
In the real world attempts at prophecy always come to a bad end. Only
in religious texts and the currently popular fantasy fiction do
prophecies come true. H G Wells, in "The shape of things to come,"
successfully predicted the mechanised War, as did Winston Churchill,
but little else, and the film that Wells closely supervised now
provides rather comic entertainment (but wonderful music). Even those
of us closely involved in electronics did not foresee that a
development of the ancient art of writing on stone, lithography, would
result in millions of transistors being available on one chip,
changing the world forever, including granting new and sinister means
of control to those in authority.
Likewise, divination was greatly regarded in all cultures, ancient and
modern. Stars were observed, chickens and other animals slaughtered,
so that their steaming entrails could be examined to predict the
future, cards were shuffled and crystal balls peered into.
Comparatively recently the leader of the most powerful nation on earth
relied on the advice of astrologers.
Now divination has returned with, for example, the examination of the
entrails of ancient trees. Though the methods used are invalid (they
wrongly assume linearity) and have been comprehensively shown to be
irreproducible and misleading, the results have been paraded before
the world in defence of draconian sacrificial policies.
The main form of modern divination, however, is computer models. Forty
odd years ago an instruction passed round the Faculty of Engineering
of the University of London that no PhDs were to be awarded on the
basis of computer models unsupported by measurement. As T S Eliot
asked in Choruses from The Rock
Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge?
Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?
Now, huge and generously funded university and government departments
do nothing but develop computer models, involving assumptions about
physical interactions that are still not understood by science. Their
dubious (to say the least) results are used by the new international
priesthood to frighten the people into conformity.
Puritans and killjoys
No one has bettered Mencken's definition of Puritanism - the haunting
fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy. It is an unfortunate
characteristic of many varieties of religion that this characteristic
is to the fore and Global Warming is far from being an exception.
Nothing the proponents offer involves an improvement or even
maintenance of human contentment, quite the opposite in fact. You
might think that any philosophy of life would involve swings and
roundabouts, good and bad, but think again. Virtually everything you
enjoy is now sinful - holidays, driving your car, having a comfortable
temperature in your home, being free from the stink of rotting
garbage, and on and on.
As with the flagellants of old, for some people a feeling of
self-righteousness not only transcends all discomforts, but derives
from them. The rest of us have to be coerced into conformity.
It is an unfortunate fact of life that there are people who get their
kicks out of pushing other people around. The existence of little
pleasures of life, such as savouring a fine wine or cigar (and even
more so the proletarian equivalents) is intolerable to them. They will
exploit any means - the distortion of science, the suborning of weak
politicians, the repetition of mendacious propaganda - to achieve the
elimination of the hated practices. The eleventh commandment for the
killjoys is "Thou shalt not have fun", and global warming provides a
delightful playground for them.
Censorship and angles
Freedom of speech and publication is at the very heart of science.
Even the most foolish of hypotheses is allowed to be offered for
examination. In much of religion the opposite is true; challenging the
established dogma is heresy, for which the punishment has ranged from
ostracism to horrific torture and death. One of the greatest ironies
produced by the successful policy of entryism by the eco-theologians
is that it is none other than the Royal Society that has been
orchestrating the attempt to censor any deviation from establishment
beliefs. Authoritarian politicians, such as Congressman Brad Miller,
would give such suppression the force of law.
It is a curious repetition of history that those who advance the
hypothesis that the sun is the controlling element in changes of
climate are vilified, just as Galileo was, for supporting the
Copernican heliocentric description of the solar system. Yet the sun
is clearly the driver for climate - if it stopped shining, the earth's
temperature would drop to near absolute zero. In the establishment
dogma the sun is barely mentioned, while the puny efforts of mankind
are gratuitously magnified out of proportion. In a scientific approach
to climate, a full understanding of the behaviour of that solitary
driver would be the first prerequisite, but this is waived in the
interests of piety; so leading solar researchers have been deprived of
funding.
One of the most exploited ways of angling the news is by "ratchet
reporting". News of unusual warm weather, for example, is given
copious coverage, while cold weather is studiously ignored. Thus the
spring of 2007 was disastrously cold in parts of North America, with
ice-bound ships and snowed-off baseball, but this was kept secret from
the British, whose wonderful summery April was presented as though it
were bad news (and that in the land of rheumatism and bronchitis!).
