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Newsletter (April 23, 2010)
Above the FoldCornwall Alliance for the Stewardship of Creation, April 20, 2010
While Others Push Evangelicals to Embrace Anti-Christian Environmental Views, the Cornwall Alliance Will Introduce an Explosive New Series of Videos and Printed Resources for Churches and Ministries
(April 20, 2010, Washington, DC) – While environmentalists focus on Earth Day celebrations and public policy debates and initiatives, the Cornwall Alliance for the Stewardship of Creation is announcing a new initiative, “Resisting the Green Dragon,” that will sound the alarm about dangerous environmental extremism and bring a Biblical viewpoint on environmental issues and creation stewardship to evangelical churches, ministries, and schools.
The Cornwall Alliance asserts that one of the greatest threats to society and the church today is the multifaceted environmentalist movement. There isn’t an aspect of life that it doesn’t seek to force into its own mold.
“Environmentalism has become a new religion,” says Cornwall Alliance National Spokesman Dr. E. Calvin Beisner. “Its policies are devastating to the world’s poor. It threatens the sanctity of human life. It targets our youth. And its vision is global.”
“Today’s environmentalism isn’t just the conservationist belief that every generation should use the Earth wisely so that it benefits not only itself but also future generations,” Dr. Beisner said. “Environmentalism isn’t a neutral set of ideas that can be tacked onto the Christian faith without theological compromise. Instead, environmentalism promotes its own world view and its own doctrines of God, creation, humanity, sin, and salvation. And those doctrines aren’t Biblical.”
The Resisting the Green Dragon initiative (www.ResistingtheGreenDragon.com) includes a book by South African evangelical physicist Dr. James Wanliss; a 12-part DVD series with an impressive array of speakers who have expertise in science, theology, economics, and the environment and are respected by the evangelical community; and discussion guides, practical suggestions for small group projects, and other printed and broadcast resources.
The initiative takes its cue from James 4:7, “Submit therefore to God. Resist the devil and he will flee from you.” Resisting the Green Dragon is a major, innovative education initiative that helps churches, schools, and other ministries to understand the difference between a Biblical definition of creation stewardship and both the secular environmental movement and its pagan religious counterpart. Both are making inroads into the evangelical community. . . .
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Watch the trailer.
FREE: Register to attend a live recording of the seminar.In This Issue
Featured- Radio Interview of Calvin Beisner by Janet Parshall
- Last in Class: Critics Give U.N. Climate Researchers an ‘F’
- Climate Science In Denial
Debate- Book: 'The Great Global Warming Blunder: How Mother Nature Fooled the World’s Top Climate Scientists'
- Prominent Climategate Figure Threatens Lawsuit Over Spoof Video
Science- Avoiding Carbon Myopia: Three Considerations for Policy Makers Concerning Manmade Carbon Dioxide
- The Illusion of a Sensitive Climate System: A Stovetop Demonstration
Economics- Cap-and-Trade 'Failure' Would Have Many Benefits
- The Sierra Club: How Support for Industrial Wind Technology Subverts Its History, Betrays Its Mission, and Erodes Commitment to the Scientific Method
- Moralizing Twaddle: James Hansen's Vision of Presidential Greatness
Upcoming Events
Briefly Noted
Meet the Critics: Robert M. Carter, Ph.D.
Landmark Documents from the Cornwall Alliance
FeaturedMoody Radio: Talking It Over, April 17, 2010
April 22 is Earth Day, and the media will be filled with stories about the environment. But what should the Christian response be to this issue? Are we shifting our affections for the creation and away from the Creator? Is there a way to care for God's creation without hurting our fellow man? Dr. Calvin Beisner, National Spokesman for the Cornwall Alliance for the Stewardship of Creation, will answer your questions as we probe the issue of Christianity and environmentalism.
Download the audio.Back to top by Gene J. Koprowski
FOXNews, April 19, 2010
It may be time for the United Nations' climate-studies scientists to go back to school.
A group of 40 auditors -- including scientists and public policy experts from across the globe -- have released a shocking report card on the U.N.'s landmark climate-change research report.
And they gave 21 of the report's 44 chapters a grade of "F."
The team, recruited by the climate-change skeptics behind the website NoConsensus.org, found that 5,600 of the 18,500 sources in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's (IPCC) Nobel Prize-winning 2007 report were not peer reviewed. . . .
Based on the grading system used in American schools, 21 chapters in the IPCC report received an F for citing peer-reviewed sources less than 60 percent of the time. Four chapters received a D, and six received a C.
The report also got eight A's and five B's from the auditors, who included Bob Ashworth, a member of the American Geophysical Union, and Dr. Darko Butina, a director of Chemomine Consultancy Ltd.
