Why are we reviewing a film that came out in 2012? Well, check out this Associated Press headline from October 9, 2013.
"Study: Temperatures go off the charts around 2047"[1]
We're doomed, say the Global Warming-er, Climate Change-scientists. Unless governments "do something before it is too late," the jig is up. We're gonna fry.
Although Global Warming has seen much better days in the polls, Big Government and Big Science, and their parrots in the media, just can't bear to give it up. No matter how many times the Warmists get caught lying and cheating, they refuse to pack it in.
It may be that someone in your family or among your circle of friends won't pack it in, either. Maybe you'd very much like to know how to answer this alarmist clatter. Or maybe you'd just like to know the truth, already. Either way, An Inconsistent Truth is a film for you. And you can see it on YouTube at your own convenience ( http://www.youtube.com/user/AnInconsistentTruth ).
The Argument
Phil Valentine, a nationally-syndicated talk radio host, musters telling arguments against Global Warming doctrine as preached by its most lionized evangelist, former Vice President Al Gore, who has amassed fabulous wealth in doing so. Valentine's humorous style offsets what might otherwise be a rather grim presentation.
The science is not "settled." There is no "consensus"-not that consensus has anything to do with science. The polar bears are not dying off, the ice caps are not melting away, the famous "hockey stick graph" is a complete fraud, and Warmists campaigning to have "deniers" treated as criminals is a sign of desperation, not a cogent argument. We needn't go into all the details here. Watch the movie.
Valentine has some fun along the way, trying over and over again to get an interview with Gore, who only talks to friendly interviewers who treat him as an oracle. We see Gore's mansion, we learn about the half a dozen other homes he has, and Valentine even follows him to a book signing-where still no probing questions are allowed. We never do get to talk to Gore, but Valentine's "man in the street" interviews are fun-and a little bit appalling, too.
Here's an exchange, for instance, that sums it all up.
Q: "Do you believe in Global Warming?"
A: [with enthusiasm] "Yes, I do!"
Q: "Why?"
A: [Grimaces. Looks all around, as if trying to find a teleprompter. Shuffles feet. Twitches. Giggles.] "Tee-hee-hee!"
People don't know why they believe in Global Warming; or else they're ashamed to admit that they believe in it because "scientists" or movie stars or politicians said it's so. This raises the question of what makes the public believe or disbelieve in anything. Perhaps some self-examination is in order.
Meanwhile, Back in the Real World ...
As I write this, it has just snowed in Cairo, Egypt, for the first time in a hundred years. Record low temperatures have been logged all over the world. This past summer, Global Warming enthusiasts took twenty-two yachts to the Canadian Arctic to sail what they expected to be a wide-open Northwest Passage. Their yachts got frozen in and they had to be rescued.[2] Meanwhile, Valentine shows us a front-page newspaper article from Kenya, in which a "scientist" warns that, owing to Global Warming, Kenya will "collapse in 40 hours." It didn't.
Time after time, we catch the Warmists lying. Valentine captures one of them on film admitting that he and his scientific colleagues decided they had to "emotionalize the issue"-that is, tell lies and wild exaggerations-"to get people to pay attention."
Lie after lie, tall tale after tall tale-why do they keep it up?
Because "Global Warming regulation is the road to global government," explains one of many dissenters interviewed by Valentine. "It's about control. If they control energy, they control the economy."
The Human Apocalypse
Even so, there's more to it than just a lot of dishonest people trying to become rich and powerful at everyone else's expense. The top dogs in the Global Warming movement are getting rich indeed-or I should say "richer." But there's something in it for the humblest believer.
We find out what it is in one of the satirical songs in the movie's sound track, with the line, "Fiction becomes a religion."
Bull's eye. Give that man a kewpie doll.
"[A]ccording to the mythology of science," R. J. Rushdoony wrote in 1967, "science can and will do all things."[3] Just a few years later, the world's smartest scientists laid it on the line in The Humanist Manifesto II:
"Using technology wisely, we can control our environment, conquer poverty, markedly reduce disease, extend our life-span, significantly modify our behavior, alter the course of human evolution and cultural development, unlock vast new powers, and provide humankind with unparalleled opportunity for achieving an abundant and meaningful life."[4]
Secular humanism is the prevailing religion of many scientists, politicians, and so-called "educators." It is a belief that man, through science, really can and will do all things. Having ruled out God and rejected the promise of eternal life, humanism offers a worldly substitute for salvation obtained by works of the flesh.
Hence the demonstrators in the movie shouting slogans and carrying signs with messages like "Save the Climate Now" and "Climate Justice," whatever such twaddle might mean. Maybe we can "Save the Climate" by imposing carbon taxes on top of all the other taxes people have to pay, taking away their light bulbs and cars, stopping technological and economic progress in the "undeveloped countries," going to Sheryl Crowe concerts, or eating tofu burgers. We can't all zip off to Davos in private jets to chin-wag with world leaders and movie stars; but even if all you do is pay the higher taxes and limit your use of toilet paper, you've done your bit. The secular utopia may not be achieved in your lifetime-first they've got to silence the deniers, and educate the masses not to believe in God-but you'll enjoy that warm glow that comes of knowing that you, personally, have sacrificed for The Planet, just like all those secular sages told you to do, and have brought that earthly paradise just a tiny bit closer to reality.
It's almost too asinine for words.
So we've got powerful and influential people pushing this for all they're worth, because they personally gain by it, and a lot of hapless, publicly-educated true believers who don't know any better, yoked to a bogus religion that presents a stark choice between a scientifically-attained Utopia and a Global Warming End Times vision of the terrible things that are going to happen unless the Warmists are allowed to rule the world ...
No wonder the confounded thing just will not go away.
Phil Valentine doesn't tell us how to get rid of "this cult of Global Warming," as he so insightfully describes it. Really-how do you answer fanatics who declare that Genghis Khan's mass killings "helped the planet"?
False religions grow powerful when the church, one way or another, grows weak. Over the past hundred and fifty years, churches in the Western world have found many ways of weakening themselves, resulting in a spiritual vacuum into which various false religions have rushed.
But how to revive the church is not the subject of this film, nor of this review.
[1] http://bigstory.ap.org/article/study-temperatures-go-charts-around-2047
[2] http://www.canadaka.net/forums/science-f47/north-west-passage-blocked-with-ice-yachts-caught-t106161.html
[3] R. J. Rushdoony, The Mythology of Science (Vallecito, CA: Ross House Books, 1995 ed), 123.
[4] http://americanhumanist.org/Humanism/Humanist_Manifesto_II
- Lee Duigon
Lee is the author of the Bell Mountain Series of novels and a contributing editor for our Faith for All of Life magazine. Lee provides commentary on cultural trends and relevant issues to Christians, along with providing cogent book and media reviews.
Lee has his own blog at www.leeduigon.com.