"Anthropogenic global warming is a scientific hypothesis, not an article of religious or ideological dogma"
The second half of that statement is, I think, wrong.
For a long time, I paid no attention to the debate over global warming. It just didn’t interest me. But when I finally decided to read up on it, I noticed straightaway that the believers sounded … well, religious.
Their narrative is a familiar one. Man has sinned. Unless he repents, he will burn. (Though verily, verily, an indulgence — now known as an “off-set” — can redeem you. All religions take VISA.) In the meantime, non-believers should be treated as heretics. There can be no questioning of the Word.
But the rest of Jeff Jacoby’s essay is excellent. He reminds us that Newsweek — the same Newsweek whose cover now derides atheists global warming “denialists” — was in 1975 prophesying a return of the ice age. (The evidence was so massive, said Newsweek, “that meteorologists [were] hard-pressed to keep up with it.”)
In the 1980s, you may recall, the world faced its end in the hell of a nuclear winter.
Question: Does man need to believe in the apocalypse?
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