Some years ago my wife and I made presentations about the JFK assassination conspiracy nonsense at the national meeting of a group dedicated to exposing widely believed frauds (CSICOPS). Current events forcibly remind me of some material in my wife’s speech. She described and quoted from "the bible of [Kennedy assassination] true believer thought, Jim Marrs' best-selling book.

Crossfire:
Was the Oswald killed in Dallas the same Oswald born in New Orleans in 1939? Bizarre as it may sound, there is considerable evidence to suggest that the man killed by [Jack] Ruby was not the original Lee Harvey Oswald. [P. 546.]

[My wife continues] "In seven pages of the sustained innuendos which true believers confuse with evidence, Marrs suggests: a) that the body buried in Oswald's grave is not the real Oswald; and b) that the refusal by Texas officials to dig up Oswald's body and check his identity was part of the cover-up. Belatedly, Marrs admits that the body eventually was exhumed and absolutely confirmed as Oswald's. But Marrs doubts the expert identification, and he suggests that, if the body is Oswald's, the delay of the exhumation until 1981 (due to opposition from Oswald's family) allowed the conspirators to substitute Oswald's body for the ringer. However, none of this really impacts Marrs' bottom line: If the body in Oswald's grave is not Oswald's, he suggests this evidences a conspiracy. But if the body is Oswald's, this evidences -- Guess what? -- Yes, a conspiracy! [P. 553]"

Fast forward to 2010: Normally temperate areas of the nation are wrapped in almost unprecedented blizzard. The trend toward slightly higher world temperatures ended a decade ago and the decade since has seen no temperature increase. The bible of the global warming true believers, Al Gore’s book, turns out to be full of palpable errors. And scientists whom the British government is paying millions to do extended research on the issue turn out to have been suppressing and misrepresenting their data so their funding will continue.

But this does not prove anything or even suggest anything to global warming true believers. Rather it turns out to all be more proof of global warming. Indeed global warming true believers now claim that they predicted blizzards and horrible weather all along.

True believers nay rightly respond by asking, "who is Don Kates; is he a qualified climate scientist?" To which I must answer that I have no such scientific qualifications. But I do know a great deal about religion. From that perspective global warming looks a great deal more like religion – albeit a religion embraced by people who scorn conventional religion --than it looks like science:

Do scientists demand that other scientists who doubt their theories be fired? No, but that is

What global warming true believers not only demand but have brought about to deter any doubting scientist from expressing his doubts.

Do scientists suppress, misrepresent and/or destroy their results if those results cast doubt on their global warming theory? No, but that is what global warming true believers do.

I am reminded of something a lapsed 7^th Day Adventist once told me. Early in the history of the religion a group of its founders predicted that on a certain date in the early 1840s, Jesus Christ would return and the world would end.. The true believers gathered on that date only to be disappointed when it passed without either Jesus returning or the world coming to an end. Shocked, they returned to their Bibles where they discovered that they had miscalculated the date by about a year. So the true believers gathered on the new date. The fact that Jesus still did not return nor the world end did not faze them, however. Allegedly 7^th Day Adventist now celebrate the date(s) as religious holidays.

To take global warming hysteria seriously one must accept ALL of the following dubious propositions:

1. Temperature is seriously increasing.

The "evidence" for this is just computer projections whose accuracy is dependent on the accuracy of the data – which is questionable. We now have actual data – not mere projections -- which show not a rise in world temperatures for the last decade but a slight decrease. For global warming hysteria, the interpretation most favorable is that the slight cooling trend is just a cyclical variation from an overall warning trend. But a far more plausible possibility is that both slight global warming and cooling are phenomena that have been occurring naturally throughout human history – and that do not betoken any future disaster.

It bears emphasis that the actual climate data – not projections – revealing a cooling trend are part of all the data that was suppressed at the University of East Anglia – because revealing it would imperil the data-suppressors’ chances of future government funding for more studies on the supposed urgent crisis of global warming.

[NOTE: Yes, global warming hysteria reveals a truly startling and disturbing fact: It turns out that when scientists’ continued funding depends on it, they are just as capable of lying and faking and suppressing data as the politicians on whom they depend to finance them.]

2. Climate change is a disastrous thing.

Depending on how extreme it is, climate change could be a disastrous thing. But if global warming is very mild, it would have little or no appreciable effect. Even if it is fairly extreme it will bring benefits as well as harms. Alaska was once, and could be again, a place where Sarah Palin could be a surfboarder.

3. Global warming has been caused by human industry.

This is a mere speculation without any persuasive evidence whatever. Climate change, including disastrous change, is an established natural fact from eras millions of years ago when there was no human industry, nor were there any humans. Thus, for instance, while the dinosaurs may have been killed off by climate change, that change was NOT caused by dinosaur industrial production.

More important is the question whether ...

4. Climate change conceivably could be halted by a concerted world wide human effort.

Nobody knows whether this is true or false. If true, such a concerted effort would involve a truly massive effort that would disastrously disrupt economies. As to this the important question is whether...

5. The world is willing to endure the massive and socially disastrous changes necessary to radically decrease the human effects which some people SPECULATE may be causing global warming.

The four previous points are irrelevant because neither the Chinese nor the Indians nor any other third world nation is willing to do this. And by the estimates of the global warming hysterics themselves, no changes the first world makes will avert global warming if the massive negative effects of third world industry are not curbed.

So there is no point in even discussing this since the third world and its politicians are not willing to impoverish themselves in an effort to avert what they deem a mere bugaboo.

EPILOGUE: we should take note of the "reasoning" by which the global warming hysterics justify faking evidence and firing any scientist who advances doubts of their faith: global warming threatens global catastrophe so dire that any measure is justified which promotes belief in it, and retards doubt.

Well, if the danger is really so dire, why do we not just atom bomb India and China out of existence? Clearly, that is the only way we will get them to stop polluting the earth. Clearly, killing 2 billion people is justified if that is the only way we can preserve the earth’s billions and billions of other people.