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Newsletter (August 7, 2009)
Above the Foldby E. Calvin Beisner
National Spokesman, Cornwall Alliance for the Stewardship of Creation
WorldNetDaily, August 7, 2009
I've been a pastor, and I know how busy pastors can be. So why would I urge America's Christian leaders and clergy to take on yet another concern, namely, standing against global warming alarmism?
Because while on the surface this might seem like a peripheral issue, it has profound spiritual, moral and economic implications for believers – and especially the poor – that pastors can ill afford to ignore.
. . . some people propose to fight global warming by slowing or reversing the increase of CO2 in the atmosphere through massive, forced reductions in use of carbon-based fuels – oil, coal and natural gas. . . . a bill that recently passed the House of Representatives . . . would create a so-called "cap and trade" system to reduce CO2 emissions. . . .
A recent study by the Heritage Foundation found that the law would:
- raise the average family's annual energy bill $1,241 (over $100 per month);
- raise electricity rates 90 percent, gasoline prices 74 percent and residential natural gas prices 55 percent;
- raise unemployment by nearly 2 million jobs in 2012, with additional job losses to follow;
- raise the inflation-adjusted federal debt 26 percent by 2035 – about $115,00 per family of four; and
- reduce gross domestic product by an average of $393 billion per year, or $9.4 trillion through 2035.
The payoff? About 0.09 degree F reduction in global average temperature in the year 2050. (The real reduction might be only one-tenth as much.) At that rate, counting the costs only through 2035, we'd be paying $940 billion for every one-one hundredth of a degree reduction in temperature. Assuming – optimistically! – that costs after 2035 were slashed in half, we'd end up paying an additional $2.9 trillion, for a total of over $12 trillion, or $1.2 trillion for every one-one hundredth of a degree. That's an awful lot to pay for so little return when growing numbers of qualified scientists reject the case for destructive manmade global warming anyway.
In the face of these facts, we should remember that the Bible requires us to care for the poor. The Apostle Paul wrote that the other Apostles in Jerusalem had one main concern on their minds when he visited them: that he should "remember the poor – the very thing [he] also was eager to do" (Galatians 2:10).
The costs of climate change policy will hit the poor harder than anyone else. Indeed, they can least afford the general rise in prices, and energy constitutes a larger share of their spending than of others with more discretionary income.
But that isn't the only reason pastors should be concerned. Global warming policy is part of a concerted effort to push environmentalism to the fore in American politics and culture. . . .
Secular environmentalism – in contrast to biblical creation stewardship – is at heart a false religion. It degrades human beings, the crown of God's creation (Genesis 1:26; Psalm 8); it deifies nature in its untouched state as the ideal, contrary to God's mandate for man to fill, subdue, and rule the Earth (Genesis 1:28); and it disregards the poor, who often are harmed by environmental policies . . . .
Secular environmentalism is also the new face of the anti-human, pro-death agenda. As the Optimum Population Trust put it in 2007, "The most effective national and global climate change strategy is limiting the size of its population. . . . A non-existent person has no environmental footprint."
Among many environmentalists, people are the ultimate pollution, and reducing their numbers – through abortion, euthanasia, disease or poverty – is the goal. Replacing wood and dung as fuels for cooking and heating with electricity would prevent 2 to 3 million premature deaths every year in poor countries, yet CO2-restricting policies will make electricity generation more expensive and delay its provision to the poor for decades. Such thinking is more common than you might think; one well-known religious leader once told me that "the last thing" the developing world poor need is cheap, abundant energy. (Brian McClaren, radio interview, 2007)
But there's an alternative. The WeGetIt.org Campaign calls for stewardship of creation based on biblical principles and factual evidence. The heart of the WeGetIt.org Declaration is, "With billions suffering in poverty, environmental policies must not further oppress the world's poor by denying them basic needs. Instead, we must help people fulfill their God-given potential as producers and stewards."
As a pastor, I signed on. Please join me. And please help spread the call for biblically based creation stewardship near and far.
