A hugely important piece on global warming (or the lack thereof)

I read something the other day that was confirmation of a belief I have expressed many times in this blog--global warming is NOT something we should allow people to use to ruin our economy. The Wall Street Journal had an article entitled "No Need to Panic About Global Warming," which was signed by sixteen well-respected scientists in fields dealing with climate and related endeavors.

We're in a time of great political activity. The article points out a key thing: candidates should understand that the oft-repeated claim that nearly all scientists demand that something dramatic be done to stop global warming is not true. In fact, a large and growing number of distinguished scientists and engineers do not agree that drastic actions on global warming are needed.

Here's proof of their claim. In September, Nobel Prize-winning physicist Ivar Giaever, a supporter of President Obama in the last election, publicly resigned from the American Physical Society (APS) with a letter that begins: "I did not renew [my membership] because I cannot live with the [APS policy] statement: 'The evidence is incontrovertible: Global warming is occurring. If no mitigating actions are taken, significant disruptions in the Earth's physical and ecological systems, social systems, security and human health are likely to occur. We must reduce emissions of greenhouse gases beginning now.' In the APS it is OK to discuss whether the mass of the proton changes over time and how a multi-universe behaves, but the evidence of global warming is incontrovertible?"

Dr. Giaever is not alone, and he's no crank. In spite of a multidecade international campaign to enforce the message that increasing amounts of the "pollutant" carbon dioxide will destroy civilization, large numbers of scientists, many very prominent, share his opinions. And what's interesting is that his position is not growing weaker. The number of scientific "heretics" is growing with each passing year. The reason is a collection of stubborn scientific facts.

Perhaps the most inconvenient fact is the lack of global warming for well over 10 years now, according to the article. This is known to the warming establishment, as one can see from the 2009 "Climategate" email of climate scientist Kevin Trenberth: "The fact is that we can't account for the lack of warming at the moment and it is a travesty that we can't."

How has this hugely important factor (no global warming over the past 10 years) been missed? Computer models have greatly exaggerated how much warming additional CO2 can cause. Faced with this embarrassment, those promoting alarm have shifted their drumbeat from warming to weather extremes, to enable anything unusual that happens in our chaotic climate to be ascribed to CO2. Nice maneuver, right?

The article points out something important that's often missed, and it's so simple. CO2 is not a pollutant. CO2 is a colorless and odorless gas, exhaled at high concentrations by each of us, and a key component of the biosphere's life cycle. Plants do so much better with more CO2 that greenhouse operators often increase the CO2 concentrations by factors of three or four to get better growth. The scientists who write this piece say that better plant varieties, chemical fertilizers and agricultural management contributed to the great increase in agricultural yields of the past century, but part of the increase almost certainly came from additional CO2 in the atmosphere.

I'm going to stop here even though this is only about half of the Journal piece. I think this is so important that I'd like everyone reading this to take another look and share this with your friends. I'll take on the other half in the next blog.

Obama and his energy policy

The other day Holman Jenkins had an interesting piece in The Wall Street Journal in which he examined President Obama’s energy policy. Our President is trapped by his own rhetoric just when interesting things in energy are taking place.

Look at his recent decision to nix the Keystone XL pipeline from Canada to the United States. It will cost him votes, but he did it anyway. He has to do this despite seeing what’s going on around the world. He knows China and India are opening a new coal plant every week. He knows the huge amounts of fossil energy lying at humanity's feet won't be abandoned just because an American president says so. In addition, Canada's oil sands won't remain undeveloped; the oil will go to the Far East.

He’s smart enough to recognize the problems with the global warming theory. I have blogged on that many times in the past, so I won’t spend much time on it here. The theory may be popular, but the evidence has thus far eluded the tens of billions spent on climate science. The temperature data are so messy that they reveal no pattern connecting rising CO2 in the industrial age with temperature trends.

Obama is smart enough to realize these problems exist with the global warming theory. But he's also a political operator and an acolyte of radical theorist Saul Alinksy. He understands politics as a matter of power, and democratic politics as a matter of powerful coalitions cultivated and maintained with self-interest (aka money, money, money).
For Obama, oil and other traditional energy sources are connected with Republicans. Anything that's good for the oil industry is bad for the alternate power structure he's been trying to build with handouts and mandates for green energy. Remember Solyndra? Somehow he must justify the "investments" he's dishing out to placate a support base whose need for subsidies and regulatory favors jibes with the Democratic Party's need for donations. Oil sands are the "dirtiest" fossil energy, requiring great releases of CO2, so, of course, the green fanatics oppose it. To approve Keystone, then, would compromise his own credibility as a leader who can be trusted to deny advantage to "Republican" industries and deliver it to "Democratic" ones.

