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Who's paying them? Who? It must be big oil, I tell ya...otherwise, what self-respecting scientist would dare go against the all-knowing, all-powerful Goracle?

I don't think anyone can stop the train now. It's built up too much steam.

Perhaps it's the fatalism induced by living through the formation of the EUSSR, but I personally feel it's beyond the stage of trying to stop what's happening. I feel much like a pagan living in Rome, watching the churches go up and the hordes of monks surging through the streets pulling down shrines, and thinking "this is crazy", how could a religion of hated foreigners, slaves and criminals become so powerful?", and watching the bureaucracy and the court christianise, bit by bit, and then the Emperor...

Historically, the christianising of Rome was unstoppable once it began. Whether that was a good or a bad thing is not relevant. The process took on a momentum of its own, and that was that for the pagans. We're seeing something similar now.

The lesson is, you don't need to gain the majority support of the populace to take over a civilisation. Neither do you need to win the debate. You just need to spread through the institutions and the elites, a step at a time. When an institution stands in your way, do an end run around it; diminish it, set up something else that draws the power from it until it no longer matters. This for instance is the purpose of the transnational bodies. The Roman Christians set up churches, accumulated lands, created parallel institutions and filled a great treasury; in this current takeover the NGOs and charities and foundations fill this role.

The pagans protested, complained, watched their temples thrown down but could mount no worthy defence. It was already too late. A pagan petition to the Senate begging for the retention of old religious traditions could achieve nothing, however worthy its signatories. The power had already shifted too far.

The pagans were swept aside. Rome fell.

I appreciate that christian readers might not like the above comment, but I find the analogy striking, and have done for some time.

Mind you, it may prove interesting if some of the solar scientists are correct and we're about to plunge into a little ice age again, hehe.

It shouldn't be abandoned, people should know what we are doing to our own enviroment and try to take a stand and keep this world clean. If people think it's a hoax well thats your opinion and I don't want to offened you but we should be worried about what we do to our world and try to help it!

Listen & Learn

Poor widdle pwanet.

Help yourself to a big heaping bowl of professional help.

The Great Prophet of Moonbattiness has spoken: America is his enemy!

http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1694259,00.html

Ian – A very interesting analogy, striking in the sense that environmentalism continues to adopt the mantle of religion as it opportunistically fills the spiritual vacuum of the post-Christian secular west. There are some differences that may provide some hope for a better outcome. Christianity was (and is) underpinned by a belief in the divine birth and resurrection of Jesus. For Christians, these beliefs are matters of faith, "facts" that are not subject to debate. While global warming aspires to faith status by resting on "facts not subject to debate", these beliefs have been established under the doctrine of science and can maintain their validity only if they can hold up under the necessary scrutiny. Science is not based on eternal truths; science is based on provable facts. Global warming, the latest weapon of Global Moonbattery, is a faithless political corruption of science. Resting the case for Enviro-Marxism on disprovable facts is a serious mistake by the establishment Left.

Also, Christianity became established from the bottom up, and was not embraced by the elites until it had reached the tipping point you described. Moonbattery is being imposed from the top down, and lacks the power of a movement that resonates with people's inherent understanding of the natural rights of man.

I appreciate that christian readers might not like the above comment, but I find the analogy striking, and have done for some time.

Hehe, and here I was thinking we need our equivalent of Martin Luther to nail that document to the doorways of the United Nations. The fact that Drs. McKittrick, Dyson and Gray are on there should be case enough for people to turn their heads. I'm surprised that Dr. Paul Reiter didn't sign that, though I'm sure he's so disgusted with the IPCC that he decided to simply abstain from anything to do with them.

Stupid, stupid America--

US gives in to agree 'historic' Bali climate deal

why oh why didn't you tell this pathetic shower of Communists to p*ss off?

Ian, I found that a very interesting analogy, which is now lodged in my brain for further pondering.

I suspect, in the end, global warming will not live up to the inevitability and ubiquity of Rome's Christianization. There are too many interests who stand to lose too much if this global warming train continues going off the rails. Global business, pretty much every citizen of developed countries, even moreso the citizens of the BRIC and other rapidly-developing countries, etc. I suspect what's happened is, pro-global warming politicians are riffing and thriving off the support of "the people" and treating themselves to taxpayer paid vacations in Bali, etc. Anti-global warming politicians see that many, many, many people have been mind-f***ked by the UN, media, European elites, etc., and these politicians are trying to go with the flow and stay out of the crosshairs for now, to mix metaphors a bit. Republicans, Bush, etc. - they do not want to be on record or perceived as wanting to destroy the poor little planet on behalf of Halliburton, so they're in a defensive stance, keeping their heads down. Meanwhile, Eurocrats are enjoying and savoring the artificial split that's been created between the big bad Americans and all the animal and plant lovers worldwide who would just save the planet and create World Peas if the Americans would just stop ruining everthing.

But....all that said, there are lots of sane people in the world, and many powerful interests that are waiting for the right moment to get back into the debate after public fervor has cooled a bit, after Al Gore's put his prize on the shelf, and after the screetchy kids on various campuses, egged on by the UN and NGO's, have gone back to class, gotten wasted, and found other ways to occupy their time. Global warming, in the end, is not going to be the Pagans of Rome. It'll look much more like Global Cooling in the 1970's. Yet another apocalyptic panic frenzy, tossed in the garbage just as soon as people get tired of it or find something else to occupy their need for drama.

