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Newsletter (May 14, 2010)
Above the FoldCornwall Alliance for the Stewardship of Creation, May 12, 2010
Rising Costs of Energy, Goods and Services Will Hurt the Poor the Most; Hundreds of Leaders Warn of Lost Jobs, Call for Justice for the Poor
Dr. E. Calvin Beisner, national spokesman for the Cornwall Alliance for the Stewardship of Creation, made the following statement today:
Despite the fact that the scientific case for dangerous, manmade global warming is crumbling in the wake of Climategate and other revelations of scientific malpractice by leading alarmists and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, supporters of policies to fight global warming are still pushing for restrictive energy policies.
But those policies will hurt working families and the poor by driving up energy prices. And since energy goes into everything we consume, these rising energy prices will make everything more expensive--especially the most basic things like food and clothing and shelter.
American evangelicals strongly support greater energy freedom, not restriction. (Over 500 evangelical pastors, theologians, academic leaders, scientists, economists, and others have signed the Cornwall Alliance’s Evangelical Declaration on Global Warming, warning that restrictive energy policies would “destroy jobs” and unjustly oppress the poor.)
Despite support from small vocal groups like Ronald Sider and Jim Ball's Evangelical Environmental Network and the Christian Coalition--a tiny shell of its former self--evangelicals continue to be less supportive of global warming policies than the general public, which consistently ranks the issue last or nearly last in a long list of concerns. Online resources
Pew Research poll: “Dealing with global warming ranks at the bottom of the public’s list of priorities; … the percentage that now says addressing global warming should be a top priority has fallen 10 points from 2007.” http://stewards.net/aTGCfV
Gallup poll: “over the last two years [the public] has become less worried about the threat of global warming, less convinced that its effects are already happening, and more likely to believe that scientists themselves are uncertain about its occurrence.” http://stewards.net/aBEoU9
Barna Research poll: “born again Christians - particularly evangelicals - [express] the most skepticism about the importance of global warming of any faith segment.” “Young born again Christians are not much different than their parents when it comes to concerns about the environment. Despite expectations to the contrary, many young Christians seem to adopt a wait-and-see approach to global warming.” http://stewards.net/c2stGW
Evangelical Declaration on Global Warming – http://stewards.net/9wKocs
Prominent signers of the Declaration – http://stewards.net/9Mdcdi
Download the press release (pdf)In This Issue
Featured- Questions Posed for Kerry, Lieberman on New Climate-Energy Bill
- The American Power Act: A Climate Dud
- Christopher Monckton's Congressional Testimony
Debate- Willow Creek's Delusion About 'Social Justice'
- The Untold Story of Astroturf: Corporate-Sponsored Environmentalism
- Book Review: 'Nazi Oaks'
Science- It's All About 'Climate Sensitivity'
- Arctic Ice Sets Records in April, Could Augur Global Cooling
Economics- Lessons From the Gulf Blowout
- Weighing the Benefits and Costs of Offshore Drilling
Upcoming Events
Briefly Noted
Meet the Critics: Piers R. Corbyn
Landmark Documents from the Cornwall Alliance
Featuredby Paul K. Driessen
Columnist, Townhall; Senior Fellow, Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow, Center for the Defense of Free Enterprise, and Congress of Racial Equality; Author, Eco-Imperialism.com
May 12, 2010
The new Kerry-Lieberman climate bill mandates a 17% reduction in US carbon dioxide emissions by 2020. It first targets power plants that provide reliable, affordable electricity for American homes, schools, hospitals, offices and factories. Six years later, it further hobbles the manufacturing sector itself.
Like the House-passed climate bill, Kerry-Lieberman also requires an 83% reduction in CO2 emissions by 2050. Once population growth and transportation, communication and electrification technologies are taken into account, this translates into requiring US emission levels last seen around 1870!
House Speaker Pelosi says “every aspect of our lives must be subjected to an inventory,” to ensure that America achieves these emission mandates. This means replacing what is left of our free-market economy with an intrusive Green Nanny State, compelling us to switch to unreliable wind and solar power, and imposing skyrocketing energy costs on every company and citizen.
Meanwhile, the Environmental Protection Agency is implementing its own draconian energy restrictions, in case Congress does not enact punitive legislation.
It’s time to ask these politicians some fundamental questions.
1) Even slashing carbon dioxide emissions to 83% below 2005 levels would reduce projected global average temperatures in 2050 by barely 0.2 degrees F, according to a study that used the UN’s own climate models. That’s because China, India and other developing countries are building new coal-fired power plants every week, even as the United States and Europe shackle their economies and send more jobs overseas. How do you justify such destructive, punitive, meaningless legislation?
