It's an interesting subject.

Prof Frank Ferudi hit the nail on the head with this:

http://www.frankfuredi.com/index.php/site/article/3/

But that's only one branch of the doomsdayers. Why do we persist in thinking the end of the world is nigh, if not tomorrow, then certainly next year or in ten years time or 100? Notice the doomsday date is never 1000 years or 10,000 years - they wouldn't get buy in.

This bloke is so far gone, I think he may be actually certifiable.

True Hasbeen
In my view he's barely worth a response. This statement "And if we had direct democracy, polls suggest we would be investing in green energy." They do? If this is the case I think we'd need to look at how the poll question was framed. But it hardly matters what the truth is, with this guy.

Seems plausible enough to me, and well argued too.
The end-time Christians are of course mis-informed by the New York Times bestselling Left Behind series of "novels".
But then I am only a daft duck.
Then again there are completely daft nut cases like this chap and his "kingdom" warriors.
http://jerryboykin.com
Plus Google his name for further connections.
It is also interesting that the Raw Story website also featured an essay on the uktra daft Michelle Bachmann advocating "spiritual" warfare to impose "religious" values on the government.

Dear David,

This is probably one of the saddest articles I’ve read.

Sad because you are clearly passionate about your alarmism but have failed to grasp any form of reality on this subject. You are clearly a member of the unsubstantiated alarmism sect but fail to understand or even be aware of what changes have occurred in the last five years.

All I can do is point to the fact that whatever “science” you adhere to as the basis for your distress, it has evaporated.

As has been pointed out many times on OLO, your challenge is not about the science, it’s about why your science is no longer good enough to support your global response to your global problem? So there seems little point in banging on about it here.

It’s curious that the sceptics have been told we are flat earthers, deniers, low on intelligence and mentally ill and yet it is the might of your intellect and that of your fellow elites who have failed, odd that?

Why do you think the global CAGW response infrastructure has collapsed and what do you think should be done about it?

We have yet to receive any answers to these simple questions from one single warmer on OLO, so good luck and over to you.

Hi David,
On your numbers your strategy of trying to convert the masses to the truth of what you say is doomed - too many people believe in heaven and in God. As you say, many of them are fundamentalist ... even purposely ignoring any examination of the truth (a total contradiction to the message of Christ who said He was the Way, the Truth & the Life)

While I do agree with you that we face BIG problem, that is as far as I can go with you. Unfortunately you too are a fundamentalist in your own understanding of theism - you have the same fundamental view of God as the fundamentalists.

You say "theism is essentially the belief that some more powerful being is running the show." You reject this, as do I - but I have a Truth seeker's understanding of God, not the reactionary view you prefer.

An experience of love shows that love is not about control.

You also say that "theism is anti-democratic at its core." I would agree, but not for the fundamentalist reasons you present. There are Truth-filled reasons for seeing "democracy", even at its very best, as a deception, unjust, a false god in which to have faith.

I return to your strategy & to the the unviability of your fundamentalist declaration that "Jesus isn't coming back". A workable strategy would clearly need to bring as many theists (& athiests) on board as possible. To do so could not involve hiding your aggression towards theists - you would actually need a new understanding & presentation about the scientific truth that theists could respect & accept.

You are quite wrong to say that "the non-armageddonist theists have never found a logical solution to the problem of free will, either." I think you would need to put some effort into understanding this for yourself because it is a journey. If love is indeed The Way out of our fix as I believe, we can't get there by creating division.

Chris Baulman
@landrights4al

This article presents a very US-centric view of the world. Fundamentalists who take a literal view of Armageddon and the end of the world are a much smaller proportion of Christians here or in Europe, for example, than in the USA. And active Christians are a smaller proportion of the population.

If I extrapolate from my own acquaintances and OLO contributors (and I know this is probably not a representative same!) I’d guess that climate change sceptics are on balance more likely to be atheist/agnostic, and religious believers of various hues are more likely to support the idea the AGW is real. Runner is of course one clear exception, but s/he is not typical of Christian thought in my experience.

If religious fundamentalism explains human inaction on climate change, why are less religious societies also doing very little? Why is China now the world’s largest GHG emitter?

I agree with Chris, too, that David’s presumption that theists must believe in a string-pulling God does not do justice to the diversity and subtly of Christian though on free will and human agency.