The fact that Britain had no spring at all in 2006 was conveniently
forgotten, except as a basis of comparison to establish that 2007 was
substantially warmer.
That the media know that they are peddling untruths is demonstrated by
these tricks they get up to. If they were confident of the truth of
their case there would be no need to fake the coverage. They have been
frequently caught out faking their numbers and graphs, but only a few
internet surfers know about it. If you think you have a good case, you
can afford to present both sides, but they don't. The great majority
of the population have no idea that there is an alternative view. That
is not science, it is religion.
Control and taxation
Religion has always played an important part in the imposition of
authority. For many centuries it took the form of the "Divine Right of
Kings" or the "Mandate of Heaven". Once you get the people to believe,
you can get away with almost any imposition. The alliance between the
shaman and the legislator has long been the very foundation of
authoritarianism. Even when the dogma is a godless one, such as
Marxism, it is imposed with religious fervour, for that is the way to
induce conformity.
People now accept laws that restrict their liberty and standard of
living, which would once have provoked riots, because they are cloaked
in a quasi-religious formula of environmentalism. So-called
environmental burdens, for example, now greatly outweigh the
incremental effect of the poll tax that met with such violent
opposition in England, yet are now meekly accepted, as is the
parasitic presence of various forms of snooper, who even invade
people's dustbins.
Contradictions and irrationality
Traditional religions not only tolerated contradiction and
irrationality, they embrace them as part of the mystique. Words and
phrases are repeated ad nauseam and in strange contexts, until they
lose all meaning and become self-preserving mantras.
Contradictions and irrationality also abound in the modern theocratic
world. The EU, for example, gratuitously destroys a tiny industry
making traditional barometers, on the grounds of an irrational fear of
mercury, then imposes the use of fluorescent light bulbs that
distribute that same dreaded substance in huge quantities across the
continent, all on the basis of the threat of global warming.
People who have never heard of Wien or Planck confidently assert that
it is "obvious" that man-made CO2 will cause runaway warming of the
planet, when it is not at all obvious to many who are familiar with
the works of those gentlemen. It is obvious in the sense that it is
obvious that believers will have everlasting life or that a senseless
act of self-immolation will earn the eternal attentions of 72 virgins
in Paradise. The capacity to believe six impossible things before
breakfast has been restored from fantasy to accepted normality.
Wealth and power
Some organisms develop the ingredients to survive and multiply, so it
is with business and religions. It is characteristic of businesses
that they dispose of the entrepreneurs who create them and are taken
over by a different breed of corporate manager: so it is with
religions. The brutally suppressed troglodytes who were the early
Christians of Rome were a different breed from the cardinals, bishops
and abbots who bestrode mediaeval Europe and lived the opulent life.
There were also, of course, the humble and saintly mendicant friars.
The equivalents of all these varieties exist within the new movement.
Money is the basis of the new religion. It poured in from various
foundations (the so-called ketchup money) and na
Number Watch, June 2007
http://www.numberwatch.co.uk/religion.htm
By John Brignell
It was Michael Crichton who first prominently identified
environmentalism as a religion. That was in a speech in 2003, but the
world has moved on apace since then and adherents of the creed now
have a firm grip on the world at large.
Global Warming has become the core belief in a new eco-theology. The
term is used as shorthand for anthropogenic (or man made) global
warming. It is closely related to other modern belief systems, such as
political correctness, chemophobia and various other forms of
scaremongering, but it represents the vanguard in the assault on
scientific man.
The activists now prefer to call it "climate change". This gives them
two advantages:
It allows them to seize as "evidence" the inevitable occurrences of
unusually cold weather as well as warm ones.
The climate is always changing, so they must be right.
Only the relatively elderly can remember the cynical haste with which
the scaremongers dropped the "coming ice age" and embraced exactly the
opposite prediction, but aimed at the same culprit - industry. This
was in Britain, which was the cradle of the new belief and was a
response to the derision resulting from the searing summer of 1976.