2) Reflecting agreement with thousands of scientists, most Americans now say climate change is natural, not manmade. Fully 75% are unwilling to spend more than $100 per year in higher energy bills to “stabilize” Earth’s unpredictable climate. What provision of the Constitution, your oath of office or your duty to the overall health and welfare of this nation permits you to ignore the will of the people, the mounting evidence that “climate disasters” are the product of manipulated data and falsified UN reports, and the job-killing impacts of the laws and regulations you seek to impose?
3) If carbon dioxide is causing “runaway global warming,” why have average global temperatures not risen since 1995, and why have they been COOLING for the past five years – even as atmospheric carbon dioxide levels have continued to rise to levels unprecedented in the modern era?
4) What properties does manmade carbon dioxide have that enable it to replace the complex natural forces that clearly caused the Ice Ages, Medieval Warm Period, Little Ice Age, Dust Bowl, ice-free Arctic seas in 1822 and 1922, Alaska’s 100 degree F temperature record in 1915, and all the other climate and weather changes and anomalies, blessings and disasters that our planet has experienced during its long geologic and recorded history? . . .
Read the rest.Back to top by Paul C. Knappenberger
Administrator, World Climate Report; Writer, MasterResource
May 12, 2010
“The global temperature “savings” of the Kerry-Lieberman bill is astoundingly small—0.043°C (0.077°F) by 2050 and 0.111°C (0.200°F) by 2100. In other words, by century’s end, reducing U.S. greenhouse gas emissions by 83% will only result in global temperatures being one-fifth of one degree Fahrenheit less than they would otherwise be. That is a scientifically meaningless reduction.” Senators John Kerry and Joseph Lieberman have just unveiled their latest/greatest attempt to reign in U. S. greenhouse gas emissions. Their one time collaborator Lindsey Graham indicated that he did not consider the bill a climate bill because “[t]here is no bipartisan support for a cap-and-trade bill based on global warming.” But make no mistake. This is a climate bill at heart, and thus the Kerry-Lieberman bill sections labeled “Title II. Global Warming Pollution Reduction.”
So apparently someone thinks the bill will have an impact on global warming. But those someones are wrong. The bill will have no meaningful impact of the future course of global warming. . . .
Read the rest.
Related items:
What Will Kerry-Lieberman Do to Future Global Temperature? And What Will It Cost?
by E. Calvin Beisner
National Spokesman, Cornwall Alliance for the Stewardship of Creation
May 13, 2010
Enron Applauds Senate Cap-and-Tax Proposal
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
May 12, 2010Back to top by Christopher Monckton
Viscount of Brenchley; Chief Policy Adviser, Science & Public Policy Institute
May 6, 2010
The Select Committee, in its letter inviting testimony for the present hearing, cites various scientific bodies as having concluded that –
- The global climate has warmed;
- Human activities account for most of the warming since the mid-20th century;
- Climate change is already causing a broad range of impacts in the United States;
- The impacts of climate change are expected to grow in the coming decades.
The first statement requires heavy qualification and, since the second is wrong, the third and fourth are without foundation and must fall.
The Select Committee has requested answers to the following questions:
- What are the observed changes to the climate system?
Carbon dioxide concentration: In the Neoproterozoic Era, ~750 million years ago, dolomitic rocks, containing ~40% CO2 bonded not only with calcium ions but also with magnesium, were precipitated from the oceans worldwide by a reaction that could not have occurred unless the atmospheric concentration of CO2 had been ~300,000 parts per million by volume. Yet in that era equatorial glaciers came and went twice at sea level. . . .
Read the rest (PDF).Back to top Debateby David A. Noebel
President, Summit Ministries; Author, Understanding the Times
WorldNetDaily, May 5, 2010
. . . [Jim] Wallis' ability to deceive reaches high into evangelical circles. For example, an article posted on the Sojourners blog entitled "Beyond Charity: Living a Life of Compassion and Justice" written by the wife of Willow Creek Pastor Bill Hybels says the following: "The battle against injustice is a tough and ugly war. While I am proud that Willow has entered that war, the truth is we have just begun to fight. … I look forward to the day when we as a church will be known for being the greenest church on the planet, not just because we enjoy the beauty of God's creation, but because we know that climate change is a justice issue." Included in her suggested reading list is Jim Wallis and his Sojourners magazine.
This idea that climate change is a justice/injustice issue is 100 percent in synch with the President's Advisory Council on Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships, which "envisions the 'partnership' between government and religious institutions as a means of spreading the administration's environmental warnings, rather than just a way to help churches feed the hungry and clothe the poor." No wonder Clyne closes her article with the comment, "Perhaps it's only reasonable that global warming activists would turn to God for help as the scientific case for their position collapses."