According to Lafromboise, much of the scientific research published by the U.N. cited press releases, newspaper and magazine clippings, student theses, newsletters, discussion papers, and literature published by green advocacy groups. Such material is often called "gray literature," she said, and it stands in stark contrast to the U.N.'s claims about the study's sources. . . .
Read the rest.
Related items:
From NoConsensus.org:
UN's Climate Bible Gets 21 F's on Report Card
IPCC Report Card
Citizen Audit - Detailed FindingsBack to top by Richard S. Lindzen
Professor of Meteorology, Massachusetts Institute of Technology; Fellow, American Academy of Arts & Sciences, American Meteorological Society, American Geophysical Union, and American Association for the Advancement of Science
Wall Street Journal, April 22, 2010
In what has come to be known as "climategate," one could see unambiguous evidence of the unethical suppression of information and opposing viewpoints, and even data manipulation. The Climatic Research Unit is hardly an obscure outpost; it supplies many of the authors for the United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Moreover, the emails showed ample collusion with other prominent researchers in the United States and elsewhere.
One might have thought the revelations would discredit the allegedly settled science underlying currently proposed global warming policy, and, indeed, the revelations may have played some role in the failure of last December's Copenhagen climate conference to agree on new carbon emissions limits. But with the political momentum behind policy proposals and billions in research funding at stake, the impact of the emails appears to have been small.
The general approach of the official scientific community (at least in the United States and the United Kingdom) has been to see whether people will bother to look at the files in detail (for the most part they have not), and to wait until time diffuses the initial impressions in order to reassert the original message of a climate catastrophe that must be fought with a huge measure of carbon control. . . .
Despite all this, it does appear that the public at large is becoming increasingly aware that something other than science is going on with regard to climate change, and that the proposed policies are likely to cause severe problems for the world economy. Climategate may thus have had an effect after all.
But it is unwise to assume that those who have carved out agendas to exploit the issue will simply let go without a battle. One can only hope that the climate alarmists will lose so that we can go back to dealing with real science and real environmental problems such as assuring clean air and water. The latter should be an appropriate goal for Earth Day.
Read the rest.Back to top Debateby Roy W. Spencer
Principal Research Scientist, University of Alabama in Huntsville; Author, DrRoySpencer.com; Author, Climate Confusion and The Great Global Warming Blunder
April 20, 2010
Today (April 20) is the official release date of my new book entitled: "The Great Global Warming Blunder: How Mother Nature Fooled the World’s Top Climate Scientists", published by Encounter Books.
About one-half of Blunder is a non-technical description of our new peer reviewed and soon-to-be-published research which supports the opinion that a majority of Americans already hold: that warming in recent decades is mostly due to a natural cycle in the climate system — not to an increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide from fossil fuel burning.
Believe it or not, this potential natural explanation for recent warming has never been seriously researched by climate scientists. The main reason they have ignored this possibility is that they cannot think of what might have caused it.
You see, climate researchers are rather myopic. They think that the only way for global-average temperatures to change is for the climate system to be forced ‘externally’…by a change in the output of the sun, or by a large volcanic eruption. These are events which occur external to the normal, internal operation of the climate system.
But what they have ignored is the potential for the climate system to cause its own climate change. Climate change is simply what the system does, owing to its complex, dynamic, chaotic internal behavior. . . .
Read the rest.
Purchase The Great Global Warming Blunder: How Mother Nature Fooled the World’s Top Climate Scientists.Back to top GlobalClimateScam.com, April 20, 2010
Penn State University’s Michael Mann, one of the central figures in the Climategate scandal, has threatened legal action against Minnesotans for Global Warming (M4GW) over the group’s popular satirical YouTube video “Hide the Decline.” The No Cap-and-Trade Coalition, a group that includes M4GW, responded today at an event at the National Press Club, releasing Mann’s threatening letter and an updated version of the “Hide the Decline” video.
“We understand why Michael Mann is eager to silence public discussion of the hockey stick scandal,” said Jeff Davis of No Cap-and-Trade, “but truth is an absolute defense.”
The original “Hide the Decline” video, which had more than 500,000 viewers, was removed today from YouTube by M4GW’s Elmer Beauregard. It received national attention when Rush Limbaugh played it on his radio show and was later featured on CBS Evening News in the wake of the Climategate email scandal. “Hide the Decline” parodied Mann, the Penn State professor who is largely responsible for the creation of the now debunked “hockey stick” graph, which purported to show a dramatic spike in average global temperature during the 20th century after 900 years of relatively constant temperature.
The video spotlighted a phrase from one of the central “Climategate” e-mails in which the University of East Anglia’s Phil Jones explains how he used Mann’s “Nature trick” to “hide the decline” of key temperature data. The hockey stick graph relied on “hiding this decline.” . . .
Read the rest.
