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Newsletter (August 14, 2009)
Above the Foldby Dr. R. Albert Mohler, Jr.
President, Southern Baptist Theological Seminary; Host, The Albert Mohler Program; Author, AlbertMohler.com
August 12, 2009
. . . Warnings that human reproduction will lead to ecological disaster have been common since at least the 1960s. Generally, these arguments have been couched in considerations of limited natural resources and environmental sustainability. Now, a new element is added to the mix, complete with a proposed model for quantifying a projected environmental impact. These two researchers advise that failing to take "reproductive choices" of individuals into account will effectively doom all other efforts to reduce the level of carbon emissions.
The logic of this argument is clear and chilling. The leap from scientific analysis to proposals for public policy is almost sure to come. How long will it be before prospective parents are warned that their decision to reproduce could be catastrophic for the environment? Should we now expect a cap and trade proposal for babies?
Anti-natalist philosophies have been around even longer than arguments over ecology and sustainability. Given our biblical responsibility for environmental stewardship, Christians should indeed be thoughtfully engaged with the entire nexus of questions related to carbon emissions, climate change, and respect for the Earth. Nevertheless, when we begin to measure babies in terms of a "carbon legacy" and a projected threat to the environment, we abandon the biblical worldview. Human beings cannot be reduced to a "carbon legacy" and the gift of children must never be seen as an assault upon the earth.
Read the rest.In this issue
Featured- Climate Rules Could Hurt Poor People
- Ban Ki-Moon: 'Four Months to Secure the Future of Our Planet'
Debate- Rent Seeking, Crony Capitalism, and U.S. Energy Politics: Who Wins from the Racket?
- Perry’s Petition and Governors Associations
Science- The Cocktail Conversation Guide to Global Warming
- Humans and Their CO2 Save the Planet!
Economics- 'Cash for Clunkers'
- 'National Security' Climate Argument Refuted
- Giving Up Meat to Save the Planet?
- Thomas Edison to Henry Ford: Forget Electric Cars
Meet the Critics: Syun-Ichi Akasofu & Tom V. Segalstad
Briefly Noted
Featuredby Jay Dennis
Senior Pastor, First Baptist Church-at-the-Mall; Former President, Florida Baptist Convention
The Ledger, August 8, 2009
. . . No matter how [policies to reduce carbon emissions] are sugarcoated, they basically come down to taxing energy use. As a result, there will be a widespread increase in energy costs for households, industries, state and federal government services, and nonprofit institutions (including churches) - all of which will have a ripple effect across our already fragile economy.
These facts are important as it will be the unemployed and working poor, and those on fixed incomes such as seniors, who will be most adversely and disproportionately affected. This is because they spend a larger percentage of their limited income on the daily staples of life such as food, fuel and utilities.
Proponents of such measures counter with economic arguments of their own: First, aggressive policies to reduce emissions will lead to millions of new "green" jobs. Second, the cost of doing nothing will be far more than any of the new regulations being proposed. In short, they present a dual picture of hope and fear in attempting to convince the public to support such measures.
With respect to green jobs, I hope they can materialize. However, we only have to look at Europe where similar policies have already been implemented to evaluate the hope that millions of green jobs will be created. Not only have European nations largely failed to meet their environmental goals, but many now suffer double-digit unemployment rates.
The argument that acting now will save money in the long run rings just as hollow. Dozens of scientists and economists who don't dispute the reality and gravity of global warming, including several Nobel laureates, have said for years that stopping climate change is one of the least cost-effective ways to address the world's problems. It would be a far better use of our time and resources, according to the Copenhagen Consensus, to help poor people escape poverty. Wealth, not a regulatory burden, makes a clean environment possible. . . .
Read the rest.Back to top by E. Calvin Beisner
National Spokesman, Cornwall Alliance for the Stewardship of Creation
August 12, 2009
United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon told a meeting of the Global Environment Forum in Incheon, South Korea, August 11, "We have just four months. Four months to secure the future of our planet" from catastrophic climate change.