But let me be blunt and suggest that Mrs. Hybels would be better informed if she would read Theodore Dalrymple's "Life at the Bottom," Peter Bauer's "Equality, the Third World, and Economic Delusion" and Thomas Sowell's "Intellectuals and Society."
In fact, if she were to read Sowell's work she would discover at least one secret to lifting the poor out of poverty, which we can assume is her desire in attaining "social justice," since she never clearly articulates what she means by the term. Writes Sowell, "Under new economic policies beginning in the 1990s, tens of millions of people in India have risen above that country's poverty level. In China, under similar policies begun earlier, a million people a month have risen out of poverty." . . .
Read the rest.
Related item:
A Profile in Social Justice
by Andrée Seu
Writer, WORLD Magazine
May, 2010Back to top by Jeff Poor
Staff Writer, Business & Media Institute
May 12, 2010
While groups like the George Soros-funded MoveOn.org have managed to elude the “Astroturf” moniker, from its inception, the Tea Party movement has taken shots from its critics. One of the most popular left-wing charges was to call it “Astroturf,” meaning it was presented as a grassroots efforts, but wasn’t really grassroots. Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi labeled the Tea Party movement “Astroturf” back during the original Tax Day Tea Party protest on April 15, 2009.
“This initiative is funded by the high end – we call it Astroturf,” Pelosi said. “It's not really a grassroots movement. It's Astroturf by some of the wealthiest people in America to keep the focus on tax cuts for the rich instead of for the great middle class.” . . .
For many companies, environmental causes and saving the planet have become a clever way to market or advertise a product. It’s a common phenomenon for retail outlets to use the environmental mantra to promote what they’re selling. In fact, it’s not only promoted by corporate interests, but it’s something the federal government encourages businesses do to sell their product, according to the U.S. Small Business Association’s Web site . . . .
And one has to look no further than Earth Day 2010 to see the corporate fingerprint on so-called green activist efforts. Major U.S. corporations like Proctor & Gamble, Siemens, Wells Fargo, AT&T, UPS, Philips and Ford all had a major presence at the so-called Earth Day “Climate Rally” on the National Mall back on April 25. That’s in addition to a sponsorship from NASA, a federal government entity and media outlets, including the Washington Post and Gannett’s USA Today.
So you have all the components – corporate interests and government bureaucracies collaborating to push a political agenda. Isn’t that the textbook definition of “Astroturf?” Yet that label has failed to become a part of any green efforts. . . .
And it goes much further than just a clever marketing gimmick or effort by big corporation to appease an activist movement. On Glenn Beck’s May 4 program, he explained how the leaders of the green movement are actually set to profit off of environmental policy. Global warming is lucrative, and regulations that would make carbon usage a commodity will profit some, perhaps even much-maligned Wall Street boogeyman Goldman Sachs . . . .
“The global warming hoax continues to be one of their best tools,” Beck said. “We've shown you the CCX, the Chicago Climate Exchange, a carbon-buying and selling business that has been estimated to become potential $10 trillion gold mine – that's if cap-and-trade is passed. Barack Obama invested via the Joyce Foundation. He was on the board. He helped the Joyce Foundation invest in CCX. And then, it just turned into a money mechanism for cap-and-trade. CCX potential attracted the attention of the London-based generation investment management. By the way, have you seen his new house? Al Gore. Yes, Al Gore decided to invest along with Goldman Sachs. Didn't we just see the protests? Aren't these guys all angry at Goldman Sachs because they're so evil? Why would they be here?” . . .
Read the rest.Back to top Review by Bruce Walker
Writer, Canada Free Press
May 2, 2010
One overlooked area in which Nazism and modern leftism converge is the worship of nature, the expansion of a gentle and loving appreciation of divinely created beauty into an obsession bordering on religious fanaticism. Mark Musser, in his new book, Nazi Oaks, Advantage Inspirational, not only explores the historical development of radical environmentalism within the Nazi movement but he explains how this totalitarianism is grounded in a violent rejection of the historical Judeo-Christian worldview, which views nature as a blessing created for man by God. The Old Testament, as Musser explains, has an historical and a metaphysical prelude to problems which we associate with modern and thoughtful secularism.
The decline of faith accelerated with the infatuation with nature, which characterized the Romantic Period. The author notes the idealization of a holistic harmony of man with his environment which Henry David Thoreau urged and which was inextricably tied to hostility to the basic beliefs of Christianity, held in contempt by Thoreau with its Creator which exists outside of nature.
