Why warming is more chic than cooling was

Mark Steyn nails it, as usual, with his MacLeans column about why global warmism is so appealing:

According to the CIA’s analysis, “detrimental global climatic change” threatens “the stability of most nations.” And, alas, for a global phenomenon, Canada will be hardest hit. The entire Dominion from the Arctic to the 49th parallel will be under 150 feet of ice.

Oh, wait. That was the last “scientific consensus” on “climate change,” early seventies version, as reflected in a CIA report from August 1974

Indeed. A lot of the loudest voices sounding the alarm over The Crisis Formerly Known as Global Warming are too young to even be aware that there was an equally urgent looming ice age crisis not much more than 3 decades ago.

The rest are old enough to know about it, but too dishonest to mention it, because that would be an admission that climactic scare mongering has a very poor track record.

Yet, when I reprised the line [that 30 year olds have seen no warming in their adult lives] in this space a couple of weeks back, thinking it was now safe for polite society, I was besieged by the usual “YOU LIE!!!!!!!” emails angrily denouncing me for failing to explain that the cooling trend of the oughts is in fact merely a blip in the long-term warming trend of the nineties.

Well, maybe. Then again, perhaps the warming trend of the nineties is merely a blip in the long-term ice age trend of the early seventies.

Why did apocalyptic warm-mongering take, where apocalyptic ice-mongering did not?

There were no fortunes to be made from government grants for bogus “renewable energy” projects. Unlike Al Gore, carbon billionaire, nobody got rich peddling ice offsets.

Precisely right: nobody was clever enough to figure out how to collect massive profits on the imminent ice age; today's scientists, pseudo-scientists, former VP's and assorted other hucksters have become rather more, ummm, entrepreneurial.

But profiteering only explains it for Al Gore and the few thousands of other guys who are in the pump and dump racket purely for the dough.

For the rest, the millions of true believers, it boils down to that most basic of human needs: religion.

Why did “climate change” remain the boutique scare-story of a few specialists last time round, and gain global traction this time round? In the Spectator, Maurizio Morabito puts it this way:
“Is the problem with the general public, who cannot talk about climate except in doom-laden terms, and for whom the sky is the last animist god?”

That last part explains a lot. Forty years ago conventional religious belief was certainly in decline in what we once knew as Christendom, but the hole was not yet ozone-layer sized. Once the sea of faith had receded far from shore, the post-Christian West looked at what remained and found “Gaia.” [...] [W]e’ve had climate change for four billion years. But now apparently there is an ideal state that Ma Mère has to be maintained in. A belief in a garden of Eden which man through sin has despoiled sounds familiar. But this time we get to pick. Not the Medieval Warm Period that causes the “scientific consensus” such problems, and not presumably the bucolic state the planet was in when Canada was 150 feet under, but some pristine condition somewhere in between.

When man was made in the image of God, he was fallen but redeemable. Gaia’s psychologically unhealthy progeny are merely irredeemable. Anti-humanism is everywhere [...]

Very few sciences could survive being embraced as a religion. Imagine the kind of engineering or math you’d get if it also had to function as a “faith tradition.” What’s also changed since the seventies is the nature of the UN and the transnational bureaucracies. Once it became obvious that “climate change” represents an almost boundless shakedown of functioning jurisdictions by dysfunctional basket cases, the die was cast. “Aid” is a discredited word these days and comes with too many strings attached. But eco-credits sluiced through an oil-for-food program on steroids offers splendid new opportunities for bulking up an ambitious dictator’s Swiss bank accounts.

And, because of this malign combination—corrupted science, ersatz religion, Third World opportunism—global warming took off in a way the old ice age never did. It would perhaps be too much to expect a generation of brainwashed schoolkids to shake off their brain-dead conformism. And so, between the anti-human left and an alliance of rapacious dictatorships, it now falls to a handful of economically expansive emerging nations—India, China, Brazil, a couple of others—to save the developed world from itself.

He notes the pandering to dictators without noting the very totalitarian mindset that underlies the entire movement, but that would be straying away from the point of the column: that packaging racketeering as religion, coupled with a cradle to grave propaganda campaign unmatched in modern human history, is the reason that "climate change" was able to sway the impressionable much more than the more modest campaign of the previous generation.

Religion of Peace update

Malaysian Islamic court orders woman caned for having a beer

KUALA LUMPUR, July 21 (AP) - (Kyodo)—A Malaysian Islamic court sentenced a part-time Singaporean model to six strokes of the cane and a 5,000 ringgit ($1,416) fine for drinking beer in a nightclub, the New Straits Times reported Tuesday.