The deadline referred to an international conference in Copenhagen set for December at which Ban Ki-moon and other climate alarmists want to "Seal the Deal" on an international treaty to limit greenhouse gases.
Climate change, Ban said, "exacerbates all of the problems we face: poverty, disease, hunger and insecurity. . . . It deepens the food and energy crises."
"If we fail to act," he continued, "climate change will intensify droughts, floods and other natural disasters.
"Water shortages will affect hundreds of millions of people. Malnutrition will engulf large parts of the developing world. Tensions will worsen. Social unrest – even violence – could follow.
"The damage to national economies will be enormous. The human suffering will be incalculable."
With all due respect to the Secretary General, we beg to differ.
As Bjorn Lomborg has demonstrated in his book Cool It! The Skeptical Environmentalist's Guide to Global Warming, even the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's projections for manmade climate change suggest that the most likely scenarios would have a net positive impact on food production and other aspects of the human economy. And while with any climate change--manmade or natural--there will be changes in the patterns and locations of droughts, floods, and natural disasters, there is no convincing scientific evidence that such disasters will be more frequent or intense with warming. In fact, historical evidence strongly suggests that they are more frequent and intense during cooler periods.
And the economic evidence is also strong that attempts to fight global warming by mandated cuts in CO2 and other greenhouse gas emissions will deepen and perpetuate abject poverty, as both Lomborg and Yale economist William Nordhaus have shown.
Ban's most basic mistake is counting only the harms projected from global warming (and rising CO2), not also the benefits, and only the benefits projected from greenhouse gas emission reduction policies, not also the harms. Count both harms and benefits in both cases, and you find that trying to reduce global warming will do more harm than letting it occur while our economies continue to grow. Consider a few illustrations, from Lomborg's Cool It, and remember that money spent to fight global warming can't be spent on other things, too:
- Potential malaria cases prevented through 2085 by Kyoto compliance: 70 million // Potential malaria cases prevented through 2085 by direct malaria reduction strategies: 28 billion (p. 100)
- Assuming the IPCC is right about global warming, world agricultural production will double around "2081 rather than 2080." (p. 104)
- Even the world's poorest areas will see increased agricultural production through this century despite global warming. (p. 105)
- ". . . how many hungry the world will end up with depends much less on climate than on demographics and income. . . . using climate policy to obtain a small reduction in hunger is simply not the best strategy. . . . if we really care about helping the hungry, we . . . could focus on simple measures like investing in agriculture . . . . Each time our investment in climate saves one person from hunger, a similar investment in direct hunger policies could save more than five thousand people." (pp. 106-108)
- Since lack of water is driven primarily by inefficient services, not by natural limits, and services improve with economic growth, "increased economic ability will probably more than compensate for the lower amounts of water available" and "The remarkable result is that global warming actually reduces [emphasis original] the number of people living in water-stressed areas, with less water stress in warmer scenarios than in colder ones." (pp. 108-109)
- Investing about $4 billion annually in improving access to clean drinking water for the 1 billion people who lack it now "would avert almost one billion cases of diarrhea each year," saving "on average two hundred hours per person each year" with total monetary value over $200 billion per year.
As Lomborg summarizes, "The fundamental economic [emphasis original] problem with both Kyoto and its stricter follow-ups is that all macro-economic models show that they are poor investments" (p. 119).Back to top Debateby Donald Hertzmark
International Energy Specialist; Writer, MasterResource.org
August 5, 2009
. . . Cap-and-trade is a fertile playground for rent seeking. Most of the hundreds of billions of tax dollars devoted to Waxman-Markey will do little or nothing to reduce the simulated impacts of increased CO2 levels, nor will these monies result in greater energy production. What happens instead is that cap-and-trade permits the trading of phony carbon reductions in order to fund the construction of new electricity plants that do not actually contribute very much to supply, and may reduce the overall wealth of society through greater regulation and suppression of investment in more productive areas.
