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Calls to accept catastrophic “global warming” appeared in trouble this year, as Al Gore’s propaganda film, An Inconvenient Truth, received eleven - eleven! - crosses by a British judge. Yet, the babbling of socialist elites continues: they’re now willing that the far-left’s “climate porn” will avoid scrutiny. Or dodge accountability.

Climate crusaders enjoy the spotlight. For one thing, they view themselves as “enlightened” beings and love to hand politically correct awards to each other, often for the cameras. Yet, many live (or spend a good deal of time) in energy-hungry pads, with swimming pools, and like to drink imported bottles of water.

Sadly too, special interests, rather than objective reporters, hold the most critical positions in the elite media. Thus, reporting for “Sunday Life” (part of The Sunday Age), Carmella Ferraro wrote in July of this year: “As global warming and resource depletion become everyday realities through drought, record temperatures, crop failure and rising sea levels, many of us are striving for an environmentally friendly lifestyle.” Though, consumer habits paint a different picture.

But rather than focusing on the The Age’s questionable adverts (“Fly Emirates”, “The all-new Mitsubishi Outlander is more versatile”, “Volkswagen Touareg. Be prepared for anything”, “Qantas: Holidays … Waikiki Sand Villa from $1780”) the evangelical Ferraro, points to attention-starved do-gooders and their “green lifestyles” because “small actions do matter”.

“The planet’s frying,” reasoned Glenda Lindsay, 52, a Melbourne resident. Yet, it was not “hot enough” for The Age to drop the corporate advertisers.

Al Gore, who is known for his incendiary comments, never disappoints his fawning disciples either. Forget snow in the Sahara. Good news is bad news. So treasured are green spiritual myths, that they often nurture statistically dubious rants about drowning polar bears, apocalyptic sea rise tales, and even “truth force” mystics.

Other number crunchers are not so sure about the polar bears. For instance Bjorn Lomborg, a statistician, tackles this issue in Cool It: The Skeptical Environmentalist’s Guide to Global Warming. He reveals that:

The best-studied polar bear population lives on the western coast of Hudson Bay. That its population has declined 17 percent, from 1,200 in 1987 to under 950 in 2004, has gotten much press. Not mentioned, though, is that since 1981 the population had soared from just 500, thus eradicating any claim of a decline. Moreover, nowhere in the news coverage is it mentioned that 300 to 500 bears are shot each year, with 49 shot on the west coast of Hudson Bay.

Of course.

Moreover, to the chagrin of media-assisted hysterics everywhere, the few decreasing bear populations live in regions were temperatures have been dropping for some time, whereas we’re seeing the “endangered species’” numbers rise in warmer areas.

Intriguingly, the environmentalist’s belief system is bolstered by restraining orders on questioners, but pagan beliefs are fine. Thus TIME (May 28, 2007), a leftwing magazine, matter-of-factly states that Al Gore “draws from a number of faiths, from philosophy and self-help and poetry and from Gandhi’s concept of truth force, the idea that people have an innate ability to recognize the most powerful truths”.

In summary, it should be noted that green spirituality - the worldview supporting catastrophic climate change - continually preaches three lines:

• the world is always burning or freezing;
• there is a cultic consensus, so one must never challenge “polar bear” studies and the like; and
• the media must never - never! - remind readers of their demonstrably false “global cooling” and “global warming” reports. (Some examples below)

1912: October 7, “Fifth Ice Age Is on the Way” (Los Angeles Times)

1923: “Scientists Says Arctic Ice Will Wipe Out Canada” (Chicago Tribune)

1924: September 18, “Mac Millian Reports Signs of New Ice Age” (New York Times)

1933: March 27, “America in Longest Warm Spell Since 1776; Temperature Line Records a 25-Year Rise” (New York Times)

1952: August 10, “Our Changing Climate … the world has been getting warmer in the last half century” (New York Times)

1954: “Climate - the Heat May be Off … Despite all you may have read, heard or imagined, it’s been growing cooler - not warmer since the Thirties” (Fortune)

1958: September, “The Coming Ice Age” (Harper’s)

1959: February 15, “A Warmer Earth Evident At Poles” (New York Times)

1969: February 20, “Expert Says Arctic Ocean Will Soon Be Open Sea” (New York Times)

1970: April 22, “Colder Winters Held Dawn of New Ice Age” (Washington Post)

1975: “The Ice Age Cometh” (Science News)

2007: February 10, “From Bad to Worse: Earth’s Warming to Accelerate” (Science News)

2007: April 9, “Global Warming: What Now? Our feverish planet badly needs a cure …” (TIME)

2007: May 28, “The Brooding Omnipresence of Global Warming” (Harper’s)

I know. This is dangerously religious. In 1958, Betty Friedman was preparing my grandparents for the coming Ice Age. Today? “The planet’s frying” says Glenda.

Indeed, if the world is burning, then Cate Blanchett, the Australian Conservation Foundation’s new face, might wish to ponder the irony of those frequent flyer miles. Or - and I hate to sound mischievous - cease hawking tickets for high-energy cinema chains.

Ben-Peter Terpstra is a freelance writer. His blog pizzatraysandbeerbottles is here.