“He sees you when you’re sleeping
He knows when you’re awake
He knows if you’ve been bad or good
So be good for goodness sake!”
-Santa Claus is Coming to Town
As parents around Christmas time undoubtedly understand, it is easy to manipulate uninformed children. All it takes is the threat of retribution from a vague and invisible force.
Al Gore has clearly taken note of this.
America has had its share of fears over the years. Communism, Fascism, and terrorism encompass a few of these. The fear of global warming, trumpeted by Al Gore, has recently entered these ranks.
The difference between those aforementioned fears and the paranoia surrounding global warming, however, is that the former were clearly defined and clearly a threat.
In the 1930s, one could merely point to Adolf Hitler’s seizing of Austria and then the Sudetenland to determine the grave reality at hand. Decades later, one could look 90 miles south of the United States where the Soviet Union was placing nuclear missiles in Cuba and recognize the obvious imminent danger. And then, in 2001, the fear of terrorism and the need to act became abundantly clear in the wake of the horrific September attacks at the hands of al-Qaeda.
That being said, does global warming really merit a spot at the top of the world’s list of grave fears? Although environmentalist devotees will fight to the death over the issue, the “evidence” supporting the global warming hypothesis is hardly evidence at all. The article “Climate Hysterics v Heretics in an Age of Unreason” published yesterday in The Australian, reminds us of some of the “evidence” surrounding global warming:
“First, NASA had to correct its earlier claim that the hottest year on record in the contiguous US had been 1998, which seemed to prove that global warming was on the march. It was actually 1934. Then it turned out the world’s oceans have been growing steadily cooler, not hotter, since 2003. Meanwhile, the winter of 2007 was the coldest in the US in decades, after Al Gore warned us that we were about to see the end of winter as we know it.”
Much to the dismay of folks like Al Gore and others, the global warming fear is more fittingly included under the embarrassing category of rampant superstitions, which Merriam-Webster defines as “a belief or practice resulting from ignorance, fear of the unknown, trust in magic or chance, or a false conception of causation.” So just how is global warming a “false conception of causation”? Consider the following argument proposed by The Australian article:
“More than 200 years ago, Scottish Enlightenment philosopher David Hume put his finger on the process. His essay, Of Superstition and Enthusiasm, describes how even in civilized societies the mind of man is subject to certain unaccountable terrors and apprehensions when real worries are missing. As these enemies are entirely invisible and unknown, like today’s greenhouse gases, people try to propitiate them by ceremonies, observations, mortifications, sacrifices such as Earth Day and banning plastic bags and petrol-driven lawnmowers.
“Fear and ignorance, Hume concludes, are the true source of superstition. They lead a blind and terrified public to embrace any practice, however absurd or frivolous, which either folly or knavery recommends…As Hume points out, the stronger mixture there is of superstition, with its ambience of ignorance and fear, the higher is the authority of the priesthood.”
Much like children around Christmas time are reminded “to be good for goodness sake” out of fear that Santa Claus might deprive them of a lot of wonderful Christmas loot, Al Gore and the rest of the “priesthood” warn us sensible adults to be good or else. If we are not careful, global warming will get us.
Think about for a moment. Like a bad Santa, global warming is the perfect monster. It cannot be seen, felt, located, or defined. It can be blamed for everything and dictates our lifestyles.
Consequently, as Hume clearly understood, one surefire way for the authorities to remain in a state of power is to ensure that the people remain in a state of fear.
The truth surrounding global warming is unfolding before our very eyes. The ruse is revealed. Global warming is nothing but a nightmare scenario propagated by Al Gore and the rest to guarantee greater government control by those who see Big Government as the ultimate endgame.
The real fear we ought to be concerning ourselves over is the consequent erosion of freedom which—like terrorism, Communism, and Fascism before it—is very real and very threatening.