Obama is in a tight place. The natural-gas fracking boom has demolished his (the greenies) position that all ordinary energy sources are drying up, so we must turn to the uproven, unsteady, and expensive alternatives (hydrogen, solar, wind, etc.). For example, Solyndra must be defended all the more fiercely now that solar is collapsing globally as countries repent of foolish subsidies. Green energy must be hugged all the more tightly as the shale revolution renders hopeless any chance of wind and solar becoming cost-competitive with fossil fuels.

Our poor President. Green energy metamorphosed from a policy notion into a political strategy and then into a dead weight his campaign must lug to November. That’s quite a risk he’s taking--spurning affordable, strategically convenient energy from Canada. We’ll see how it plays out this year as gas prices under his watch remain high.

Something to look forward to this week

I’m in a good mood today. The national and international news certainly isn’t what has made me happy. This week we start an apologetics class at our church.

For the last three years we have been meeting to tackle ways to defend the Christian faith. We watched a DVD series, we critiqued a debate between an atheist and a Christian, and we’ve read books that challenged us in many ways.

This time we are doing a couple of things. Steve Bruecker is going to discuss various tactics we can employ in discussions with those who don’t agree with us. We want to be good ambassadors, so there are effective and ineffective ways to interact with others. We want to avoid bitter arguments and raised voices. We also want the person who has raised objections to share the burden of proof.

Steve will be using tactics suggested by Greg Koukl, a popular Christian apologist and radio show host. Greg has written a book called Tactics, which was of the ten top best-selling apologetics books last year, so it obviously has useful things to say.

I will be leading discussions that are based on another of Greg’s books—Faith Is Not Wishing. This is a collection of essays he has written that cover a wide range of issues. Some of these include the idea that Jesus is just another in a long line of mythological figures who shared the same story line, the complaint that God is just a crutch, the idea that evil in this world shows that God doesn’t exist, and the new tolerance that’s so big in our society. Each essay has much to discuss, so I’m looking forward to this part of our classes.

The real fun of the classes will be the people in attendance. We have a lot of people from previous classes, so that will be great catching up with them. They are sharp and able to engage in good discussions. About a third of the class will be made up of new people. It’s always nice to hear how they got interested in apologetics and how they are able to incorporate our class information into their daily lives into practice.

The real key to the class is whether we make it work in the real world. So many people today are critical of Christianity and don’t hesitate to express their views. It’s a good thing that there are solid answers that we as confident Christians can give them.

Books I read last year

At the end of each year, I look back on the books I read and think about my favorites. Let me tell you about a few of them here.

I really enjoyed The Autobiography of Mark Twain, a huge book that Twain asked be held back until long after his death. I still prefer his famous stories like Life on the Mississippi, Roughing It, and Innocents Abroad. But anything by Twain is enjoyable for his command of the English language.

I'm a history nut, so there were plenty of good history books on the list. One chilling example was Stalin, the story of the ruthless butcher who took over the Soviet Union. As an airplane lover, I enjoyed the autobiography of Jimmy Doolittle, known for his daring attack on the Japanese mainland not long after Pearl Harbor. The title was I Could Never Be So Lucky. Another powerful historical book was Flags of Our Fathers, which followed the lives of the flag raisers on Iwo Jima from recruitment through the battle and on to their lives afterwards.

Maybe my favorite of the entire year was a book by Peggy Noonan. She told the story of Ronald Reagan in When Character Was King but not in a traditional, dry format. She injected her own thoughts and a sense of the dramatic as she told stories of the man who came to power at a crucial time in American history.

Then there is the story of two brothers growing up in Montana early in the 20th century – A River Runs Through It. This has beautiful writing that I wish I encountered in student papers I see out at Palomar.

A few more books round out my favorites. Two of them, The Japanese Imperial Conspiracy and The Rising Sun, followed the rise of the Japanese Empire before World War II, the war itself, and the destruction of the empire by the end of that war. We in the West have a hard time understanding the Japanese mindset that led to the war, but both books helped a great deal. Then there was Canvas Falcons, a detailed look at the men and their airplanes of World War I. It took a lot of guts to get into these rickety crates without parachutes and maneuver them all over the skies. One more good read was simply called Apollo; it had wonderful pictures and stories of the moon missions in the 1960s and 70s. I miss the optimism and engineering skills that America displayed during this time period.

