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Newsletter (October 9, 2009)
Above the FoldThe Cornwall Alliance is excited to bring you a compelling movie that poignantly showcases the human cost of global warming hype. Not Evil Just Wrong is a moving documentary that traces the effects of environmental alarmism on the lives of a small-town, blue-collar American family, an African woman who lost her son to malaria, and former Vice President Al Gore.
From rural America to the streets of Uganda to the halls of power in Washington, D.C., Not Evil Just Wrong makes the complex science behind climate change understandable. It explains how global warming alarmism will increase costs for working families during one of the worst recessions in living memory. Worse, misguided environmental fears threaten to trap yet another generation of our poorest neighbors around the world in grinding poverty.
Environmental activists want to limit or eliminate fossil fuels in the developed world. This would devastate the American economy and drive jobs to places, India and China, which have many fewer environmental protections.
Not Evil Just Wrong is a powerful appeal to the human heart and mind to “remember the poor.” It is not a Christian film, but its clarion call for human freedom and flourishing resonates with a Biblical world view. We are proud to endorse it.
Not Evil Just Wrong premiers on Sunday, October 18th. Click here to watch the trailer, and order your copy today!
(You can offer your church, small group, and friends a 10% discount by using this flyer.)In this, the final of five segments from a much longer interview, listen to the choices faced by families on fixed incomes. One retiree says that paying ever-increasing energy bills "is like juggling the ball, as long as you don't drop it.
Read the rest and view the video.In this issue
Featured- Australia Illustrates: Why an Emissions Trading Scheme Is not Necessary
- A Federal Leviathan: The American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009
Debate- The Nature of an Environmental Ethic
- EPA 'Tailoring Rule' Confirms Mass v. EPA Set the Stage for Disaster
- Rent-Seeking Utilities: You Reap What You Sow
Science- Cherry Picking of Historic Proportions
- China's Wind Farms Come with a Catch: Coal Plants
Economics- Costly Carbon Cuts
- Working Class Bears Burden of Cap-and-Trade
- Green Job Subsidies Will Destroy Far More Jobs Than They Create
Meet the Critics: David Deming & Reid A. Bryson
Briefly Noted
Featuredby Leon Ashby
President, The Climate Sceptics
The Carbon Sense Coalition, September 13, 2009
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A slide from Ashby's presentation illustrates the minuscule effect individual nations and
even all nations together have on the atmosphere's greenhouse gas levels.
Download and view the entire PowerPoint slideshow in which Leon Ashby clearly and simply demonstrates the sheer futility and tremendous cost (for one specific nation, though his analysis is revealing for all) of attempting to mitigate global warming by reducing carbon emissions.Back to top by Kathleen Hartnett White
Distinguished Senior Fellow-in-Residence, Armstrong Center for Energy & the Environment
September 17, 2009
. . . Initially known as the Waxman-Markey bill after authors Henry Waxman (D-CA) and Edward Markey (D-MA), it is typically labeled as the “cap and trade” bill. ACES, however, is so much more. The cap and trade provisions comprise only 400 of the bill’s almost 1,500 pages. ACES, viewed in its entirety, contains a dizzying array of federal dictates and programs to transform and control U.S. energy production and use. The bill imposes more than 1,000 new federal dictates through 21 federal agencies. The senior attorney for the Sierra Club recently commented that ACES “is the most complex piece of legislation in the history of our country, which may make it the most complex piece of legislation in human history . . . it imposes on EPA alone approximately 600 [new] mandates.”
The colossal price tag of this massive bill is also rarely noted. CBO’s estimated federal cost in direct spending at $822 billion, another nearly trillion dollar burden on American taxpayers. CBO’s revenue estimate for ACES, however, is $846 billion. The bill is deficit neutral. The revenues to the federal treasury are from the indirect carbon tax imposed on energy users—all economic sectors and consumers.