More generally, though, I think this article demonstrates one of the main problems with both sides of the climate change debate – their need to ridicule, demean or dismiss those who disagree with them. So denialism/warmism is dismissed as a product of ideological/religious brainwashing, low intelligence, or corporate/interest group propaganda.

We might finally make some progress when both sides of the debate acknowledge that the people they disagree with are as intelligent, impartial, well-informed and socially responsible as they are.

Belief in AGW is a serious pathology.

AGW continues to exist because of zealots who exhibit this mental bifurcation where, on the one hand their blame of the disbelievers of AGW for not only not believeing but causing AGW is misanthropic, while on the other hand their assumption that they, as believers, have the power to control nature is delusional.

Sick stuff.

More references on the psycho-pathology of right-wing Christian politics as it is promoted and dramatized in the USA.
Two which are now ten years old

http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/1116
http://serendipity.li/wot/goetterdaemmerung.htm
Plus check out the essays by Loren Adams on TPJ Magazine
Also the work of Frank Schaeffer.
Frank is the son of Francis Schaeffer the writings/rantings of which have inspired the entirely toxic website Worldnet Daily which is as far off the wall as anything like balanced sanity that you could find. And the inspiration behind the really scary (totalitarian in its cultural implications) book Total Truth by Nancy Pearsey.

Apart from being a touch too U.S. oriented it is a good article, not scientifically based, but nevertheless a reasonable summation of real world opinions. Others may see it differently, but that is their right.

Cohenite, Pray tell, why is the Arctic ice cap melting.

David

'Nonetheless, among the things we should be doing right now is explaining to our neighbors that Jesus isn't coming back. '

With your idiotic rational David I know who I will believe. Your religion demonstrates great arrogrance.

Why we allow the destruction of our planet
David Swanson,
Because there are so many people brainwashed by those brainwashed who think they know best. The anti-abortion brigade, the civil libertarians i.e. criminal-lovers et al who are always opposing & even sabotaging any attempts by reasonable thinking people to put society on a better track.

"Cohenite, Pray tell, why is the Arctic ice cap melting."

Good, let's have a conversation about the dearth of evidence to support AGW beginning with every alarmist's favourite whipping boy, the Arctic.

The 2012 summer Arctic melt was the largest in the satellite era according to NASA:

http://www.nasa.gov/topics/earth/features/2012-seaicemin.html

Reading the fine print that melt was exacerbated by a large storm but NASA says in the past with thicker ice the storm effect would not have been so large.

The 2013 growth in Summer ice was the largest in the satellite era:

http://stevengoddard.files.wordpress.com/2013/02/screenhunter_175-feb-12-10-35.jpg

There is no doubt the Arctic ice extent was much less than today in the near geological past:

http://bprc.osu.edu/geo/publications/mckay_etal_CJES_08.pdf

It is also a fact that the rate of temperature increase in the Arctic was greater in the 1930's:

http://www.lanl.gov/source/orgs/ees/ees14/pdfs/09Chlylek.pd

Chylek and Folland are leading experts and attribute Arctic ice levels to Atlantic Multi-decadal Oscillation.

Another interesting theory is based on a polar oscillation, that is, when the Arctic is warm, the Antarctic is colder and vice-versa:

http://www.princeton.edu/~cmngroup/13_Science_Editors_Choice.pdf

Right now the Antarctic is the coldest it has been in the satellite era with its greatest extent of sea-ice.

AGW is not needed to explain the Arctic 'melting'.

Oh pish and tish, cohenite,

Let Andy "show" you what's happening with Arctic ice...(I'm sure you're a fan)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YgiMBxaL19M

And never let it be said that the leader of the free world isn't hard at work developing a strategy to take advantage of any more accessible resources on offer in that region.

http://m.whitehouse.gov/blog/2013/05/10/national-strategy-arctic-region-announced

Runner. Your lot has been waiting for 2000 years for Jesus to return. You will still be waiting for another 2000 years by which time perhaps the penny will have dropped and you will realize that your waiting is in vain. He isn't coming mate, get used to it.

David

VK3AUU

'Your lot has been waiting for 2000 years for Jesus to return. '

Yeah and Israels enemies have tried desperately for 2000 years to wipe out the Jews. As foretold clearly in Scripture they lose. The global warmist (formerly the ice agers) prophecies have proven to be nothing short of pathetic. As I stated in my last post, I know who never lied and prophecy after prophecy has come true including the arrogrance of the secularist.

