'76 Blog

('76 Contributor) If you're someone who cherishes humanity and thus opposes human exploitation, as I do, you will welcome the Cornwall Alliance for the Stewardship of Creation, a new joint effort by conservative Christians standing against global warming alarmism.  Please read the group's formal declaration and then consider signing the declaration.    There are varying opinions on global warming and the responses being put forth by our governments (state and national).  But the possible negative consequences of putting the control of energy resources in the hands of a few are beyond imagination.  As I have followed this issue for years, I have noted a huge disconnect between the rhetoric and the lifestyle of some of the top promoters of human-caused global warming.  This alone has generated a skepticism and recent revelations of tainted data confirm my skepticism.   What is the real motivation for a few to control the energy supply?  What will such control and the accompanying restrictions mean to lower income and impoverished people in American and around the globe?  Will it increase human hunger and deaths?  Is the global warming agenda connected to world population control?  If have not yet take some time to delve into this issue to ascertain what is really driving it, I encourage you to click the links below.  If you find the case compelling enough to sign on, please consider passing this along to others you believe would be interested. Following is the notice I received from Calvin Beisner, Cornwall Alliance spokesman: Dear Friend: I'm sure you're absolutely swamped with other concerns, so please forgive this demand on your time, but if you could spare just a few minutes to read An Evangelical Declaration on Global Warming and, if you're in agreement, complete the endorsement form online, it would be a great help to us. Thus far we're nearing 500 endorsers, but we'd like to add more leaders to the list before making a public announcement. (By the way, we make provision for non-evangelicals to endorse without implying that they're evangelicals.) The Declaration is based on the findings of A Renewed Call to Truth, Prudence, and Protection of the Poor, co-authored by, among others, Dr. Roy W. Spencer of the University of Alabama, Dr. Cornelis van Kooten of the University of Victoria, BC, and Dr. Craig Mitchell of Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary. In case you're interested, here are names of a few of the prominent people who have endorsed so far: Dr. Richard Land of the Southern Baptist Convention's Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission, Dr. Barrett Duke of the same, Dr. Daniel Heimbach of Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary, Tom Minnery of Focus on the Family, Dr. Ross McKitrick of the University of Guelph, Dr. Charles Van Eaton of Bryan College, Janet Parshall of Janet Parshall's America, Dr. Joseph Pipa, president of Greenville Presbyterian Theological Seminary, Dr. Peter Jones of Westminster Theological Seminary in Escondido, CA, Dr. Douglas Groothuis of Denver Seminary [and a Centennial Institute Fellow], Mark Coppenger of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, Bryan Fischer of the American Family Association, and Dr. Robert L. Reymond, emeritus professor of Systematic Theology at Knox Theological Seminary and Covenant Theological Seminary. The collapse of climate treaty negotiations in Copenhagen last week was welcome, and it was my delight to be there and watch it happen on the heals of "climategate" and the general collapse of the scientific case for dangerous manmade global warming over the last several years. Now we need to work together to prevent the United States from adopting similar policy on its own. Your endorsement of the Evangelical Declaration on Global Warming will help achieve that. Note: John Andrews, Director of the Centennial Institute and '76 Blog editor, signed the declaration immediately upon receiving notice from former Vermont State Sen. Mark Shepard and Colorado State Sen. Kevin Lundberg.  Others with the Centennial Institute and Colorado Christian University are being encouraged to sign as well.