The father of the new religion was Sir Crispin Tickell, and because he
had the ear of Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher, who was engaged in a
battle with the coal miners and the oil sheiks, it was introduced into
international politics with the authority of the only major political
leader holding a qualification in science. The introduction was timely
yet ironic since, in the wake of the world's political upheavals, a
powerful new grouping of left-wing interests was coalescing around
environmental issues. The result was a new form of godless religion.
The global warming cult has the characteristics of religion and not
science for the following reasons.
Faith and scepticism
Faith is a belief held without evidence. The scientific method, a
loose collection of procedures of great variety, is based on precisely
the opposite concept, as famously declared by Thomas Henry Huxley:
The improver of natural knowledge absolutely refuses to acknowledge
authority, as such. For him, scepticism is the highest of duties;
blind faith the one unpardonable sin.
Huxley was one of a long tradition of British sceptical philosophers.
From the Bacons, through the likes of Locke, Hume and Russell, to the
magnificent climax of Popper's statement of the principle of
falsifiability, the scientific method was painfully established, only
to be abandoned in a few short decades. It is one of the great ironies
of modern history that the nation that was the cradle of the
scientific method came to lead the process of its abandonment. The
great difference, then, is that religion demands belief, while science
requires disbelief. There is a great variety of faiths. Atheism is
just as much a faith as theism. There is no evidence either way. There
is no fundamental clash between faith and science - they do not
intersect. The difficulties arise, however, when one pretends to be
the other.
The Royal Society, as a major part of the flowering of the tradition,
was founded on the basis of scepticism. Its motto "On the word of no
one" was a stout affirmation. Now suddenly, following their successful
coup, the Greens have changed this motto of centuries to one that
manages to be both banal and sinister - "Respect the facts." When
people start talking about "the facts" it is time to start looking for
the fictions. Real science does not talk about facts; it talks about
observations, which might turn out to be inaccurate or even
irrelevant.
The global warmers like to use the name of science, but they do not
like its methods. They promote slogans such a "The science is settled"
when real scientists know that science is never settled. They were
not, however, always so wise. In 1900, for example, the great Lord
Kelvin famously stated, "There is nothing new to be discovered in
physics now. All that remains is more and more precise measurement."
Within a few years classical physics was shattered by Einstein and his
contemporaries. Since then, in science, the debate is never closed.
The world might (or might not) have warmed by a fraction of a degree.
This might (or might not) be all (or in part) due to the activities of
mankind. It all depends on the quality of observations and the
validity of various hypotheses. Science is at ease with this
situation. It accepts various theories, such as gravitation or
evolution, as the least bad available and of the most practical use,
but it does not believe. Religion is different.
Sin and absolution
It is in the nature of religion to be authoritarian and proscriptive.
Essential to this is the concept of sin - a transgression in thought
or deed of theological principles.
Original sin in the older religions derived from one of the founts of
life on earth - sex. The new religion goes even further back to the
very basis of all life - carbon. Perhaps the fundamental human fear is
fear of life itself. The amazing propensity of carbon to form
compounds of unlimited complexity made the existence of life possible,
while its dioxide is the primary foodstuff, the very start of the food
chain. Every item of nutriment you consume started out as atmospheric
carbon dioxide. It is therefore the ideal candidate for original sin,
since no one can escape dependence on it. This manna that gave us life
is now regularly branded in media headlines as "pollution" and
"toxic": surely one of the most perverse dysphemisms in the history of
language.
The corrective to sin in religion is absolution, and the power of most
religions comes from their claim to have the monopoly on absolution.
So it is with the new godless religion. Furthermore, it is in the
nature of religion to create false markets. In the time of Chaucer the
Pardoner sold papal indulgences, which freed the prosperous from the
consequences of sin. Likewise, the new pardoners sell carbon offsets.
As in so much of both ancient and modern society these activities
divert effort from wealth creation and so act as a drag on the
economy. They also grant to the rich a comfort that is not available
to the poor - a sure road to success.
Proselytes and evangelists
Most religions seek to grow by means of proselytism. Science does not
seek or need converts. It teaches those that are willing to learn, but
it does not impose itself on those who are indifferent. Religions (at
least those that are successful) have a different imperative. A
growing cohort of believers reinforces the beliefs of existing
adherents and participating in the quest for converts helps assuage
the inevitable doubts they might harbour. Successful religions are
structured to encompass this expansionary mechanism. Those who can
recruit others to the cause are therefore held in high regard.