The Nazis adopted this attitude even before they came to power in Germany. In 1931, the National Socialist Physician League, for example, proclaimed the importance of national biology over national economy. After Hitler came to power, at the 1936 Berlin Olympics, he presented an oak seedling to each of the gold metal winners, including Jesse Owens, and these were taken back by the winners and planted as gifts from the German people. . . .
Read the rest.Back to top Scienceby E. Calvin Beisner
National Spokesman, Cornwall Alliance for the Stewardship of Creation
May 7, 2010
If everyone agreed that our atmosphere were to warm only 0.0001 degree C for every doubling of carbon dioxide concentration, nobody would give a hoot about anthropogenic global warming. If everyone agreed that it would warm 20 degrees C for every doubling, everybody would be in full panic mode.
But nobody believes either of those, and the real matter for debate about global warming is precisely this: How much will Earth's near-surface temperature rise from a given increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration?
The United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change claims a mid-range estimate of 3 degrees C (4.5 degrees F) from doubled CO2 and a minimum of 1.5 (2.25 F).
Those estimates assume strong net positive feedback by the climate system on the much smaller amount of warming that would be directly attributed to doubled CO2. The latter is about 1.2 C (2.16 F). To get 3 C feedback must add 150%; even to get 1.5 C, it must add 25%.
Recent observations of changes in radiative energy outflow from Earth's atmosphere, however, strongly indicate that the assumption of strong net positive feedback is wrong--not just in magnitude, but in sign. That is, not only do the feedbacks not add from 25% to 150% to CO2's basic radiative warming. Instead, they diminish the warming. They are strongly net negative, not positive.
Dr. Roy W. Spencer, principal research scientist in climatology at the University of Alabama, Huntsville, and a lead scientist in NASA's satellite remote atmospheric sensing experiments, reports in a blog entry that satellite measurements of outgoing infrared radiation indicate that feedbacks reduce GHG warming rather than increasing it. The result? Net warming from doubled CO2, after feedbacks, of about 0.5 C (0.9 F).
And that amount of warming in response to doubled CO2 would, according to the best ecological and economic modeling, cause significant net benefit to human economy and health and to the rest of Earth's ecosystems.
Spencer and co-author William D. Braswell report their findings in a forthcoming article in the Journal of Geophysical Research, which we at the Cornwall Alliance will be sure to link in our newsletter as soon as it's available.Back to top by Lawrence Solomon
Executive Director, Energy Probe and Urban Renaissance Institute; Writer, National Post and Financial Post; Author, The Deniers: The World-Renowned Scientists Who Stood Up Against Global Warming Hysteria, Political Persecution, and Fraud
May 3, 2010
The Arctic ice set 30 records in April, one for each day. According to satellite data received by the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency, the Arctic was more ice bound each day of April than it had been any other corresponding day in April since its sensors began tracking the extent of Arctic Ice in mid 2002. Click here to see this tracking on the Japan Aerospace website, run jointly with the International Arctic Research Center.
While Arctic ice has always varied greatly, expanding and contracting during the course of a year and also from year to year and decade to decade, the expansion of the Arctic ice this decade is significant in one respect: It acts to disprove the models that had predicted that the Arctic ice in this century would not recover as it had in previous centuries. . . .
Read the rest.Back to top Economicsby Paul K. Driessen
Columnist, Townhall; Senior Fellow, Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow, Center for the Defense of Free Enterprise, and Congress of Racial Equality; Author, Eco-Imperialism.com
May 8, 2010
Transocean’s semi-submersible drilling vessel Deepwater Horizon was finishing work on a wellbore that had found oil 18,000 feet beneath the seafloor, in mile-deep water fifty miles off the Louisiana coast. Supervisors in the control cabin overlooking the drilling operations area were directing routine procedures to cement, plug and seal the borehole, replace heavy drilling fluids with seawater and extract the drill stem and bit through the riser (outer containment pipe) that connected the vessel to the blowout preventer (BOP) on the seafloor.
Suddenly, a thump and hiss were followed by a towering eruption of seawater, drilling mud, cement, oil and natural gas. The BOP and backup systems had failed to work as designed, to control the massive amounts of unexpectedly high-pressure gas that were roaring up 23,000 feet of wellbore and riser. . . .
How bad will the disaster be? Much depends on how long the calm weather lasts, how quickly the cofferdams can be installed, and how successful the entire effort is. There is some cause for optimism – and much need for prayer, crossed fingers and hard work.
But it will take weeks to years of uncontrolled leakage, before this spill comes close to previous highs . . .
