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   From: jaimuhammad@ssir.net   
      
   Peer Review: The Great Conspiracy To Discredit Conservative Political   
   Ideology & The Skeptic Blogosphere   
      
   As we all know, peer review is what happens when a bunch of   
   anonymous scientists gang up on right thinking bloggers and   
   science skeptics in their fascist attempt to silence our   
   freedom of speech.    In fact there are several non-peer   
   reviewed papers published which wholeheartedly and unanomously   
   debunk the great fascist socialist conspiracy of liberal   
   politically driven peer review.   Some by the Freedom Instutute   
   pull no punches in blaming people whith fancy science degrees   
   trying to tell us what to think.  The religion of science is   
   like homosexual marriage, a threat to the family unit.  In   
   fact, the ruling Republican party of our planet's greatest   
   nation has recently ruled science to be contradictory to their   
   great and long beholden spirit of rugged individuality and   
   liberty.   
      
   Last week marked the 20th anniversary of the mass hysteria   
   phenomenon known as global warming. Much of the science has   
   since been discredited. Now it's time for Conservative   
   political scientists, Christian theologians and psychiatrists   
   to weigh in over whether these mental cases should be locked up   
   and silenced forever so we can get on with the job of building   
   more SUVs and drilling for more oil.  Essentially, it's up to   
   God to decide if global warming is real and not science because   
   God always trumps science and the only way for us to hear from   
   God is to listen to and obey America's Christian Theologians.   
   It's time to end the leftist socialist lies once and for all   
   and let freedom and libertay prevail.   
      
   What, discredited? Millions of the America's smartest climate   
   scientists insist otherwise, none more noisily than NASA's Jim   
   Hansen, who first banged the gong with his June 23, 1988,   
   congressional testimony (delivered with all the modesty of "99%   
   confidence").  We all know that NASA are liars.   
      
   AP   
   The New True Believers   
   But mother nature has opinions of her own. NASA now   
   begrudgingly confirms that the hottest year on record in the   
   continental 48 was not 1998, as previously believed, but 1934,   
   and that six of the 10 hottest years since 1880 antedate 1954.   
   Data from 3,000 scientific robots in the world's oceans show   
   there has been slight cooling in the past five years, never   
   mind that "80% to 90% of global warming involves heating up   
   ocean waters," according to a report by NPR's Richard Harris.   
      
   The Arctic ice cap may be thinning, but the extent of Antarctic   
   sea ice has been expanding for years. At least as of February,   
   last winter was the Northern Hemisphere's coldest in decades.   
   In May, German climate modelers reported in the journal Nature   
   that global warming is due for a decade-long vacation. But be   
   not not-afraid, added the modelers: The inexorable march to   
   apocalypse resumes in 2020.   
      
   This last item is, of course, a forecast, not an empirical   
   observation. But it raises a useful question: If even slight   
   global cooling remains evidence of global warming, what isn't   
   evidence of global warming? What we have here is a   
   nonfalsifiable hypothesis, logically indistinguishable from   
   claims for the existence of God. This doesn't mean God doesn't   
   exist, or that global warming isn't happening. It does mean it   
   isn't science.   
      
   So let's stop fussing about the interpretation of ice core   
   samples from the South Pole and temperature readings in the   
   troposphere. The real place where discussions of global warming   
   belong is in the realm of belief, and particularly the motives   
   for belief. I see three mutually compatible explanations.   
      
   The first is as a vehicle of ideological convenience. Socialism   
   may have failed as an economic theory, but global warming   
   alarmism, with its dire warnings about the consequences of   
   industry and consumerism, is equally a rebuke to capitalism.   
   Take just about any other discredited leftist nostrum of yore ?   
   population control, higher taxes, a vast new regulatory regime,   
   global economic redistribution, an enhanced role for the United   
   Nations ? and global warming provides a justification. One   
   wonders what the left would make of a scientific "consensus"   
   warning that some looming environmental crisis could only be   
   averted if every college-educated woman bore six children:   
   Thumbs to "patriarchal" science; curtains to the species.   
      
   A second explanation is theological. Surely it is no accident   
   that the principal catastrophe predicted by global warming   
   alarmists is diluvian in nature. Surely it is not a coincidence   
   that modern-day environmentalists are awfully biblical in their   
   critique of the depredations of modern society: "And it   
   repented the LORD that he had made man on the earth, and it   
   grieved him at his heart." That's Genesis, but it sounds like   
   Jim Hansen.   
      
   And surely it is in keeping with this essentially religious   
   outlook that the "solutions" chiefly offered to global warming   
   involve radical changes to personal behavior, all of them with   
   an ascetic, virtue- centric bent: drive less, buy less, walk   
   lightly upon the earth and so on. A light carbon footprint has   
   become the 21st-century equivalent of sexual abstinence.   
      
   Finally, there is a psychological explanation. Listen carefully   
   to the global warming alarmists, and the main theme that   
   emerges is that what the developed world needs is a large dose   
   of penance. What's remarkable is the extent to which penance   
   sells among a mostly secular audience. What is there to be   
   penitent about?   
      
   As it turns out, a lot, at least if you're inclined to believe   
   that our successes are undeserved and that prosperity is   
   morally suspect. In this view, global warming is nature's great   
   comeuppance, affirming as nothing else our guilty conscience   
   for our worldly success.   
      
   In "The Varieties of Religious Experience," William James   
   distinguishes between healthy, life-affirming religion and the   
   monastically inclined, "morbid-minded" religion of the   
   sick-souled. Global warming is sick-souled religion.   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)