Well, those were some of my favorites of 2011. I look at my bookshelf now, and it's full of unread books that are calling out to me. Guess I better get started with one.

Political commentary from last year

World magazine had an article at the end of the year by Marvin Olasky, who apparently is a judge for the Media Research Center awards given to the worst mainstream journalism of 2011. Wow, these were pretty amazing statements by people who claim to be giving us the straight news.

How was President Obama portrayed? It's really not much of a question. We all know the answer. For example, ABC's Christiane Amanpour called him "full of sunny optimism, very Reaganesque." Lara Spencer on the same network asked, "Is President Obama a baby whisperer? Watch as the First Lady tries to quiet down the fussy little friend. She then hands the bawling baby to the big man, and, presto, the tot is simply transfixed."

How was the Tea Party portrayed? Again, not much of a question, considering the political beliefs of so many in the mainstream media. New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman equated Tea Party people with Hezbollah. Another New York Times columnist (see a pattern here?) wrote this: "Tea Party Republicans have waged jihad on the American people." MSNBC's Chris Matthews, whom I despise for his past pretense of fairness, said that the "GOP has become the Wahhabis of American government."

Here's one more statement by Matthews to give you an idea of his demented beliefs. Last month he commented on Republican voters: "They hate.… Their brains, racked as they are by hatred, they lack the 'like' mode."

Another New York Times columnist, Maureen Dowd, gives Matthews a run for his money. She said GOP budget-cutters were "cannibals… vampires… zombies… the metallic beasts in Alien."

Of course, these are the same people that call plaintively for a return to kindness and gentility in politics. Remember, they blamed the shooting of an Arizona Congresswoman on mean-spirited Republican political comments. Don't you love the hypocrisy of that?

Faith Is Not Wishing--8

One of the chapters in Greg Koukl's book Faith Is Not Wishing deals with a topic that gets me steamed every time it is raised. It has to do with hate crime legislation. In this essay, Greg says it makes sense to be against hate crimes, yet still oppose hate crime laws. I agree totally with his position – hate crime legislation is a frontal assault on fundamental liberties that should not be restricted, and represent an unfair use of power to prop up the legitimacy of politically correct values.

The first reason Greg opposes hate crime laws has to do with criminal thought. It's obvious – hate crime laws criminalize thought, not conduct. We can already punish assault using existing statutes. This legislation of hate crime levies an additional penalty solely for the attitude of heart. Government can coerce actions, but it should not attempt to govern people's hearts. When it tries to do this, it creates excuses for the worst kind of tyranny.

The second complaint Greg has for hate crime legislation focuses on the types of hate that are stressed. Virtually any crime of passion could be construed as a hate crime because it entails malice toward persons. However, all crimes of passion are not considered hate crimes under this new legislation since they do not involve a protected class of people. This leads to a key question – Is hate crime legislation about hate per se or is it really about something else? We see that such laws mandate penalties for particular government-disapproved states of mind. Only certain types of people gain protection from hate crime legislation. If a gay was attacked, the person doing it would receive a heavier penalty than a person who attacked me. That's because I don't belong to a class protected by the law. So this law has to do with groups of people, but groups have no rights, according to the Constitution.

A final argument Greg has with this type of legislation is the oppression that comes with it. These laws can serve as a legal tool to enforce a particular moral and political point of view that goes by the misnomer of "tolerance." So, for example, if a gay is attacked, it encourages many to actually blame Christians for such incidents. By claiming homosexuality is evil, Christians, according to critics, demote homosexuals to a "less than" status. That makes the homosexual marked in a way to become an object of scorn, hatred, and physical abuse. Greg points out this kind of thinking would make Alcoholics Anonymous responsible every time a drunk gets beat up in an alley. It does not follow that moral condemnation of homosexuality encourages gay bashing. To those who want hate legislation, people taking a moral position are hatemongers. But objecting to hate is also a moral position. So, are those who demonize Christians for their views equally guilty of hate-mongering? I have seen something like this out at Palomar College where a group claiming to be against hate lashed out with hateful language itself.

Hate crime legislation is not the answer. It turns the government into thought police and turns the law into a club to enforce political correctness. Existing laws should be enforced to give equal protection to all people, punishing the crime, not the frame of mind.