You're hopeless Poirot; pure gullibility; 1979 was the highest Arctic sea ice level in the 20thC:

http://www.real-science.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/ScreenHunter_102-Mar.-03-07.04.jpg

Naturally ice levels have come down since then but they are still below levels in the near past.

I can't believe you believe this rot.

When they can produce NASA pictures spanning a couple of thousand years we might get somewhere. Why even a few brain scans of some gullibles would do the trick.

cohenite,

Regarding Arctic sea ice in the thirties:

http://climatecrocks.com/2013/04/11/pesky-reality-intrudes-in-denierville-again-danish-ice-maps-from-the-30s/comment-page-1/

"...the 1930's 'similar melt' is the second last dip on the graph, the first decline with modern observational data. This saw a return to 'normal' after a peak that had seen the greatest extents in 500 years."

Interesting to compare the "second last" dip on the graph to the "last" dip on the graph.

Poirot, the Kinnard paper which you link to [have you read it?] uses the same proxies as the earlier Kaufman paper:

http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/paleo/pubs/kaufman2009/

Those proxies were incorrectly used in Kaufman who also found "unprecedented" warming in the Arctic in the modern era. This common error is discussed by Steve McIntyre:

http://climateaudit.org/2009/09/03/kaufmann-and-upside-down-mann/

Put simply Kaufman and Kinnard misinterpret proxies for past temperature and ice extent conclusions based on temperature because they turn them upside down.

Poirot I linked to another paper above which shows the 'grow-back' of ice being the largest in the satellite era; how does that fit with Kinnard's thesis of unparalled melting?

For a better historical look at the Arctic ice levels Tony Brown has prepared an exhaustive list of papers, data and observations at Judith Curry:

http://judithcurry.com/2013/04/10/historic-variations-in-arctic-sea-ice-part-ii-1920-1950/

http://judithcurry.com/2013/04/10/historic-variations-in-arctic-sea-ice-part-ii-1920-1950/

cohenite,

Regarding "grow-back".

http://www.epa.gov/climatechange/science/indicators/snow-ice/sea-ice.html

"Evidence of the age of Arctic sea ice suggests an overall loss of multi-year ice. The proportion of sea ice five years or older has declined dramatically over the recorded time period from more than 30 percent in the 1980's to 4 percent in 2012. A growing percentage of sea ice is only one or two years old. This thinning of Arctic ice makes it more vulnerable to further melting.

http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/IOTD/view.php?id=77270

http://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/abs/10.1175/JCLI-D-11-00113.1

Did you have a peep at that piece from the White House blog on future mechanisms that may useful to exploit the melting Arctic?

http://m.whitehouse.gov/blog/2013/05/10/national-strategy-arctic-region-announced

Poirot,

You persist in banging on with your so called scientific links; the problem is that your science is no longer good enough for your own scientists.

When are you going to answer the questions? “Why do you think the global CAGW response infrastructure has collapsed and what do you think should be done about it”?

It’s not our science that has failed, it’s yours. It’s not our intellect that has failed it’s yours, it’s not our ideology that has failed, it’s yours. So what are you going to do about it?

Why should we be in anyway interested in your failed science? If you can’t answer the questions, shut up!

There are a number of sites which provide data on ice levels at the Arctic; Nansen is as good as any:

http://arctic-roos.org/observations/satellite-data/sea-ice/ice-area-and-extent-in-arctic

You will note winter levels have not changed much since the satellites came on board but summer melts have been consistently below the satellite average.

Winter levels are an indication of new ice whereas summer levels show the decline in old ice.

During the satellite period there has been a decline in old ice; but this 'old' ice was only established in 1978-1979, the highest level of Arctic ice during the 20thC:

http://www.real-science.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/ScreenHunter_102-Mar.-03-07.04.jpg

The graph shows the huge growth in ice from 1974 to 1979. Given this the concern about levels of ice in the satellite era seems a concoction.

I read the White House proposal; oil and Narwhal steaks are on the menu I guess.

spindoc,

What gives you the right to dictate whether or not someone on this forum comments?

Mind yer own beeswax...

