A globe-spanning cult predicts the world will end soon in drought, famine, flood, and fire. Led by a loose affiliation of academics and politicians, this cult is attracting a widespread following in the United States.

Instead of standing on a random street corner and shouting out their theory, the cult has taken their message to the airwaves and the Internet. Not only do the doomsday prophets maintain cult centers from England to California, they also feed a sprawling, uncritical communication network that spreads their predictions via newspapers, television, and government bureaucrats throughout the world.

Barbara Boopstein, a professor at Walden University who studies doomsayers like cult high priest Phil Jones, suggests that the interest in the cult’s predictions is a reflection of the uncertainty millions of Americans face in a shifting economy.

“A lot of times these prophecies gain traction when difficulties are happening in society,” she told the Reader. “Right now, there’s a lot of insecurity, and this is a promise that says it’s not all random, it’s part of a greater divine plan.”

Jones, after doing some number crunching based on figures he’s since lost, created the symbol for the movement based on a computer model. “The computer model is infallible,” said Jones. “It doesn’t matter what we put into it or how we program it, it always tells the truth.” And the truth, he says, “is shaped like a hockey stick.”

That hockey stick has become the symbol of the cult’s followers throughout the world. It portends a hellish future of fire—a catastrophic warming of global temperatures that’s already started today. Still, according to warmist doctrine, most people will barely notice that the world is dying. That’s because the temperature increase, even over a decade, is less than a degree. It’s only outside the lifetime of most people alive today—including the cult’s leaders—that the prophesied temperature increase would be noticeable by the laity.

Experts in doomsday cults say that this helps spread cult doctrine among the gullible. If the cult claimed higher temperatures now, potential recruits might look around, and think, “wait; this summer wasn’t any worse than ones I’ve already lived through, or that my parents talked about, or their parents.” Instead, the cult makes predictions about places most people will never go, such as the Arctic, or South Pacific islands. And then they visit the South Pacific islands.

For example, globetrotting prophet Al Gore has been predicting since at least 2007 that global warming will make the Arctic ice free within five years. He made the same prophesy again in 2008, and then in 2009 updated it to “five to seven years”.

“These guys make the May 21 cult look scientific by comparison,” said religious studies analyst Winston Smith. “At least the May 21 cult has set a date by which their ‘theory’ is falsifiable. The warmist cult keeps their predictions decades and centuries in the future.”

According to Smith, in 2005 the cult predicted fifty million refugees within five years. “Well, 2010 has come and gone. Now, they’ve updated the prediction to 2020 instead of 2010.”

According to Professor Boopstein, a cult’s leaders can never be wrong; if the world disagrees with them, then the world is wrong.

They predict a mild winter, and the winter ends up being one of the coldest, snowiest in years; so they claim that their models predict violent weather. Then, they predict that the next summer will be a major hurricane year; when it turns out to be a mild year for hurricanes, they claim that their models also predict a weakening of weather patterns. Theology is unfalsifiable: whatever happens, it’s a sign that the world will end in fire.

Boopstein added, “Everything is a sign to them. Too much water? Global warming. Too dry? Global warming. You had a big earthquake or a volcanic eruption? Blame it on global warming.”

Smith said that “one of the defining features of a cult is it’s ability to forget inconvenient truths.”

There was a big scandal a few years ago when thousands of cult documents were leaked to the Internet. It turns out most of the “data” they’re basing their religion’s calculations on is lost or destroyed, and that the calculations themselves were adjusted to provide the results they wanted. For a few months, they kept a low profile in their temples. Now, they’re out again, talking about “hottest year on record”, as if their “record” had never been shown to be hypocritical doom-mongering.

Readers are urged to apply the scientific method to any claims regarding “global warming”, “climate change”, and “climate instability”.

“Science is falsifiable,” said Smith. “Religion is not. When a scientist makes a prediction, their theory hinges on the success of that prediction. When a religious leader makes a prediction, the theology is never wrong. There’s always another explanation to account for the prediction’s apparent failure.”