(CCU Faculty) When the Spanish first arrived in Mexico, they discovered that Aztec high priests sacrificed 10,000 still-beating hearts to the god Quetzalcoatl every December 22nd in order to cause the days to stop growing shorter.  This religious belief was confirmed, as the days began to grow longer again.  Al Gore is the high priest of our new religion, global warming.  He insists that if we sacrifice our standard of living, our economy, and millions of American jobs, that we can save the planet and stop global temperatures from increasing.  Unfortunately for him but fortunately for us, global temperatures began to drop before he was able to perform his sacrifice. Throughout the 1990s I believed in global warming and taught it as fact in university geography courses, mostly due to the liberal media and education which I received at the University of California.  It wasn’t until I read Senator Inhofe’s 2005 speech before the Senate, that my faith in Global Warming began to be seriously challenged.  Inhofe called Global Warming “the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people.”  I then began to reconsider my position on the issue.  I learned of the Medieval Warming Period, that Vikings farmed in Greenland and the earth continued to warm until the 14th century.  This Medieval Warming Period was ignored by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), in a way reminiscent of Joseph Stalin erasing Bolsheviks who fell out of favor by simply erasing them from photographs.  Instead the IPCC invented the “hockey stick” graph claiming that the earth’s temperature was basically unchanged until the 19th century when it began to drastically increase.  The data (which we now know was falsified by environmental “scientists”) shows that after the Medieval Warming Period, the earth began to cool until the Little Ice Age of the 16th to 18th centuries.  Then it began to warm again through the 19th and 20th centuries.  Al Gore insists this was caused by human activity, but I began to wonder what degree humans could complete with heat produced by solar radiation.  I became convinced that any contribution by humans would be infinitesimal compared to the energy produced by our sun. In 2007 I heard the Danish climatologist/economist Bjorn Lomborg speak to the Denver World Affairs Council on the costs of implementing the Kyoto Protocol.  He reminded us of the importance of doing a cost/benefit analysis, warning that “we are in danger of implementing a cure that is more costly than the original affliction: economic analyses clearly show that it will be far more expensive to cut carbon dioxide emissions radically than to pay the costs of adaptation to the increased temperatures."   Shortly thereafter, I read Christopher Horner’s “Politically Incorrect Guide to Global Warming”, and while on a fellowship to Oxford that same year saw the UK documentary “The Great Global Warming Swindle.”  Most convincing was their graph showing the correlation between solar radiation and average global temperatures, confirming my hunch that the sun was overwhelmingly the major contributor. Over the past several years ice caps and glaciers have begun to grow again.  Even my heating bills show that 2009 was colder than 2008, which was colder than 2007.  Yesterday it snowed in Houston, setting a record.  Those who are convinced that humans really make a difference to global temperature now should encourage us to burn coal and oil to save the planet from a coming Ice Age.  However, it is more likely due to the regular fluctuations of solar radiation, which we should learn to live with, rather than allowing dishonest scientists and politicians to sacrifice our global economy, or for that matter 10,000 still-beating hearts.

('76 Contributor) As any visitor to Cuba will tell you, slogans like "Hasta la victoria siempre" (towards victory, always) or "Socialismo or muerte" (socialism or death) are dotted here and there all over the Caribbean island for fear that the long-suffering local population might lose sight of the ill-fated goals of the communist revolution that took place there under the leadership of Fidel Castro and Che Guevara in 1959.   The way things are going in France right now, pockets of little Cubas are very likely to sprout up all over the country as the summit on climate change in Copenhagen next month looms larger and larger. I personally know of one such Cuban-like ideological treadmill: the High School in Lyon, France’s second-largest city, where I am completing my third year as a teacher of Anglo-American Studies.  About two months ago, straight from the French Department of Education came a diktat to the effect that all public schools in the country had to organize teaching activities aimed at promoting so-called environmentally-friendly sustainable development, i.e. socialism. I have been asked to participate. Needless to say that I have sustainably declined. One of the ideas some of my colleagues have come up with though is to translate the speeches President Obama and British Prime Minister Gordon Brown are expected to make in Denmark next month, and to flash up bits of the speeches on large TV screens dotted here and there all over the school for fear that the students might lose sight of the ill-fated goals of the green revolution that is currently taking place in France under the leadership of President Nicolas Sarkozy. With so much hot air coming out of the screens, I guess temperatures will rise exponentially all over the school and melt what little critical thinking is left in the French education system.  As the episode illustrates, descriptions of President Sarkozy as a conservative are misleading. On global warming, as in many other policy areas, Sarkozy is just about as conservative as Newt Gingrich sitting on a couch with Speaker Pelosi touting misguided bipartisan efforts to save the planet. The green revolution currently going on in France is being every bit as destructive of individual freedom and responsibility as the ominous events of 1789 there, or, for that matter, those in Cuba more than 150 years later. In other words, welcome to the new land of scorching propaganda, brainwashing, intellectual goose-stepping and, I almost forgot, youth duly decked out in Guevara accessories and apparel as the latest fashion dictates.   Are you sure you want to be next, America? The author is a French citizen with a PhD in political science who formerly lived in Colorado.

"Is Global Warming a Crisis," the Centennial Institute debate proposition for Scott Denning of CSU and James Taylor of the Heartland Institute, yielded an illuminating rather than heated exchange with Taylor saying no and Denning in backhanded agreement.  Facing off before an audience of 500 at Colorado Christian University on Oct. 20, the two argued their cases with data, analogies, humor, and the inevitable slide presentations.  Click to view the Denning slides and the Taylor slides. Denning defused suspense at the outset by sidestepping the "crisis" description popularized by Al Gore and other politicians.  But he insisted the human-generated increase of CO2 in earth's atmosphere will increase surface temperatures by 2100 at about the equivalent of one 4-watt light bulb per square meter worldwide, making it imperative to reduce CO2 emissions. His solution: "the magic of the free market," transitioning us smoothly to a new energy economy -- provided policymakers cooperate by "putting a price on carbon."    But that latter condition seemed to me a fatal disqualification to the whole scenario, since it implicitly endorses cap-and-trade, a decidedly unfree approach.   Taylor's rebuttal built on the key points that (1) context is crucial (recent warming trends being minor in perspective with historically much-warmer and high-CO2 epochs in earth's history), (2) solar influence is more explanatory for past climate cycles than CO2, (3) computer modeling of the sort used for Denning's light-bulb prediction is discredited by recent research from William Gray and Richard Lindzen, and (4) the prohibitive economic sacrifices of pricing-out carbon are unjustified in light of the foregoing, especially with China and India determined to continue their own burgeoning emissions.   The bottom line for this (admittedly non-neutral) observer: Carbon-dioxide worriers didn't come close to demonstrating urgency to warrant such drastic measures as the Waxman-Markey energy tax now before the US Senate and the Copenhagen Treaty due for international action before year-end.   "First do no harm," the policy verdict recommended by Chris Horner at Centennial's climate debate last April, was convincingly seconded by James Taylor at the October debate -- and this is the only wise guide for America's unilateral and multilateral actions on climate issues at present. Here's more about the Oct. 20 debate from CCU partner journalist Jean Torkelson, with photos by Ryan Masterson.

