Laugh? Scream? Cry? What's the proper reaction to a letter from liberal Democratic Senators Charles Schumer (NY), Maria Cantwell (WA), Ed Markey (MA), and Robert Menendez (NJ) to President Donald Trump decrying the harm rising gasoline prices does to American families. (It's always about the family, you know! Whatever a "family" might be.) All four Senators have supported raising federal taxes on gasoline as a way to fight global warming by reducing consumption. The tax increase would, of … [Read more...]
What Would the Precautionary Principle Imply for Ethanol?
In 2007 Congress passed a law requiring the federal Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to study and report every three years to Congress on the environmental impact of EPA’s ethanol mandate. And in the intervening nine years, EPA has complied with the law once—in 2011. Now it says it’ll be 2024 before it can manage it again. So by the time it should have filed five such reports and be working on its sixth, EPA expects to file its second. Meanwhile, multiple studies not done by EPA have … [Read more...]
Climate Science, Energy Policy, Poverty, and Christian Faith: How do they Connect?
(Editors Note: Click graphs to enlarge) In the March 16, 2016, issue of Forbes astrophysicist Ethan Siegel’s article "The Next Great Global Warming ‘Hiatus’ is Coming!" sought to refute skeptics of catastrophic anthropogenic global warming (CAGW) by arguing that the apparent lack of statistically significant global warming over roughly the last 18 or 19 years is just one in a series of lulls in a long-term warming trend for which human action is responsible. His article, deftly argued and … [Read more...]
Why You Should Mourn Implementation of the Paris Climate Agreement
The climate agreement reached in Paris last December will become effective on Earth Day, (Friday, April 22) with a ceremony at the United Nations headquarters in New York City. We’ll all hear of heroic world leaders who joined together in Paris to ensure the planet’s survival. The Obama administration will try to enforce the agreement (which meets all the legal criteria of a treaty though the President chooses not to call it that to evade Senate disapproval) by imposing the Environmental … [Read more...]
What Good Are Fossil Fuels Other than for Energy?
In the midst of a worldwide “holy crusade” to demonize fossil fuels, blaming them for alleged (but not real) catastrophic global warming, it is increasingly essential that more and more ordinary citizens like you and me understand what’s at stake. The war on fossil fuels threatens not just minor adjustments at the margins of our luxury but enormous reductions in human welfare in developed countries—and the permanent captivity of one-third of humanity in desperate poverty. That’s why we’re … [Read more...]
A Christian’s Perspective on Climate Change: Conventional Energy Sources Are Necessary for Developing Nations’ Poor
Global warming has been making headlines consistently during the past two decades. The subject impacts global economic policies and thereby our everyday lifestyle. Amidst the smoke in the battleground arises the moral call of Christians to function as responsible stewards of creation. But how does climate change impact the marginalized of the world? What can we, as followers of Christ, do for the environment and the poor? The recent developments at the Paris climate change conference saw … [Read more...]
Stop calling me a ‘denier’: Debating science is honorable, not evil
We’ve all read the articles, and heard the voice of doom about “mother earth.” The earth is going to get really hot, it’s all humans fault, and we must make drastic changes to fix our mistakes. Those who disagree with this viewpoint are termed “Climate Deniers,” an insult intended to bring about the specter of Holocaust denial. The fact that this particular insult makes no sense, since it’s impossible to “deny” climate doesn’t seem to matter. What do climate alarmists and climate skeptics … [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...]
Preventing Climate Change does Not Help the Poor, It Dooms Them!
Many climate scientists argue that we need to mitigate global warming because otherwise it will be the poor who will be hurt the most. Apparently these scientists do not understand their own models. Projections from climate models are based on the rates of poverty reduction, with the highest (‘worst’) temperature projections resulting when the poorest people in the world increase their incomes from $246 (measured in constant 1990 USD) to $49,000 per year (approximately equal to U.S. GDP per … [Read more...]