Newsletter (April 18, 2012)

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Tiny, Happy People

by C. Ben Mitchell
First-Things, 4/10/12

Just when you think you have heard it all, someone pushes the envelope. According to three ethicists writing in the journal Ethics, Policy and the Environment, because geoengineering might be too risky a way to combat global climate change, we should alter the human species instead.

Here is the argument offered by Matthew Liao, Anders Sandberg, and Rebecca Roache. Climate change is the result of human corruption of the environment—so-called anthropogenic causes. Climate change affects food production, access to water, health, and the environment. Since, in their view, millions could suffer from the consequences of climate change something radical must be done. Recycling, tax-incentives, and large-scale manipulation of the environment are, according to the authors, either too negligible or too grand to be effective. Geoengineering, in particular, is disadvantageous because “in many cases, we lack the necessary scientific knowledge to devise and implement geoengineering without significant risk to ourselves and to future generations” (p. 4). So, in one breathtaking leap, the authors argue that we ought to consider “biomedical modification of humans to make them better at mitigating climate change.” ...

The suggestion that we ought to modify the human species as a means of mitigating climate change is at once both naive and hubristic. If they think modifying the environment may be difficult, successfully modifying the extraordinarily intricate balance of human homeostasis is a pipedream at best. Here is what they think might be desirable. First, humans might be altered to be meat averse. … Second, the number of humans could be modified through cognitive enhancement [making them less fecund]. … Third, pharmacological enhancements could increase altruism and empathy [by lowering testosterone, which will also reduce fecundity and increase compliance]. …

Most readers will find the suggestion that re-engineering the species to control climate change is simply ludicrous on the face of it. But it is worse than ludicrous, it is dangerous. Although the authors say these alterations will come about voluntarily, it would, in fact, be parents who would make these decisions for the next generation without consent. Our children would become guinea pigs in a massive genetic and pharmacological engineering experiment—which, in many cases, we would be unable to reverse. …

In this paper we see another example of the human self-loathing that is so much a part of both the environmentalist and transhumanist movements. For environmentalists, human beings are parasitic threats. For the transhumanists, human beings are maladaptive and need re-engineering. Instead of seeing human creativity, innovation, and market forces applied in stewardly ways for the sake of the truly human good, the technologist (the human) becomes the technological artifact (the modified post-human). Human re-engineering, it seems to me, is a far greater threat to our humanity than climate change. [Read the rest.]

[Related item: Patrick Michaels takes on Liao and his colleagues here.]

Last Call: You Are Invited to the
First Annual Cornwall Alliance Fellowship Dinner

Speakers? Keynote Speaker, Theologian Dr. Wayne Grudem; Host, Cornwall Alliance National Spokesman Dr. E. Calvin Beisner; Master of Ceremonies, CBN News Anchor Lee Webb
When? Registration and Reception, 6:30 p.m., Dinner 7:15 p.m., Friday, April 20, 2012
Where? Fairview Park Marriott, 3111 Fairview Park Drive, Falls Church, Virginia
Admission? No charge. There will be an opportunity to donate financially.
Response? Register by noon Eastern time, Thursday, April 19, online here.

Cornwall in the News

Why Christians Should Oppose New CO2 Regulations (Chris Skates, Crosswalk.com, 4/11/12)
The EPA’s newest coal regulations will harm the poor but not help the environment. Christians, called to protect the poor, should work to reverse them.

Canadian Newspapers Decry Cornwall Alliance’s Influence on Prime Minister
True, the Guelph Mercury and Grand Forks Gazette’s caricatures of the Cornwall Alliance’s views are uproariously funny and rely on testimony of a hostile critic rather than going to primary sources like the Cornwall Declaration, the Cornwall Stewardship Agenda, the Renewed Call to Truth, or The Cost of Good Intentions, but we can’t help preening a bit over their belief that somehow or other, without our even having tried, we have powerfully influenced the policies of Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper on environment and energy.