Read the rest.In this issue
Featured- Africa's Real Climate Crisis
- Global Warming Campaigner Cizik Embraces Abortion and Sex Education Bill--Is There a Connection?
- Rise of the Natural Climate Cycle Deniers
- Numerous Letters from Scientists Outraged by Claims of Consensus
Debate- Climate Bill May Fall by the Wayside
- Lawrence Solomon Interviewed About 'The Deniers'
Science- Still No Tropical Storms? Must Be Global Warming
- Resisting Climate Hysteria
Economics- Global Warming and the Poor
- Forests of Concrete and Steel
Meet the Critics: Ian R. Plimer & Sherwood B. Idso
Briefly Noted
Featuredby Fiona Kobusingye
Coordinator, Congress of Racial Equality Uganda and Kill Malarial Mosquitoes Now Brigade
Townhall.com, July 29, 2009
Life in Africa is often nasty, impoverished and short. AIDS kills 2.2 million Africans every year according to WHO (World Health Organization) reports. Lung infections cause 1.4 million deaths, malaria 1 million more, intestinal diseases 700,000. Diseases that could be prevented with simple vaccines kill an additional 600,000 annually, while war, malnutrition and life in filthy slums send countless more parents and children to early graves.
And yet, day after day, Africans are told the biggest threat we face is – global warming. . . .
. . . Africans are told climate change “threatens humanity more than HIV/AIDS.” More than 2.2 million dead Africans every year? . . .
. . . the real problem isn’t questionable or fake science, hysterical claims and worthless computer models that predict global warming disasters. It’s that they’re being used to justify telling Africans that we shouldn’t build coal or natural gas electrical power plants. It’s the almost total absence of electricity keeping us from creating jobs and becoming modern societies. It’s that these policies KILL.
The average African life span is lower than it was in the United States and Europe 100 years ago. But Africans are being told we shouldn’t develop, or have electricity or cars because, now that those countries are rich beyond anything Africans can imagine, they’re worried about global warming. . . .
. . . Not having electricity means millions of Africans don’t have refrigerators to preserve food and medicine. Outside of wealthy parts of our big cities, people don’t have lights, computers, modern hospitals and schools, air conditioning – or offices, factories and shops to make things and create good jobs.
Not having electricity also means disease and death. It means millions die from lung infections, because they have to cook and heat with open fires; from intestinal diseases caused by spoiled food and unsafe drinking water; from malaria, TB, cholera, measles and other diseases that we could prevent or treat if we had proper medical facilities.
Hypothetical global warming a hundred years from now is worse than this?
Telling Africans they can’t have electricity and economic development – except what can be produced with some wind turbines or little solar panels – is immoral. It is a crime against humanity. . . .
Read the rest.Back to top by E. Calvin Beisner
National Spokesman, Cornwall Alliance for the Stewardship of Creation
August 6, 2009
Major manmade global warming alarm campaigner Richard Cizik, forced to resign as the National Association of Evangelicals' (NAE) vice president for governmental affairs last December when he embraced homosexual civil unions in a National Public Radio interview, has now embraced proposed legislation that pro-life groups warn "deceptively promotes 'common ground' on abortion, promoting policies to 'reduce the need for abortion' that pro-life leaders say would actually lead to its increase," as Kathleen Gilbert of LifeSiteNews.com put it.
The legislation, co-sponsored by Democratic Congressmen Tim Ryan and Rosa DeLauro, "purports to 'reduce the need for abortion' by increasing funds for the Title X Family Planning Program, which funds Planned Parenthood, and set aside grants for explicit sex education."
But statistical data indicate that "family planning" and sex education do not lead to fewer abortions, and they lead to fewer unwanted births only because more women with unplanned pregnancies have abortions. Support for the bill by Planned Parenthood, the nation's largest abortion provider, and NARAL (National Abortion Rights Action League) is consistent with that.
