Climate change is scientific fact, not a religion in which you can believe or not

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My  layman’s familiarity with the science of man-made global warming has made me inclined to answer in the affirmative when I’m asked if I “believe in climate change.” 
But certain facts of the matter suggest that such an answer is open to misinterpretation. 
For starters, the term “climate change” is perhaps misleading. It doesn’t go for far enough. It can too easily be confused with climate change in a general sense. Right-wingers, for example, are happy to point out that we’ve always had climate change. For our purposes here, then, a more correct term is one which makes clear that we’re talking about the kind of troubling climate change occasioned in recent years and decades by anthropogenic global warming. 
And then there’s the issue of “belief” in climate change. 
Rebecca Leber of the New Republic addresses it HERE
Last week, Environmental Protection Agency chief Gina McCarthy made little impression on Republican senators at an Environment and Public Works hearing, where she said, “Climate change is not a religion. It is not a belief system. It’s a science fact.” She would have been better off aiming her remarks at a different audienceanyone who says he or she “believes” in climate change… 
Conservatives have long drawn comparisons between climate change science and a fervent religion. A 2013 National Review column articulated the parallels thus: “Religion has ritual. Global-warming alarmism has recycling and Earth Day celebrations. Some religions persecute heretics. Some global-warming alarmists identify ‘denialists’ and liken them to Holocaust deniers.”  
Their arguments work best when they can convince the public the issue is a debate between ideologies, rather than about scientific observation. By playing into the conservative trope and conflating science with faith, climate change communicators hurt their own cause. 
(Snip) 
Sometimes it’s okay to talk about what people believe when it comes to climate change. It’s fair to say someone believes in an argument about how society can address the problem: One person might think pollution warrants a specific course of action, such as government investment in clean energy; another might say the emphasis should be on energy efficiency; and yet another might say fossil fuels are worth the consequences, because we will adapt. Some arguments carry more weight than others, but at least it’s a debate that can stand on agreed-upon fact.
  

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