Related item:
Michael Mann Controversy
NoCapAndTrade.comBack to top Scienceby David R. Legates and Willie Soon
Physicist, Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics; Chief Science Adviser, Science & Public Policy Institute; Science Director, Tech Central Station; Senior Scientist, Marshall Institute; Co-Author, Global Warming and Maunder Minimum (Soon); Delaware State Climatologist and Director of Delaware Environmental Observing System, University of Delaware; Senior Scientist, Marshall Institute; Fellow, Independent Institute; Scholar, Competitive Enterprise Institute (Legates)
Science & Public Policy Institute, April 6, 2010
. . . Prudent policy makers should not get swept up by the shortsightedness of the alarmist media coverage of human-induced global warming. Rather, given the potential costs and impacts, they should be suspicious that advocates have subverted science to further their own causes. Understandably the extent of uncertainty regarding the role and impact of rising atmospheric CO2 may come as a shock to those swept up by the fanaticism. Given the uncertainty involved, policy makers should consider the scientific data carefully.
Decision makers should consider the following questions: Do we really want a future based on the grievous misunderstanding engendered by carbon myopia? Can humanity really afford to ignore the real harm that would be caused by adhering to these fallacies about carbon? We must have the courage to stand against climate alarmism and stand for rational stewardship and for reliable, affordable energy. We urge political leaders of the world to do the right thing and to reject any deal that would tax or restrict carbon emissions. Only in that way can they protect the jobs, health, welfare, economic opportunities, environmental quality, living standards, and civil rights that depend so critically on hydrocarbon energy.
Read the rest.Back to top by Roy W. Spencer
Principal Research Scientist, University of Alabama in Huntsville; Author, DrRoySpencer.com; Author, Climate Confusion and The Great Global Warming Blunder
April 10, 2010
Whether it is the Earth’s climate system experiencing warming, or a pot of water being placed on a warm stovetop, the fundamental basis of why the temperature of something changes is the same: If energy is being absorbed faster than it is being lost, then warming will result.
This is illustrated in the following two plots, which show that imposing such an “energy imbalance” on a pot of water (or on the Earth’s climate system) causes warming which is at first rapid, but then slows as the system reaches a new state of energy equilibrium where the rate of energy loss by the system increases to match the rate of energy gain. Once these two flows of energy once again become equal, the temperature stops changing.
In the context of global warming, more CO2 added to the atmosphere from humanity’s burning of fossil fuels slightly reduces the Earth’s ability to cool to outer space through infrared energy loss, contributing to the Earth’s so-called ‘greenhouse effect’. This “heat radiation”, by the way, is also one of the energy loss mechanisms for a pot of water on the stove.
In global warming theory, this increase in the greenhouse gas content of the atmosphere causes an energy imbalance, which then causes warming. The warming then increases the rate of infrared energy loss until energy equilibrium is once again restored — but now at a higher temperature. This is the basic mechanism behind the theory of manmade global warming.
THE TEMPERATURE “SENSITIVITY” OF THE SYSTEM
Returning to the above plot, if we know (1) the amount of energy imbalance imposed upon the system — whether a pot of water or the Earth — and we know (2) how much the system then warms as a result, we then know the temperature “sensitivity” of the system to an energy imbalance.
For instance, if a small energy imbalance leads to a large temperature change, that is called high sensitivity. This is how all climate models now behave, and is the basis for Jim Hansen’s and Al Gore’s fear of a global warming Armageddon.
But alternatively, if a large energy imbalance causes only a small temperature change, then that is called low sensitivity, which is how I, MIT’s Dick Lindzen, and a minority of other climate researchers believe the climate system behaves.
THE ILLUSION OF A SENSITIVE CLIMATE SYSTEM
I believe that climate researchers have fooled themselves into believing that the climate system is very sensitive. The reason why is related to a real-world complication to the above simplified example: when we compare a warm year to a cool year in the real climate system, we are NOT looking at the equilibrium response at one of those temperatures, to an energy imbalance imposed at the other temperature. That would be a very special case indeed, and it is one that never happens in the real world.
To see what usually happens in the real climate system, let’s return to the example of a pot of water on the stove. Imagine we keep turning the stove up and down, over and over. This will result in the water warming and cooling as the temperature responds to the ever-changing energy imbalance of the system. . . .
Read the rest.Back to top Economicsby Marlo Lewis
Senior Fellow, Competitive Enterprise Institute
Energy & Environment Experts, April 19, 2010
“What’s the cost if Congress fails” to enact a cap-and-trade or carbon tax bill? The “cost” is actually a multitude of benefits:
- The U.S. economy won’t be hit by virtual or outright energy taxes in the midst of the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression, improving prospects for a recovery.
- Congress will not declare political warfare on coal, continuing America’s access to abundant, affordable base-load power.