Demagogues and hypocrites
Demagoguery is also, therefore, a feature of religion. Some people
have the capacity to hold the masses in their thrall. It is a
mysterious art, as their skills of oratory do not often stand up to
any sort of critical examination. They are idols of the moment, who
often turn out to have feet of clay, as so frequently seems to happen
with charismatic TV preachers.
One of the most notorious demagogues of the godless religion is Al
Gore. He is certainly no great orator, but he makes up for it with
chutzpah. His disregard for truth is exemplified by his characteristic
and ubiquitous pose in front of a satellite photograph of hurricane
Katrina. Even some of the most vehement climate "scientists" refrain
from connecting that particular isolated and monstrously tragic event
with global warming. Likewise his Old Testament style prophecies of
further disasters, such as floods due to a rise in sea level, greatly
exceed the more modest claims of the "professionals". As in the
overthrow of the cities of the plain and other biblical prophecies,
Gore promises a rain of fire and brimstone on us, unless we change our
ways.
Gore also displays all the characteristics of the classical religious
hypocrite. He disregards his own proscriptions with abandonment and
ostentation. By his own measure (carbon footprint) his sins are great;
at least twenty times those of the average American. It is all right
though, because he purchases absolution (carbon offsets) through his
own company. As he is a private individual it is not known whether he
profits directly, but at a minimum he does not pay out of his taxable
income and, worst of all, he demonstrates that the rich are immune
from any of the actual privations that attachment to the new religion
visits upon its poorer adherents. This is also not unknown in
traditional religions and has been a source of material for satirists
throughout the centuries.
Infidels and apostates
Religions vary in their treatment of unbelievers, which ranges from
disregard to slaughter. The new religion relies at present on verbal
assault and character assassination, though there are those who would
go further. They call the infidels "deniers" - a cheap and quite
despicable verbal reference to the Holocaust. There is a sustained
campaign to deny the deniers any sort of public platform for their
views.
Apostates are universally even more reviled than infidels. They have
turned their backs on the true faith, whichever that might happen to
be. Partial apostates, or heretics, are even more loathed and through
the ages have been subjected to the most appalling punishments and
deaths. In the case of the "sceptical environmentalist", Bjorn
Lomborg, he is of the faith. In fact he is a serial believer;
accepting, for example, that eating celery causes two percent of all
cancers and, of course, that global warming is man made, but he
rejects the sacrificing of humanity to the belief. This is
unacceptable! What are a few million deaths from dirty water, mosquito
bites and other hazards so long as people can be made to conform? So
far he has only been assaulted with insults and custard pies. Patrick
Moore, a founder of Greenpeace, broke with the movement over its
growing anti-human, anti-scientific tendencies and drift into
extremism. The last straw for him was the campaign against chlorine,
not only an essential component of human life but also the basis of
one of the most dramatically life-saving hygienic interventions. He
has, consequently, been subjected to a prolonged campaign of
vilification, described as an eco-Judas, turncoat and traitor. Every
minor commentator or blogger who manifests disbelief can expect to be
the target of abuse from self-appointed protectors of the creed.
Sacrifice and ritual
It is part of human nature that we do not like to admit making a
mistake, even to ourselves. So if, for example, we buy a magic device
that by some mysterious means improves the fuel efficiency of our car,
we drive a little more conservatively in order to prove that we have
not been had. Religions exploit this weakness as a means creating and
reinforcing commitment. If someone can be induced or coerced into
making a sacrifice they then have a stake in the cause.
Windmills, for example, are the symbols of power, not physical power
(of which they are derisorily short) but political and religious
power. They are like the great domes of temples, the statues of Saddam
or the big "M" arch of MacDonald's. Windmills are ugly: they destroy
the visual (and aural) landscape, but that is their purpose. They are
part of the sacrifice. It would not be so bad if they were simply
useless, but it is worse than that. Conventional generating systems of
equivalent power have to operate for 80% of the time, while the wind
is blowing too soft or too hard, and then be switched to warm standby
when it is just right, an expensive and wasteful process. Windmills
are there to remind us of our commitment, willing or not, to the
cause, both in excessive taxation and loss of visual and aural
amenity.