In short, ACES sanctions 85 percent of the U.S. energy supply from fossil fuels and pours money and mandates at renewable energy and energy efficiency. Nuclear energy is barely mentioned. In so doing, the legislation wagers U.S. economic vigor on as yet untested, unproven, more expensive energy sources with inherent limitations. . . .
Read the rest.Back to top Debateby Jay W. Richards
Visiting Fellow, Heritage Foundation; Author, Money, Greed, and God
The American, September 30, 2009
Last week, The Washington Examiner interviewed Rev. Jim Ball, CEO and president of the Evangelical Environmental Network. Among other things, Ball explains one reason he prefers the term “creation care” to “environmentalism.”
We use the term in part to help people understand that we’re not just talking about the environment, but about something created by our Lord. It’s God’s creation. Have you ever heard anyone say it’s God’s environment? No. The word “creation” implies a creator — this is not just some environment that popped up out of nowhere, [with] no meaning to its existence — no. This is about caring for his creation. That sounds right. Believing that God has created the universe and that he has placed us as stewards over it is a solid foundation on which to build an environmental ethic. “Creation care” captures that as well as any phrase. If “creation care” is to be more than mere religious cover for an otherwise secular environmental agenda, however, then its content will surely differ from the “environmentalism” of those who see nature, or the Earth, as the ultimate reality.
Though I assume Ball would agree, I don’t think he’s careful enough in distinguishing “creation care” from environmentalist orthodoxy. This is evident is his response to the last question: “What has been the biggest barrier stopping conservative Christians from embracing the environment as they’ve embraced the pro-life movement, for example? How can you overcome it?”
He responds:
The biggest barrier preventing Christians from more fully embracing creation care, including addressing global warming, is not understanding and accepting that to do so is an important part of being a disciple of Jesus Christ today, of doing the Lord’s will. We will overcome it by helping Christians understand what the Bible says about creation care and also about protecting “the least of these” from such major threats like global warming. Perhaps Ball speaks to completely different groups than I do. But in speaking about environmental stewardship to conservative Christian talk show hosts, groups, and churches for the last several years, only twice has anyone told me that Christians shouldn’t be concerned about stewardship of the environment. And in both cases, these individuals were challenged directly by their fellow parishioners.
What I have found is that many conservative Christians are (rightly) concerned with the nearly ubiquitous anti-Christian and misanthropic assumptions in the environmental movement. So, to be persuasive to critical thinking Christians, Christian leaders who focus on environmental stewardship need to make it clear that when they speak of “creation care,” they’re not just substituting a religious euphemism for the agenda of the environmentalist movement.
But that is just the impression they’re likely to get when “creation care” is more or less identified with treating global warming as a “major threat,” as Ball does here. He should recognize the possibility that some Christians may care just as much about the creation as he does, but may not agree with him that global warming is a “major threat” to the environment.Back to top by Marlo Lewis
Senior Fellow, Competitive Enterprise Institute
OpenMarket.org, October 1, 2009
I’ve just begun reading EPA’s proposed Tailoring Rule to establish a new 25,000 tons per year (TPY) ”major stationary source” applicability threshold for greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions under the Clean Air Act’s Prevention of Significant Deterioration (PSD) pre-construction permitting program and Title V operating permits program. I’ll blog about this again later on, but for now I just want to say, “We told ya so!”
Attorney Peter Glaser, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, CEI and a host of other free market groups warned repeatedly that regulating GHG emissions from new motor vehicles — the immediate policy objective of plaintiffs in the Supreme Court global warming case, Massachusetts v. EPA – would have the following consequences:
- CO2 would automatically become an air pollutant “subject to regulation” under the PSD and Title V programs.
- Millions of previously unregulated entities — big box stores, enclosed malls, hotels, apartment complexes, mid-sized office buildings, even commercial kitchens — would be vulnerable to new controls, paperwork, penalties, and litigation.
- The volume of permit applications would create an administrative quagmire for EPA and state environmental permitting agencies.
- The new costs, uncertainties, and delays would create an unprecedented roadblock to new construction and economic development, turning the Clean Air Act into a gigantic Anti-Stimulus program.