(and I mean that in the nicest possible way)

cohenite,

If nothing much is changing in the Arctic, why the rush to organise pie slices by the White House?

"If nothing much is changing in the Arctic, why the rush to organise pie slices by the White House?"

The implication in your question being the White House inmates know what they are doing; how amusing you are Poirot.

Dear Poirot,

I do apologies, when I said “shut up” what I should mean to say was “shut up about it”

Meaning that you bang on with your scientific links to support CAGW but fail to recognize that those who need your “scientific links” are the people trying to get a new Kyoto, blow life into the ashes of the EU emissions trading market and arrest the 90% collapse in the global RENIXX renewable industry index.

Why on earth would you try to convince anyone that your science is valid when those who need and want desperately to use that science, tell you it is utter rubbish?

Last week in Bonne the high powered (sic), born again Kyoto committee met, and again walked away without any agreement.

It’s done Poirot; it really is a dead Parrot.

Unless of course you and your fellow CAGW travelers can offer some explanation as to why the entire global CAGW infrastructure has collapsed and what can be done about it?

If you can’t answer, then why don’t you keep a very low profile and reduce the risk of being seen as silly?

My dearest spindoc,

Humans are intelligent, adaptive, ingenious, prone to greed, myopia and selective ignorance if their general material organisation and well-being are questioned or threatened in any way.

Wisdom doesn't get a look in.

'Humans are intelligent, adaptive, ingenious, prone to greed, myopia and selective ignorance if their general material organisation and well-being are questioned or threatened in any way. '

great description of the warmist Poirot

"Wisdom doesn't get a look in."

Thanks for proving my point, runner : )

Poirot,

<< Humans are intelligent, adaptive, ingenious, prone to greed, myopia and selective ignorance if their general material organisation and well-being are questioned or threatened in any way>>.

You missed out the word “SOME” in front of your comment!

I also note that you offer no explanation for the problem you have with the collapse of the global CAGW infrastructure, so I’ll offer you one.

Once upon a time you were offered a “political conservation” fairy tale and you believed it. You believed it because so many “intelligent, adaptive and ingenious” people also believed it. They came to believe that “their general material organisation and well-being are questioned or threatened”.

They were so convinced they were right that they started a debate in the public domain where most did not understand the science, in order to create political populism for action. Some devoured the content from the commentariat and “information” links to the extent that they became self indoctrinated and incapable of even perceiving any alternative view.

This faith was created and supported by the might of the UN/EU who created a number of global instruments. Kyoto to impose emission caps and to provide governance, an emissions trading market to support funds and line of credit to renewable industries and finally, the renewable industries themselves. So all was well in the land of fairy tales.

Unfortunately, along came those “prone to greed, myopia and selective ignorance” who cheated the system, were found to have exaggerated, cooked the scientific books, acted in self interest and when challenged, failed to explain their transgressions.

As a result, those who were of low intelligence, flat earthers, deniers and mentally ill just kept on asking questions. When they didn’t/couldn’t answer the questions, the material toys the public had paid for were taken away.

Now that these very expensive toys, that we the public gave you have been taken away, all you have left is what you had in the first place, the fairy story. You can tell it as much as you like but the toys are not coming back anytime soon.

Spindoc,

You are confusing expert opinion on a problem with the willingness of politicians to do something about it. The Wikipedia article on the scientific consensus on global warming contains a long list of learned societies that have issued statements supporting AGW, or at least not contradicting it.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_opinion_on_climate_change

When the learned societies change their positions, I will follow suit. Not all of us are emotionally invested in this issue, and we have God's own plenty of environmental problems without AGW.

The problem with your viewpoint is that you have to assume that the vast majority of climate scientists are either too stupid to recognise the problems with their arguments, even when pointed out by lawyers and other laymen, or that they are part of some conspiracy. Climate scientists have passed stiff examinations in mathematics, physics, and chemistry, and then worked full-time on atmospheric physics and chemistry for years or even decades, using the most technologically advanced instruments. Scientists (even the whole scientific community) aren't infallible, but science is competitive and self-correcting, rewarding researchers for interesting new findings or ideas, or for shooting down the arguments of other scientists. How likely is it that you know more about their field than they do?

