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CCP Proves ‘Climate’ Fight Not Really About Climate

You don’t have to be a climate scientist to know the ringleaders of the “climate change” bandwagon don’t truly believe the narrative they’re selling.

And it’s not just because they jet around the world in private jets to lecture you about your car and your hamburgers.

In fact, if the people at the top bought into the notion that human emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2) are really “pollution” producing a “climate crisis,” they would be doing exactly the opposite of what they’re actually doing.

Examining climate policy and communist China proves the point.

Consider the UN Paris Agreement. Negotiated at the 21st Conference of the Parties (COP21) in Paris in 2015, the global deal calls on national governments to make their own national pledges about what they force on their populations to combat the alleged “climate crisis.”

Under the deal, the Obama administration unilaterally pledged to slash CO2 emissions in the United States by more than 25 percent by 2025. This was to be imposed on Americans through executive orders and federal regulations to avoid involving Congress. Other Western governments made similar promises.

The Chinese communist regime, by contrast, was already emitting far more CO2 than the United States and now spews more than the entire Western world combined by far—and yet it pledged only to keep increasing its emissions for the next 15 years. Seriously.

In its submission to the UN (pdf), the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) agreed “to achieve the peaking of carbon dioxide emissions around 2030.”

In other words, the regime proudly announced to the world that its CO2 output would continue to grow for at least 15 years, at which point nobody will even remember the Paris pledges.

When I asked members of the Chinese delegation for comment at the UN summit, instead of responding, they sent one of their minions to follow me around the conference and take pictures of me, something I promptly reported to UN security and the French police.

It’s a good thing for the CCP that nobody will remember its promises by 2030, because virtually every analyst who has looked at the regime’s coal-fired power-plant construction binge has acknowledged there’s no way its emissions will “peak” by 2030. Communist promises have never been worth the paper they’re printed on anyway, as history has shown.

The CCP wasn’t kidding about increasing its emissions, though: Beijing is currently bringing more coal-fired power plants online just between now and 2025 than the United States has in total.

According to Global Energy Monitor’s February 2021 briefing (pdf), the CCP built more than three times as much coal-power capacity as the rest of the world combined in 2020. And it already has about half of all the world’s coal power capacity, according to Global Energy Monitor’s “Boom and Bust 2020: Tracking the Global Coal Plant Pipeline.”

Already, China emits more than twice as much CO2 as the United States, according to data from the Global Carbon Project. Its emissions are rising meteorically even as U.S. emissions and emissions from other Western nations continue to plunge.

In 2021, Americans released about 5 billion tons of CO2, while China released about 11.5 billion. If current trends continue, the CCP may release more CO2 than the rest of the world combined in the not-too-distant future.

Think about this. If one was truly concerned about CO2 emissions producing “climate hell,” as world leaders claimed at the latest UN “climate” summit in Egypt that I attended, they would be panicking, not celebrating.

Moving Production

Again, all of the production being moved out of the West and into China will result in vastly more CO2 entering the atmosphere than if that production had remained in the United States, Canada, or Europe.

And yet, Western governments, tax-funded climate activists, UN leaders, and their media allies all celebrated and continue to celebrate the Paris Agreement and subsequent follow-ups as a huge success in saving the climate. Perhaps Donald Trump was on to something when, in 2012, he wrote on Twitter,

“The concept of global warming was created by and for the Chinese in order to make U.S. manufacturing non-competitive.”

That’s exactly what happened, of course, as electricity rates got pushed higher and higher over time. In 1975, electricity was averaging around 3 cents per kilowatt hour, helping U.S. industry remain competitive globally. By 2010, thanks in part to Obama’s policies, it had tripled. And by 2021, it was approaching 15 cents.

For perspective, electricity prices in China are about half that.

There are many reasons for the shifting of production from the United States to China—many of them directly related to U.S. policy—but one key factor has been the cost of energy.

Yet higher energy prices were openly touted as a policy objective by Obama. As he made clear in a 2008 interview with the San Francisco Chronicle, “under my plan … electricity rates would necessarily skyrocket.”

Later that year, he expressed similar sentiments as gas prices soared to around $4, saying only that he would have “preferred” a “gradual adjustment” instead.

Faced with higher labor costs and a tougher regulatory environment, American companies and entrepreneurs were already struggling to keep production in the United States amid a rigged global trading regime benefiting the CCP at America’s expense.

Soaring energy costs in many cases pushed firms over the edge, forcing them to shift production to China or shut down in the face of Chinese competition.

Again, if you truly believe CO2 is pollution, the worst possible outcome of “climate” negotiations would be to transfer even more production to China, where CO2 emissions per unit of economic production are massively higher.

But this is precisely the result of the much-celebrated UN “climate” process.

The shift into so-called “renewable energy” being engineered by the Biden administration and federal policymakers has been and will continue to be a huge boon to the CCP, too—and not just because it will force prices higher while making the U.S. energy grid more unstable.

Almost 80 percent of solar cells produced in 2019 were made in China, according to Bloomberg data (pdf). The CCP dominates production in the wind sector and battery industries as well. It also controls the supply chain for rare-earth materials needed to produce all of these “green energy” products.

The U.S. government, for its part, is offering massive subsidies to these CCP-dominated industrial sectors while forcing Americans into dependence on them through regulations, mandates, subsidies, and other policies. How this is supposed to help the environment is never made clear.

For some perspective on the economic carnage inflicted on America by Obama’s Paris scheme, which he claimed was an “executive agreement” and thus not subject to Senate ratification as required by the Constitution, the Heritage Foundation crunched the numbers in a 2016 study.

Among other findings, the conservative-leaning think tank said Obama’s Paris pledges would increase electricity costs for a family of four between 13 and 20 percent annually while vaporizing almost half a million jobs, including around 200,000 in manufacturing.

That damage translates to about $20,000 in lost income for American families by 2035 and a reduction in GDP of over $2.5 trillion.

Who Benefits?

Who benefits from all this? Certainly not the “climate.” Again, shipping U.S. industry to China will result in more CO2 in the atmosphere, not less. And in any case, based on the UN’s own debunked “models,” complete elimination of all U.S. CO2 emissions would result in virtually no reduction in global temperatures.

According to a peer-reviewed paper by Dr. Bjorn Lomborg published in the Global Policy Journal, even if all the significant pledges made in Paris were fulfilled, global temperatures would be just 0.05 degrees C (0.086 degrees F) cooler by 2100—a statistically insignificant rounding error.

The big winner, of course, was the CCP, which has been laughing all the way to the bank as it absorbs the factories, jobs, and wealth production that U.S. and other Western authorities are shutting down to “save the climate.”

This appears to be deliberate, as statements by leading officials in the Obama administration and the UN have made clear.

Obama’s “Science Czar” John Holdren openly advocated a de-industrialization of the United States in his 1973 book “Human Ecology.”

“A massive campaign must be launched to restore a high-quality environment in North America and to de-develop the United States,” Holdren and his co-authors wrote. “De-development means bringing our economic system (especially patterns of consumption) into line with the realities of ecology.”

Then consider seemingly bizarre comments made by then-UN Executive Secretary of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change Christiana Figueres.

Speaking to Bloomberg a few months after Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau expressed his unsettling admiration for the CCP, Figueres claimed that the regime in Beijing—overseeing about one third of global CO2 output—was “doing it right” on climate policy.

In separate comments while pushing for major climate policies, Figueres also suggested the goal of “climate” policy was really economic transformation.

“This is the first time in the history of mankind that we are setting ourselves the task of intentionally, within a defined period of time, to change the economic development model that has been reigning for at least 150 years, since the Industrial Revolution,” she said on Feb. 4, 2015.

Five years before those comments, one of the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s top officials, Ottmar Edenhofer, revealed a similar agenda in comments to Germany’s NZZ Online.

“One must say clearly that we redistribute de facto the world’s wealth by climate policy,” he said. “One has to free oneself from the illusion that international climate policy is environmental policy. This has almost nothing to do with environmental policy anymore.”

Wealth redistribution? Changing the economic model of the world? De-developing the United States? And here Americans are being told this is about “saving the climate.”

Remember, too, that when Trump withdrew from the Paris agreement, climate alarmists from around the world declared that Beijing was the new global “leader” of the effort to save the climate—the same regime that oversees the most CO2 emissions, is building coal plants faster than they can be counted, and that promised to keep increasing CO2 emissions until 2030.

If this is really about saving the climate from CO2, how can the CCP be the new leader? It’s beyond absurd.

Despite all this, the Biden administration continues to intensify “cooperation” on “climate action” and the Paris Agreement with Beijing, no doubt causing amusement and joy among members of the CCP’s Politburo.

It’s not just China that benefits. In fact, congressional researchers discovered that state-backed Russian energy interests were funding U.S. “green” groups opposed to U.S. energy via a shell company in Bermuda called Klein Ltd.

