Climate Change – A modern day religion

Religion

1:        a personal set or institutionalized system of religious attitudes, beliefs, and practices

2:        scrupulous conformity: conscientiousness
3:        a cause, principle, or system of beliefs held to with ardor and faith

Heretic

1:        a person who differs in opinion from established religious dogma especially : a   baptized member of the Roman Catholic Church who refuses to acknowledge or accept a revealed truth The church regards them as heretics.

2:        one who differs in opinion from an accepted belief or doctrine: nonconformist

Dogma

1:       something held as an established opinion especially: a definite authoritative tenet

2:        a code of such tenet’s pedagogical dogma
3:       a point of view or tenet put forth as authoritative without adequate grounds
4:        a doctrine or body of doctrines concerning faith or morals formally stated and authoritatively proclaimed by a church

Faith

1:        belief and trust in and loyalty to God

2:        belief in the traditional doctrines of a religion
3:        firm belief in something for which there is no proof
4:        complete trust
5:        something that is believed especially with strong conviction especially
6:        a system of religious beliefs
7:        without question

I’ve been a Christian my entire life.  From my earliest memories of “Sunday School”, through confirmation, conversion from Lutheran to Catholic, marriage up to today when my wife and I will attend Mass in a few hours.  I don’t believe I’ve ever really doubted the existence of God though I’ve never really just “accepted” him as fact, I’ve looked for “proof” that he existed.  The earliest exploration for proof occurred sometime after my confirmation.  I’d received a microscope as either a birthday or Christmas present and I spent many hours viewing everything from a butterfly wing, to fish scales . . . to a part of a communion host that I palmed in the name of science.  I must admit that I never really believed that “bread” was actually converted to the “body” of Christ.  That afternoon I had my proof, right there under the microscope . . . it was still bread!  Honestly this discovery did little to shake my faith in God though it did put more understanding it the phrase “through, with and under the bread”.  It was here that the idea of FAITH, just plain trust in something based on what if felt in my heart and what I believed based on the faith of others around me – my mother, aunts, uncles, kids in the church with me, became clearer.  I “knew” there was a God, a Christ, that he died and rose to save me.  It was my faith.  It still is.

That doesn’t mean I’ve stopped looking for evidence . . . real, honest, hard evidence that he exists.  Perhaps that’s the engineer side of my head, the science side, the logical side.  I have settled on a specific piece of evidence that I use to explain that God truly exists . . . the Maple Leaf.  It’s perfect in every way for it’s stated task, to take sunlight and use that to convert nutrients taken from the ground into food for the tree.  To take CO2 from the air and convert it to Oxygen for the creatures of earth and to finally decompose returning to the earth to create soil to hold the tree.  Nothing wasted.  Nothing left over.  Perfect.  To believe that such a thing could come about from the universe’s chaos by chance is simply a reach that is too far to make. 

This past week I was in Florence, Italy and saw “The David”.  It is a single piece of marble depicting a grown David carrying his sling.  To believe that there is no God would be to believe that someone was digging around in the ground one day and happened upon a true piece of art “The David” fully formed by nature itself.  We know for fact that “The David” was extracted from a single piece of marble by Michelangelo.  His skill and love of the work is seen in the perfection of the work itself . . . as is God’s skill and love the His work as seen in the perfection of the Maple Leaf.

If you open your eyes, question everything, it is easy to see God in nature, the laws of nature, the orbit of the planets, the existence of the multitude of universes and the existence of billions and billions of suns and planets.  It all works too well together to simply be an accident – thus science offers proof to me that God exists.  It is a faith I can easily accept.  And still I question, look, observe – looking for more “proof”.

I’m taking a lot of words to draw an analogy between a Faith in God and a Faith in “Climate Change”.  Does “Climate Change” exist?  Sure – 100,000 years ago where I live was part of a vast savannah.  Forests grew and receded, grasslands expanded and contracted.  Just 10,000 years ago a bit to the north of where I sit was under a mile+ of ice.  The Great Lakes didn’t exist.  Man was pushed to a few areas that were warm enough for them to survive.  Creatures like the Wooly Mammoths existed.  “Climate Change” happened, the earth warmed, the glaciers melted, the Great Lakes filled in – a new normal was established.

If we look 65 million years in the past a single meteor impact changed the entire global climate killing over 75% of all life forms including the dinosaurs.  And again “Climate Change” healed the planet allowing life to once again flourish.  So, bottom line, is “Climate Change” real – yes.