So why would Cizik, who has positioned himself as pro-life, support the bill? No reports have made it clear. But under the outspoken environmentalist's watch the NAE shifted increasingly toward majoring on trendy issues with tenuous Biblical support and away from issues that had unified evangelicals for decades. For example, the Institute on Religion & Democracy's Alan Wisdom found through a Nexis search that during 2006, only 3 percent of media mentions of NAE (excluding those focused on the scandal-prompted resignation of former NAE President Ted Haggard) referenced its opposition to same-sex marriage, and under 1 percent referenced its opposition to abortion, but 37 percent referenced the environment and global warming.
The overwhelming majority of Cizik's attention in recent years has been on the environment, especially global warming. Not coincidentally, Cizik told the World Bank in 2006,
I’d like to take on the population issue, but in my community global warming is the third rail issue. I’ve touched the third rail . . . but still have a job. And I’ll still have a job after my talk here today. But population is a much more dangerous issue to touch. . . We need to confront population control and we can — we’re not Roman Catholics after all — but it’s too hot to handle now. As The Acton Institute and The Institute on Religion and Democracy (IRD) revealed in a joint paper, From Climate Control to Population Control: Troubling Background on the "Evangelical Climate Initiative", large groups long committed to population control see alleged manmade global warming as a way to bring their agenda in through the back door. Cizik's not-so-subtle hint at support for population control over three years ago fits with that agenda, and so does the Ryan-DeLauro bill, as Planned Parenthood and Guttmacher Institute support imply.
Cizik now works for anti-population growth leader and media mogul Ted Turner's United Nations Foundation, which has strong emphases on population control and global climate action.
What ties population control and climate action together? Acton and IRD explained in their joint paper:
Logically, one can care for the environment without supporting population control. But for many radical environmentalists, the route from global warming (and care for the environment generally) to population reduction seems irresistible: since people use up natural resources, release CO2 into the atmosphere and otherwise pollute the environment, the fewer people, the less global warming and less harm to the environment. To help the environment, therefore, we must reduce the human population. LiveScience.com made the connection explicit in an article reporting on a new study on the effect of childbearing on carbon dioxide emissions. It's no wonder, then, that, as Acton and IRD pointed out, "The Hewlett Foundation, which contributed $475,000 to the [Evangelical Climate Initiative], is a major contributor to the causes of abortion and population control. Like many other groups, the Hewlett Foundation explicitly connects its interest in these causes to its views on the environment.
In contrast to Cizik's endorsement of Ryan-DeLauro, the NAE made its own position clear in a July 31, 2009, letter from NAE President Leith Anderson to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi regarding pending health care reform legislation. Anderson wrote:
. . . one point on which the NAE as a whole wishes to be very clear is its opposition to abortion and, most assuredly, the use of taxpayer resources to provide abortions.
. . . the NAE is concerned that abortion, if not specifically excluded from being covered and funded in the plans arranged for by this legislation, may be considered to be approved under the legislation after enactment. If facilitation of abortion is not the intent of Congress, then language specifically excluding abortion must be incorporated into the bill . . . .
Members of the NAE believe that the Bible reveals God’s calling and care for persons before they are born, which is why the NAE firmly opposes abortion generally. Also stemming from this belief is the NAE’s continued interest in the conversation about how to find common ground in the effort to reduce the abortion rate in the United States. The NAE holds that federal subsidization of abortion would run counter to this aspiration. Indeed, the possibility that money taxed from their earnings could be used to facilitate the intentional termination of prenatal lives is anathema to many members of the church congregations that the NAE represents. The Bible repeatedly warns God's people against alliances with the wicked (Exodus 23:32; 34:12; Judges 2:2). More poignantly, it asks: "If one carries holy meat in the fold of his garment, and with the edge he touches bread or stew, wine or oil, or any food, will it become holy?" and answers no. Again it asks, "If one who is unclean because of a dead body touches any of these, will it be unclean?" and answers, "It shall be unclean" (Haggai 2:10-14). "Bad company ruins good morals," warns the Apostle Paul (1 Corinthians 15:33).