Read the rest.Back to top by Marlo Lewis
Senior Fellow, Competitive Enterprise Institute
OpenMarket.org, September 22, 2009
Yesterday, in State of Connecticut et al. v. American Electric Power et al., the 2nd U.S. Court of Appeals decided that states and other plaintiffs have the right to sue five electric utilities – American Electric Power, Cinergy, Southern Co., Excel Energy, and the Tennessee Valley Authority – for creating a ”public nuisance” by emitting CO2 and, thus, contributing to global warming.
With regard to American Electric Power (AEP) and Cinergy, I am tempted to say, it couldn’t happen to a nicer bunch of guys. These utilities for years have lobbied for carbon cap-and-trade schemes. Instead of opposing climate alarmism, they have helped promote it. Boys, you reap what you sow! How are you going to deny plaintiffs’ allegations that your CO2 emissions are a public nuisance, when you have repeatedly stated on the record that man-made global warming is a big, big problem? . . .
Read the rest.Back to top Scienceby Joanne Nova
Author, The Skeptics Handbook; Author, JoanneNova.com; Partner, Science Speak
September 29, 2009
It appears Steve McIntyre (volunteer unpaid auditor of Big-Government-Science) has killed the Hockey Stick a second time. . . .
The Briffa temperature graphs have been widely cited as evidence by the IPCC, yet it appears they were based on a very carefully selected set of data, so select, that the shape of the graph would have been totally transformed if the rest of the data had been included.
Kieth Briffa used 12 samples to arrive at his version of the hockey stick and refused to provide his data for years. When McIntyre finally got hold of it, and looked at the 34 samples that Briffa left out of his graphs, a stark message was displayed. McIntyre describes it today as one of the most disquieting images he’s ever presented. . . .
Read the rest.
Related items:
UN Climate Reports: They Lie
by Marc Sheppard
Journalist, American Thinker
October 5, 2009
No Data, No Science
by Marlo Lewis
Senior Fellow, Competitive Enterprise Institute
OpenMarket.org, September 24, 2009
Defects in Key Climate Data Are Uncovered
by Ross McKitrick
Associate Professor of Environmental Economics, University of Guelph; Co-author, Taken by Storm: The Troubled Science, Policy, and Politics of Global Warming
Financial Post, October 1, 2009
Yamal: A 'Divergence' Problem
by Steve McIntyre
Author, ClimateAudit.org
September 27, 2009Back to top by Jing Yang
Writer, Wall Street Journal
September 28, 2009
China's ambition to create "green cities" powered by huge wind farms comes with a dirty little secret: Dozens of new coal-fired power plants need to be installed as well.
Part of the reason is that wind power depends on, well, the wind. To safeguard against blackouts when conditions are too calm, officials have turned to coal-fired power as a backup. . . .
Read the rest.Back to top Economicsby Bjorn Lomborg
Director, Copenhagen Consensus; Associate Professor, University of Aarhus, Denmark; Author, Lomborg.com; Author, Cool It: The Skeptical Environmentalist's Guide to Global Warming
Washington Post, September 28, 2009
In speech after rousing speech at the United Nations summit on global warming last week, politicians emphasized the need to protect the world's most vulnerable, who will be hit hardest by climate change. The rhetoric did little to disguise an awful truth: If we continue on our current path, we are likely to harm the world's poorest much more than we help them. . . .
Imagine for a moment that the fantasists win the day and that at the climate conference in Copenhagen in December every nation commits to reductions even larger than Japan's, designed to keep temperature increases under 2 degrees Celsius. The result will be a global price tag of $40 trillion in 2100, to avoid expected climate damage costing just $1.1 trillion, according to climate economist Richard Tol, a contributor to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change whose cost findings were commissioned by the Copenhagen Consensus Center and are to be published by Cambridge University Press next year. That phenomenal cost, calculated by all the main economic models, assumes that politicians across the globe will make the most effective, efficient choices. In the real world, where policies have many other objectives and legislation is easily filled with pork and payoffs, the deal easily gets worse.