Should we stop drilling offshore? We can hardly afford to. We still need to drill, so that we can drive, fly, farm, heat our homes, operate factories and do everything else that requires reliable, affordable petroleum. Indeed, over 62% of all US energy still comes from oil and gas. And we certainly need the jobs and revenues that US offshore energy development generates. . . .
Even with this blowout and its 1969 Santa Barbara predecessor, America’s offshore record is excellent. Since 1969, we have drilled over 1,224,000 wells in state waters and on the Outer Continental Shelf. There have been 13 losses of well control involving more than 50 barrels: five were less than 100 barrels apiece; one was a little over 1,000 barrels; two (both in 1970) involved 30,000 barrels or more. Only in Santa Barbara (so far) did significant amounts of oil reach shore and cause serious environmental damage. . . .
What should we do next? Recognize that life, technology and civilization involve risks. Humans make mistakes. Equipment fails. Nature presents us with extreme, unprecedented, unexpected power and fury.
Learn the right lessons from this tragic, catastrophic, probably preventable accident. Avoid grandstanding and kneejerk reactions. Replace people’s lost income. Insist on responsible, adult thinking – and a thorough, expert, non-politicized investigation. Find solutions instead of assigning blame. . . .
Read the rest.
Related item:
Oil Slicks and the Free Market
by James Tonkowich
Scholar and Former President, The Institute on Religion & Democracy; Senior Fellow, Cornwall Alliance for the Stewardship of Creation
May 10, 2010
Keep the Gulf Oil Rig Disaster in Context
by Mackubin T. Owens
Professor of National Security Affairs, Naval War College; Editor, Orbis; Adjunct Fellow, Ashbrook CenterBack to top by Ronald Bailey
Science Correspondent, Reason
May 4, 2010
. . . Opponents of offshore drilling have jumped on the spill [two weeks ago at BP’s Deepwater Horizon oil drilling rig in the Gulf of Mexico] as evidence that offshore drilling is inherently dangerous, and not worth the risk. They see the blowout as evidence that the recently lifted moratorium on offshore drilling in parts of the outer continental shelf should be reinstated. Miyoko Sakashita of the Center for Biological Diversity decried “the absurdity of the claims by the oil industry and politicians beholden to that industry that offshore oil and gas development is safe." As a consequence, the center is urging the Obama administration “to reinstitute a moratorium on new offshore oil leasing, exploration, and development on all our coasts.” The Natural Resources Defense Council is also calling for a “time-out” on any further offshore oil drilling until an independent investigation of the BP spill is completed. On April 30, the Obama administration heeded the call for a time-out and halted plans to expand offshore drilling until an investigation into the causes of the BP blowout are complete.
But in deciding whether or not to continue offshore exploration for oil and gas, a calm quantitative approach makes more sense than a rush to ban drilling after seeing some pictures of oily birds. It would be useful to figure out if the costs, economic and ecological, outweigh the benefits of producing offshore oil and gas. Luckily, a recent study by Georgetown University economist Robert Hahn and Milken Institute economist Peter Passell offers some insight to this question. Published in the December 2009 issue of Energy Economics, their study “The economics of allowing more U.S. oil drilling,” finds that the benefits of producing offshore oil greatly outweigh the costs.
In their analysis, Hahn and Passell look at three types of benefits: producer revenues, lower prices to consumers, and less fluctuation in oil prices. These benefits are considered in a scenario in which oil is priced at $50 per barrel, and in another in which it goes for $100 per barrel. (The current price is around $85 per barrel.) At $50 per barrel they estimate that 10 billion barrels of oil would be recoverable from the off-limits outer continental shelf, and at $100 this rises to 11.5 billion barrels.
On the cost side of the ledger they calculate that it would cost $17 per barrel to produce offshore oil at $50 per barrel and $20 per barrel at $100 per barrel. . . .
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 NotedLieberman: U.N. Global Warming Treaty Process Still Off-Track in Bonn-and for Good Reason
Animal Lovers RejoiceBack 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:
Piers R. Corbyn
Astrophysicist Piers Corbyn is a weather forecaster, the owner of WeatherAction, and was a contributor to the Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change's Climate Change Reconsidered. Corbyn denies manmade catastrophic climate change, noting that "the most significant and persistent cycle of variation in the world's temperature follows the 22-year magnetic cycle of the sun's activity." "The problem for global warmers is that there is no evidence that changing CO2 is a net driver for world climate," he continues. "Feedback processes negate its potential warming effects." A more extensive sample of Corbyn's work is What Does and Does Not Cause Climate Change, a lecture delivered at the 2009 International Conference on Climate Change.
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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