The regime in Venezuela, too, is laughing all the way to the bank as the Biden administration sabotages U.S. energy and begs the Maduro dictatorship to send oil to America.

To be clear, I don’t begrudge the CO2 emissions of China or anyone else. In fact, many scientists have told me that more of this “gas of life” would be enormously beneficial for the planet and humanity.

Retired Princeton physics professor Dr. William Happer, who served as Trump’s climate adviser, told me years ago at a climate conference we both spoke at that the planet needed more CO2 and that plants were designed to live in an atmosphere with quite a bit more CO2 than the planet currently has.

Plus, human emissions of CO2 make up a fraction of 1 percent of all the so-called “greenhouse gases” present naturally in the atmosphere.

To summarize, if one truly believes that CO2 is bad for the climate, shipping U.S. production and industry to China is the worst possible way to deal with it. Logically, then, the policymakers behind this must have an ulterior motive.

Of course, the CCP loves the Paris deal: They do nothing but build more coal plants to power the industries and factories fleeing America for China as the U.S. government forces the United States to commit economic suicide.

This isn’t just an economic or “climate” issue, either. As the United States is “de-developed,” the economic destruction produces a major threat to national security. A strong military can’t be funded without a strong economy, obviously.

It’s time for lawmakers in the U.S. House of Representatives to shut down the administration’s “climate” policies that do nothing but expand CCP CO2 emissions and harm the United States.





Why Do Some Climate Alarmists Want Us All Dead?

What is the end-game of some extremists who believe in the threat of catastrophic, man-made climate change? The end of humanity.

In contrast, the founders of America operated out of a Judeo-Christian framework. The Bible was by-far the most widely read and studied book during America’s founding.

The framers declared that it is self-evident that we have been created equal and have been endowed by our Creator with certain key rights—first listed amongst them is the right-to-life.

But some of today’s climate alarmists want to see a global change to pull the plug on that right—not just for our country, but basically for humankind. And they certainly want to put the kibosh on the Biblical command to be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth with humans.

Why do some climate alarmists essentially wish us all dead? Because they think people are bad for the earth. They don’t believe in God. They claim to believe in science. But what is the evidence that people are supposedly bad for the earth?

The Atlantic recently had an article (January/February 2023 issue), focusing on this idea that some experts today are promoting human extinction, for the sake of the planet. They write:

“From Silicon Valley boardrooms to rural communes to academic philosophy departments, a seemingly inconceivable idea is being seriously discussed: that the end of humanity’s reign on Earth is imminent, and that we should welcome it…. It is a rejection of humanity’s traditional role as Earth’s protagonist, the most important being in creation.” [emphasis added]

They call this view “transhumanism”—that we should get beyond humanity, and we should engage in “drastic forms of self-elimination.” As noted, this contrasts sharply with the Biblical command that humanity should be fruitful and multiply. Argue the transhumanist “experts” quoted in The Atlantic:

“But if being fruitful and multiplying starts to be seen as itself a form of killing, because it deprives future generations and other species of irreplaceable resources, then the flourishing of humanity can no longer be seen as simply good.”

The New York Times features an article on a 75-year old man who promotes a similar message: “Earth Now Has 8 Billion Humans. This Man Wishes There Were None.”

They write: “For the sake of the planet, Les Knight, the founder of the Voluntary Human Extinction movement, has spent decades pushing one message: ‘May we live long and die out.’”

Knight often spreads the message, “Thank you for not breeding.”

They add, “Mr. Knight is among those who believe that overpopulation is a main factor in the climate crisis.” The article notes that “a 2020 poll found that one in four Americans who had not had children cited climate change as a reason.”

Ideas have consequences. What begins as a discussion of hypotheticals in the faculty lounge may eventually become policy somewhere. These are worldviews in conflict.

I remember years ago, one Christian speaker made this observation:

-In the 18th century, the Bible was killed. (Higher critics beginning in Germany attacked the Scriptures and postulated that they couldn’t be trusted.)

-In the 19th century, God was killed. (Darwinism supposedly eliminated the need for the “God hypothesis.”)

-In the 20th century, Man was killed. (Nazi Germany’s Holocaust and the Communists’ murder of some 100 million persons are two prominent examples.) And now some of these climate alarmists are arguing that even more human beings should willingly die out…for the sake of the planet.

I reached out to author Wesley J. Smith, the Chair of the Discovery Institute’s Center for Human Exceptionalism, for a comment on this idea. He told me, “The Human Extinction Movement is a form of nature worship, expressing the belief that the world will be pristine without us. But why will that matter? No one will be around capable of appreciating nature’s wonder.”

I also asked for a reply from Dr. E. Calvin Beisner, the president of the Cornwall Alliance for the Stewardship of Creation, who is a major critic of the unproven hypothesis of man-made, catastrophic climate change.

Beisner noted, “The proposal is absurdity in the extreme. Even the scenarios for the future in the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s scientific reports, exaggerated as they are, don’t depict human-induced global warming as an existential threat or even a great crisis. Such claims come only from the UN’s and various nations’ political leaders, environmental activists, and the mainstream media.”

And he added, “The hope for human extinction is nothing more than anti-human. Christians, who recognize that people are the image of God, will recognize it as attacking God in effigy.”

Beginning with a dubious premise, the alarmists have reached a dubious conclusion. This relatively new push for no more humans reminds me of the verse in the Bible where God’s wisdom says, “All who hate me love death.”


This article was originally posted at JerryNewcombe.com.




Schools Terrorizing Children: 7 in 10 Scared of “Climate Change”

In the face of escalating indoctrination and fear-mongering about alleged man-made global warming in government schools around the world, more than seven in 10 children now say they are afraid of “climate change” and environmental issues. Climate alarmists said the results showed the need for even more climate propaganda in schools — yes, seriously.

The controversial survey of 1,000 children, commissioned by a British “eco-grocery” company known for reusing milk bottles, found that the impact “climate change” would have on animal was the top concern among one fourth of children polled. Other concerns among the brainwashed youngsters included “plastic pollution” and “rising temperatures.”

More than one third of the children said their schools or teachers were their primary inspiration, according to an outfit called “Generation Alpha” cited in news reports about the survey. Almost half, though, looked to population-control fanatic David Attenborough with the British government’s propaganda machine, BBC, as their inspiration and educator. Families took the spot for less than one fourth.

The company that commissioned the survey said it proves more brainwashing is needed. “The results show that environmental challenges are having a prominent effect on the children of today, proving that it’s never been more important to educate communities on the actions they can take to protect our planet,” said Simon Mellin, founder and CEO of the “eco-grocery” outfit behind the poll.

While that survey focused on children on the other side of the Atlantic, it is just as bad in the United States, if not worse. “Climate change” is a key component of the “Next Generation Science Standards” developed by the same quacks behind Common Core — pseudo-science standards that never once mention the scientific method. Six years ago, the National Center for Science Education revealed that about 3 in 4 “science” teachers in American government schools teach “climate change,” too.

The new survey results confirm other studies showing that children are suffering from being bombarded with doom and gloom prophecies about global warming. In fact, they are experiencing something researchers dubbed “eco-anxiety.” It is characterized by “negative” emotions such as “anger, sadness, guilt, and hopelessness,” according to a peer-reviewed study from this summer calling for more research on the trend.

The growing terror surrounding alleged man-made global warming comes as government schools also terrorize children about the supposed risks of everything from COVID to school shootings. This endless barrage of fearmongering has produced a generation of American youngsters who are losing their minds, literally, with the CDC finding that 44 per cent of teenagers say they feel “persistent feelings of sadness or hopelessness.”

The use of fear to accomplish political objectives has long been understood by tyrants. In fact, former National Socialist leader Hermann Goering — Adolf Hitler’s right-hand man — famously explained after the war that it is easy to make a population do the bidding of leaders: “All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger.”

Just replace “being attacked” with “having their climate destroyed by climate deniers, Americans, and capitalists,” and replace pacifists for “climate deniers,” and presto! Dealing with the people and things “exposing the country to danger” now requires all sorts of extreme “solutions” including giving up individual rights, limiting national sovereignty, and crushing prosperity. There is a reason former NASA senior climate scientist Dr. Roy Spencer refers to vicious alarmists as “global warming Nazis.”  

As schools terrorize children with climate propaganda, they are then stepping in and using tactics such as “mindfulness” — a religious and spiritual practice tied to Buddhism — to supposedly help them cope. Social-Emotional Learning, or SEL, is also a big part of what passes for education today, with children propagandized to adopt New Age spirituality and far-left political views under the guise of teaching regulation and control of emotions.

Children should be playing and learning. They should not be subjected to an endless barrage of cultish propaganda paid by taxpayers aimed at transforming society under the guise of stopping the climate from changing — something that has happened since the Earth was created and presumably will continue as long as it exists. This child abuse must end. Only parents can make it stop.


This article was originally published at FreedomProject.com.




