Irony Deficient: WaPo 'On Faith' Frets About Climate Change

April 28th, 2010 2:51 PM

“A warming planet is just the tip of the iceberg, the warning light on the dashboard,” according to the Washington Post’s On Faith Guest Voices, Katharine Hayhoe. In her April 27 article, “Not Red, Not Blue, Just Green,” Hayhoe fretted about supposed climate change and attempted to use religion as a means to take action against global warming.

Hayhoe, a professor at Texas Tech and climate scientist, continued to sound the alarm and warned that global warming is only a “relatively small warning.” She described how, “Climate change is already altering the character of the places we know and love. It will continue to change in the future from what we have already done.”

But it didn’t just stop there. She resorted to a typical liberal claim and stated, “Climate change threatens our notions of stability and security. Things we did in the past, we can no longer do; but we are uncertain how to proceed into the future. To many of us, this makes us afraid.”

What exactly was done in the past, but we can’t do now, was unclear.

Perhaps Hayhoe, however, has been too busy worrying about climate change to realize there have been recent disputes surrounding it. The ClimateGate scandal, for example, erupted when e-mails from scientists at the University of East Anglica’s Climatic Research Unit emerged that actually doubted global warming.

On the same day as Hayhoe’s column, ClimateDepot’s Marc Morano appeared on Fox News to discuss how scientist Michael Mann, famous for the “hockey stick graph,” did not release data from tree rings that showed temperatures are falling. Morano stated, “But what he failed to do, he compared apples and oranges.”

Despite long-running criticism of environmentalism as a secular religion, Hayhoe also attempted to tie in actual religion as a call for action. She quoted Corinthians 10:23, in which the Apostle Paul stated, “Everything is permissible, but not everything is beneficial.” Using that verse, she warned there are “serious risks” if we do not change our actions.

 Hayhoe also pointed out that we are supposed to, “love our neighbors as ourselves.” To her, that means, “Today, many of our global neighbors are already facing the reality of climate change.” We should therefore “express God’s love to our neighbors in crisis by recognizing our common spiritual and physical heritage.”

Even though Hayhoe wrote, “we can take an honest look at the facts” she clearly failed to do so.