A final note: We as Christians believe homosexuality is an evil. But we are all fallen individuals made in the image of God. We must always be grieved and angered at any injustice.

Faith Is Not Wishing--part 7

The next section of Greg Koukl's book Faith Is Not Wishing deals with an issue we hear often, especially from the new atheists. It has to do with the idea that there is a conflict between faith and science. Critics of Christianity say science tells us what's real while religion tells us fairy stories that can be comforting but have nothing to do with the real world. Greg, instead, argues that the object and domain of science should be the natural, physical world, but the goal of science should not be to produce naturalistic explanations, but rather to follow the evidence wherever it leads to find truth. In other words, science should be about getting the right answers, not the right kind of answers (materialistic ones).

Even some Christians find comfort in the idea of science and religion as occupying two complementary but totally separate realms. Natural science studies the physical universe while the non-physical realm belongs to religion. Science cannot tell us of the ultimate origin of the universe nor discuss the governance of the universe.

Greg says that, at first glance, the two-realms of view is inviting, but he sees problems with it. Why should we accept the view that science reigns supreme in the area of the empirical?

For thousands of years science was viewed differently. The old tradition had one aim-- to identify ideas worth believing. But by the modern era there was a shift in science from a general methodology aimed at determining truth to one that was solely empirical. Science became the final measure of all truth.

Greg sees three errors in the view that religious theories should not intrude in science. First, it commits the either/or fallacy by asserting that a view is either scientific or religious. Some metaphysical issues might have empirical support. Think about near-death experience research or conclusions on the existence of a creator based on Big Bang cosmology or the fine-tuning of the universe.

Secondly, it commits the straw man fallacy by assuming that those who advance intelligent design make no use of scientific methods. This is simply not true. Those who promote intelligent design are quite happy to present an abundance of properly gathered scientific evidence for their viewpoint if they're allowed to. Instead, what they run up against are major scientific journals which summarily disqualify them.

Third, it assumes that the reigning scientific view (materialistic macro- evolution) does not have religious significance. But this is false. Any view about ultimate origins has metaphysical ramifications. In this case, if evolutionary naturalism is a true description of how life developed on earth, then the only room for God is in the imagination of the faithful.

Christianity is, by its very nature, wedded to the physical realm known by the senses. But modern man apart from religion lives in a two-story house where nature/science/reason occupy the bottom floor while meeting/value/freewill are in the second floor. Because modern individuals are told there should be no interaction between the upper story and the lower story, people try to live in the lower floor. But human dignity and purpose are crushed in the gears of nature's determinism. So people without religious beliefs must take a leap apart from reason into the upper story of meaning and significance. They pay a heavy price for this – schizophrenia and loss of rationality.

But Greg suggests an alternative – restore to the scientific process the classical emphasis on truth. Science and theology can still have their separate domains, but they need not be arbitrarily isolated from one another. After all, early scientists believed they were "thinking God's thoughts after him" and saw no problem merging the two. It may be the case that physical phenomenon might be caused by an agent rather than a prior physical event. Though science is restricted to examining physical effects, when causes are inferred, there should be no limitation to the physical world.

Those who believe in intelligent design claim that issues like origin and governance can be properly inferred using empirical methods. For example, take a look at forensic medicine. Medical examiners use scientific methods to determine if an individual died of natural causes or by foul play. It may have been a heart attack or an intelligent agent may have been involved. In the same way, scientific evidence could, in principle, indicate that creation was the result of an agent rather than chance physical factors. Think about the old movie Contact in which researchers use scientific methods to infer intelligent causes. I wonder what Carl Sagan would say if he knew his book and movie were used to justify respect for intelligent design.

Faith Is Not Wishing--part 6b

Last time I only finished half of one of Greg Koukl's chapters in Faith Is Not Wishing. He was discussing a complaint often brought against Christianity – historical bloodletting in the name of God. Is Christianity a blood-thirsty enterprise?

In the last blog I covered two of Greg's points. First, the crimes leveled against Christianity have been exaggerated. Secondly, the greatest evil in the world actually came from the ones who denied God's existence. Consider Stalin, Hitler, and Mao. Enough said.

Another point Greg brings up has to do with the teachings of Christ. It certainly is true that there has been oppression and bloodshed as a result of Christianity, but the question is simple – did this come because it is a religious duty of Christianity or a logical application of the teachings of Christ? If not, then any violence done in his name cannot be laid at his feet. Critics can't hold Christianity responsible when so-called Christians violate the written instructions. Jesus spoke often about the need for us to love, and this extended to even our enemies (John 14:15 and Luke 10:29-37). You can't find any Christian teaching that mandates forcible conversion to the faith or coerces adherence to biblical doctrines.