The conspiracy argument is daft. Who organised the worldwide conspiracy and how have they managed to cover it up? How do they stop individual scientists from breaking ranks and showing that the emperor has no clothes, even though it would mean a Nobel Prize and unlimited grant money? No one wants AGW to be true. If the government wants to frighten and stampede people to get more power, there are far simpler and less economically damaging ways to do it.

"The conspiracy argument is daft. Who organised the worldwide conspiracy and how have they managed to cover it up?"

Read the emails: emails 1:

http://bishophill.squarespace.com/blog/2009/11/20/climate-cuttings-33.html

Emails 2:

http://joannenova.com.au/2011/11/breaking-more-emails-released-climategate-ii/#more-18980

Anyone who denies these guys were not conspiring to suppress views opposing AGW needs their head read.

The rest of the 'conspiracy' is not about 'scientists' lying in private but about suppression, bullying and intimidation. There are plenty of scientists who stood up to the heads of the pro-AGW organisations and were punished; google Clive Spash, Doug Lord etc.

There are vast amounts of money being wasted on AGW; scientists are human; they know if they play the game they'll get the money; don't tell me these guys are all pure and scientifically moral.

Then there is the scientific backbone of the AGW 'science', models; they are damaged beyond repair:

http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/05/16/climate-models-getting-worse-than-we-thought/

The people who have stood up to the bully-boy tactics of the AGW industry are the true heroes; the Watts, Novas, McIntyres Stockwells, Michaels, Pielkes etc.

Finally your consensus is a joke, fundamentally unscientific and proved using every shonk technique in the book as Cook's latest effort shows:

http://joannenova.com.au/2013/05/cooks-fallacy-97-consensus-study-is-a-marketing-ploy-some-journalists-will-fall-for/#comment-1274748

Anyone who uses the consensus to justify AGW is a dope.

Divergence,

I’m not a scientist, at least not the sort of scientist that could possibly comment on climate science.

That said I think you completely miss the point. It matters not how many “learned people” or even politicians you can enlist, because they and their science has caused the collapse of the entire infrastructure needed for a global response to a global problem.

If your science cannot convince your infrastructure to do something about your problem, all you are left with is YOUR problem. Alarmism is your problem and so is your “belief” in it.

You say when the learned societies change their position, you will follow suit. That tells us all that you are incapable of thinking for yourself. That Divergence is what got you into this position in the first place. You are sheeples!

Interesting that those who preside over us and tell us what to think are the same “intelligentsia” who have been “had” by this monumental scam, go figure.

You and your fellow travelers are a lost cause and quite frankly there are many who are quite happy to see you remain that way

Well said, Divergence.

Of course, spindoc doesn't give near enough credit to all the players who fuel climate denial, most of it backed up, not by scientists with expertise in the various disciplines associated with climate, but by so-called "expert commentators" like Jo Nova and Anthony Watts....and ably supported on blogs by loyal acolytes like spindoc.

Yup...climate scientists are dumb.....or they're part of a world-wide conspiracy....or both!

....yuk,yuk,yuk....

Spindoc,

If a climate scientist started making pronouncements in your own area of expertise, you would most likely proclaim him to be an idiot, and with good reason.

Cohenite,

I didn't give a figure for the degree of consensus, but the existence of a consensus is obvious from the positions of the various learned societies.

Individual scientists are people, so they can obviously be bullies, be corrupt, abuse their authority, or just be incompetent. I make no apology for the East Anglia people, although I doubt that you would want to be exclusively judged by stolen emails taken out of context, with the worst possible construction put on them. At the very worst, this is still a long way from a worldwide conspiracy, affecting what is published in Chinese journals, for example. No one scientist or group of scientists has that much influence or control, especially since the rewards for breaking ranks would be high. Imagine being able to tell the Communist Party leadership of your country that spending money on greenhouse gas abatement is unnecessary (and providing good evidence to back up that position).

Cohenite et al.

Please read
http://www.noaanews.noaa.gov/stories2013//20130412_arcticseaice.html

David

Divergence

See how your approach is one of mere credulity?

Has it ever occurred to you that other people might be doing the same thing, including people you look up to and trust?

If it was a matter of mere opinion, it would be okay. But these are people who think it's okay to waste other people's lives and freedoms like it's going outta style.