James Wanliss: The Green Dragon and the Evolutionary Paradigm

Cornwall Alliance Senior Fellow Dr. James Wanliss, author of our book Resisting the Green Dragon: Dominion, Not Death, explains the roots and fruits of the anti-human environmentalist worldview. Environmentalists’ hostility to the message of Genesis 1:28 (“God blessed [Adam and Eve] and said to them, ‘Be fruitful and multiply and fill the Earth and subdue it and rule over [it].”) is not accidental, not shallow, not tangential to the environmental worldview. It is essential to it. The very word environment, coming from the French for “surroundings,” which amounts to everything, implies a great leveling, the biological and even universal egalitarianism that refuses to recognize any priority of one thing over another, particularly of humanity over the Earth and the other forms of life on it. Naturalistic evolutionism, environmentalism, and anti-human ecological egalitarianism go hand in hand.

Tips for Earth Stewards

Simple things you can do to make the earth more fruitful, beautiful, and safe.

Many simple tricks can save money and resources around your home. Wash clothes in cold water, unless they have serious stains; body soil comes out with detergent, not heat. This saves about 80% of the energy in washing. “Precycle” products by purchasing store brands, which frequently come in bulk and exclude unnecessary packaging. Insulate your water heater, especially pre-2004 models. Turn the water heater down to 130°F to have a balance between sanitation and energy savings, since only the dishwasher needs water hotter than 120°F.

Fun Facts for the Week

The rising power of coal: It's not just China anymore
“In just two decades, China has utilized coal to dramatically improve the quality of life for its vast population. Since 1990, coal-based electricity in China has increased 500%, from 500 TWh to over 3,000 TWh. GDP per capita increased 600%, hundreds of millions of Chinese were taken out of poverty, and over 95% of the population now has electricity.” This is not happening only in China, though. The rest of Southeast Asia, India, and South Africa have made the lives of 2.5 billion in those areas healthier, wealthier, and less desperate. But those and other developing countries have a long way to go to lift their people to true prosperity, and coal will be an indispensable part of how they get there.

Recent Significant Developments

Science & Ecology

What’s Wrong With the Science? (Bob Carter, David Evans, Stewart Franks & William Kininmonth, Quadrant Online, 4/5/12)
“On March 13–14, 2012, two new reports regarding global warming and climate change were released by CSIRO/BOM and the Climate Commission. … Our analysis finds no evidence that dangerous global warming is occurring; nor that human carbon dioxide emissions will cause such warming in future; nor that recent Australian climate-related events lay outside normal climate variability; nor that reducing carbon dioxide emissions will have any discernible impact on future climate.” More here.

Senior climate scientist queries temperature data ‘adjustments’ (Investigate Daily, 4/14/12)
[Dr. Roy] Spencer, a specialist in satellite temperature records, has checked official land based weather station records in the USA and discovered most of the claimed global warming of the past 40 years appears to be a result of data adjustments after the fact, not raw temperature records. More here.

Attribution of a Warm Winter to Global Warming—An Example of Misstatement of Reality by Some Climate Scientists (Roger Pielke Sr., Climate Science, 4/10/12)
This past March was unusually warm. Some journalists mistakenly attributed the warmth to climate change. February was cooler than the 33-year global temperature average by 0.12°C; March was warmer by 0.11°C. Many of the warming anomalies are regional and temporal. Claiming this warming is global, permanent, and man-made is misleading. More here.

Economics & Energy

Obama Fuel Economy Standards Could Price Almost 7 Million Drivers out of New Car Market—NADA (Marlo Lewis, GlobalWarming.org, 4/12/12)
“In a report released [April 12], the National Auto Dealers Association (NADA) estimates that the Obama administration’s model year (MY) 2011-2025 fuel economy standards could price nearly 7 million consumers out of the market for new motor vehicles.” The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration estimates the new fuel economy standards will raise vehicle price by nearly $3,000, but the NADA suspects it will be closer to $5,000. The increase in price will cause even economy-sized cars to be unaffordable to many.

Oil Boom Could Fuel Economy, If We Let It. (Marita Noon, Townhall.com, 4/15/12)
Left-wing politicians have introduced legislation to keep domestically produced petroleum in America so that prices stay low at the pump. This protectionism is economically unsound, since free trade lowers prices, and probably violates international treaties; the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade and the North American Free Trade Agreement. More here and here.

Religion & Ethics

Terrence Corcoran: Get Ready For the Rio Happiness Summit (Terrence Corcoran, Financial Post, 4/2/12)
“At the United Nations on [April 2], they took a major step toward a global strategy to enhance your happiness status, and the happiness of everybody else in the world. It’s the new role for governments across the planet. If the UN has its way, the state’s major objective will be to boost your sense of well-being and improve how you feel about your life.”

