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...]
My Sister and I
When we were kids my sister and I were best friends, inseparable even. Something changed during adulthood and we ventured down separate paths. I’m a rock ribbed conservative, she’s just as firmly entrenched in political liberalism. I’m a fundamentalist evangelical (in the classic meaning of those terms) and sis leans a little new age. Perhaps one of our most stark contrasts comes at the point of our outlook towards environmentalism and the green movement. I wrote a novel about an extremist … [Read more...]
Why Biblical Worldview and Sound Science Generate Skepticism about Manmade Global Warming
In 1 Thessalonians 5:21, the Apostle Paul tells us to “test all things, hold fast what is good.” That, among other things (such as belief that a rational God designed the ordered world to be understood and ruled by rational human beings made in His image), is the Biblical basis for modern science, which arose only once in history and in only one place: Medieval Europe, which was shaped by the Christian worldview. Such thinking gave rise to scientific method, the key to which is skepticism, as … [Read more...]
