There’s been a lot of evidence contrary to global warming popping up these days, primarily the fact that Earth has actually been in a cooling period for the past five years. Further, in May, German climate modelers predicted that there won’t be any more global warming until about 2020. Should we expect such revelations to change the debate over global warming?

Not likely, because, as the Wall Street Journal’s Bret Stephens points out, the global non-warming deniers have a strong psychological need to believe that global warming is happening.

Listen carefully to the global warming alarmists, and the main theme that emerges is that what the developed world needs is a large dose of penance. What’s remarkable is the extent to which penance sells among a mostly secular audience. What is there to be penitent about?

As it turns out, a lot, at least if you’re inclined to believe that our successes are undeserved and that prosperity is morally suspect. In this view, global warming is nature’s great comeuppance, affirming as nothing else our guilty conscience for our worldly success.

In “The Varieties of Religious Experience,” William James distinguishes between healthy, life-affirming religion and the monastically inclined, “morbid-minded” religion of the sick-souled. Global warming is sick-souled religion.