But, I still find your historical analogy fascinating and thought-provoking, and quite applicable in some other areas, such as the reemergence of antisemitism and the tidal wave of world animoscity toward Israel and the Jews. We on the right-wing blogs can complain about it all we want, and implore the world to wake up before it's too late, but antisemitism is starting to have the feel of historical inevitability and run-away momentum that fits well with your Pagan Rome analogy.

~mega

Ian, I am a Christian. I don't pretend to speak for all Christians (unlike the IPCC's claim to speak for all science, Mother Gaia and the Children), but I will tell you that I am not in the least offended by your analogy.

Thanks for the positive replies :) My analogy wasn't a discussion of whether the christian takeover of Rome was a good thing or not in the long run (one can reasonably argue it can, since had it not happened the western world as we know it would never have existed).

Beef is right that the method is somewhat different- our current crisis is very much an "elite project".

Mega, what bothers me is that AGW is just one major front in a broader campaign; the progressive project to return our world to a stratified oligarchical society and so it's not just about AGW succeeding or failing. We're enmeshed in a grand undertaking that has been in the making for over a century. Europe has effectively fallen to it entirely, the rest of the West isn't far behind. Only America seems to have what it takes to combat it- an organised "right" wing and even you guys are taking to steps back for every step forward.

But anyway I think the creeping takeover analogy has some validity and my more personal point; what it must have felt like to be a pagan watching your society changed beneath you, so to speak; I think is very valid. Western populations currently are having things done to them which they simply haven't been asked about, and criticism of which produces a smackdown akin to witch hunting. I've spent a lot of time trying to study the underlying causes and currents in recent history but one feels one has only just scratched the surface. I could write volumes lol.

I think that Edward Gibbon in his Decline and Fall Of the Roman Empire was right when he suggested "what made it fall" (other than the observation that perhaps one should ask how it fell but how it managed to last so long). He saw Romans as losing their sense of "Roman-ness". They turned away from their civilisation, effectively. I fear that the rise of the Left (or whatever you want to call the termites gnawing at our foundations) may be a similar effect. As a whole, our civilisation has lost faith in itself. We teach our children that our ancestors were nothing but evil imperialist slavers, we denounce every success (and there are so many to denounce!), we denounce the wealth and plenty and freedom of choice we have. Liberals and conservatives alike seem far too eager to believe they're living in a decadent Babylon without merit that deserves to perish. I consider myself a, um, "Westernist". I'm proud of western civilisation, of capitalism, of wealth, of consumer choice, of womens' rights, of democratic secular government, of religious freedom; I believe that a dose of hedonism is a good thing and loathe those who'd detonate bombs in nightclubs because they hate women in short skirts dancing and having a drink. I feel like a minority of one, sometimes.

If we can't learn to be proud of all that stuff again, from our grand cathedrals to our shops full of stuff to our girls in bikinis, we're doomed. As I said, I think that loss of faith in self brought down Rome, and it scares me that we're doing the same.

*clambers down off soapbox and quaffs a beer while it's still legal*

I'm also amazed at how may grammatical and spelling errors I seem to make when I post here. I'm normaly qwite good at riting. Strange :)

Ian - The seeming ambivalence to the creeping takeover you reference is what Mark Steyn refers to a loss of “civilizational confidence” in the West, akin to perhaps the Romans loss of a sense of “Romaness”. I think that progressivism is merely an agent of destruction, and not a replacement ideology. (That role will probably be left to Islam).

Christianity was a movement that proved successful in a pragmatic sense in that it promoted a way of life that was superior (i.e. its adherents faired better than its non-adherents). Here’s Steyn just today (timely, yes?) on the founding narrative of Christianity, the birth of a child:

“On the one hand, what could be more powerless than a newborn babe? On the other, without a newborn babe, man is ultimately powerless. For, without new life, there can be no civilization, no society, no nothing. Even if it's superstitious mumbo-jumbo, the decision to root Christ's divinity in the miracle of His birth expresses a profound – and rational – truth about "eternal life" here on Earth.”

Contrast this will the profoundly anti-human basis of progressive Moonbattery, typified by a book from Professor David Benatar (again from Steyn’s column):

"Better Never to Have Been: The Harm of Coming into Existence." The author "argues for the 'anti-natal' view – that it is always wrong to have children … . Anti-natalism also implies that it would be better if humanity became extinct."

This is the voice of a death cult. People who choose this way choose their own extinction. Progressivism is not merely the symptom of a civilization that has lost its way; it is a malevolent infection that will die with its host.

I'm proud of bikinis and moon rockets, and Hemi Cudas and F-35's, and football and Skynyrd, and I need another beer.

Pam:

"Historically, the christianising of Rome was unstoppable once it began."

It is useful to remember that the Christianizing was centered more in Byzantium (Constantinople) -- only later to return to Rome and the West hundreds of years later.

While there are definite negatives to both religious and secular political systems, there are also positives.

Alas, the human species can't seem to find its way through these various schemes of ordering society without mucking things up -- often with the belief of doing good.

The comment on "better never to have been" is an echo of the ancient Greek saying, "Best never to have been born, second best to die yount." The point was that life was brutal and harsh.

This ancient Greek saying is not what today's anti-natalists may have in mind -- that humanity may be better off as an extinct species.

Too much data to contend with. I think we need a politician to simplify it for us ;->>

Be well,
Joe