- Congress will not adopt carbon tariffs, avoiding an era of trade warfare between the United States and emerging industrial powerhouses such as China and India.
- The U.S. Government will lack a bully pulpit for pressuring poor countries to ban coal-based power, allowing them to escape from energy poverty. . . .
Read the rest.Back to top by Jon Boone
Developer, www.stopillwind.org
MasterResource, April 17, 2010
MasterResource editor's note: In this three part series, Jon Boone traces the history of the Sierra Club from its inception in 1892 to today and comments on its evolution as an environmental body. Given this organization’s prominence in environmental thinking today, this is an important and informative essay on the merits, possible motivations and effects of such movements. Part II will focus on the realities of today’s “Gush for wind” initiatives and its influence on Sierra Club beliefs. Part III concludes with a discussion on the science being used to promote its policies and the unintended consequences that may result.
By the dawn of the twentieth century, European sensibilities and burgeoning technologies, filtered through the American experience, had brought a close to the vast North American frontier. A centuries-long march to the beat of seemingly inexhaustible abundance was replaced by a dawning recognition of limitation, of natural resources ravaged and lost. Passenger pigeons, once the most common bird in colonial America with numbers in the billions, had become extinct, along with several other species. Many more were on the edge of extinction. The bodies of millions of native songbirds dangled around fashionable ladies’ millinery. Miners even used birds to assess air quality in coal shafts. . . .
Read the rest of Part I.
Part II
Part IIIBack to top by Marlo Lewis
Senior Fellow, Competitive Enterprise Institute
MasterResource, April 15, 2010
Last week in the Huffington Post, climatologist Dr. James Hansen made an impassioned plea to President Obama to ditch cap-and-trade and instead advocate a plan to tax carbon-based fuels with 100% of the revenues returned to households. This was not the first time. Hansen made the same pitch back in December 2008 in a letter to President-elect Obama. President Obama did not heed Hansen’s advice, keeping his wagon hitched to cap-and-trade, the policy darling of Big Green, U.S. CAP, and congressional leaders. But with cap-and-trade bogged down on Capitol Hill, Hansen argues, his plan gives Obama “a second chance on the predominant moral issue of this century.”
Hansen made the case for “tax-and-dividend” in testimony before the House Ways & Means Committee on February 25, 2009. I commented on Hansen’s testimony a week later on MasterResource. Substantively, there’s nothing new in Hansen’s Huff Post column, but rhetorically there is one modification. He now calls his proposal a “fee” rather than a tax. Despite Hansen’s earlier criticism of cap-and-trade as a hidden and thus dishonest tax, and his call for a “transparent” approach to reducing greenhouse gas emissions, he now avoids the “T” word as assiduously as any shifty cap-and-trader.
Today’s column offers a running commentary on Hansen’s Huff Post piece. . . .
Read the rest.Back to top Upcoming EventsThe purpose of ICCC-4 is the same as it was for the first three events: to build momentum and public awareness of the global warming “realism” movement, a network of scientists, economists, policymakers, and concerned citizens who believe sound science and economics, rather than exaggeration and hype, ought to determine what actions, if any, are taken to address the problem of climate change. Speakers will include over a hundred scientists, economists, and other scholars from around the world.
Register online.Back to top Briefly NotedVideo: EPA Head Lisa Jackson's Radical Environmental Justice Agenda
British Lawyer Urges UN to Accept 'Ecocide' as International Crime on Par with Genocide
Worker Wins £50,000 After 'Environmental Discrimination'Back to top Meet the CriticsMeet the Critics gives you basic information on 64 of the leading critics of dangerous manmade global warming. Today's critic:
Robert M. Carter, Ph.D.
Paleontologist, stratigrapher, marine geologist, and environmental scientist, Robert Carter has chaired multiple research committees and has held academic positions at multiple universities. A recipient of degrees from Otago and Cambridge, Carter currently serves as a Research Professor at James Cook Univeristy and is a member of numerous scientific organizations. Mentioned on page 136 of the Senate report, Carter has over a hundred scientific publications and over a hundred other scientific articles, letters, interviews, and presentations. A few of his exemplary writings are The Myth of Dangerous Human-Caused Climate Change, High Price for a Load of Hot Air, The IPCC: On the Run at Last, and the recent Science Versus Propaganda. His lecture, Climate Change: Is CO2 the Cause?, is viewable on YouTube in four parts.
Back to top Landmark Documents from the Cornwall Alliance
E. Calvin Beisner, Ph.D., National Spokesman
Cornwall Alliance for the Stewardship of Creation, http://www.cornwallalliance.org/
Information in this newsletter is for scholarly and educational use only and may not be copied or reproduced for any other purposes without prior permission of the copyright holders.
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