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General News    H2'ed 5/27/11

Right-Wing Media Compare Gore To Fringe Preacher Who Incorrectly Predicted Rapture

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Right-wing media have recently smeared former Vice President Al Gore and global warming activists by comparing them to Harold Camping, the fringe preacher who incorrectly predicted the Biblical day of rapture would occur on May 21. Right-wing media have previously smeared the scientific consensus on global warming as a "cult."

Right-Wing Media Compare Gore To Harold Camping

CNN's Dana Loesch: "Anyone Else See Any Difference Between Harold Camping And Al Gore? Neither Do I." In a May 24 Twitter post, CNN contributor Dana Loesch wrote: "Anyone else see any difference between Harold Camping and Al Gore? Neither do I": [Twitter, 5/24/11]

 

WSJ's Taranto: "Camping Is Merely The Christian Al Gore." In his May 23 Wall Street Journal column, James Taranto wrote: "Nonbelievers are no less susceptible to doomsday cults than believers are; Harold Camping is merely the Christian Al Gore." From Taranto's column:

Something else bothers us about the media mockery of Harold Camping, as justifiable as it may be. Why are only religious doomsday cultists subjected to such ridicule? Reuters notes that "Camping previously made a failed prediction Jesus Christ would return to Earth in 1994." Ha ha, you can't believe anything this guy says! But who jeered at the U.N.'s false prediction that there would be 50 million "climate refugees" by 2010? We did, but not Reuters.

Doomsday superstitions seem to fulfill a basic psychological need. On the surface, the thought that God or global warming will destroy the world within our lifetimes is horrifying. But all of us are doomed; within a matter of decades, every person alive will experience the end of his own world. A belief in the hereafter makes the thought of death less terrifying. But so does a disbelief in the here, after. If the world is to end with us--if there is no life for anyone after our death--we are not so insignificant after all.

To reject traditional religion is not, as the American Atheists might have it, to transform oneself into a perfectly rational being. Nonbelievers are no less susceptible to doomsday cults than believers are; Harold Camping is merely the Christian Al Gore. But because secular doomsday cultism has a scientific gloss, journalists like our friends at Reuters treat it as if it were real science. So, too, do some scientists. It may be that the decline of religion made this corruption of science inevitable. [The Wall Street Journal5/23/11]

Limbaugh: "The Global Warming People" Are "Almost Identical" To Rapture Believers. On the May 20 edition of his radio show, Rush Limbaugh described Camping's predictions about the rapture and stated: "This is a dead-ringer for the global warming movement. This is exactly how these people are portraying it -- end of the world, we're destroying the planet. Sounds a lot like the global warming warnings that we've gotten over the last 20 years." He later stated that "even though the global warming people claim not to have a religion," "these comparisons are fascinating -- global warming and these end-of-the-Earth guys. It's almost identical." [Premiere Radio Networks, The Rush Limbaugh Show5/20/11]

Right-Wing Media Have Previously Smeared The Scientific Consensus On Global Warming As A "Cult"

Wash. Times: "Belief In Global Warming" Is "A Form Of Cultism." The Washington Times asserted in a December 4, 2009, editorial: "Belief in global warming had long had a tinge of theology about it, a form of cultism that adherents and defenders elevated to a holy crusade." The editorial further stated: "The veil has been pierced, the myth revealed, the scales have fallen from the people's eyes. The pagan priests are fleeing the temple, their sacred idols are being pulled down, their holy works renounced. Their god, finally, is dead." [Media Matters12/9/09]

Malkin: "[C]limate Change Cult" Enabled By Mainstream Media. Fox News contributor Michelle Malkin stated during the December 3, 2009, edition of Fox & Friends, "[M]ost of the mainstream media have been the official enablers of the climate change cult." Malkin further stated that Energy Secretary Steven Chu "compared Americans who challenged a lot of this cult mentality about global warming and climate change to unruly teenagers." [Media Matters12/9/09]

IBD: Global Warming Science "Has Taken On All The Trappings Of A Cult." Investor's Business Daily stated in a December 2, 2009, editorial that "[w]hat has been passed off as climate science has taken on all the trappings of a cult." The editorial also asserted: "As the high priests of what Czech President Vaclav Klaus has called a 'religion' prepare their pilgrimage to worship the earth goddess Gaia in Copenhagen, complete with humanity being sacrificed, the heresy of climate truth is finally being heard." [Media Matters12/9/09]

Coulter: "The Global Warming Cultists Want Us All Dead." Ann Coulter wrote on December 2, 2009, that the scientists at the Climate Research Unit (CRU) at the University of East Anglia were "cult members" who "plotted to get editors ousted and the publications discredited." Coulter added, "Until now, the global warming cult's sole argument has been to demand that everyone shut up in response to the 'scientific consensus' that human activity was causing global warming." Coulter further wrote:

Even if the Earth were warming -- which apparently it is not -- the idea that humans using energy-efficient light bulbs would alter the temperature of the globe is approximately as plausible as the Aztecs' belief that they were required to wrench the beating heart out of living, breathing humans in order to keep the sun on its path.

Sadly, the "human sacrifice deniers" lost the argument to Aztec CRU scientists, who explained that there was a "scientific consensus" on the benefits of ritual murder.

But at least the Aztecs only slaughtered tens of thousands of humans in the name of "climate change." The global warming cultists want us all dead. [Media Matters12/9/09]

American Spectator: "[T]he Cultist Genuflect Reverently Before Their Idol, Science." In a November 28, 2009, post on the American Spectator blog titled, "The Temple Cult of Scientism," Robert Stacy McCain wrote: "The High Priests perform their statistical rituals and the cultists genuflect reverently before their idol, Science. And it's all very impressive until the truth is discovered." [Media Matters12/9/09]

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