If the big pot of (our) money is just lying on the table, waiting for the rent-seekers to scoop it up, then we should at least figure out who the potential winners are from this bonanza. There are several categories of winners in this contest:
- Emissions permits and carbon trading profits,
- Renewable energy revenues, and
- “Smart” network investments. . . .
Read the rest.Back to top by Paul Chesser
Director, Climate Strategies Watch; Scholar, John Locke Foundation
GlobalWarming.org, August 11, 2009
The campaign for Texas Gov. Rick Perry (who faces a Republican primary challenge in 2010 from Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison) has posted on his Web site a petition against cap-and-trade legislation:
We, the undersigned, ask that Congress abandon legislation that will immediately lead to higher taxes, higher unemployment, tremendous burdens on businesses, and higher costs of goods. We believe policies like this should not be pursued as a response to inconclusive climate change theories.
As America experiences a period of economic downturn, we cannot afford the largest tax increase in our country’s history. By some estimates, the legislation known as “Cap and Trade” will result in a shocking $6,800 yearly increase in costs for a family of 4 in just a few short years. Families will see higher utility bills, loss of jobs, businesses closing, and higher prices on American products.
Texans are certainly qualified to speak out on this issue. Texas’ energy industry fuels the nation, supplying 20 percent of the nation’s oil production, one-fourth of the nation’s natural gas production, a quarter of the nation’s refining capacity, and nearly 60 percent of the nation’s chemical manufacturing. The Texas energy industry employs nearly 375,000 Texans with $35 billion in total wages. . . . Read the rest.Back to top ScienceGeorge C. Marshall Institute
. . . To understand whether global warming really is a serious threat, it is necessary to understand some basic facts. Here are the answers to commonly asked questions about global warming.
Isn’t there a consensus of scientific opinion on man-made global warming?
No. Human activities, such as the burning of fossil fuels to power our homes and businesses and changes to the land, such as modern cities and expanded agriculture, undoubtedly affect the environment, but just how much they may be changing the climate is the subject of much debate. . . .
. . . Is the world heating up? How would we know?
Not recently and not accurately. Even though GHG emissions increased steadily in the latter half of the 20th century, global surface temperatures have not increased since about 1998. Since the late 1800s, the world’s average surface temperature is believed to have warmed about 1°F, which is, in part, a natural recovery from the “Little Ice Age,” a period of global cooling lasting from about 1400 to the 1800s AD. The precise change is unknown because temperature in most parts of the globe has not been measured accurately over a very long period of time. . . .
. . . Hasn’t the Earth’s climate alternated in the past between ice ages and warming periods?
Yes. Climate is always changing. . . .
. . . Does man-made carbon dioxide (CO2) contribute to global warming?
Yes, but how much is uncertain. Water vapor and clouds account for over 90% of the natural greenhouse effect. A doubling of atmospheric CO2, which could be reached late in this century, would increase the greenhouse effect by only 3%. . . .
. . . How do we know what the climate will be in the future?
We don’t. Predictions of future climate come from computer models, which are very incomplete approximations of the behavior of the real climate system. Models rely on assumptions about how the climate works and translate those assumptions into mathematical representations of climate processes. But many of these processes, such as clouds and precipitation, ocean circulation and solar effects, are not well understood and so cannot be modeled accurately. The predictions of future climatic changes are hypotheses, not scientific facts. . . .
. . . Aren’t there serious risks of increasing CO2 beyond certain levels?
Maybe. The risks of increasing levels of CO2 in the atmosphere are not well understood, but we do know that the Earth has experienced previous CO2 levels well beyond those projected. We seldom hear about the benefits of more CO2 in the atmosphere, even though it is an element that is necessary for life to exist. . . .
. . . Can any specific event, such as a drought or a tornado, be tied to global warming?