They talk about how cost doesn't matter, money is no object. But none of the warmists offering to make so free with other people's money are offering to pay $11 million to fund a job themselves, or to fund any of their other obscene and corrupt boondoggles. They all want the comforts of western civilisation while expecting everyone else to be forced to sacrifice to pay for their own values. Their concern for others is fake. Real moral superiority is based on personal responsibility, not an abdication of your critical faculties backed up by force.

An interesting study result summarised below:

A survey of thousands of peer-reviewed papers in scientific journals has found 97.1% agreed that climate change is caused by human activity.

Authors of the survey, published on Thursday in the journal Environmental Research Letters, said the finding of near unanimity provided a powerful rebuttal to climate contrarians who insist the science of climate change remains unsettled.

The survey considered the work of some 29,000 scientists published in 11,994 academic papers. Of the 4,000-plus papers that took a position on the causes of climate change only 0.7% or 83 of those thousands of academic articles, disputed the scientific consensus that climate change is the result of human activity, with the view of the remaining 2.2% unclear.

The study described the dissent as a "vanishingly small proportion" of published research.

"Our findings prove that there is a strong scientific agreement about the cause of climate change, despite public perceptions to the contrary," said John Cook of the University of Queensland, who led the survey.

Public opinion continues to lag behind the science.

The study blamed strenuous lobbying efforts by industry to undermine the science behind climate change for the gap in perception. The resulting confusion has blocked efforts to act on climate change.

Jon Krosnick, professor in humanities and social sciences at Stanford university and an expert on public opinion on climate change, said: "I assume that sceptics would say that there is bias in the editorial process so that the papers ultimately published are not an accurate reflection of the opinions of scientists."

No army could function without a chain of command. That is why soldiers are punished for disobeying orders, even if it turns out that the soldier was right and the officer who gave the order was wrong. Similarly, no complex civilization can function without reliance on expert opinion.

I know for a fact that a great many antinuclear activists are talking nonsense on stilts, but I am not a climate scientist. The case for or against AGW relates to the scientific data, not tastes or values. Unless the climate scientists are in serious disagreement with each other (not the case, as shown by Geoff of Perth's study) or make arguments that violate basic physics, I have no reason to believe that they are wrong. So far, all such problem arguments seem to be coming from the anti-AGW side. Even some of their own scientists are concerned about it:

http://www.americanthinker.com/2012/02/climate_deniers_are_giving_us_skeptics_a_bad_name.html

This issue goes far beyond AGW. If people are encouraged to "think for themselves" and ignore expert opinion on AGW, why shouldn't they also ignore expert opinion on evolution, vaccination, the HIV virus, the Holocaust, the dangers of secondhand tobacco smoke, or anything else? The temptation to do this is likely to be great, especially if accepting the expert advice is going to be inconvenient, cost them money, or challenge their favourite religious, political, or economic ideology.

There is new television documentary, "Jabbed", on vaccination that is going to be screened this week. It is going to show 30 seconds of a newborn baby with whooping cough that is struggling to breathe and may die. The baby would be too young to vaccinate and could only be protected by herd immunity, which can be easily lost if its family's idiot neighbours refuse to vaccinate their children. This is the ultimate result of "thinking for oneself".

"I can't believe you believe this rot.
Posted by cohenite, Wednesday, 15 May 2013 8:52:44 PM"

I guess like theism, that's fundamentally what it comes down to. You have to believe or have faith because the evidence is against you. I will go with the climate scientists.

As to the OP, excellent article, you're not going to get far with it unfortunately. It's a pity the recent rewrite of the DSM didn't include the delusion in believing in some dude in the sky... be it santa, or god as a disorder. My main issue is these people can vote, I do think they can believe in whatever whacky thing they want but to hold political sway is repugnant because they lack the ability to apply the critical thinking necessary to make an informed decision.

Divergence, you're wrong. It's the result of completely failing to think for oneself because one lacks the tools or the innate ability to do so. As a result, anything can be taken as true, with no test other than whether it confirms underlying prejudices, or has some other emotional impact.

The reason religion has been so successful is that it says to those who are losers in life's lottery that they will be in the corporate box after it ends and of course, it has produced reams and reams of impressive-looking theology which must be right, because it's got lots of long words.

Ditto with other movements that have exploited members of underclasses everywhere. When you're poor, ill-educated, ground down by life and so are all your friends, who is going to argue with someone who isn't who shows an interest?