The Occasion The appearance of a new version of Star Wars is an important moment for Christian witness. To be sure, we can shrug our shoulders, since Star Wars is old news. Or we can enthusiastically introduce our grandchildren to a beloved, harmless yarn. Or we can and should discover this as an occasion to help our children and grandchildren to understand the culture in which they live in order to speak the Gospel more accurately to it. In this famous and creative saga, which we must respect … [Read more...]
Archives for December 2015
Never Underestimate Your Opponent—Coming to Grips with the Paris Climate Agreement
Master Sun [Tzu] talks often about deception and therefore warns against being deceived by the enemy and underestimating their ability. ‘He who exercises no forethought but makes light of his opponents is sure to be captured by them.’ It’s important to properly assess your opponent without prejudice or assumption. Many skeptics of catastrophic, anthropogenic global warming (CAGW) and therefore opponents of a legally binding treaty to limit carbon dioxide emissions to fight it, including me, … [Read more...]
32 Books I Read in 2015 (Make that 33)
The vast majority of my time is spent reading or writing. Someone just suggested I tell about the books I’ve read so far this year. (I’d love to tell about the articles, too, but they’re far too many—typically a dozen or two a day, five or six days a week.) Perhaps others will be inspired to read some of them, too. So, here goes, in no particular order—which reflects my typical reading habits: Social Justice Isn’t What You Think It Is, by Michael Novak and Paul Adams, an excellent study of the … [Read more...]
Unelected, Unaccountable Greens Dictated Clean Power Plan to EPA
Emails obtained by the Energy & Environment Legal Institute under FOIA demonstrate that EPA almost certainly violated federal law by using private email to correspond with the Natural Resources Defense Council, correspondence in which NRDC essentially drafted critical parts of the "Clean Power Plan," or even, as the Wall Street Journal puts it, "the rule," not just critical parts. Imagine if some pro-coal organization(s) had done the same in the preparation of an EPA regulation. The Left … [Read more...]
Think Carefully Before Welcoming Humane Society Policies
Humans should only be eating animals raised under humane conditions. Sounds perfectly innocent doesn’t it? After all who wants to think of animals suffering just so that he/she can have a cheap burger or chicken patty? This is essentially the argument cleverly proffered by Pete Letheby in the article “Farmers team up with the Humane Society on behalf of animals” published in the Fall 2015 edition (p. 24) of Ag in Action by the Lewistown News-Argus (Lewistown, MT). The problem with this article … [Read more...]
Unenforceable Paris Climate Agreement, ‘Worse than a Failure,’ Would Trap the Poor in Poverty if Implemented
For Immediate Release Burke, VA, December 14, 2015—“The agreement reached at the Paris climate summit is worse than a failure,” said Dr. E. Calvin Beisner, Founder and National Spokesman of The Cornwall Alliance for the Stewardship of Creation. “The ‘commitments’ made in the Paris agreement are voluntary and unenforceable,” Beisner said, “which means most nations will not comply. EU nations said they would make binding commitments only if all major emitters did—and they didn’t. So the EU’s … [Read more...]
What Is “the Wisdom from Above”?
Last week I posted a blog piece answering the objections of one Christian college faculty member, a theology professor, to our Open Letter on Climate Change to the People, their Local Representatives, the State Legislatures and Governors, the Congress, and the President of the United States of America because he thought the world’s poor would be hard hit by manmade global warming. Another negative response came from a professor in the physics and engineering department of a different Christian … [Read more...]
Whose Policies Kill More People: ISIS…or Greenpeace?
Approximately 200,000 people have died due to global terrorism in the last 10 years. During the same time, many millions of people (mostly women and children) have died due to policies promoted by Greenpeace and other “green” organizations (e.g. anti-DDT, anti-golden rice, anti-fossil fuel). I’ve said it before…I don’t really care where our energy comes from…as long as it is abundant and affordable. Until someone comes up with an alternative energy source with those two characteristics, … [Read more...]
Scientists, Policy Experts, Religious Leaders Call to Reject Harmful Climate and Energy Policy
For Immediate Release Washington, D.C., December 8, 2015—The Cornwall Alliance for the Stewardship of Creation today announced that over 350 scientists, policy experts, ethicists, and religious leaders, plus laymen, have signed An Open Letter on Climate Change to the People, their Local Representatives, the State Legislatures and Governors, the Congress, and the President of the United States of America. The letter, which challenges “consensus” on anthropogenic global warming (AGW) exclusively … [Read more...]
Signers of Open Letter to American People etc. By Degree Level
As of November 23, 2015 Doctoral Level Degrees Sheila Prabhakar Abraham, Ph.D. (Entomology), Associate Professor of Biology, Southeastern University, Evangelical Protestant, Lakeland, FL, USA Robert V. Acuff, Ph.D. (Nutritional Biochemistry), Professor, Department of Surgery, College of Medicine, East TN State University, Evangelical Protestant, Elizabethton, TN, USA Dwight D. Allman, Ph.D. (Political Science), Associate Professor of Political Science, Baylor University, Mainline … [Read more...]