How EPA Uses “Sue and Settle” Agreements to Steal Power from the States (and what the Congress is doing to stop it) (William Yeatman, GlobalWarming.org, 4/11/12)
“In late March, the House Judiciary Committee passed H.R. 3862, the Sunshine for Regulatory Decrees and Settlements Act of 2012, by a 20-10 vote. If enacted, the bill would make it more difficult for the Environmental Protection Agency to negotiate ‘sue and settle’ agreements that effectively exclude States from environmental policymaking, in seeming contravention of the Clean Air Act.” The so-called “sue and settle” litigation is where the EPA, or some other defendant, will set up a lawsuit having made a deal with the plaintiff not to put up a strong fight.

Law, Regulation, & Litigation

Study: Feds Approving Fewer Oil and Gas Leases (Brian Fojtik, Heartland.org, 3/14/12)
“The number of oil and gas leases granted by the federal government in the western United States declined by 44 percent during the first two years of the Obama administration versus the last two years of the Bush presidency, according to a new study prepared for the American Petroleum Institute (API) by EIS Solutions.” Even more boldly, the EPA has attempted to retroactively deny permits that have already been granted.

EPA’s Math: Coal Regs = Coal Jobs (David Bier, GlobalWarming.org, 4/3/12)
The EPA argues that its regulations will create jobs, not destroy them by increasing industry expenses. How? Temporary compliance contractors fulfill the “jobs.” Will the ghost of Henry Hazlitt please explain the broken window fallacy to the EPA?

Politics & Debate

Obama's Favored Policy Would Boost Gasoline's Prices (Paul Driessen, Investor’s Business Daily, 4/9/12)
“President Obama wants us to think he can compel oil companies to lower the pump price of gasoline, by eliminating business tax deductions for certain major companies, and raising their cost of doing business by what he admits would be $4 billion a year. In reality, the companies will have to pass the tax hikes on to their customers—further increasing pump prices.” More here.

The Dinosaur Media Prematurely Bury Climate Warming Skeptics—Again (Patrick Michaels, Forbes, 4/8/12)
“The dinosaur media are—yet again—reporting the death of climate skeptics because of the latest, greatest paper published by Nature magazine. Increases of dreaded carbon dioxide appear to have preceded the warming that initiated human civilization.” Okay, maybe, but as Mark Twain might have put it, the report of the skeptics’ demise is exaggerated.

Food & Agriculture

Interactive Effects of CO2 and Phosphorous On Plant Growth (Science and Public Policy Institute, 4/11/12)
A new paper recently released by the Science and Public Policy Institute explores the connection between CO2 and plant growth. Many plants are “carbon limited,” meaning there is insufficient CO2 to allow maximal metabolic growth. Phosphorus acquisition in plants as a function of carbon acquisition is important to growth, and enhanced CO2 increases it. More here.

Evolutionary Response to Environmental Change in Sockeye Salmon (Crozier, L.G. et al., Non-governmental International Panel on Climate Change, 4/10/12)
“According to Crozier et al. (2011), ‘environmental change can shift the phenotype of an organism.’” The researchers observed Sockeye Salmon migrating up the Columbia River and found the phenotypes of fish that survived the journey, compared to past specimens, were different. They determined that adaptive response to heat trends explained a majority of the phenotypic changes. A similar effect is found in plants as well. Other species, too, may be more adaptable to warming climates than projections of mass extinctions from global warming assume.

Resisting the Green Dragon

Order Resisting the Green Dragon for Church, School, or Small Group

More and more churches and other groups are using Cornwall Alliance’s groundbreaking 13-part video series around the country. With its printable discussion guide, it provides full curriculum for a Sunday school quarter. The accompanying book helps teachers and others dig deeper.

Join Cornwall Alliance Facebook Group Page

To keep up with relevant developments, join Cornwall Alliance’s Facebook Group page, where we and group members will post and discuss items daily.

Landmark Documents from the Cornwall Alliance

E. Calvin Beisner, Ph.D., Founder and National Spokesman
Cornwall Alliance for the Stewardship of Creation

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