Perhaps it's time for Cizik and other self-professed evangelicals who have joined him in support for both global warming alarm and the Ryan-DeLauro bill to think long and hard about what their associations with pro-abortion, pro-population control environmentalists have done to their spiritual and moral discernment.Back to top by Roy W. Spencer
Principal Research Scientist, University of Alabama in Huntsville; Author, DrRoySpencer.com; Author, Climate Confusion
July 29, 2009
Those who promote the theory that mankind is responsible for global warming have been working for the past 20 years on a revisionist climate history. A history where climate was always in a harmonious state of balance until mankind came along and upset that balance.
The natural climate cycle deniers have tried their best to eliminate the Medieval Warm Period and the Little Ice Age from climate data records by constructing the uncritically acclaimed and infamous “hockey stick” of global temperature variations (or non-variations) over the last one- to two-thousand years.
Before being largely discredited by a National Academies review panel, this ‘poster child’ for global warming was heralded as proof of the static nature of the climate system, and that only humans had the power to alter it. . . .
. . . These deniers claim that the Medieval Warm Period was only a regional phenomenon, restricted to Europe. Same for the Little Ice Age. Yet when a killer heat wave occurred in France in 2003, they hypocritically insisted that this event had global significance, caused by anthropogenic ‘global’ warming.
The strong warming that occurred up until 1940 is similarly a thorn in the side of the natural climate cycle deniers, since atmospheric carbon dioxide increases from fossil fuel burning before 1940 were too meager to have caused it. So, the ‘experts’ are now actively working on reducing the magnitude of that event by readjusting some ship measurements of ocean temperatures from that era.
Yet, they would never dream of readjusting the more recent thermometer record, which clearly has localized urban heat island effects that have not yet been removed (e.g., see here and here). . . .
Read the rest.Back to top An outpouring of skeptical scientists who are members of the American Chemical Society (ACS) are revolting against the group's editor-in-chief -- with some demanding he be removed -- after an editorial appeared claiming “the science of anthropogenic climate change is becoming increasingly well established.”
--Marc Morano, Climate Depot, July 29, 2009 Chemical & Engineering News, July 27, 2009
. . . How many readers of C&EN even know why carbon dioxide is the "culprit"? How many kilocalories of infrared energy can a ton of carbon dioxide absorb? What is the amount of carbon dioxide absorbed in fresh or salt water, and how is that equilibrium impacted by temperature or other environmental factors? What are some of the other variables that can cause an increase or decrease in temperature?
Instead of debate, members are constantly subjected to your arrogant self-righteousness and the left-wing practice of stifling debate by personal attacks on anyone who disagrees. I think ACS should make an effort to educate its membership about the science of climate change and let them draw their own conclusions. Although under your editorial leadership, I suspect we would be treated to a biased and skewed version of scientific debate. I think its time to find a new editor.
--Thomas E. D'Ambra, Rexford, N.Y.
I am always intrigued by claims that science is settled, especially when it comes to something as complex as climate. Rudy Baum's remarks are particularly disquieting because of his hostility toward skepticism, which is part of every scientist's soul. Let's cut to the chase with some questions for Baum: Which of the 20-odd major climate models has settled the science, such that all of the rest are now discarded?
Precisely why do you claim that the "scientific consensus of climate change has become increasingly hard to challenge," when nobody in the world claims that climate does not change?
Do you refer to "climate change" instead of "global warming" because the claim of anthropogenic global warming has become increasingly contrary to fact?
Have you made the switch from "global warming" to "climate change" because any data whatsoever can be taken, however illogically, as evidence that man is changing the climate?
--Howard Hayden, Pueblo West, Colo.
Read more letters.
Related item:
Scientist Accuses Editor of 'Censoring of Articles and Letters'
Climate Depot, July 31, 2009Back to top Debateby Lisa Lerer
Journalist, Politico
August 5, 2009
With the fight over health care reform absorbing all the bandwidth on Capitol Hill, Democrats fear a major climate change bill may be left on the cutting-room floor this year.