As in other forms of mental conditioning, continued reinforcement is a
necessary part of the process and that is where ritual comes in.
Ritual comprises tiny sacrifices infinitely repeated. Going round the
house switching off standby lights performs the same function as the
repetitive chanting of mantras. The fact that it is pointless is the
whole point.
One of the most valuable ideas of modern engineering, lost in the
noise, has been lost in the noise. In most applications a change of,
say, one part in ten thousand is too small to be measured and
therefore not worthy of concern. If standby in domestic devices ever
were a problem, it is now a rapidly diminishing one. In the old days
of thermionic devices (valves or tubes) it was necessary to keep
cathodes heated to avoid a prolonged warming up period, but
transistors and LCDs do not have cathodes and are therefore instantly
available. Present standby powers are about five watts. In the
temperate zone that is transferred from your central heating bill for
half the year, though it is barely enough to keep your big toe warm.
In fact, it would be relatively easy to make the standby power
microwatts, just enough to power an optical sensor and decoder, though
until now nobody thought such a pointless exercise necessary.
Prophecy and divination
In the real world attempts at prophecy always come to a bad end. Only
in religious texts and the currently popular fantasy fiction do
prophecies come true. H G Wells, in "The shape of things to come,"
successfully predicted the mechanised War, as did Winston Churchill,
but little else, and the film that Wells closely supervised now
provides rather comic entertainment (but wonderful music). Even those
of us closely involved in electronics did not foresee that a
development of the ancient art of writing on stone, lithography, would
result in millions of transistors being available on one chip,
changing the world forever, including granting new and sinister means
of control to those in authority.
Likewise, divination was greatly regarded in all cultures, ancient and
modern. Stars were observed, chickens and other animals slaughtered,
so that their steaming entrails could be examined to predict the
future, cards were shuffled and crystal balls peered into.
Comparatively recently the leader of the most powerful nation on earth
relied on the advice of astrologers.
Now divination has returned with, for example, the examination of the
entrails of ancient trees. Though the methods used are invalid (they
wrongly assume linearity) and have been comprehensively shown to be
irreproducible and misleading, the results have been paraded before
the world in defence of draconian sacrificial policies.
The main form of modern divination, however, is computer models. Forty
odd years ago an instruction passed round the Faculty of Engineering
of the University of London that no PhDs were to be awarded on the
basis of computer models unsupported by measurement. As T S Eliot
asked in Choruses from The Rock
Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge?
Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?
Now, huge and generously funded university and government departments
do nothing but develop computer models, involving assumptions about
physical interactions that are still not understood by science. Their
dubious (to say the least) results are used by the new international
priesthood to frighten the people into conformity.
Puritans and killjoys
No one has bettered Mencken's definition of Puritanism - the haunting
fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy. It is an unfortunate
characteristic of many varieties of religion that this characteristic
is to the fore and Global Warming is far from being an exception.
Nothing the proponents offer involves an improvement or even
maintenance of human contentment, quite the opposite in fact. You
might think that any philosophy of life would involve swings and
roundabouts, good and bad, but think again. Virtually everything you
enjoy is now sinful - holidays, driving your car, having a comfortable
temperature in your home, being free from the stink of rotting
garbage, and on and on.
As with the flagellants of old, for some people a feeling of
self-righteousness not only transcends all discomforts, but derives
from them. The rest of us have to be coerced into conformity.
It is an unfortunate fact of life that there are people who get their
kicks out of pushing other people around. The existence of little
pleasures of life, such as savouring a fine wine or cigar (and even
more so the proletarian equivalents) is intolerable to them. They will
exploit any means - the distortion of science, the suborning of weak
politicians, the repetition of mendacious propaganda - to achieve the
elimination of the hated practices. The eleventh commandment for the
killjoys is "Thou shalt not have fun", and global warming provides a
delightful playground for them.
Censorship and angles
Freedom of speech and publication is at the very heart of science.