Study Finds Sun—Not CO2—May Be Behind Global Warming

The sun and not human emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2) may be the main cause of warmer temperatures in recent decades, according to a new study with findings that sharply contradict the conclusions of the United Nations (UN) Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

The peer-reviewed paper, produced by a team of almost two dozen scientists from around the world, concluded that previous studies did not adequately consider the role of solar energy in explaining increased temperatures.

The new study was released just as the UN released its sixth “Assessment Report,” known as AR6, that once again argued in favor of the view that man-kind’s emissions of CO2 were to blame for global warming. The report said human responsibility was “unequivocal.”

But the new study casts serious doubt on the hypothesis.

Calling the blaming of CO2 by the IPCC “premature,” the climate scientists and solar physicists argued in the new paper that the UN IPCC’s conclusions blaming human emissions were based on “narrow and incomplete data about the Sun’s total irradiance.”

Indeed, the global climate body appears to display deliberate and systemic bias in what views, studies, and data are included in its influential reports, multiple authors told The Epoch Times in a series of phone and video interviews.

“Depending on which published data and studies you use, you can show that all of the warming is caused by the sun, but the IPCC uses a different data set to come up with the opposite conclusion,” lead study author Ronan Connolly, Ph.D. told The Epoch Times in a video interview.

“In their insistence on forcing a so-called scientific consensus, the IPCC seems to have decided to consider only those data sets and studies that support their chosen narrative,” he added.

The implications, from a policy perspective, are enormous, especially in this field where trillions of dollars are at stake and a dramatic re-organization of the global economy is being proposed.

Paper Examines Sun Vs. CO2

Using publicly available data sets from the U.S. government and other sources, it is easy to explain all of the warming observed in recent decades using nothing but changes in solar energy arriving on Earth, according to the new paper.

Indeed, while it agrees that using the data sets chosen by the UN would imply humans are largely to blame, the study includes multiples graphs showing that simply choosing different data sets not used by the UN upends the IPCC’s conclusion.

If confirmed, the study, published in the international scientific journal Research in Astronomy and Astrophysics (RAA) by experts from over a dozen countries, would represent a devastating blow to the UN IPCC and its conclusion that man’s emissions of CO2 are the sole or even primary driver of warming.

While the paper calls for further research to resolve differences between conflicting data sets and studies, the authors show conclusively that, depending on the data sets being used, it is entirely possible that most or even all of the warming has nothing to do with man.

Using 16 different estimates on the amount of solar energy, dubbed “Total Solar Irradiance,” the review compares that data with over 25 estimates of temperatures in the Northern hemisphere stretching back to the 1800s.

When solar data from NASA’s “ACRIM” sun-monitoring satellites are compared to reliable temperature data, for example, virtually all of the warming would be explained by the sun, with almost no role at all for human emissions.

And yet, for reasons that the study authors say are murky at best, the UN chooses to ignore the NASA ACRIM data and other data sets in favor of those that support the hypothesis of human responsibility for climate change.

The UN IPCC reports, including the recently released 6th Assessment Report, have consistently blamed human activities such as the emission of so-called “greenhouse gases” for the observed changes. Many studies in the scientific literature have agreed with the UN IPCC position.

However, the new study, titled “How much has the Sun influenced Northern Hemisphere temperature trends? An ongoing debate,” cites dozens of other studies that have pointed to the sun—not human activity—as the primary driver of climate changes.

According to the study authors, these dissenting scientific views have been deliberately suppressed by the IPCC and have not been reflected in the UN IPCC reports, for reasons that have not been adequately explained.

A spokesman for the IPCC denied wrongdoing by the UN body in comments to The Epoch Times and said the new study had been accepted for publication after the deadline for consideration.

The paper in RAA agrees that the planet has warmed somewhat since the late 19th century, when reliable data collection began in the northern hemisphere.

However, in another challenge to the UN’s influential report, even the temperature data sets used by the IPCC are subjected to criticism in the new paper and others.

Among other concerns, the study highlighted apparent flaws in the approach used by the IPCC for estimating global temperature changes using data from both urban and rural locations.

According to the study’s authors, including urban data sets results in an artificial upward skewing of temperatures due to the well-known “urban heat island” effect that must be taken into account.

Basically, cities tend to be warmer than the countryside due to human activity and structures, so temperature stations that had cities grow up around them will show artificial temperature increases caused by the urbanization rather than global warming.

The IPCC has rejected those concerns, arguing that urbanization only played a very minor role in the estimate temperature increase.

Why the Apparent Bias?

Asked why these views have been ignored and even suppressed, lead study author Connolly suggested “confirmation bias” was at work. This is when individuals only consider information that supports their bias, something Connolly said affects all scientists.

While this may be at work in the IPCC’s selection of data sets and studies to consider and include, it is hard to know for sure, he said, expressing concern that the UN IPCC was only considering data sets and studies that “support the chosen narrative.”

“Whether they were deliberately doing it or whether it was simply confirmation bias is difficult to say, but it is clear that data sets are being selected that support the IPCC view while data contradicting it have been excluded,” added Connolly, who has a doctorate in Computational Chemistry and is affiliated with the Center for Environmental Research and Earth Sciences (CERES).

Connolly also said that the IPCC ignored key recent papers contradicting its conclusions, even denying that any such new papers existed despite leading IPCC scientists having cited those same papers in their own work.

For instance, a related 2015 paper published in the prestigious Earth-Science Reviews journal titled “Re-evaluating the role of solar variability on Northern Hemisphere temperature trends since the 19th century” was cited favorably by IPCC Working Group 1 Co-Chair Panmao Zhai of China. That paper argued, among other points, that the urban heat effect is not being properly addressed.

And yet, in the latest IPCC Assessment Report, the UN body claims that “No recent literature has emerged” that would cause an altering of its conclusion that the urbanization issue explains less than 10 percent of the apparent rise in global land temperatures.

Asked why the 2015 study in a major journal cited by one of its own leaders, among other key papers, was not mentioned in its latest report, a spokesman for the IPCC told The Epoch Times after consulting with IPCC Working Group 1 Co-Chair Panmao that “decisions on citations are up to the chapter team authors not the co-chairs.”

A spokesman for the UN body told The Epoch Times that he asked Panmao for an answer but that any potential response would not likely be forthcoming prior to publication.

In another case, the IPCC misrepresented a 2019 study that Connolly was involved in on snow cover, falsely implying that it showed less snow in all four seasons. In reality, the study showed more snow cover in fall and winter and that current climate models get all four seasons wrong.

Part of the problem is that the IPCC is mandated to find a scientific consensus, according to Connolly.

“This may have seemed like a good idea at the beginning, but where the scientific community has dissenting opinions, trying to force a premature consensus unfortunately hinders scientific progress—it is unhelpful and leads to an unjustified confidence in the conclusions,” Connolly told The Epoch Times in an interview.

Attempting to explain the absence of various published scientific viewpoints in the UN’s reports, the study cited researchers and papers to suggest that “scientific results that might potentially interfere with political goals are unwelcome.”

Systemic Bias … or Deliberate Fraud?

Another study author, Willie Soon, Ph.D. echoed those concerns and argued that ignoring the sun’s activity is the equivalent of ignoring the elephant in the room.

Blasting the IPCC as “cartoon science rather than science,” the astrophysicist from CERES essentially accuses the UN body of deliberate fraud.

“I think the latest IPCC report will continue to mislead most of the unsuspecting public on how their works will be a fair and objective review of all relevant scientific works published over the past 8 years,” he told The Epoch Times in one of a series of interviews on the subject.

Soon, who has been researching the relationship between the sun and the Earth’s climate at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics for three decades, blasted the IPCC’s “Summary For Policymakers” (SPM) as well.

“It is no wonder that the draft SPM report has sold everyone yet another blatant untruth, that it is all about the CO2 that has driven all the temperature change on Earth, while they continue to hide the fact that our new and comprehensive research paper concludes that all these conclusions are not only premature but factually misleading and confusing,” he said.

“Our scientific review shows that the changes in the Sun’s irradiance are a plausible and important factor that can explain most of the observed changes in the thermometer data,” added Soon. “So now why is IPCC still playing this childish hide-and-seek game while thinking that we can all be permanently hoodwinked by their one-trick agenda?”

Soon said he hopes the systematic review of the relationship between the sun and the climate can help the scientific community return to a “more realistic approach” to understanding changes in the planet’s climate systems.

“It is time for this abuse of science by the IPCC to be stopped,” he concluded.

Incidentally, Soon believes global temperatures may decline in the coming decades, also due to changes in solar activity.

What is Climate Change?

Study co-author Professor László Szarka, a geophysicist and member of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, told The Epoch Times that the new review represented a “crucial milestone” in restoring the scientific definition of “climate change.”

Asserting that the definition has become distorted over the last 30 years, Szarka argued that the scientific community must remember that science is not based on authority or consensus, but on the pursuit of truth.

