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The Daily Dish - 2006-2011 archives for The Daily Dish, featuring Andrew Sullivan

Climate Christianism

By The Daily Dish
Feb 17 2009, 6:04 AM ET

Mark Kleiman sees a connection:

One possible reason that global-warming denialism is more prevalent in the U.S. than elsewhere is that more Americans than Europeans are Biblical literalists. That involves believing that all biologists and paleontologists are either massively incompetent or deliberately trying to mislead the public about the central facts of their disciplines. [The alternative theory, held by some, is that the entire fossil record is a trick by Satan, intended to deceive those whose faith isn't firm.] I haven't seen any data on the overlap between global-warming denialism and creationism, but thinking about Sarah Palin and her fans you'd have to guess at a strong correlation between the two beliefs.

Then there's simple extreme skepticism, a la George Will. And skepticism is perfectly defensible given the short time we've had for accurate measurements. But after a while, as the data accumulates about the fact of climate change and its expotential upward curve, the skepticism is surely best directed toward proposed solutions.



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