Yet the real tragedy is that, by exaggerating the threat of global warming, we have awoken the beast of protectionism. There are always forces in society that demand that politicians create more barriers to trade because they cannot compete on an even, fair playing field. Global warming has given them a much stronger voice. . . .
Read the rest.Back to top Institute for Energy Research, September 29, 2009
With Sens. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) and John Kerry (D-Mass.) expected to reveal a draft of the Senate’s climate bill this week, free-market think tank Institute for Energy Research (IER) released a new analysis today outlining how cap-and-trade would precipitate a financial windfall for well-connected special interests and politically-favored companies. The study, entitled “Who Benefits from Free Emission Allowances? An Economic Analysis of the Waxman-Markey Cap-and-Trade,” details how shareholders, not ratepayers, will be the primary beneficiaries of cap-and-trade’s largess. The analysis also outlines the significant wealth-transfer that cap-and-trade would initiate – a $14 billion redistribution of resources from the nation’s poorest citizens to the nation’s wealthiest citizens. . . .
Read the rest.
Read IER's summary of Chamberlain's study and read the study itself.Back to top by Ben Lieberman
Senior Policy Analyst, Heritage Foundation
October 2, 2009
Don't let the hype about "green jobs" fool you. The global warming bill approved earlier this year by the House of Representatives would destroy far more jobs than it could ever possibly create. . . .
Sure, the president can visit wind turbine factories and boast about the few hundred green jobs at each. But the billions of dollars in government subsidies to the wind industry siphon resources and jobs away from other parts of the economy.
Worse, the higher cost of wind-generated electricity and other alternatives kills even more jobs, especially in the manufacturing sector that needs reasonably-priced energy to compete in the global marketplace.
A study by The Heritage Foundation estimates a loss of 1,145,000 jobs from the Waxman-Markey bill. These are net job losses, after any "new" green jobs are taken into account. The three analyses of the bill done by the federal government also predict net job losses. . . .
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:
David Deming, Ph.D.
Geophysicist David Deming is a professor at the University of Oklahoma, an expert for the National Center for Policy Analysis, an associate editor for the journals Petroleum Geology and Ground Water, and previously held a National Research Council postdoctoral fellowship at the US Geological Survey in California. Deming, the author of a textbook on hydrogeology and more than thirty research papers, told Congress, "There is no sound scientific basis for predicting future climate change with any degree of certainty. If the climate does warm, it is likely to be beneficial to humanity rather than harmful." Deming also reports, "A major researcher working on climate change confided in me that the factual record needed to be altered so people would become alarmed over global warming. He said, 'We have to get rid of the Medieval Warm Period.'" Several of Deming's numerous articles are Global Warming Freeze?, Fluorescent Bulb Follies, Getting Sensible on Energy, Environmental Hysterics, Year of Global Cooling, and Inconvenient Truths.
Reid A. Bryson, Ph.D.
Known as "the father of scientific climatology," the late Reid Bryson received the 30th Ph.D. in Meteorology in American education's history. Bryson served as a major in the Air Weather Service of the U.S. Army Air Corps before beginning a career teaching at the University of Wisconsin, where he was the founding chairman of the Department of Meteorology. The most cited climatologist in the world, according to the British Institute of Geographers, Bryson said, "All this argument--'is the temperature going up or not?'--it's absurd! Of course it's going up. It has gone up since the early 1800's, before the industrial revolution, because we're coming out of the little ice age, not because we're putting more carbon dioxide into the air." A couple of Bryson's works, which include a number of books and over 230 publications, are Climates of Hunger: Mankind and the World's Changing Weather and Global Warming? Some Common Sense Thoughts.Back to top Briefly NotedChesser: Climate Robo-Educators
Germany Eyes Nuclear Solution
US Navy Boffins Put an End to Drought
. . . and for some comic relief: Global Warming Causes Sheep to Shrink
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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