“The definition of climate change was distorted in 1992 in a way that is incompatible with science,” the geophysicist explained, pointing to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and its exclusion of natural causes from the definition of climate change.

In reality, the term climate change used to—and must again—include not just changes wrought by man, but also natural changes in temperature, rainfall, wind patterns, and other factors that occur over decades or longer time periods.

“The obscuration of the classical definition of climate change has paved the way for any change in the climate to be attributed and accounted to anthropogenic emission,” Szarka explained to The Epoch Times in highlighting the significance of the study.

But it does not have to be that way. He suggested that even non-scientist laymen could and should work to discover the truth.

“Regular people are able to decide who is fishing in troubled waters, if they systematically ask politicians, decision makers, and journalists what they mean by the term climate change,” he said.

Outside Opinions

Even some UN IPCC reviewers have expressed skepticism of the dominant narrative and support for the work of Soon and others.

When contacted by The Epoch Times, accredited UN IPCC reviewer Howard Brady, Ph.D. of Australia praised the work of Soon and other authors behind the study as “probably the best around.”

Acknowledging a lack of expertise regarding the sun specifically, Brady slammed the IPCC and its models.

Among other concerns, he noted that they “still predict more storms even though they are declining,” and “they still report accelerating sea level [rise] when that does not exist.”

Over the years, numerous IPCC scientists have dissented from the views advanced by their colleagues.

For instance, the late Dr. Nils-Axel Morner, who served as an IPCC reviewer on sea-level, frequently accused the UN body of getting it wrong—most likely for political rather than scientific reasons.

Another outside expert contacted by The Epoch Times for insight into the new study and the latest IPCC report also expressed major concerns.

Alabama State Climatologist John Christy, distinguished professor of Atmospheric and Earth Sciences at the University of Alabama in Huntsville, noted that “the IPCC report indicates high confidence in model simulations while at the same time noting in the main body of the report how the models poorly represent the real atmosphere.”

The IPCC claims its models accurately portray the impact of all the forces that affect the climate and that nothing else could have caused the warming over the last 40 years except human emissions, he explained.

“This indicates a bit of hubris and lack of imagination,” said Christy, who also serves as the director of the Earth System Science Center.

Acknowledging that he had not had time to read the new paper or carefully review the latest IPCC report, the world-renowned climatologist told The Epoch Times that the UN’s models cannot even reproduce the natural variations of the last 150 years, such as the natural warming during the first half of the 20th century.

“They also overdo the warming of the last 40 years, again, not matching the real world,” he said.

“So, if they can’t reproduce natural variations with sufficient skill and they overheat the atmosphere over the last 40 years, how are they then endowed with the ability to tell us ‘why’ changes are happening with such ‘unequivocal’ confidence?” he asked.

Dr. Christy was blunt in his conclusions, saying “the models certainly don’t agree with each other regarding the future.”

That limits their results “to the realm of speculative hypotheses, not policy-determining tools.”

Response from NASA and IPCC

When contacted about the new paper, Gavin Schmidt, who serves as acting senior advisor on climate at NASA and the director of the Goddard Institute for Space Studies, was also blunt.

“This is total nonsense that no one sensible should waste any time on,” he told The Epoch Times.

He did not respond to a follow-up request for specific errors of fact or reasoning in the new RAA paper.

However, even Schmidt, a leading proponent of the man-made warming hypothesis, has conceded that the IPCC’s models have been inaccurate.

“You end up with numbers for even the near-term that are insanely scary—and wrong,” Schmidt was quoted as saying by the journal Science.

By contrast, IPCC Communications chief Jonathan Lynn told The Epoch Times that the UN body remained very confident in its conclusions.

Asked about the new paper and its authors’ assertions that the IPCC was inaccurately blaming human emissions, Lynn responded: “The IPCC doesn’t seek to blame anyone or anything for anything. We do try to attribute climate change to explain its causes.”

Pointing to Chapter 3 of the new IPCC report, Lynn echoed the UN body’s assessment that the more than 14,000 papers it examined demonstrate that warming has been driven by human emissions.

“The new 2021 paper may well challenge the underlying IPCC conclusion that CO2 and human emissions are behind the warming of recent decades,” Lynn added in a follow-up statement to The Epoch Times. “But if it is included in the next assessment, it’s unlikely to completely overturn that conclusion which is based on thousands of other pieces of research.”

The next IPCC assessment is expected more than five years from now.

One of the authors of the new IPCC report, Jim Kossin, celebrated that people were “starting to get scared” about climate changes due to the body’s findings.

“I think that’ll help to change people’s attitudes,” he said. “And hopefully that’ll affect the way they vote.”


This article was originally published by The Epoch Times.




Child Abuse in Plain Sight

Written by Larry Sand

Forcing Critical Race Theory on children is psychologically damaging.

I come from a time when schools existed to teach the ABCs, basic math and the amazing story of the American founding. While it’s true that Horace Mann, the man who first promoted universal public education, was a central planner, government schools usually turned out educated students whose values comported with those of their parents. But these days, driven by fads and pseudoscience, many schools seem to exist to frighten children by forcing them into believing some craze-du-jour that is often alien to their parents. Of late, the global warming (or is it climate change?) and gender fluidity fads have been cruelly forced upon children as young as five.

Then, most recently, we had the hysterical response to COVID-19. The ensuing school lockdowns have led children to live lives of social isolation, which have increased rates of anxiety, depression and suicide. Additionally, the learning loss has been incalculable. And now, many of those who have been able get back to in-person classes are being subjected to woke schooling and its foundational underpinning, Critical Race Theory (CRT). Those who condemn CRT pedagogy, which maintains that racism is pervasive and permanent, and divides students into “oppressor” and “oppressed” factions, usually comes from those who have an issue with its inherent radicalism. But what about its effects on children’s psyches?

In an eye-opening piece, Children’s Educational Opportunity Foundation president Lewis Andrews writes that “woke curricula involve much more than warped views of history, the scientific method, and social relations – they also employ instructional methods that have been shown to inflict serious psychological harm completely independent of what is being taught. These include the frequent use of shaming, forced public confessions of so-called ‘privilege,’ the acceptance of one’s socioeconomic background as an excuse for not achieving, and the promotion of ideological conformity as the best way to deal with social conflict.”

Quoting psychologist Anna Smith, Andrews adds that shame is the ultimate divider. “It’s a me versus them feeling. A deliberate act to cause one to feel like an outsider. As ‘a finger-pointing gesture,’ she says, it can easily induce the very reverse of what was intended.”

Here in Wokefornia, where CRT has reached religious status in some circles, the state is getting close to passing AB 101, which would mandate teaching a one-semester course in ethnic studies in high school. As written, the bill does not include specific content, however. That decision would be left to each school district. And like the wolf in “Little Red Riding Hood,” the red CRT wolves are waiting to pounce. In Los Angeles, the school district is considering a curriculum that disdains “merit” and “individualism,” and claims that “history classes and textbooks focus on the perspective of white colonial culture.”

The San Diego Unified School District is no better. There, students must “confront and examine your white privilege” and to “acknowledge when you feel white fragility.” Additionally, children are told to “understand the impact of white supremacy in your work.”

The good news is that a “civil rights violation complaint” has been filed against San Diego schools. The Californians for Equal Rights Foundation along with five partner organizations have filed the complaint against the school district for unlawful, discriminatory critical race training of teachers and employees. CFER claims, “Culturally Responsive Sustaining Practices & Ethnic Studies and other relevant training violates the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, Title VI of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, Article I Section 31 (a) of the California Constitution, as well as state anti-discrimination laws and Board policies.”

One can only hope that this lawsuit – and perhaps others – will put a crimp in the rampaging Cultural Marxism we are experiencing. And make no mistake about it – this is Marxism. The godfather of Communism taught his followers that the world was divided into two categories –oppressors and the oppressed. Marx also despised the nuclear family, which he claimed “performs ideological functions for Capitalism” and teaches “passive acceptance of hierarchy.” He thought that the destruction of the family model would make it easier to abolish private property.

Traditionally, teachers have tried to empower kids, but now the regnant pedagogy aims to foster tribalism, anger, resentment, and victimhood. As Lewis Andrews notes, “Sadly, today’s woke curricula do far more to erode a child’s sense of intrinsic worth than to build it up. Indeed, one can hardly imagine a more effective way of grooming disorganized and incompetent adults. As one veteran teacher in the Buffalo Public School system recently put it, anti-racist classrooms have devolved into little more than a series of ‘scoldings, guilt-trips, and demands to demean oneself simply to make another feel empowered.’”

Yes, for many government-run schools and increasing numbers of private ones, it has come to this – child abuse plain and simple – and it’s being perpetrated in plain sight.


Larry Sand, a former classroom teacher, is the president of the non-profit California Teachers Empowerment Network – a non-partisan, non-political group dedicated to providing teachers and the general public with reliable and balanced information about professional affiliations and positions on educational issues. 

This article was originally published by the California Policy Center.




