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Washington Post Op-Ed: It’s time for conservatives to end the denial on climate change
Washington Post ^ | 06/26/2015 | Michael Gerson

Posted on 06/26/2015 8:49:52 AM PDT by SeekAndFind

Reducing Pope Francis’s encyclical “Laudato Si” to a white paper on global warming is, in George Weigel’s fitting analogy, “akin to reading ‘Moby Dick’ as if it were a treatise on the 19th-century New England whaling industry.” The whole spirit and story of the thing are missed.

The pope’s sprawling, ambitious statement — setting out a theory of nature and of the human person — will be profitably scrutinized for decades. Environmentalists who like some of Francis’s conclusions will find, if they sit quietly with the text rather than rummage through it for the politically relevant bits, that the pope is making a frontal assault on a technological and utilitarian worldview that treats creation as “raw material to be hammered into useful shape,” reduces humans to mere consumers and treats inconvenient people as so much refuse.

SNIP

Many conservative Republicans now deny the existence or danger of human-caused warming and routinely question the motives of scientists who speak up on the issue. For a conservative to stray from skepticism is regarded as ideological betrayal.

In a recent National Affairs essay, Jim Manzi and Peter Wehner provide an explanation: “The Republican position — either avowed ignorance or conspiracy theorizing — is ultimately unsustainable, but some still cling to it because they believe that accepting the premise that some climate change is occurring as a result of human action means accepting the conclusions of the most rabid left-wing climate activists. They fear, at least implicitly, that the politics of climate change is just a twisted road with a known destination . . . ceding yet another key economic sector to government control.”

This is the temptation of the ideologically intense on the left and right: Truth exists to serve the narrative rather than the narrative arising from truth.

(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...


TOPICS: Constitution/Conservatism; Culture/Society; News/Current Events
KEYWORDS: climatechange; conservatives; envirowhackos
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1 posted on 06/26/2015 8:49:52 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
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To: SeekAndFind

stop relying on facts and truth and join the dark side!!


2 posted on 06/26/2015 8:50:27 AM PDT by GeronL
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To: SeekAndFind

It’s [past] time for climate change fanatics to go f-— themselves.


3 posted on 06/26/2015 8:51:11 AM PDT by WayneS (Yeah, it's probably sarcasm...)
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To: SeekAndFind

How long can this be resisted? Every other liberal-socialist initiative has been embraced.


4 posted on 06/26/2015 8:52:14 AM PDT by Attention Surplus Disorder
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To: SeekAndFind

Eh, take it up with the SCOTUS, WaPo, I’m sure they’ll agree with you.


5 posted on 06/26/2015 8:52:35 AM PDT by NohSpinZone (First thing we do, let's kill all the lawyers)
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To: SeekAndFind

Just send it to the supreme court. They can tell us what to think.


6 posted on 06/26/2015 8:52:41 AM PDT by virgil (The evil that men do lives after them)
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To: SeekAndFind

This is it......the NEXT way for the ‘Supremes’ /Obama to control the masses.


7 posted on 06/26/2015 8:52:45 AM PDT by originalbuckeye (Not my circus, not my monkeys.......)
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To: GeronL

“For a conservative to stray from skepticism is regarded as ideological betrayal.”

I thought it was the other way around with libtards. Rightwingers just don’t believe in fairy tales or lies that started from glow-bull warming THEN changing the new lie and BS to “climate change” because the first lie wasn;t working..


8 posted on 06/26/2015 8:53:04 AM PDT by max americana (fired liberals in our company last election, and I laughed while they cried (true story))
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To: SeekAndFind

I trust the Maunder Minimum more than I trust a pinhead speechwriter.


9 posted on 06/26/2015 8:53:35 AM PDT by Night Hides Not (Remember the Alamo! Remember Goliad! Remember Mississippi! My vote is going to Cruz.)
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To: SeekAndFind

this POS was Dubya`s speechwriter from 01 to 06


10 posted on 06/26/2015 8:53:54 AM PDT by advertising guy ( panties - not the best thing on earth, but next to it .)
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To: max americana

bump


11 posted on 06/26/2015 8:54:13 AM PDT by GeronL
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To: SeekAndFind
I don't deny it, I'll just call it what it is; Natural Climate Cycles.

12 posted on 06/26/2015 8:54:14 AM PDT by BitWielder1 (I'd rather have Unequal Wealth than Equal Poverty.)
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To: SeekAndFind

How ‘supremely’ arrogant of mere humans to suggest they can control the WEATHER! It’s not nice or smart to fool with Mother Nature! But most of us see through this......it is just another way to accelerate the bankrupcty of the late, great USA, now known as the USSA.


13 posted on 06/26/2015 8:54:55 AM PDT by originalbuckeye (Not my circus, not my monkeys.......)
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To: SeekAndFind

The left does not care about “climate change” or minorities, or women, or gays or anything else, this is all one of the many fronts to push their political agenda forward.


14 posted on 06/26/2015 8:55:13 AM PDT by GeronL
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To: SeekAndFind
Many conservative Republicans now deny the existence or danger of human-caused warming and routinely question the motives of scientists who speak up on the issue. For a conservative to stray from skepticism is regarded as ideological betrayal.

Effing crackheads. Skeptics are far more a voice in the wilderness than the Kool-Aid imbibers. You can get paid handsomely and not publicly pilloried if you'll only parrot the clap-trap. If they're going by what takes the most courage to say, AGW is definitely a pile of crap.

15 posted on 06/26/2015 8:55:36 AM PDT by Still Thinking (Freedom is NOT a loophole!)
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To: NohSpinZone
Eh, take it up with the SCOTUS

Already a done deal. The Hon. Justice Kennedy, remarkably enough, joined the progressives to find that the EPA has broad powers to regulate carbon dioxide under the Clean Air Act, even though carbon dioxide is not a pollutant. Justice Kennedy, the gift that keeps giving.

16 posted on 06/26/2015 8:56:21 AM PDT by mojito (Zero, our Nero.)
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To: SeekAndFind

Will anyone break it to the Pope that when his usefulness to the Marxists is over, they’ll persecute and get rid of him as well?

Sad that I have to remind the Pontiff of this, but you’ll never go wrong obeying God, and you’ll never go right disobeying Him either.

I suggest you start to read and heed the Holy Bible Pope Francis. You’re going to be held to a higher standard than the rank-and-file.


17 posted on 06/26/2015 8:57:11 AM PDT by Paulie (America without Christianity is like a Chemistry book without the periodic table.)
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To: SeekAndFind

End it? In your dreams!


18 posted on 06/26/2015 8:57:18 AM PDT by Socon-Econ
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To: Attention Surplus Disorder
How long can this be resisted?

Speaking entirely for myself, until the grave.

I will never, ever, be found at a queer "wedding", or even acknowledge such a thing.
I will never, ever, believe that a naturally exhaled gas is a dangerous substance; it was only for the money and control factor that it was ever deemed such.

If the "climate" is "changing", it's a natural occurrence.

19 posted on 06/26/2015 8:57:58 AM PDT by grobdriver (Where is Wilson Blair when you need him?)
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To: max americana

20 posted on 06/26/2015 9:00:16 AM PDT by PROCON (CRUZing into 2016 with Ted.)
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