No. Specific weather events cannot be linked to global warming. The effect of warming on hurricanes, tornados, and torrential rains is the subject of much speculation, but there is little evidence that a warming world has made — or will make — these events more frequent or more severe.
Are sea levels rising? Are Greenland, the Arctic, and the Antarctic melting?
Yes and yes, but neither can be linked to global warming with any certainty. Sea levels have risen some, and melting is observed, but the causes are the subject of much study. The oceans have not risen rapidly during the past century. . . .
Read the rest.Back to top by Frank J. Tipler
Professor of Mathematical Physics, Tulane University
Pajamas Media, August 5, 2009
As the Senate considers the fate of the cap-and-trade bill, we should consider what it means for more carbon dioxide to be added to the atmosphere, something the bill intends to prevent.
Carbon dioxide is first and foremost a plant food. In fact, plants take carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and use the energy from sunlight to combine the CO2 with water to yield glucose, the simplest sugar molecule. Carbon dioxide is also the source of all organic — this word just means “contains carbon” — molecules synthesized by plants. Without carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, there would be no organic molecules synthesized by plants. The less carbon dioxide there is in the atmosphere, the fewer organic molecules synthesized by plants. All animals depend on plants to synthesize essential organic molecules. Without the organic molecules synthesized by plants, the animal world could not exist. Without plants, there would be no biosphere. . . .
Read the rest.Back to top Economics'Clunkers' Pile Up on Auto Dealer's 'Death Row'
by Elizabeth Shogren (NPR, August 5, 2009)
So far, Americans have swapped more than 150,000 gas guzzlers for more efficient vehicles under the "cash for clunkers" program, and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid says he expects the Senate to vote this week to add $2 billion to keep the program going until Labor Day.
The federal government requires auto dealers to disable the engines on the clunkers before they junk the cars. According to Danny Smith, a mechanic at Criswell Chevrolet in Gaithersburg, Md., they do that by pouring two quarts of sodium silicate into the oil tank and then running the engine at 2,000 revolutions per minute until the engine locks up and won't start anymore. . . .
The Shaky Economics of 'Cash for Clunkers'
by David Kestenbaum (NPR, August 6, 2009)
Allen Sanderson, an economist at the University of Chicago, says it's important to remember what's behind many auto dealers' crowded showrooms. Out back, he says, you'll likely find a parking lot filled with the cars that have been traded in. Many of those vehicles run fine. And they all are scheduled for execution.
The government trade-in program requires that the engines of the clunkers be killed. More accustomed to fixing cars, mechanics will pour in a solvent called "liquid glass," then run the engine until it seizes.
From an economic perspective, that's a waste, says Sanderson, who calls the program "silly." The autos required labor and resources to build. . . .
Critics Say 'Clunkers' Program Isn't Very Green
by Christopher Joyce (NPR, August 3, 2009)
. . . it takes electricity to make a new car, and fuel to ship it. . . .
. . . William Chameides [dean of the Nicholas School of the Environment at Duke University] calculates that if you trade in an 18 mpg clunker for a 22 mpg new car (22 miles per gallon is the minimum mileage allowed for a new car under the program), it would take five and a half years of typical driving to offset the new car's carbon footprint. With trucks, it might take eight or nine years, he says. . . .
. . . And people with big cars tend to buy new cars that are still pretty large, according to Brand Fowler, vice president of Sheehy Auto. . . .
Clemency for Clunkers
by Ron Marlette
Executive Director, Mission Solano
Christian Newswire, August 12, 2009
It is a shocking contrast. On one side of town is the Fairfield Auto Mall suddenly alive with new car buyers all leaving their so-called clunkers to be destroyed. On the other side of town is the Mission Solano used car lot with an inventory of seven cars. Donations are down at the Mission lot. There is little chance for recovery as long as the government is in the car business, paying up to $4,500 for cars that once were candidates for being donated to the Mission lot. . . .
