The Ecology Movement Has Become a Religion

I appreciate your taking up the challenge of this debate. I think it will be an interesting one. A) It is unnecessary for a there to be a single unified ecology movement for it to have taken on the character of religious movement. By comparison, The Religious Right is composed of diverse groups that disagree in the extreme over issues of doctrine. About a third of the Religious Right are Democrats. Nonetheless, a pattern of religious belief is easily identified and properly characterized as religious. The characterization is based upon applying articles of faith to issues of public policy. Similarly, environmentalist fundamentalists have in common a form of pantheism by which the interests of nature, however they construe them, are placed above the interests of mankind. That is the contention of this debate. B) It is not necessary to be a member of any formal organization to be Christian nor is it generally required to join an organization to be religious. The definition of religion does not include a membership requirement. What is required is adherence to a pattern of non-rational beliefs that guide a person's actions. The pattern is evident. C) "Accepting the consensus of opinion on the man's impact on the environment is not a matter of irrational belief; rather it is a matter of rationally evaluating the scientific evidence." I agree, but that it not the point at issue. The issue is whether those who do not agree are treated respectfully as dissenting scientists, or whether they are treated as religious heretics. By comparison, the scientific consensus in the 1960s favored the Steady State Theory of the universe. However, those who favored the Big Bang Theory were not labeled as "denialists" and subjected to wild accusations. Science simply continued the debate, new evidence supporting the Big Bang emerged, and Big Bang Theory won. The best data I can find is that current consensus on CO2 Theory is about a 60/40 split in the scientific community in favor of the theory. I am confident that science, left alone, will ultimately come to a resolution. The current IPCC report projects a rise in ocean levels of nine inches in the next hundred years, versus seven inches from the last hundred. Interestingly, the environmental movement rejects that consensus as heresy; any result that does not predict New York and London engulfed is unacceptable. The books "The Deniers" and, more recently, "Red Hot Lies" document the abuses to which dissenters are subject by Believers. 1,2. I never asserted that the ecology movement was only concerned with climate change. That would be like supposing that Christian fundamentalism is only concerned with abortion. I made that clear by citing not only smoking but flood gate banning, fear of nuclear power, fear of irradiated food, and other issues embodied as tenets of the religion. In Silicon Valley, cigar bar owners equipped their facilities with clear room technology that kept the air two feet from a cigar smoker far cleaner than the air outdoors. However, the state legislature passed a law that outlawed smoking establishments, no matter if the air for non-smokers was perfectly clean. This can only be explained by a religious belief, not a rational belief. 3) The energy to dump chlorine in water is negligible, and in any case water-use rules are enforced regardless of whether the energy is produced from renewable resources or not. The concept is of "water footprint" is that if water is conserved in the Amazon Basin (or anywhere else) it will make more water available for people in the desert. It is completely nuts, but the belief is readily explained in terms of religious belief. The pop science magazine "Discovery" presented the water footprint concept to its readers as if it were good science. 4.1) You are incorrect that Lindzen or other scientists often argue or present evidence that no global warming is taking place. The author of the book "The Deniers" said that he did not find a single scientist who denied that global warming exists. There are such people, no doubt, but that is largely irrelevant to the scientific issue. Lindzen doesn't even deny that CO2 may be an important factor in climate change. He only argues, from the viewpoint of the leading authority on convection models of the atmosphere, the most difficult part of climate modeling, that the models presented so far are inadequate and unreliable. The unreliability of the models is amply demonstrated by the continued downward revision of the "crisis" numbers deemed consensus by the IPCC. 4.2) The accusation that "denier" research is mostly funded by oil companies is false. In one year, Exxon spent $1.5 million on climate research, out of their $11 billion in profits. If any funding by private sources taints research, then the fact that private organizations spend more that 20 times as much promoting CO2 theory would imply that CO2 is hopelessly biased. Private groups are ideologically based, the Marshall Fund being one of note. Supposing that ideologues are impartial whereas profit-making companies are biased is not logical. that is akin to supposing that if a church supports something, it is less likely to be biased that if a company supports. Con's argument is that the peer review process in science does not function. Papers providing counter-evidence are reviewed and approved for publication by panels of scientists, and we presume that 60% of those approving panels will be pro-CO2 theory. Raising the argument that funding source trumps peer review is in itself a religious-based argument. It assumes that "evil" stems from the source. Many, in fact most, papers simply present data. There are over a hundred papers devoted to reconstructing climate history. They make it clear that past climate variation was not dominated by CO2, but the papers by themselves are not reaching broad conclusions. I have spent a great deal of time refuting holocaust denial. (More, I suspect, than Con can imagine.) The correct way to do it is point-by-point based upon the facts, not to attempt to categorize all those who advocate it as untouchables. 5. Con misunderstands the point. The point does not relate to how much fossil fuel is burned, but rather where it comes from. There is no projection of alternative technology that comes close to establishing the energy independence of the United States in the next 30 years. The US is going to be importing fuel for a long time, no matter what. So what is the point of blocking domestic production that would offset fuel imports? Why is buying oil from dictators, sending hundreds of billions overseas, better than keeping the money locally? That is clear policy. It cannot be explained rationally. It is easily explained by a religious concept that involves keeping sin offshore. 6) With respect to recycling bottles, Con again misses the point. Bottles are not recycled, they are pointless sorted and then buried. It is a ritual that makes no logical sense. 7) Con presented no counter argument. Why is the cost of the backup system, which is clearly necessary, never counted as a cost of wind or solar? Not for any logical reason. 8) Mass transit is cheaper only when the cars are kept packed, as in New York or Tokyo. San Jose's mass transit system was running at a cost of $52 per passenger. However, one is not allowed to argue about costs. Mass transit is blessed as always superior. 9) 100% of the energy from a light bulb ultimately ends up as heat. In any air condition space, that makes lights twice as costly, in a heated space they have no energy cost. But one is not allowed to say it. 10) I was citing the actual circumstances for New Orleans. A Federal law says that any project can be stopped if an endangered species is as much as inconvenienced. Environmentalists successfully sued to block flood gate construction. It only makes sense in a religious context.