Even the most foolish of hypotheses is allowed to be offered for
examination. In much of religion the opposite is true; challenging the
established dogma is heresy, for which the punishment has ranged from
ostracism to horrific torture and death. One of the greatest ironies
produced by the successful policy of entryism by the eco-theologians
is that it is none other than the Royal Society that has been
orchestrating the attempt to censor any deviation from establishment
beliefs. Authoritarian politicians, such as Congressman Brad Miller,
would give such suppression the force of law.
It is a curious repetition of history that those who advance the
hypothesis that the sun is the controlling element in changes of
climate are vilified, just as Galileo was, for supporting the
Copernican heliocentric description of the solar system. Yet the sun
is clearly the driver for climate - if it stopped shining, the earth's
temperature would drop to near absolute zero. In the establishment
dogma the sun is barely mentioned, while the puny efforts of mankind
are gratuitously magnified out of proportion. In a scientific approach
to climate, a full understanding of the behaviour of that solitary
driver would be the first prerequisite, but this is waived in the
interests of piety; so leading solar researchers have been deprived of
funding.
One of the most exploited ways of angling the news is by "ratchet
reporting". News of unusual warm weather, for example, is given
copious coverage, while cold weather is studiously ignored. Thus the
spring of 2007 was disastrously cold in parts of North America, with
ice-bound ships and snowed-off baseball, but this was kept secret from
the British, whose wonderful summery April was presented as though it
were bad news (and that in the land of rheumatism and bronchitis!).
The fact that Britain had no spring at all in 2006 was conveniently
forgotten, except as a basis of comparison to establish that 2007 was
substantially warmer.
That the media know that they are peddling untruths is demonstrated by
these tricks they get up to. If they were confident of the truth of
their case there would be no need to fake the coverage. They have been
frequently caught out faking their numbers and graphs, but only a few
internet surfers know about it. If you think you have a good case, you
can afford to present both sides, but they don't. The great majority
of the population have no idea that there is an alternative view. That
is not science, it is religion.
Control and taxation
Religion has always played an important part in the imposition of
authority. For many centuries it took the form of the "Divine Right of
Kings" or the "Mandate of Heaven". Once you get the people to believe,
you can get away with almost any imposition. The alliance between the
shaman and the legislator has long been the very foundation of
authoritarianism. Even when the dogma is a godless one, such as
Marxism, it is imposed with religious fervour, for that is the way to
induce conformity.
People now accept laws that restrict their liberty and standard of
living, which would once have provoked riots, because they are cloaked
in a quasi-religious formula of environmentalism. So-called
environmental burdens, for example, now greatly outweigh the
incremental effect of the poll tax that met with such violent
opposition in England, yet are now meekly accepted, as is the
parasitic presence of various forms of snooper, who even invade
people's dustbins.
Contradictions and irrationality
Traditional religions not only tolerated contradiction and
irrationality, they embrace them as part of the mystique. Words and
phrases are repeated ad nauseam and in strange contexts, until they
lose all meaning and become self-preserving mantras.
Contradictions and irrationality also abound in the modern theocratic
world. The EU, for example, gratuitously destroys a tiny industry
making traditional barometers, on the grounds of an irrational fear of
mercury, then imposes the use of fluorescent light bulbs that
distribute that same dreaded substance in huge quantities across the
continent, all on the basis of the threat of global warming.
People who have never heard of Wien or Planck confidently assert that
it is "obvious" that man-made CO2 will cause runaway warming of the
planet, when it is not at all obvious to many who are familiar with
the works of those gentlemen. It is obvious in the sense that it is
obvious that believers will have everlasting life or that a senseless
act of self-immolation will earn the eternal attentions of 72 virgins
in Paradise. The capacity to believe six impossible things before
breakfast has been restored from fantasy to accepted normality.
Wealth and power
Some organisms develop the ingredients to survive and multiply, so it
is with business and religions. It is characteristic of businesses
that they dispose of the entrepreneurs who create them and are taken
over by a different breed of corporate manager: so it is with
religions. The brutally suppressed troglodytes who were the early
Christians of Rome were a different breed from the cardinals, bishops
and abbots who bestrode mediaeval Europe and lived the opulent life.
There were also, of course, the humble and saintly mendicant friars.
The equivalents of all these varieties exist within the new movement.
Money is the basis of the new religion. It poured in from various
foundations (the so-called ketchup money) and na