Greg claims that Christianity has actually been the greatest force for good in the history of the world. After all, it is part of the Judeo-Christian morality that says human beings are made in the image of God and therefore have transcendent value.

Greg specifically lays out four areas where Christianity has transformed the world for the better. First is education. Modern education owes its origins to Christianity. Think of the Reformation – the goal was to get the Bible into the hands of the common man. To do this, primary public education was important. It's hard to believe, but most of the Ivy League schools were started with theological intentions. Missionaries spread out around the world, creating literate societies wherever they went.

A second area where Christianity has improved things has to do with human rights. William Wilberforce, a Christian, spent a lifetime working to abolish slavery in England and the British Commonwealth. It was Christian missionaries who entreated European powers to intervene in Africa to stop the slave trade carried on by the Arabs.

A third positive result of Christianity has been acts of mercy. Think of Mother Teresa, a humble Christian who spent her life serving the poor people of Calcutta. William Booth started the Salvation Army, and Chuck Colson began Prison Fellowship. George Mueller started orphanages all over 19th-century England. Many historians acknowledge that evangelist John Wesley's preaching saved England from a bloody revolution like that in France. Most of the social reforms in England between 1787 in 1850 were the outcome of evangelical Christians trying to help the poor.

Finally, Christianity has done wonderful things through its missionaries. They have tackled social evils throughout the years. In India, for example, they worked tirelessly to stop child marriage, the immolation of widows, temple prostitution, and untouchability. They opposed foot binding, opium addiction and the abandoning of babies in China. In the continent of Africa they opposed polygamy, the slave trade, and the destruction of twins. All over the world they have opened schools, hospitals, clinics, medical colleges, orphanages, and leprosaria. Missionaries often protected indigenous peoples against their own governments or rapacious business interests.

Does Christianity have a perfect record? Of course not. But Greg has pointed out the true record of the followers of Jesus, and it's much better than some would tell you.

Faith Is Not Wishing--part 6a

I love history. It was my minor in college, so I was especially interested in reading Greg Koukl's chapter called "Christianity's Real Record " in his book Faith Is Not Wishing. He deals with the question of whether followers of Christ actually have been the cause of great evil in the world.

Current critics of Christianity and religion in general see a history littered with examples to support their point of view. They bring up witchhunts, crusades, and religious jihad. For example, Thomas Friedman, a popular New York Times columnist, said our battle is not really against terrorism but against any religion that claims to be true, which he calls "religious totalitarianism."

What is his solution? Pluralism, the idea that "God speaks multiple languages." But Greg points out the self-defeating nature of Friedman's argument. Friedman's claim that God is a pluralist is, in fact, a narrow, exclusivist religious claim that he thinks is true. He's dogmatic about this doctrine of God, and is also militant about it since he believes people who disagree with him should be silenced.

Friedman actually misdiagnoses the problem, according to Greg. Friedman sees it as religious dogma, but everyone, including Friedman, is dogmatic about issues of truth. The problem is not religious dogma, but religious error. The problem with Muslim terrorists is not fundamentalism, but that their fundamental beliefs are simply false.

Another key problem with Friedman is his complaint that religion has been responsible for more devastation than anything else in history. But the crimes themselves have been exaggerated. In some cases, conflicts that appear to be religious in nature are actually political or cultural wars that divided along religious lines (Northern Ireland is a prime example). Yes, people did die in the Crusades, the Inquisition, religious wars of the Reformation, and the Salem witch trials. However, the numbers of deaths are far smaller than what some people have suggested. In addition, the Crusades were a defensive war, the Spanish Inquisition involved the government more so than the church, and the Salem witch trials were stopped by Christians.

Friedman's look at history is incorrect also because the greatest evil in the world actually comes from those who deny God's existence. The greatest evil has always resulted from a denial of God, not pursuit of him. Greg points out that noted radio talk show host Dennis Prager has said, "In the 20th century alone, more innocent people have been murdered, tortured, and enslaved by secular ideologies – Nazism and communism – then by all religions in history." Think about communist China, the USSR, and Cambodia – millions were slaughtered in each of these countries where people in charge were convinced that there is no God to whom they must answer.

The above represents only half of Greg's chapter on Christianity's real record. I'm going to save the other half for a future blog.