But . . . but . . . and it’s a BIG BUTT . . . is “Man Made Climate Change” real?  Is man, by his very existence and his choice of actions, changing the climate?  And in what manner?  When I was younger the “scientific consensus” was that the earth was cooling and that was an existential threat to all humans.  There was a plan to fix that – use nuclear weapons to break off the McMurdo Ice Shelf from the Antarctica, let it drift into the North Atlantic Current, change the salinity of the Atlantic Ocean and the “Global Cooling” would stop – catastrophe averted!  Just to make sure we would also cover the Antarctica with coal dust which would also increase the ice melt, decrease the salinity of the Atlantic Ocean adding to the “cure” for “Global Cooling”.  It was simply the “faith” of the scientific community, based on what they had seen, that this would work.  Obviously, it was never implemented.  Because other, more “pressing” issues gathered steam – acid rain, shifting weather patterns and innumerable other climate emergences emerged.  Finally – “Global Warming” showed itself to be the next existential threat.  The planet was “warming” fast!!  We were all going to die – is just 20 years!!!  Of course, those 20 years past . . . and the next . . . until it was generally realized that global temperatures were not rising.  In fact, we were still recovering from the last mini-ice age.  So, the phrasing had to change . . . to “Climate Change”.  Yep . . . and we must do something in the next 12 years . . . or the next 10.5 years . . . or what, we’re all going to die???  Really??  Well holy crap, we better get cracking.  And since the good folks aren’t smart enough to get their butts in gear . . . our government will just have to tell them what to do!  What cars to buy, gas to use, light bulbs to buy, food to eat, how to build their houses, where to build their houses . . . our government will just have to CONTROL EVERY LITTLE BIT OF OUR LIVES . . . just to SAVE US FROM OURSELVES.

And that, that right there is the purpose of “Climate Change” just as it is the purpose of every religion on earth today.  To control our lives.

Religion attempts to control who we marry, when we marry, where we marry, how we act, what is good, what is bad.  Punishments range from a “visit from the pastor” to the taking of your head depending which faith you follow.

Governments manage everything from restrictions on services ( limits on when you can water your grass ) to imprisonment for various “code” violations.

Control is the goal of “Climate Change” – not saving the earth.  

Did you notice with the latest “walk out” this past week (9/20/2019) school children, college students and everyday folks walked out of the classroom, off the job to “protest” us not doing enough to prevent “Climate Change”?  Did you notice that no questions were asked, no doubts raised, no data presented . . . just full acceptance of the faith, the religion of “Climate Change” as being the truth?  Scientists that confirmed “Climate Change” were accepted as telling the truth.  Scientists that questioned the results, that found different results – were called “climate deniers” – in other words, heretics of the religion of “Climate Change”.  The “consensus of the science” was that “Climate Change” change is happening – regardless of what the heretics were saying.

And in moments like these . . . true science dies . . . and myth, superstition, a new faith is born.

Here is a clue . . . a BIG CLUE . . . science does not support “consensus” . . . it only supports an unending drive for provable, repeatable, undeniable FACT . . . not “consensus”.  So what’s missing here . . . what should we be looking at?

With the presentation at the UN by “Pippi Longwinded” – (Greta Thunberg)  - it would seem to me that the final transition of “Climate Change” to a full blown eco-religion has been completed.  The acolytes are the young, ignorant, uneducated – grade school through the early years of college – tentatively lead by an young woman seemingly on the edge of madness due solely to the “fact” that the adults of the world are stealing her youth by standing by while a “mass extinction” event is roaring across the globe.   All of which is based on raw emotions whipped up to a fever pitch.  The level of which can only ever be generated within a primarily “religious” environment that is fully without benefit of true scientific evaluation.

What comes next?  My expectation – real violence against the “deniers”, the heretics.  You are either all in on this new religion – or you are an enemy of the planet and must be eliminated.  Is this movement big enough to be a genuine threat to law and order?  I suspect not in the short term . . . but unless the adults begin to stand up, in another 10 years or so . . . violence will be all they have left.

A little something to put things into perspective . . .

During the past week I found myself in Rome, Italy.  Old Rome . . . in the ruins of the original Rome.  I was standing in front of the “Temple of Romulus” built in AD 307 . . . in a city founded in 753 BC . . . and standing on a road built around 300 BC . . . 2,300 years ago . . . over two millennia ago.  Since that time our earth has withstood . . .

Volcanos that have erased entire cities and their populations from history and killed millions with the famines they generated.  Plagues have killed hundreds of millions of people.  Evil men have killed over 100 million people in their own countries in our century alone.  We have endured wars, nuclear weapons, hurricanes and typhoons . . . yet here, now . . . this new “religion” . . . this new “faith” assures us that we are on the very edge, the very cusp of extinction.  We have only 12 years . . . or 10.5 years remaining . . . or we’ll all die!!

I also stood in the forum in Pompeii and looked at the twin peaks of Vesuvius.  The right peak the remainder of the 79AD eruption that erased Pompeii from existence until the late 1700s.  The peak on the left is the new, active peak that will surely erupt again in the future.  And I wondered if those in the forum that day nearly 2,000 years ago had a better grasp of an “extinction event” as the pyroclastic material exploded towards them, burying them alive . . . than we do when we ponder this mythical event that is about to kill us in the next 12 years. 

2,000 years from now, if this moment is even remembered, there will be humans walking the earth . . . just as there are today.  Perhaps if we focused on true science . . . and not fears or feelings  . . . we would do ourselves a better service in becoming good stewards of the gifts we have been given.