A handful of key senators on climate change are almost guaranteed to be tied up well into the fall on health care. Democrats from the Midwest and the South are resistant to a cap-and-trade proposal. And few if any Republicans are jumping in to help push a global warming and energy initiative.
As a result, many Democrats fear the lack of political will and the congressional calendar will conspire to punt climate change into next year.
“The reality is [the health reform bill] is going to happen before cap and trade,” said House Agriculture Committee Chairman Rep. Collin Peterson, who’s been working with farm-state senators on the climate legislation. “Who knows if it will ever come out of the Senate?”
Sen. Byron Dorgan (D-N.D.), a senior member of the Energy and Natural Resources Committee and chairman of the Democratic Policy Committee, has also publicly questioned efforts to move a Senate climate change bill this year.
“It’s very hard for the United States Congress to wrap itself around one very large, significant, very controversial issue, and we’re being asked to do that in the midst of a very deep recession,” he told POLITICO last week. . . .
Read the rest.Back to top Climate Realists, July 28, 2009
This is an interview well worth listening to, as Lawrence Solomon (Energy Probe) is interviewed by CBC's (Canadian Broadcasting Corporation) Ideas show. He gives insights into the corruption that surrounds the IPCC.
"The science is settled" is now the mantra of climate change activism. Those who disagree are either in denial or in the pay of an oil company. But long time environmentalist and energy activist Lawrence Solomon says no, the science is not settled on global warming. Ideas producer David Cayley breaks the unofficial media blackout of skeptics in this courageous and path-breaking broadcast.
Listen to the interview (MP3).Back to top Scienceby Roy W. Spencer
Principal Research Scientist, University of Alabama in Huntsville; Author, DrRoySpencer.com; Author, Climate Confusion
August 3, 2009
So, where are all of the news stories about the fact we’ve had no tropical storms yet this year? As can be seen in the following graphic, as of this date in 2005 we already had 8 named storms in the Atlantic basin. And tomorrow, August 4, that number will increase to 9. In 2005 we were even told to expect more active hurricane seasons from now on because of global warming.
Of course, even though it is interesting that the 2009 tropical season is off to such a slow start, it may well have no significance in terms of long-term trends. But the lack of news coverage on the subject does show the importance of unbiased reporting when it comes to global warming. . . .
Read the rest.Back 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
Quandrant Online, July 26, 2009
The notion of a static, unchanging climate is foreign to the history of the earth or any other planet with a fluid envelope. The fact that the developed world went into hysterics over changes in global mean temperature anomaly of a few tenths of a degree will astound future generations. Such hysteria simply represents the scientific illiteracy of much of the public, the susceptibility of the public to the substitution of repetition for truth, and the exploitation of these weaknesses by politicians, environmental promoters, and, after 20 years of media drum beating, many others as well. Climate is always changing. We have had ice ages and warmer periods when alligators were found in Spitzbergen. Ice ages have occurred in a hundred thousand year cycle for the last 700 thousand years, and there have been previous periods that appear to have been warmer than the present despite CO2 levels being lower than they are now. More recently, we have had the medieval warm period and the little ice age. During the latter, alpine glaciers advanced to the chagrin of overrun villages. Since the beginning of the 19th Century these glaciers have been retreating. Frankly, we don’t fully understand either the advance or the retreat.
For small changes in climate associated with tenths of a degree, there is no need for any external cause. The earth is never exactly in equilibrium. The motions of the massive oceans where heat is moved between deep layers and the surface provides variability on time scales from years to centuries. Recent work (Tsonis et al, 2007), suggests that this variability is enough to account for all climate change since the 19th Century. . . .
Read the rest.Back to top Economicsby Bret Stephens
Foreign-Affairs Columnist and Deputy Editorial Page Editor, Wall Street Journal
August 4, 2009
. . . Indian Environment Minister Jairam Ramesh told visiting Secretary of State Hillary Clinton that there was no way India would sign on to any global scheme to cap carbon emissions.
