My leading the Cornwall Alliance entails a great deal of reading, all the time, on economic and, especially, environmental issues—from three or four to ten or twenty articles a day, and multiple books every year. But as a former professor of church history and social ethics who also taught systematic theology, reasons for Christian faith, and political theory, and as a church member committed to ministering to the needs of my brothers and sisters in Christ, and simply as a Christian ambitious to … [Read more...]
Reasons to Sign An Open Letter on Climate Change to the American People and their Leaders: An Appeal to Christian Academics
Four-part Series: Part 1; Part 2; Part 3; Part 4 Burke, VA, November 18, 2015 Greetings in the name of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ—Friend of sinners, Friend of the poor. We’re writing to ask you to join us in doing something that will take courage, so we want you to be well informed, first about who we are, and second about the subject on which we’re asking you to take a stand. Along with nearly 400 others—including many climate scientists, physicists, mathematicians, economists … [Read more...]
Climate Change, Climate Policy, and the Precautionary Principle: An Appeal to Christian College Faculty Members
Four-part Series: Part 1; Part 2; Part 3; Part 4 Burke, VA, July 29, 2015 Greetings in Christ’s name! I’m David R. Legates, Professor of Climatology and Geography at the University of Delaware, a Senior Fellow of The Cornwall Alliance for the Stewardship of Creation, and a Christian committed to Biblically sound environmental stewardship and the reduction of poverty around the world. Proponents of efforts to mitigate climate change often appeal to the “Precautionary Principle”—Principle #15 of … [Read more...]
We Pray for Those Working in the Jardim Gramacho Landfill, Brazil
BACKGROUND REPORT by The Rt. Rev. William Mikler The Jardim Gramacho landfill is the largest garbage dump in South America. No longer active, this enormous trash heap is home to 12,000 people who have neither running water nor sewage. Most all live in shacks made of cardboard or tin, and share the dump with wild pigs, vermin, snakes, and buzzards. Many of the inhabitants are children who do not know who their father is. The Life Change Project Rio team that serves in the dump is comprised of … [Read more...]
NASA’s Children’s Climate Change Website, and the book 1984: Creating Spies One Child at a Time
What would you say if your child accused you of a thought crime, and turned you in to the thought police? Would you say it was ridiculous? Perhaps you would say, “There is no ‘thought crime’ in the United States.” Surely your children would never try to accuse you of a crime or try to change your behavior. Well, think again, because that is exactly what websites like NASA’s Climate Kids intends to do, except they won’t accuse you of thought crime, they will accuse you of a climate crime. This … [Read more...]
What’s Incredible? Learning to Read Science Articles with a Critical Eye
Almost every day, we are assaulted with “studies” purporting to have found correlations, connections, links, or ties between causes and effects. In 1998 Dr. Andrew Wakefield claimed that exposure to MMR vaccine causes autism. That assertion still reverberates across Europe and the U.S., but how reliable is Wakefield’s study? What about the claim that increased carbon dioxide emissions are causing and will continue to cause global temperature to rise, wreaking havoc with ecosystems all over … [Read more...]
Your Tax Dollars at Work – Stealing Your Child’s Mind!
For generations America’s public schools have indoctrinated our children with the dogma of Darwinism: life arose and developed by chance, no Creator involved. Now they’re poised to indoctrinate them with another dogma: catastrophic, global warming—not just global warming, but catastrophic, anthropogenic global warming (CAGW). Never mind that in both cases thousands of scientists reject the dogma. Never mind that in both cases the theories fail to account for large numbers of empirical facts. … [Read more...]
Review: DIVE Earth Science Curriculum
Is there a Christian view of science? There certainly is, and the DIVE (Digital Interactive Video Education) Earth Science course does an excellent job of teaching it. (See here also.) Written mostly for eighth and ninth grade homeschooling students, DIVE is taught by Dr. David Shormann, who presents a thorough overview of all the topics important to understanding the Earth from a Christian view of history, philosophy, and science. The entire course is a 30-week study of the anatomy of the … [Read more...]
A Story of Change – But What Kind of Change?
The Story of Change, the sequel to The Story of Stuff, should be renamed The Story of Changing to a Marxist Political Economy, though its creator might not understand her own political views well enough to recognize that. The Story of Stuff (of which there is an excellent four-part critique on YouTube) started as an Internet viral movie in 2007 designed to inculcate environmental conscientiousness via product choices. In the twenty-minute animated video, shown to countless school-age children … [Read more...]
“Climate Scientists” and Mainstream Media Team Up Again to Incite Groundless Fears
The mainstream media and global warming alarmists are at it again—confusing weather with climate, appealing to “tipping points,” doing their best to scare the public into the kind of panic that would let politicians commit us to budget-busting, economy-crippling, liberty-destroying policies to fight it. Last week CNN breathlessly reported, “More record warmth as scientists warn of global tipping point.” The article began: It's hot out there. But this time, it's more than idle watercooler talk, … [Read more...]