Pence Doesn’t Believe in Science?

Written by Jerry Newcombe

After President Donald Trump named Vice President Mike Pence last week to lead nation’s battle against the coronavirus, many in the media decried the choice because supposedly Mike Pence “doesn’t believe in science.” How could he? He’s a Christian. So the logic goes.

They mock along the lines of: Maybe he just wants to pray the virus away.

The late night comedian Jimmy Kimmel quipped, “Why is Mike Pence in charge? What is his plan to stop the virus, abstinence?”

Writing for mediaite.com (2/26/20), Reed Richardson noted,

“President Donald Trump’s decision to task Mike Pence with heading up the federal government’s coronavirus response triggered an immediate backlash as critics noted the vice president’s record of doubting scientific evidence and his role in exacerbating an HIV outbreak in Indiana while he was governor.”

Richardson argues that Pence allegedly did a poor job in quelling the HIV outbreak in Indiana because for two days, he cancelled a needle exchange program and supposedly during those two days, the HIV “infection rates exploded.” After praying about it, Pence relented. An explosion of new cases in just two days?

Meanwhile, Richardson has compiled many comments from those criticizing Trump’s choice of Pence for this fight. Included in the criticisms is that he doesn’t believe in “climate science.” Why should he? Man-made catastrophic climate change is a hoax.

Democrat presidential candidate Bernie Sanders tweeted against the choice of Pence: “Trump’s plan for the coronavirus so far:…Have VP Pence, who wanted to ‘pray away’ HIV epidemic, oversee the response…Disgusting.”

Another socialist, Democrat Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez commented:

“Mike Pence literally does not believe in science. It is utterly irresponsible to put him in charge of US coronavirus response as the world sits on the cusp of a pandemic.”

One critic tweeted:

“America is a driving force in fighting epidemics, and now the director of that fight is Mike Pence, a guy who’s [sic] scientific knowledge consists of how many times you have to pray before you’re cured of being gay.”

An M.D. remarked,

“Trump names Mike Pence as the Coronavirus Czar rather than CDC Director Robert Redfield or Surgeon General Jerome Adams. A physician should be in charge of the nation’s coronavirus response, not some dude who quarantines himself from other women when dining out.”

It seems like most of the criticisms are that Pence is unqualified to head up this task force because he is a devout Christian. Therefore, the same people who argue that a man can give birth  are pro-science, while because of his Christianity, Mike Pence is supposedly anti-science.

The canard that Christians are somehow anti-science is astounding. After all, Christian invented modern science. As the great astronomer Johannes Kepler put it, the scientist is a priest of the Most High God, “thinking His thoughts after Him.” A rational God had created a rational world, and it was the scientist’s job to try and discover God’s laws in nature.

The founder of every major branch of science was created by a Bible-believing Christian of one stripe or another. I highlighted this in a previous post. As the great evangelical thinker, Dr. Os Guinness, once told me, “Actually, many of the earliest, and some of the very greatest of scientists have been people of enormous faith.”

Daniel Lapin is an author and an orthodox Jewish rabbi. He once told me in an interview about the impact of Christianity on the world, “Sir Isaac Newton wrote far more on faith, theology and religion than he wrote on gravitation. And there is a reason for that. Once we are given a clue, wait a second, ‘In the beginning, God created heaven and earth,’ then that tells me that one way I can get to know God better is by studying heaven and earth. And that’s why, until relatively recently, all the great scientists were also great Christians.”

Lapin also said, “If you look at the last thousand years…ninety-eight percent of all the major technological scientific medical advances took place again, let’s face it, under Christendom: they were in Christian countries.”

As D. James Kennedy and I noted in our book, What If Jesus Had Never Been Born?: “Both Alfred North Whitehead (1861–1947) and J. Robert Oppenheimer (1904–1967) have stressed that modern science was born out of the Christian world view…..Whitehead [in his 1925 book, Science and the Modern World] said that Christianity is the mother of science because of ‘the medieval insistence on the rationality of God.’”

The arguments that Mike Pence is disqualified from serving as the top executive to fight the spread of this virus because of his Christian commitment makes no sense.

Pence has a good record of mobilizing people to work together for the common good—and to do so in a humble attitude of “servant leadership.”


This article was originally published at JerryNewcombe.com.




U of I “Climate Emergency” Reveals Dangerous Extremism

Giving taxpayers and parents a sense of just what their money is being spent on, the University of Illinois declared a “climate emergency” ahead of the recent United Nations COP25 “climate” summit in Spain. About 200 other universities and organizations around the world made similar declarations by signing on to the letter.

In the so-called “Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) Accord,” signed by U of I President Timothy Killeen, signatories recognized the alleged “need” for “a drastic societal shift to combat the growing threat of climate change.” As part of that, the university vowed to ensure that the “young minds shaped” by its professors were “equipped” with the “knowledge” they would need to respond to this supposed “threat.”

To “step up to the challenge,” the university committed to supporting a three-point plan. This includes spending more money on “climate change research” and going “carbon neutral by 2030 or 2050 at the latest.” It also involves stepping up the climate indoctrination, described in the document as “increasing the delivery of environmental and sustainability education across curriculum, campus and community outreach programs.”

“We all need to work together to nurture a habitable planet for future generations and to play our part in building a greener and cleaner future for all,” the letter states. “We call on governments and other education institutions to join us in declaring a Climate Emergency and back this up with actions that will help create a better future for both people and our planet.”

The “SDG Accord,” named after the UN’s highly controversial Agenda 2030 Sustainable Development Goals, was signed by radical groups from around the world, including organs of mass-murdering Communist Party dictatorships that jumped on the “climate” bandwagon to extort Western taxpayers. Multiple governments and other organizations have also declared a “climate emergency.”

At the UN COP25, under the guise of stopping the supposed “climate emergency,” policies ranging from drastic population reduction and enforced lower living standards to imposing global taxes and “global governance” were all openly promoted. One prominent professor in Denmark even suggested the UN could use “peacekeeping” troops to enforce its climate mandates.

Ironically, when the European pseudo-Parliament was debating the measure to declare a “climate emergency,” German Members of the European Parliament (MEPs) were extremely uneasy. That is because National Socialist (Nazi) dictator Adolf Hitler also declared an “emergency” (Norstand, in German) to usurp all sorts of totalitarian powers under the guise of dealing with the supposed “emergency.”

Countless scientists, though, have ridiculed the notion of a “climate emergency.” Internationally renowned Princeton University physicist Dr. William Happer, who most recently served as climate advisor to President Donald Trump, warned in Madrid that the alarmist movement was a “bizarre environmental cult” that had manufactured a phony “climate emergency” to unleash its policies.

Speaking of Nazi emergencies, former senior NASA climatologist Dr. Roy Spencer, who now serves as a senior research scientist at the University of Alabama, blasted extremist peddlers of the man-made global-warming hypothesis as “global-warming Nazis.” Among the main reasons he chose the term is that the policies they advocate would kill far more people than Hitler’s National Socialists ever did.

The University of Illinois is no stranger to climate hysteria. In September, hundreds of high-school and college students gathered on campus to protest against alleged man-made “climate” changes, which they believe are caused by the gas they exhale (CO2). Professors are offering a great deal of “support” for their efforts, organizers of the demonstration said.

Speaking to the tax-funded Illinois Public Media talk show known as “The 21st,” students involved in putting together the climate march offered insight into the sort of dangerous and misleading propaganda they are being spoon-fed at their tax-funded university. And it was not pretty.

“I kind of figured out the polar bears aren’t dying because I’m leaving the lights on at night,” said U of I “Students for Environmental Concerns” campus President Abbi Pstrzroch. “They’re dying because climate change is very systematic and it’s deeply rooted in greed and corruption.”

Of course, in the real world, polar bears are not actually dying at all — they are thriving in an incredible way. In fact, according to leading polar bear expert Dr. Susan Crockford, a Ph.D. in zoology at the University of Victoria, polar bear numbers have actually exploded, with populations quadrupling just since the late 1960s when the “global cooling” scare was getting underway.

After complaining about the “eco-anxiety” that young people supposedly suffer from due to alleged man-made warming, Pstrzroch revealed what has long been very clear to observers: the “climate” movement has less to do with changes in climate, and more to do with imposing left-wing progressive changes on society.

The goals of the climate marchers, Pstrzroch said, include: “respect for indigenous lands, climate justice, sustainable agriculture, protection and restoration of biodiversity, as well as a Green New Deal mainly focusing on legislative with fossil fuels.” The proposed “Green New Deal” called for banning airplanes and “farting cows,” paying people who do not want to work, and many other absurdities.

Despite the U of I joining hundreds of other institutions around the world in declaring a “climate” emergency, the UN COP25 summit in Madrid did not succeed in advancing the extreme policies sought by the alarmist movement. That is mostly because President Trump stood in the way and quit showering billions of U.S. tax dollars on the schemes.

