Forget about the First Amendment, the indispensable role of vigorous debate and testing in the progress of scientific knowledge, the reality of major reversals in science, the tremendous benefits of fossil-fuel-derived energy in lifting and keeping whole societies---and their individual members---out of poverty, disease, and premature death. Those mean nothing to climate alarmists like Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI), the Natural Resources Defense Council and other large environmentalist … [Read more...]
Christianity, Veganism, and Animal Suffering
Last month, I discussed how Christianity cannot impose veganism on its adherents because doing so would violate the freedom we have in Christ as well as our lordship over creation. In other words, humans are superior to animals and thus eating animals is within the bounds of the created order. But I also noted that animal rights is not the only reason employed by anti-meat eaters to support their cause. One of the more emotionally compelling arguments is what can be called the argument from … [Read more...]
Do Alarmist Climate Scientists Have their Thumb on the Scale?
Ever wondered if alarmist climate scientists purposely hide uncertainties when they communicate with the media and the public? Wonder no longer. They do. That's the conclusion of Senja Post's "Communicating science in public controversies: Strategic considerations of the German climate scientists," published this month in the journal Public Understanding of Science. Here's the abstract: In public controversies on scientific issues, scientists likely consider the effects of their findings on … [Read more...]
Does the Bible Require Common Ownership of Land?
Does the Bible validate private property in land, or does it require that land be communally owned? With Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders, a self-professed socialist, doing surprisingly well in the Democratic Presidential primary campaign, such thoughts become increasingly common. Someone recently wrote: It seems to me that a theology that takes Creation as evidence of a Creator ... would recoil at privatizing Creation as a private income-generating asset. The way I come at environmental … [Read more...]
Thorns and Briers, or Peaceful Habitation?
A common theme of environmentalist thought—the Green vision of the ideal world—is of a small human population whose effect on earth’s ecosystems doesn’t differ significantly from that of other species. The stark contrast between that vision, with its particular understanding of what it means to be human, and the Biblical vision is apparent from the beginning of the Bible, where, having made Adam and Eve (unlike all other living things, earthly or heavenly) in His image, “God blessed them. And … [Read more...]
Energy for the Future
News came Wednesday that German researchers---joined by German President Angela Merkel (herself a scientist)---have turned on an experiment at the Max Planck Institute along the path to nuclear fusion energy. Fusion research has been ongoing for decades, and the scientists at Planck make it clear that this experiment won't itself generate energy. They anticipate it will take decades before fusion research reaches that stage---if it ever does. But this development repeats a lesson we should … [Read more...]
The Haunt of Jackals
Various passages of the Bible set forth the complete elimination of human habitation in a land as the epitome of God’s judgment. I have long found it remarkable that much of the environmental movement sees as ideal what Scripture depicts as hideous. One place that does so is Isaiah 34, in which God through the Prophet Isaiah foretells, in sometimes apocalyptic poetic language, His judgment on Edom and the other pagan nations that oppressed Israel and Judah: 1“Draw near, O nations, to hear, and … [Read more...]
Whither Global Food Shortage Predictions?
Less than two years ago, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which wants us to trust its prognostications about conditions a century from now enough to bet trillions on them, warned that global warming threatened global food supplies. But last week The New Indian Express reported, “International food prices dipped by 19 percent in the last year, the fourth consecutive annual fall .” Stop and think about that for a moment. In 2014 the IPCC’s Working Group II warned that … [Read more...]
Robert M. Carter, RIP
I just received word from Joe Bast at the Heartland Institute that Dr. Robert M. Carter, a palaeontologist, stratigrapher, marine geologist and environmental scientist with more than 30 years professional experience and one of the world's leading experts on climate change, died today, several days after suffering a heart attack. I met Bob first through correspondence, finding him always ready and patient to educate me, a non-scientist, in the ins and outs of climate science. Over the past few … [Read more...]
To Magnify Apparent Climate Risk, Magnify Temperature Data
In the early 1990s, working partly as a freelance book editor, I had the privilege of being the main managing editor of Julian L. Simon's (edited) The State of Humanity (Blackwell, 1995). One of my responsibilities was turning raw data from the book's 60 authors into graphs so people could grasp them better. But the graphs could enhance understanding only if they handled the data objectively, and one of the things Julian drummed into me was that whenever possible a graph should have a zero … [Read more...]
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