While thinking about the storyline in Disney Nature’s new animal movie, MONKEY KINGDOM, we came across a funny contradiction in the movie’s story, and in many other animal documentaries, that shows a problem in the thinking of many of pro-environmentalist, animal-friendly activists. MONKEY KINGDOM’s story follows a troop of monkeys in the jungles of Sri Lanka. There is a strict pecking order to this monkey troop, which is led by alpha males. Maya is an adult female born into the lower class. … [Read more...]
World’s Poor Desperately Need Abundant, Affordable, Reliable Energy
Cornwall's "Open Letter to Pope Francis on Climate Change" drove home multiple scientific and economic reasons for Pope Francis to send Ban Ki-Moon and Jeffrey Sachs packing last Tuesday. But most important is this: The world's poor desperately need abundant, affordable, reliable energy, and Sachs and Ban would deprive them of it. Pope Francis should protect the poor by ensuring that no policy he embraces on climate will delay their gaining access to abundant, affordable, reliable electricity. … [Read more...]
Humpback Whales Ignore Global Warming Hype
NOAA recently proposed removing most of the world’s humpback whales from the endangered species list, and for good reason. Whales are back. With many species hunted nearly to extinction at the turn of the 20th Century, a number of factors are responsible for their incredible comeback. While rarely mentioned, one of the biggest factors in whale recovery is economic. As E. Calvin Beisner, Ph.D., mentions in the documentary BLUE, nobody is concerned with running out of whale oil anymore, but … [Read more...]
Sustainable Churches
How can the government use the Church to spread the gospel of saving the planet? The EPA has just funded a little project to study the Christian Church in the US to answer just that question. As an anthropologist might scan the habits and thoughts of natives, the EPA is concerned to try to understand how one might channel the spiritual energies of the Christian Church to service an environmentalist agenda. The Church of Jesus Christ is on the defensive in the Western world, silenced by a love a … [Read more...]
Hydrocarbon Use and Human Material Wellbeing: A Case Against Mitigating Global Warming by Reduced Fossil Fuels Use—Talk Given in Rome, Italy April 28, 2015
I have a very simple point to make for you today: that because human material wellbeing depends heavily on access to abundant, affordable, reliable energy, and because fossil fuels are and for the foreseeable future will be, along with nuclear, our best source of such energy, the demand to reduce our use of fossil fuels to reduce our CO2 emissions to reduce manmade global warming amounts to a demand to reduce human material wellbeing. I’m going to illustrate that with 8 simple slides … [Read more...]
Dr. Beisner’s Remarks at Press Conference in Rome April 27
Having read some 50 books on the science and over 30 on the economics of climate policy, plus thousands of articles, including hundreds of peer-reviewed ones, I could talk on those topics. I could point out that computer climate models on average simulate twice as much warming as observed over the relevant period, and none simulated the complete absence of warming over the past 18+ years. That means the models are wrong, and therefore they provide no rational basis to fear manmade warming, and … [Read more...]
Update on Trip to Rome Italy from Dr. E. Calvin Beisner
Today I'll be among 8 scholars speaking for a press conference in Rome to bring balance to a global warming alarmist biased conference at the Vatican tomorrow. We have outstanding climate scientists who can explain what's wrong with IPPC "science." My basic message? Policies to fight AGW will condemn the world's poor to more generations of misery and early death. Pope Francis claims to be on the side of the poor. Then he should be against the AGW alarmist bandwagon. … [Read more...]
Hollywood and the Environmentalist Movement: Eco-Fanatic Movies Have a Mixed History at the Box Office
Like other misguided ideologues, some in Hollywood have adopted the environmentalist or ecology movement to support their efforts to support big government. Their efforts paid off in 2006 and 2007 when Al Gore’s factually challenged, hysterical rallying cry for global warming, AN INCONVENIENT TRUTH, earned a fair amount of money, at least for a documentary, and won a couple Oscars. AN INCONVENIENT TRUTH came out the same year as the pro-environmentalist cartoon HAPPY FEET, which raked in $384.3 … [Read more...]
Marriage and Environmentalism: Are They Related?
Many Christian environmentalists fail to fully appreciate how the Bible connects environmental degradation not to how many trees we cut down or to over population but to how we treat our neighbors (Jer 12:4; 23:10; Hos 4:3). In other words, while contemporary Christian environmentalists focus on the MPG of the car you are driving or whether you are avoiding beef, a Biblical environmentalist would ask, “How are you treating your neighbor?”. So is the Biblical perspective just the result of people … [Read more...]
For Three Billion People, Coal Looks Pretty Good
Ask a typical college student about “environmentally friendly” energy sources, and the student will usually respond with comments on wind energy, solar energy, or at least “renewable fuels.” Coal would never make the list. But as an economist, I’m always teaching students about trade-offs. There is no energy source that is costless, either financially or in terms of environmental degradation. Wind energy, for example, requires metals that have to be mined, access roads and transmission lines … [Read more...]