Here we go again. Leave it to government, in this case the City of Seattle, to find new and creative ways to reach into your pocketbook and grab more of your hard-earned cash. Recently, the Seattle City Council voted for a 20-cent tax/fee on every plastic or paper bag you use to take your groceries home. Years ago, in the early stages of the environmental movement we were advised that the production of paper bags kills trees and emits high levels of greenhouse gases and that’s not good. Soon thereafter, strong, lightweight, low-cost, water resistant plastic bags came along years ago to help save trees, a renewable resource by the way. As the environmental movement gained popularity it was determined that plastic bags were also an environmental hazard since they are not biodegradable. So now, thanks to the watchdog efforts of the City of Seattle, we are urged to use cloth grocery bags to save our environment and avoid this new tax/fee. As more and more citizens move to cloth bags they’ll need to clean them regularly, with detergent. That, of course, is a problem too. Many detergents, we are told, affect the quality of our water supply and cause algae blooms, which can also greatly reduce the amount of oxygen in the water and cause large fish kills. So what’s the solution? Should we buy only the groceries we need for our next meal and consume them before we leave the grocery store? Voila, no bags necessary. But wait, that sounds like a restaurant. And surely we are aware of the many public health and environmental health hazards created by restaurants, aren’t we? This all seems like a vicious cycle. What shall we do? What shall we do? There should be little argument that we can all be more environmentally aware than we have been in recent decades. The use of biodegradable plastic, environmentally friendly laundry detergents, and making every effort to reduce the emission of greenhouse gases will go a long way toward reversing what many believe is an alarming trend. But the biggest concern many citizens have right now, an understandably so, is the insatiable appetite at all levels of government for new taxes and fees…even if it is disguised as an important government intervention program to protect our environment. Before you know it, some local government will invent a tax on citizens who choose to install a home security system or a fine if you don’t shovel your sidewalk, even though the City may have stopped plowing your street 5 or 6 years ago. Sounds familiar…did the City of Colorado Springs already do that? Yes, on top of the highly controversial storm water fee that about ten thousand citizens have refused to pay. Then, perhaps, a misguided, fiscally irresponsible and liberal Governor will revoke the property tax exemption on seniors on fixed incomes. You say “That will never happen?” Well that happened in Colorado this year! So what’s next? Here are some ideas…• a tax on unnecessary, luxury auto accessories (back-up cameras; sun roofs; CD players; automatic, remote or keyless door locks; satellite radios; more than two cup holders; low tire inflation indicators; electronic rearview mirrors; back seat DVD players; etc)• a fee for each child who uses a swing, practices soccer, football or baseball in a public park...or a fee for mothers who stroll a toddler through a public park• an annual mileage tax (in addition to the excessive taxes we pay on each gallon of fuel)• a tax on ownership of household pets, or• forcing military members to carry insurance to pay for their own war injuries I know there are some elected officials saying right now “Why didn’t I think of that?” while others may be saying “Already thought of that, but do you think we can get away with it?” Ridiculous you say? I couldn’t agree more…and so is a tax on “paper or plastic?” How about, from this day forward, electing only those city councilmen, county commissioners, state legislators, and United States Senators and Congressmen who pledge no new taxes or fees for at least their next term in office; those who pledge to support growing infrastructure and national security needs only through thorough elimination of waste, fraud and abuse in government spending and programs, and not new taxes? How about not electing those who may say “no new taxes”, but by their records have already proven they cannot deliver on those pledges…those who will say ANYTHING to get re-elected. If they have a tax and spend record, let’s get rid of them all...regardless of their political affiliation. Enough is, enough…throw the bums out! Today the citizens of Seattle will be voting on whether to support or defeat this grocery bag tax/fee. If they support it, let’s call them enablers…feeding the habit of greedy elected officials who continue to tax and spend like there is no tomorrow. Some argue that unless we act now to protect our environment there will be no tomorrow…others argue that if our governments, at all levels, continue their reckless spending spree the greatest nation of Earth will no longer be the greatest nation on Earth. Count on it.