However, with public schools and left-wing universities such as those in Illinois flagrantly indoctrinating students into climate alarmism and progressive ideology, advocates of a planetary “climate” regime remain hopeful. It will be up to grassroots Americans to defend truth and freedom.


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Ideological Fascism at American Colleges and Universities

Written by Dr. Everett Piper

Once there was a prominent landowner who had a son. Even though the boy was quite well cared for and had everything he needed, he became restless. One day he approached his dad and said: “Father, I don’t want to wait for my inheritance. Frankly, I am suffocating living under your rules and your expectations. I want my freedom. I want my money. It is time for me to move out of the house, get my own place, and live as I want.”

Well, even though the father was understandably brokenhearted, he relented. He gave his son the freedom and the money he demanded. He let the boy decide how to use (or abuse) his inheritance. He permitted the prodigal to leave home. He gave his son his own way.

So, the son packed his bags and moved to the big city and rented an apartment. There, undisciplined and dissipated, he squandered everything he had. He had his freedom. He had his money, and he wasted it all by living his own way.

About the time he was spending his last few dollars of inheritance, a severe recession occurred. Having nothing left, the young man began living on the streets and scavenging in back alley dumpsters for food. He was so hungry he resorted to eating garbage to survive.

As the story goes, one day, this wayward son woke up. He came to his senses and said to all his vagabond friends: “All the ranch hands back home working for my father are much better off than we are. They, at least, sit down to three meals a day, and here I am starving to death. I am going back home.”

Reflecting on this parable of the arrogant and wayward son causes me to think of today’s colleges and universities.

I think of higher education’s “birthright and inheritance” as seen in the original mission statements of many of our nation’s seminal institutions: Of Harvard’s Christo et Ecclesia, “For Christ and the Church,” of Princeton’s Vitam Mortuis Reddo, “I restore life to the dead,” of Yale’s expressed goal for its students “to know God in Jesus Christ and … to lead a Godly, sober life.”

I think of the academy’s prodigal path, where colleges and universities, contrary to their founding creeds, now refuse even to allow traditional Judeo-Christian ideas to be openly discussed and freely debated on their respective campuses.

I think of faculty who have been denied tenure because they dared to assume they could engage in an open exchange of ideas on matters such as human origins, climate change, identity politics, intersectionality and critical race theory.

I think of the consequences of “living our own way” and eating from the “back alley dumpsters” of safe spaces, gender-neutral pronouns, trigger warnings and micro-aggressions.

I think of the routine reports of binge drinking, date rape, sexual abuse, escalating suicide rates and the pandemic reality of STDs.

But, I also think of our father and his provisions and his teachings: of Veritas; of “Truth”; of Harvard’s early affirmation on its school shield – “If you hold to my teachings you shall know the truth, and the truth shall set you free.”

Finally, I think of the historical “home “of the academy and the intellectual freedom we used to have under our father’s roof as opposed to the ideological fascism we now experience at the hand of our arrogance and rebellion.

In the story of the prodigal son, Jesus tells us: “Not long after squandering his birthright, there was a bad famine in the land, and the son began to hurt. Having nothing left but his “way,” this young man began working in the fields, feeding the pigs, thinking he must do so to survive. He was so hungry he was now eating the corncobs in the pig slop.”

As a lifelong educator, I look at my academic peers in today’s colleges and universities and I can’t help but ask myself, “has our own way resulted in what we expected when we told our father we wanted to move out of his house?” Did we get what we wanted when we spent our inheritance? Is our chosen path as liberating as we hoped?

Have “our wildest dreams” led us to where we expected or have we stumbled into a nightmare, wading in fields of pig slop and eating the “corncobs” of abuse, dysfunction, selfishness and addiction? Did we get the freedom we hoped for when we left home or have we become slaves to the consequences of frivolous spending and childish irresponsibility?

One last question: Is it possible that “Dad” was smarter than we thought he was all along?

Perhaps it is time for American education to leave the corncobs behind and go home.


Dr. Everett Piper, former president of Oklahoma Wesleyan University, is a columnist for The Washington Times and author of “Not A Day Care: The Devastating Consequences of Abandoning Truth” (Regnery 2017).




Never Have U.S. Health Professionals Been So Foolish

Last month, 74 US medical and public health groups released a “U.S. Call to Action,” declaring climate change a “true public health emergency” that can be solved by “urgent action.” The statement calls for a transition away from hydrocarbon energy and a move to a low-carbon economy. But actual weather and health trends don’t support either the alarm or the demanded actions.

The statement was endorsed by the American Medical Association, the American Heart Association, and the American College of Physicians. These and other organizations pronounced climate change the “greatest public health challenge of the 21st century.”

The statement proclaims that “extreme heat, powerful storms and floods, year-round wildfires, droughts, and other climate-related events” are caused by “fossil fuel combustion,” which is said to be the “primary driver of climate-change.” They go on to say that we can solve these problems by transitioning away from hydrocarbon fuels, coal, oil, and natural gas, and toward renewable energy and energy efficiency.

Last month, the majority of the continental U.S. was caught in a heat wave. About 85 percent of the population experienced daily high temperatures of over 90 degrees Fahrenheit and more than half saw temperatures of over 95oF. But these temperatures were far below state record high temperatures of past decades.

History shows that the warmest U.S. decade on record was the 1930s, long before industry emitted significant amounts of carbon dioxide. According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), 23 of the 50 state record high temperatures were recorded during the 1930s. Thirty-six of the 50 state record highs occurred prior to 1960.

Last month, temperatures in Iowa, Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, and Pennsylvania peaked at about 100 degrees Fahrenheit. But these temperatures were far below the state record highs, which were Iowa (118oF in 1934), Illinois (117oF in 1954), Indiana (116oF in 1936), Ohio (113oF in 1934), and Pennsylvania (111oF in 1936).

This year has also been a year of floods in the Mississippi River valley. Unfortunately, our medical professionals now parrot the idea that floods and droughts are more extreme than in past years. But NOAA has very good records over the last century for the portion of the continental US that is either very wet or very dry, using a metric called the Palmer Drought Index. The index shows no significant trend of increasing drought or flood over recent decades.

“Powerful storms” are listed by the health statement as one of the results of human-caused global warming. Hurricane Barry dropped up to 15 inches of rain on parts of Louisiana earlier this month. The storm was said to be stronger from human emissions.

But there is no evidence that storms are getting either stronger or more frequent. Nine of the 13 strongest hurricanes to make U.S. landfall in the historical record came ashore prior to 1965. Both the number of hurricanes and the number of strong hurricanes making U.S. landfall has been flat to declining since 1900.  NOAA data also shows that the number of strong tornadoes has been declining since the 1970s.

Last year’s forest fire disasters in California were blamed on human-caused global warming. Health professionals now appear to believe that wildfires are “year-round” and caused by emissions from our industry and vehicles.

But recent Congressional testimony by Dr. Judith Curry disputes this conclusion. Dr. Curry provided evidence that the U.S. area burned by fires prior 1930 was at least as large as today. She also cited a study that showed that the percent of U.S. sites reporting fires was much larger prior to 1900, before fire-suppression techniques were used.

In fact, rather than being a health crisis, much evidence shows that moderately warmer temperatures are good for people. The U.S. influenza season is approximately November through March every year, during the cold months. The influenza season in the Southern Hemisphere is during the southern winter months. More people get sick during periods of cold temperature than during hot temperatures.

Many peer-reviewed studies show that more people die during winter months than summer months. The late Dr. William Keating studied temperature-related deaths for people aged 65 to 74 in six European countries. He found that deaths related to cold temperatures were nine times greater than those related to hot temperatures. Evidence shows that if Earth warms, temperature-related deaths will likely decrease overall.

The climate alarm from health professionals defies common sense. According to data from NOAA, NASA, and the Climate Research Unit in East Anglia University in the UK, average global surface temperatures have warmed only one degree Celsius in 135 years, since 1880.

Average temperatures in Norfolk, Virginia are 5.8oC warmer than in Chicago, Illinois. Average temperatures in Miami, Florida are more than 15oC warmer than Chicago.  Is everyone dying from the heat in Norfolk and Miami?

And why do most U.S. senior citizens retire to Florida, Texas, and Arizona, rather than North Dakota, Maine, and Alaska? Don’t they know our medical professionals say that warm climates are dangerous?

The belief that changing light bulbs, driving electric cars, and erecting wind turbines can improve human health is as medieval as the belief that bloodletting can cure disease.


Originally published in NewsBlaze.




Wait Till You See What the National Education Association Is Up To

The first weekend in July, the National Education Association (NEA) held its annual Representative Assembly in Houston, an assembly consisting of “nearly 7,000 delegates.” The National Education Association is a “progressive” political activist organization that masquerades—er, I mean, identifies as an educational organization. The NEA’s Code of Ethics says, among other things, this:

The educator… recognizes the supreme importance of the pursuit of truth, devotion to excellence, and the nurture of the democratic principles. Essential to these goals is the protection of freedom to learn…. The educator therefore works to stimulate the spirit of inquiry, the acquisition of knowledge and understanding, and the thoughtful formulation of worthy goals. In fulfillment of the obligation to the student, the educator… Shall not unreasonably deny the student’s access to varying points of view.