. . . Mission Solano uses the car lot profits to feed and house the homeless. Those profits were already down as consumers hold onto old cars longer or broker their own sales to weather the bad economy. But, the Cash for Clunkers program is also hurting those who traditionally turn to the Mission to buy low priced transportation. The car they might have purchased is now sitting between the Auto Mall and the freeway with a scribbled message: Not for Sale. Must be Crushed. . . .
Read the rest.
"The art of economics is looking not merely at the immediate but at the longer effects of any act or policy: it consists in tracing the consequences of that policy not merely for one group but for all groups."
--Henry Hazlitt, Economics in One Lesson (San Francisco: Laissez Faire Books, 1996 [1946]), p. 5 Cash for Clunkers: Not Just Silly but Ethically Questionable
by E. Calvin Beisner
National Spokesman, Cornwall Alliance for the Stewardship of Creation
August 13, 2009
Several months ago, when I first heard of cash for clunkers, I anticipated most of the problems discussed in the items above (excluding the harm to non-profits who lose out on auto donations). Sure enough, those problems and plenty more arose because Congress failed to anticipate unintended consequences.
But even more important is the questionable ethics of the law. What persuades us that it's right for government to take money from some people and give it to others to replace their cars? If that's okay, how about so they can buy more comfortable clothes? or take a vacation? or buy a bigger, newer house? Does the government exist to take from some and give to others?
The Eighth Commandment doesn't say, "You shall not steal, unless you are the government"--and that's just what happens when the government forcibly (by taxes) takes your money and gives it to me to subsidize my purchase of a new car. Cash for clunkers is an exercise in wealth redistribution, plain and simple. It benefits the few who replace their cars and the few who make the replacements. It harms the many who are forced to subsidize those few.Back to top by Marc Morano
Director, Climate Depot
August 9, 2009
. . . The core of the claims made in the August 8, 2009 New York Times article by John M. Broder are stated as follows: “Recent war games and intelligence studies conclude that over the next 20 to 30 years, vulnerable regions, particularly sub-Saharan Africa, the Middle East and South and Southeast Asia, will face the prospect of food shortages, water crises and catastrophic flooding driven by climate change that could demand an American humanitarian relief or military response.”
The heart of the “national security” argument is merely a redux of the 1970's laughable scares about famines and resource scarcity. . . .
. . . The "national security" angle is based on unproven computer models which even the United Nations IPCC admits are not “predictions.” UN IPCC lead author, Dr. Kevin Trenberth refers to climate models as “story lines.” “In fact there are no predictions by IPCC at all. And there never have been. The IPCC instead proffers 'what if' projections of future climate that correspond to certain emissions scenarios,” Trenberth wrote in journal Nature's blog on June 4, 2007. So the mighty New York Times is reporting that some members of the military, led by Sen. Kerry, are essentially playing no more than “what if” “war games!” . . .
. . . Left unanswered in this argument is how a climate bill that will have no detectable impact on global temperatures will help "solve" the alleged looming national security threat. Most shockingly, the Congressional climate bill would not even impact atmospheric CO2 levels according to the EPA! . . .
Read the rest.
Related item:
Senator Kerry Misfires About Global Warming and National Security
by Christopher Monckton
Viscount of Brenchley; Chief Policy Adviser, Science & Public Policy Institute
August 12, 2009Back to top by Dennis T. Avery
Director, Center for Global Food Issues; Senior Fellow, Hudson Institute & Heartland Institute; Scientific Advisor, American Council on Science and Health; Co-Author, Unstoppable Global Warming Every 1500 Years
August 10, 2009
One of the persistent, shallow global food myths is that the world could feed more people if we gave up eating meat. Ezra Klein wrote another misguided column about this . . . Klein asserts, “It is more energy efficient to grow grain and feed it to people than it is to grow grain and turn it into feed that we give to calves until they become adults that we then slaughter to feed to people.” . . . No, Mr. Klein, it isn’t. . . .
Point One: Our biggest source of livestock food is [grass.] Humans can't get nourishment from it . . .