“There is simply no case for the pressure that we, who have among the lowest emissions per capita, face to actually reduce emissions,” Mr. Ramesh told Mrs. Clinton. “And as if this pressure was not enough, we also face the threat of carbon tariffs on our exports to countries such as yours.” The Chinese—the world’s largest emitter of CO—have told the Obama administration essentially the same thing.
. . . When Deng Xiaoping began introducing elements of a market economy in 1980, Chinese life expectancy at birth was 65.3 years. Today it is about 73 years. The numbers are probably a bit inflated, as most numbers are in the People’s Republic, but the trend line is undeniable. In India, life expectancy rose from 52.5 years in 1980 to about 67 years today. If this is the consequence of following the “American economic model” then poor countries need more of it. . . .
Read the rest.Back to top by Paul K. Driessen
Columnist, Townhall.com; Senior Fellow, Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow, Center for the Defense of Free Enterprise, and Congress of Racial Equality; Author, Eco-Imperialism.com
July 22, 2009
Boone Pickens, Nacel Energy and Vestas Iberia have been issuing statements and placing print, radio and television ads, extolling the virtues of wind as an affordable, sustainable energy resource. Renewable energy reality is slowly taking hold, however.
Spain did increase its installed wind power capacity to 10% of its total electricity, although actual energy output is 10-30% of this, or 1-3% of total electricity, because the wind is intermittent and unreliable. However, Spain spent $3.7 billion on the program in 2007 alone, according to King Juan Carlos University economics professor Gabriel Calzada.
It created 50,000 jobs, mostly installing wind turbines, at $73,000 in annual subsidies per job – and 10,000 of these jobs have already been terminated. Spain’s economic problems have slashed the subsidies and put the remaining 40,000 jobs at risk.
Meanwhile, soaring prices for subsidized wind energy and carbon dioxide emission permits raised electricity prices for other businesses – causing 2.2 jobs to be lost for every “green” job created, says Calzada. Spain’s unemployment rate is now 17% and rising. That’s hardly the “success” story so often cited by Congress and the Obama Administration.
Across the Channel, Britain’s biggest wind-energy projects are in trouble. . . .
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:
Ian R. Plimer, Ph.D.
Award-winning geologist Ian Plimer is a professor at Australia's University of Adelaide and a fellow of multiple scientific societies. "We humans have experienced massive climate change--we've lived in glaciations, we've lived in times when it's been much warmer. So if you move from, say, Melbourne to Hong Kong, there's a huge temperature increase. You don't die because of that--you adapt," says Plimer in an interview with ABNNewswire, in which he also argues that "carbon dioxide is absolutely vital for living on earth; it's plant food, all of life lives off carbon dioxide. To demonise it shows that you don't understand school child science." Another interview of Plimer advertises his new book Heaven and Earth - Global Warming: The Missing Science. A sample of Plimer's work, viewable online, is his lecture entitled Human-Induced Climate Change: A Load of Hot Air.
Sherwood B. Idso, Ph.D.
Formerly a research physicist for the U.S. Department of Agriculture, adjunct professor at Arizona State University, and editorial board member for Agricultural and Forest Meteorology and Environmental and Experimental Botany, Sherwood Idso is a recipient of the Arthur S. Flemming Award and the Petr Beckmann Award. Idso now serves as president of the Center for the Study of Carbon Dioxide and Global Change, which reports that "it is abundantly clear we have nothing to fear from increasing concentrations of atmospheric CO2 and global warming . . . Indeed, these phenomena would appear to be our friends . . . and friends of the entire biosphere." Idso has authored or co-authored over five-hundred scientific publications, including the two notable books, Carbon Dioxide: Friend or Foe? and Carbon Dioxide and Global Change.Back to top Briefly NotedNew Study Debunks Global Warming Claims
Joseph Bast's Review of Why We Disagree About Climate Change
Did House Democrats Buy Moderate Votes on Global Warming Bill?
Big Democrat Cash Dump on Eve of Climate Vote
The Solar Updraft Tower
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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