Read these “New Business Items” just passed by the NEA, and see if you believe the NEA honors its Code of Ethics:

  • “The NEA vigorously opposes all attacks on the right to choose and stands on the fundamental right to abortion under Roe v. Wade.”
  • “The NEA will immediately call on the Trump administration, U.S. Senate, the House of Representatives, and the courts, for the immediate end to the detention and criminalization of immigrant children and their families; including an end to ICE raids.”
  • “The NEA will call on the U.S. government to accept responsibility for the destabilization of Central American countries (including, but not limited to Guatemala, El Salvador, and Nicaragua), and that this destabilization is a root cause of the recent increase of asylum seekers in the United States.”
  • “NEA will collaborate and partner with organizations and individuals who are doing the work to push reparations for descendants of enslaved Africans in the United States.”
  • “The National Education Association will organize and mobilize in support of the Equality Act to be a top legislative priority.”
  • “NEA will incorporate the concept of ‘White Fragility’ into NEA trainings/staff development, literature, and other existing communications on social, gender, LGBTQIA, and racial justice.” (“White fragility” is a racist leftist term invented to mock, criticize, and silence colorless people who disagree with the assumptions of Critical Race Theory. The term embodies the false idea that disagreement with the racist views of social justice warriors is motivated by fear.)
  • NEA “… will recommend specific annual numeric goals for the recruitment of, and retention of, educators of color.” (In other words, the NEA will judge educators by the color of their skin.)
  • “NEA will promote the Black Lives Matter Week of Action in schools during Black History Month in 2020…. NEA will specifically call for clear efforts to demonstrate support for the four demands of the BLM Week of Action in schools” which include “Mandating that Ethnic Studies be taught in preK-12 schools.”
  • The National Education Association will create space in all individuals’ name tags, badges, and IDs for the individuals’ pronouns. The individuals’ pronouns will only be left off at the individual’s request.”
  • “The NEA will contact all school districts… to recommend incorporating into their science curriculum, causes, effects, and solutions to climate change and pollution.”
  • “NEA will work with current partners (such as GLSEN), to expand on the number of professional development opportunities for Gender Sexuality Alliances (GSA) advisors.  This training should include, at a minimum: Starting a new GSA; How to handle possible backlash from different stakeholders.”
  • “NEA will create model legislative language that state affiliates can use to lobby for a K-12 cross content curriculum that is LGBTQ+ inclusive.” (It’s bad enough that K-12 classes teach about homosexuality and cross-sex impersonation in health, sex-ed, and purported “anti-bullying” activities, but now they want indoctrination in the “LGBTQ+” ideology to permeate all content areas.)
  • “[T]he National Education Association will explore the opportunity to create a Stonewall LGBTQ Scholarship for tuition assistance to an openly LGBTQ student attending graduate school who demonstrates a commitment to research and practice surrounding LGBTQ issues and awareness in our schools.  This would be a tribute to the Stonewall riots.”
  • “NEA will… call on educators to refrain from discouraging… students to not speak a language other than English at school.”
  • “The NEA will publicize… a 100 percent student loan forgiveness program for educators… across the country.”

One interesting membership change was passed as well. Two-thirds of the delegates “voted to amend the national teachers’ union’s constitution” to allow “non-educators” to become members, which in turn allows them to “donate to the NEA’s political action committee.” Such “public education allies” won’t “be able to vote, nominate candidates for elected office, or hold governance positions within the union.” They’ll only be able to donate money, thereby strengthening the power of “progressives” within the NEA. If by becoming members, non-educators could vote and nominate candidates, conservatives would have reason to join, because membership might enable them to weaken the power of “progressives” within the NEA. But if membership entitles non-educators only to donate money, the effect will be to strengthen the existing power structure.

The NEA is not an educational organization. It is not an organization committed to the full, free, and critical examination of diverse ideas. It’s a Leftist, political advocacy organization led by presumptuous culturally regressive dogmatists who have arrogated to themselves the right to use government schools to impose their arguable assumptions/worldview on other people’s children. The NEA and its ideological allies have transformed education into indoctrination.

The systemic anti-conservative bias deeply rooted in the sinews of government schools make them places that conservatives—especially Christians—should exit immediately if not sooner. And this will require the assistance of churches. Many families can neither homeschool nor afford existing private schools. Churches must be creative and find ways to enable their members to exit government schools. Churches should make funds available to enable members to send their children to existing private schools and/or create affordable private schools.

There are many ways the church can facilitate the training up of children in the way they should go, including tapping one of our greatest resources: retirees who, mature in their faith and equipped with a lifetime of diverse experiences and acquired knowledge, can and should help in this crucial endeavor. Retirees who are in good health should actively pursue ways to help in this effort. I will close with this legendary admonition from theologian and retired pastor, John Piper:

I tell you what a tragedy is. I’ll read to you from Reader’s Digest what a tragedy is. “Bob and Penny . . . took early retirement from their jobs in the Northeast five years ago when he was 59 and she was 51. Now they live in Punta Gorda, Florida, where they cruise on their thirty foot trawler, playing softball and collecting shells.”

That’s a tragedy. And people today are spending billions of dollars to persuade you to embrace that tragic dream. And I get forty minutes to plead with you: don’t buy it. With all my heart I plead with you: don’t buy that dream. The American Dream: a nice house, a nice car, a nice job, a nice family, a nice retirement, collecting shells as the last chapter before you stand before the Creator of the universe to give an account of what you did: “Here it is Lord — my shell collection! And I’ve got a nice swing, and look at my boat!”

Don’t waste your life; don’t waste it.

Let’s all start working for children in earnest, with courage, and with a willingness to suffer for Christ and his Kingdom.

Listen to this article read by Laurie:

https://staging.illinoisfamily.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/New-Recording-3.mp3


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Global Warming Crop Apocalypse Is Just Media Fear-Mongering

Written by James Taylor

Global warming alarmists and their media allies launched a new scare last week, claiming that global warming is causing crop failures and food shortages around the globe.  In one of their biggest whoppers ever, the media are claiming that global warming has displaced “millions” of farmers in India and is causing – or will soon cause – similar devastation to farmers and crops in Bangladesh, Syria, and Honduras.  Objective evidence, however, decimates the assertion and shows that crop yields continue to set annual records as growing seasons lengthen, frost events become less frequent, soil moisture improves, and more atmospheric carbon dioxide fertilizes crops and plant life.

A January 10 Google News search for “global warming” listed near the top of its search results an article titled “How soon will climate change force you to move?” by an outlet called Fast Company.  Among other sensationalist climate claims, the article makes the claims listed above about global warming, crop failures, and resulting forced migration.  Fast Company, as it turns out, is trying to pull a fast one on you.

It is true that waxing and waning food production has been one of the most powerful components in the rise and fall of civilizations.  At Katowice, Poland, during the United Nations COP24 climate meetings in November 2018, Heartland Institute senior fellow Dennis Avery powerfully showed that throughout history, periods of increased crop yields have led to rising civilizations and expanding human populations.  Conversely, periods of declining crop yields triggered the fall of civilizations and led to famine, death, and contracting human populations.

Importantly, Avery showed that periods of global warmth stimulated the increased crop yields that led to expanding human populations.  Periods of global cooling repressed crop yields and led to misery, death, and contracting human populations.  The question is, has anything changed such that our modest present warming is causing declining crop production and resulting catastrophes?

Let’s first examine the claims regarding India.  Fast Company claims that “drought in some areas has forced millions of farmers to move.” For support, the article cites a Reuters article from July 2018 that interviews a failed farmer from India’s Madhya Pradesh state claiming that global warming and poor rainfall caused his failure as a farmer and his relocation to metropolitan New Delhi.  Poor rainfall “has caused repeated and widespread crop failures,” Reuters claims.  In summary, Fast Company cites another news organization’s profile of a failed farmer to support its alarmist climate assertions.

However, crop data from India eviscerate the claim that global warming, through drought or any other mechanism, is causing rampant crop failure in India.  The Indian government reports that Indian farmers produced a record amount of food grains in 2017-2018, topping the previous record that was set in 2016-2017.  “The year 2017-18 had, in fact, witnessed record production of all major crops like Rice (112.91 MT), wheat (99.70 MT), coarse cereals (46.99 MT) and pulses (25.23 MT),” the Times of India reported, citing official government data.

Notably, favorable climate conditions – and most importantly, abundant rainfall – spurred the record crop production.  “Backed by good monsoon rainfall last year, India had produced record 284.83 million tonnes of foodgrains in 2017-18 crop year,” the Times of India observed.