. . . Point Three: Livestock happily and constructively eat lots of other stuff that humans can’t or won’t consume . . .
Point Four: . . . The biological value of the animal protein is 1.4 times that value in the plant foods. . . .
Read the rest.Back to top by Robert L. Bradley, Jr.
Founder & CEO, Institute for Energy Research; Writer, MasterResource.org; Scholar, Cato Institute & Competitive Enterprise Institute; Research Fellow, Center for Energy Economics, University of Texas in Austin; Author, Capitalism at Work: Business, Government, and Energy
August 8, 2009
The wisdom of the ages applies to energy. . . . Take for example the electric car, a perennially bad idea for receiving taxpayer subsidies. Below, produced verbatim, is an eye-witness account of a conversation between the father of electricity and the father of the automobile that took place some 113 years ago.
“He asked me no end of details,” to use Mr. Ford’s own language, “and I sketched everything for him; for I have always found that I could convey an idea quicker by sketching than by just describing it.” When the conversation ended, Mr. Edison brought his fist down on the table with a bang, and said:
Young man, that’s the thing; you have it. Keep at it. Electric cars must keep near to power stations. The storage battery is too heavy. Steam cars won’t do, either, for they require a boiler and fire. Your car is self-contained—carries its own power plant—no fire, no boiler, no smoke and no steam. You have the thing. Keep at it. Later on Mr. Ford wrote:
. . . The man who knew most about electricity in the world had said that for the purpose my gas motor was better than any electric motor could be—it could go long distances, he said, and there would be stations to supply the cars with [liquid fuel]. . . . Read the rest.Back to top Meet the CriticsHave you ever been at a loss for words when challenged by the alarmist's claim of scientific "consensus," or that dissenting scientists are unqualified? Not only does consensus prove nothing, but the very idea of "consensus" among scientists on catastrophic manmade climate change is simply unfounded. A 2008 Senate Environment and Public Works Minority Report documents dissension around the world:More Than 700 International Scientists Dissent
Over Man-Made Global Warming Claims Two notable critics are:
Syun-Ichi Akasofu, Ph.D.
Founding director of the International Arctic Research Center and former director of the Geophysical Institute at the University of Alaska Fairbanks, geophysicist Syun-Ichi Akasofu is the recipient of numerous awards and honors and is considered one of the world's most cited authors. "Most reporters, who come to Alaska to try to find the greenhouse disasters, have little knowledge of the Arctic," Akasofu explains, but "It is normal for tidewater glaciers to calve large blocks of ice from the face as they reach the sea, and they will do so regardless of how warm or cold it is. Most glaciers in the world have been receding since 1800 or earlier, well before 1940, when CO2 began to increase significantly." Among numerous publications by Akasofu are Two Natural Components of the Recent Climate Change, Global Temperature Changes During the Last Millennium and the Prediction for 2100, The Big Ice Age or the Big Steamy Age?, and Why Has Global Warming Become Such a Passionate Subject? Let's Not Lose Our Cool.
Tom V. Segalstad
IPCC expert reviewer Tom V. Segalstad has taught numerous environmental subjects at the University of Oslo and Pennsylvania State University and has headed the former's Geological Museum, Natural History Museum, and Botanical Garden. "All measurements of solar luminosity and 14C isotopes show that there is at present an increasing solar radiation which gives a warmer climate," says Segalstad. "Warmer climate was previously perceived as an optimum climate and not catastrophic." Some of the many pieces by Segalstad are Correct Timing Is Everything - Also for CO2 in the Air, Do Glaciers Tell a True Atmospheric CO2 Story?, What is CO2 - Friend or Foe?, and (at the 2009 ICCC) Carbon Isotope Mass Balance Modeling of Atmospheric vs. Oceanic CO2.Back to top Briefly NotedObama's Science Czar on Global Cooling
McCain Calls Waxman-Markey Bill a 'Farce'
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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