It is no coincidence that man-made global warming, or climate change, or whatever it's called this week, got very popular as an issue just as the Soviet Union fell.  It is the top-down centralized government's last best hope of controlling the masses.  And like other forms of socialist totalitarian worldviews, it is a religion as well.

Man-made global warming is an earth-worshiping religion.  The essential feature of any religion is that its pronouncements are to be accepted on faith, as opposed to hard evidence.  And as with most religions, it is susceptible to the earthly temptations of money, power, politics, arrogance, and deceit.

Global warmists have an unshakable faith that man-made carbon emissions will produce a hotter climate, causing natural disasters.  Their insistence that we can be absolutely certain that this will come to pass is based not on science, but on faith. 

All the trappings of religion are here:

• Original sin: Mankind is responsible for the prophesied disasters, especially those of us who live in suburbs and drive our SUVs to strip malls and chain restaurants.

• The need for atonement and repentance: We must impose a carbon tax or cap-and-trade system, which will raise the cost of everything and stunt economic growth.

• Rituals: We must observe Earth Day, and we must recycle.

• Indulgences: Private jet-fliers like Al Gore and sitcom heiress Laurie David can buy carbon offsets to compensate for their carbon-emitting sins.

• Prophecy and faith in things unseen: Advocates say we must act now before it is too late.

Believers in this religion have flocked to conferences in Durban, Rio de Janeiro, Kyoto, and Copenhagen, and the global warming clergy is preaching apocalyptic disaster.  Rich countries must come up with $100 billion each year to help poor countries cope with the effects of climate change.  This is essential because in 2017, we are told, global warming becomes "catastrophic and irreversible."

Even President Barack Hussein Obama has gotten into this religion.  In November, 2008, he said, "Now is the time to confront this [global warming] challenge once and for all.  Delay is no longer an option. Denial is no longer an acceptable response."  On December 8, 2011, in Durban, South Africa, Todd Stern, White House Special Envoy for Climate Change, said, "...it's nonsense to suggest that what we are doing is proposing a kind of hiatus in dealing with climate change until after 2020.

Under (what passes for) Obama's leadership, the U.S. has engaged the international community to meet the climate change challenge through a number of (what Obama says are) important venues and policies:

• The U.S. is cataloging greenhouse gas emissions from the largest sources -- an important initial step toward measurable reductions in carbon emissions, which will reduce air pollution and protect the health and welfare of the American people.

• An Interagency Climate Change Adaptation Task Force has created recommendations for how Federal agency policies and programs can better prepare the United States to address the risks associated with a changing climate.

• The U.S. Global Change Research Program (USGCRP), a collaborative effort involving thirteen federal agencies to evaluate the current and future impacts of climate change, informs policy-makers and the public about scientific findings, and investigate effective ways to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

• The Clean Energy Ministerial, announced by Obama and the Leaders of the Major Economies Forum on Energy and Climate, and led by Energy Secretary Steven Chu, has made progress towards its goal of driving transformational low-carbon, climate-friendly technologies.

• The U.S. launched the Climate and Clean Air Coalition to Reduce Short-Lived Climate Pollution, a new global initiative to make rapid progress on climate change and air quality by reducing pollutants that are "short-lived" in the atmosphere, which accounts for one-third of current global warming.

And the MSM howls that we must maintain a "separation of church and state."  How humorous.

Global warming is harsh toward skeptics, heretics, and other "deniers."  One of the most dangerous features of the global warming religion is its level of intimidation of the heretics, the non-believers.  For example, former Vice President Al Gore called skeptics "global warming deniers."  Many climatologists have been intimidated into silence, or have had calls to punish them go out.

There is much at stake in getting people to believe in the global warming religion -- so much so that some scientists, using government grants, are fraudulently manipulating climate data and engaging in criminal activity, as revealed in what has been called "Climategate" or "Fakegate."  Disclosure of the Climategate e-mails in November 2009 showed how the global warming clergy was willing to distort evidence and suppress dissenting views in the interest of the faith.

The idea that we can be so certain of climate change 70 to 90 years from now that we must inflict serious economic damage on ourselves in the present day is causing the heretics, the non-believers, the unfaithful to have another look at the global warming religion.

Most major religions are wise enough to avoid predicting the exact date when the world will end, but not so the global warming religion.  What will happen when global warming turns out to be neither catastrophic nor irreversible in 2017?

H.L. Mencken (1880-1956) once said, "The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed - and hence clamorous to be led to safety - by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary."  Global warmists cannot produce believable or sustainable hobgoblins with science, so they must turn to religion.

Dr. Beatty earned a Ph.D. in quantitative management and statistics from Florida State University.  He was a (very conservative) professor of quantitative management specializing in using statistics to assist/support decision-making.  He has been a consultant to many small businesses and is now retired.  Dr. Beatty is a veteran who served in the U.S. Army for 22 years.  He blogs at rwno.limewebs.com.