The Syariah High Court in Kuantan, capital of Pahang State, handed down the ruling after Kartika Sari Dewi Shukarno, 32, pleaded guilty to the charge.

Consuming alcohol is prohibited for Muslims, but it is very rare for the syariah court to impose caning on women.

"The caning is aimed at making the accused repent and serves as a lesson to Muslims," Judge Abdul Rahman Yunus was quoted saying.

He imposed the maximum penalty allowed under the state Islamic law. If the fine is not paid, Kartika faces three years in jail.

According to the newspaper, this is the second time the Kuantan court has made such a ruling.

The first was against a waitress who was arrested with Kartika and another man during a raid by the religious vice squad on a hotel nightclub in Cherating, a popular beach resort near Kuantan, in July last year.

The waitress and the man were also sentenced to fines of 5,000 ringgit and six strokes of the cane.

All three are appealing.

Fake indignation

Claudia Rosset succintly nails the pathology behind the overblown offense taken to comments by the Pope:

"It’s a good rule of thumb that there is no one more easily offended than your average despot and surrounding acolytes. Tyranny by nature requires grand fictions, and when anyone dares point out that the emperor has no clothes, or the emperor is living it up while dressing his minions in suicide belts, or the emperor is murdering his own subjects and honing technologies and methods to blackmail, subjugate or kill anyone else in reach, then the emperor and his cohorts take huge offense. If you happen to live under their sway, they chuck you in prison. If you are outside the immediate reach of their secret police and terror squads, they do what they can to maneuver the debate onto their terms. They — who apologize for nothing — demand apologies."

UPDATE 9/19/06 12:40pm:

Mike Rappaport expands on the theme:

"As a promoter and beneficiary of modernity, I feel bad for those stuck in the middle ages. Not only are they led to do evil things, but it all seems very confusing for them. After all, they must mix modern claims of victimhood with medievil charges of blasphemy. It is hard to keep your stories straight, as the above quote ['anyone who describes Islam as a religion as intolerant encourages violence'] suggests.

It kind of reminds me of a weird movie I saw some years back. About ten peasants from Europe during the black death dug through a hole and came out in 20th century Australia. It was all very confusing for them. But no one thought of allowing them to get nuclear weapons."

UPDATE 9/19/06 12:55pm:

More good stuff from John Hinderacker:

"The Pope can perhaps be excused for thinking that Islam can be associated with violence. He probably took it personally when an Islamic terrorist group plotted to assassinate his predecessor. If the Vatican ever starts assassinating imams, then they'll really have something to protest."

Along the same lines, Ed Morrissey notes that the truth of the passage is self-evident:

"People use words to criticize Islam; Muslims use stones, fire, and eventually bombs to protest back. When was the last time Christians threw firebombs at a mosque to protest Muslim imams characterizing Christianity as polytheistic? When have we seen Jews firebomb mosques for Muslim leaders calling them the descendants of pigs and monkeys, a common insult from both religious and secular Muslims in the Middle East? Muslims have proven Benedict prophetic, and don't think for a moment that this wave of violence has peaked."

John Paul II, RIP

I am not Catholic, but would be remiss if I failed to acknowledge the passing of the Pope. And I can’t possibly do it any better than Charles Krauthammer in today’s Washington Post:

"History will remember many of the achievements of John Paul II, particularly his zealous guarding of the church's traditional belief in the sanctity of life, not permitting it to be unmoored by the fashionable currents of thought about abortion, euthanasia and 'quality of life.' But above all, he will be remembered for having sparked, tended and fanned the flames of freedom in Poland and the rest of Eastern Europe, leading ultimately and astonishingly to the total collapse of the Soviet empire. [...] Precisely at the moment the West most desperately needed it, we were sent a champion. It is hard to remember now how dark those days were. The 15 months following the pope's elevation marked the high tide of Soviet communism and the nadir of the free world's post-Vietnam collapse. It was a time of one defeat after another. Vietnam invaded Cambodia, consolidating Soviet hegemony over all of Indochina. The Khomeni revolution swept away America's strategic anchor in the Middle East. Nicaragua fell to the Sandinistas, the first Soviet-allied regime on the mainland of the Western Hemisphere. Then finally, the Soviets invaded Afghanistan. And yet precisely at the time of this free-world retreat and disarray, a miracle happens. The Catholic Church, breaking nearly 500 years of tradition, puts itself in the hands of an obscure non-Italian -- a Pole who, deeply understanding the East European predicament, rose to become, along with Roosevelt, Churchill and Reagan, one of the great liberators of the 20th Century. [...] We mourn him for restoring strength to the Western idea of the free human spirit at a moment of deepest doubt and despair. And for seeing us through to today's great moment of possibility for both faith and freedom."