The 2017-18 Indian crop year merely continued a longstanding trend of record crop production as our planet modestly warms.  The international Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) reports that Indian farmers have successively set new records almost every year this decade.

The Fast Company and Reuters articles are not outliers.  Global warming activists in the establishment media are always looking to find and interview somebody who blames his own personal shortcomings and misfortune on global warming.  But if you are a farmer in India, and you are a failure at your craft, you are the exception rather than the rule.  The objective data show, without any room for debate, that crop production continues to improve and set records nearly every year as our modest global warming continues.

Perhaps Fast Company’s discredited claims about global warming, drought, and crop failures in India are an isolated error, and the article is correct about its claims regarding other countries and regions.  Actually, no.

According to agricultural economists at the World Bank, as reported by CEIC Data, Bangladesh enjoyed record crop production in 2016, the last year for which data are available.  The 2016 record beat out the previous record year, 2014, and was preceded by the third highest production year, 2015.  Do you see a pattern here?  Crop production in Bangladesh is 33 percent higher than it was merely a decade ago.  According to a World Bank report accompanying the 2016 data, “Bangladesh’s rural economy, and specifically agriculture, have been powerful drivers of poverty reduction in Bangladesh since 2000.”

How about Honduras?  The International Food Policy Research Institute, citing official government data, documents that in 2016 – the most recent year for which there are data – Honduras achieved record production for each of its three staple food crops.  Honduran farmers produce record amounts of rice, wheat, and maize.  The 2016 record beat the previous record, set in 2015.  The next most productive crop year was 2014, followed by 2013.  Moreover, Coffee Bureau Intelligence reports that coffee-drinkers and coffee farmers also have reason to rejoice – as Honduran coffee production is believed to have set new records in 2018.  “Since 2014-2015, Honduras coffee production has increased by more than 12% per year,” Coffee Bureau Intelligence reports.

Syrian crop production also defies alarmist claims.  United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization data show an approximately 50-percent increase in Syrian crop production since 1995.  Moreover, the Arab Spring democracy uprisings in Syria and elsewhere, which climate alarmists blame on global warming, occurred in 2011, a year in which Syria produced its eighth highest crop yields in history.

Fast Company cites four specific nations in support of its narrative that global warming is causing rampant crop failures, which in turn is causing mass migration.  Objective data show, beyond dispute, that Fast Company’s claims are flat-out wrong.  But in today’s agenda-driven media climate, don’t expect Fast Company, other media outlets, or Google News to post any corrections to the false reporting.

 


This article was originally presented on americanthinker.com




30 Years Later, Global Warming Still Hasn’t Sunk Maldives

A report derived from government officials’ predictions shocked the world 30 years ago, warning that the tropical paradise archipelago would soon suffer the same fate as the lost city of Atlantis.

“A gradual rise in average sea level is threatening to completely cover this Indian Ocean nation of 1196 small islands within the next 30 years,” the Agence France-Presse (AFP) reported in September 1988.

Scare tactics or numbers gone wrong?

Serving alongside the UN at the time, Environmental Affairs Director Hussein Shihab gave precise “calculations” about the extent to which the Maldives would become submerged.

“An estimated rise of 20 to 30 centimeters in the next 20 to 40 years could be ‘catastrophic’ for most of the islands, which were no more than a meter above sea level,” Shihab told AFP at the time.

The alarmism did not stop there, as many islanders were led to believe by affiliated of the global peacekeepers that they had just several years to evacuate the island before it became inhabitable.

“The article went on to suggest the Maldives – along with its 200,000 inhabitants – could ‘end’ sooner than expected if drinking water supplies dry up by 1992 ‘as predicted,’” The Daily Caller News Foundation (DCNF) reported. “Today, more than 417,000 people live in the Maldives.”

Power the Future Executive Director Daniel Turner mocked the alarmists at the UN and their affiliated climatologists.

“Call Noah and have him build another Ark,” the leader of the pro-energy group mused while speaking with DCNF. “Bring out the Coast Guard. Send all the boogie boards and floaties you can find – for the Maldives is going down!”

‘Poster’ islands for global warming

For decades, the UN has claimed that the Maldives would be the first to go under the sea once the “catastrophic” effects of climate change induced by human pollutants began.

“The Maldives are among the island nations often held up by United Nations officials as being on the ‘front-lines’ of man-made global warming,” DCNF Energy Editor Michael Bastasch noted.

In fact, Republic of Maldives President Mohamed Nasheed addressed other world leaders at the UN General Assembly Summit on Climate Change in August 2009 to alarm attendees that entire populations across the world will drown as glaciers melt – and increase the ocean depth by just 4.5 feet – because of manmade airborne pollution.

“You know that with a sea-level rise of over 1.5 meters, hundreds of millions of people would be dead,” Nasheed told the UN Chronicledays after speaking at the summit. “They would simply be wiped out.”

Behind the dire warnings of the Green agenda is reportedly the green glow of money, but the alarmism was not enough to quickly secure the exorbitant funds ultra-environmentalists were trying to pander from climate-change believing nations across the globe.

“The island nation was among the first to apply for Green Climate Fund aid, but the funding hasn’t been flowing, according to The New York Times,” Bastach explained.

Just last year, Maldives Energy and Environment Minister Thoriq Ibrahim made it clear that he wanted immediate access to funds … before it was too late.

“That’s too long to wait,” Ibrahim insisted to The New York Times in November. “There’s no use having a fund somewhere if you can’t access it quickly.”

However, 30 years of panic did not usher in the consuming seas or the desired funding for the UN, as the Maldives are still perched right above sea level, with its beautiful sandy beaches still beckoning tourists to lay down their towels and unfold their beach chairs – not to head for high ground … if there were any.

“The Maldives are indeed low-lying islands with its highest point only reaching about eight feet above sea level,” Bastach informed. “But obviously, decades-old warnings [that] the Maldives were on the verge of being swallowed by the seas didn’t pan out.”

Getting bigger, not smaller?

Despite what many climatologists report concerning rising sea levels, research conducted by New Zealand scientists on Tavalu’s nine atolls and 101 reef islands between 1971 and 2014 indicates that the Maldives and other coral islands in the region are actually getting larger – not shrinking and sinking.

“The Pacific nation of Tuvalu – long seen as a prime candidate to disappear as climate change forces up sea levels – is actually growing in size, new research shows,” a report on a University of Auckland study revealed in February. “It found eight of the atolls and almost three-quarters of the islands grew during the study period, lifting Tuvalu’s total land area by 2.9 percent – even though sea levels in the country rose at twice the global average.”

In fact, Paul Kench – co-author of the research – argued against climate change alarmists’ assertion that low-lying island nations will soon succumb to rising seas and be completely submerged.

“We tend to think of Pacific atolls as static landforms that will simply be inundated as sea levels rise, but there is growing evidence these islands are geologically dynamic and are constantly changing,” Kench contended the scientific report on the study. “The study findings may seem counter-intuitive, given that (the) sea level has been rising in the region over the past half century, but the dominant mode of change over that time on Tuvalu has been expansion – not erosion.”

This argument for island expansion – as opposed to island shrinking that global warming climatologists often claim – is corroborated by other research, as well.

“The results [of the Kiwi study] echoed a 2015 study by the same lead author that also found coral island expansion,” Bastach noted. “Study lead author and scientist Paul Kench told The New Scientist ‘that the Maldives seem to be showing a similar effect.’”

More warnings of old not coming to fruition

Several months before the UN’s September 1988 alarmism attempting to scare inhabitants off the Maldives with visions of overwhelming ocean waters, The New York Times was already busy putting illusions of catastrophic rising seas and temperatures in the minds of Americans through ominous predictions.

“[If] the current pace of the buildup of these gases continues, the effect is likely to be a warming of 3 to 9 degrees Fahrenheit [between now and] the year 2025 to 2050,” the Times’ Philip Shabecoff warned in a June 1988 article, according to WND. “[This should produce a rise in seal levels of] one to four feet by the middle of the next century.”

WND noted that Shabecoff was using predictions of Hansen and Michael Oppenheimer to come up his anticipated figures.

Such cataclysmic forecasts by past and present climate change activists have been derided as the foreboding climatic events never actually take place – or even appear to be taking shape, for that matter.

“In August, Rob Bradley, Jr., the CEO and founder of the Institute for Energy Research, described Shabecoff’s claim as the ‘opening salvo’ of global-warming activism, and also pointed to the failure of claims made by NASA climate scientist James Hansen and Al Gore,” WND’s Art Moore recounted. “Bradley – who has testified before the U.S. Congress as one of the nation’s leading experts on the history and regulation of energy markets – argued that the mid-point of Shabecoff’s predicted warming would be six degrees.”

He called out the global warming alarmists for grossly overestimating rising temperatures and sea levels.

“At the 30-year mark, how is it looking?” Bradley asked on his website, WattsUpWithThat.com. “The increase is about one degree – and largely holding (the much-discussed ‘pause’ or ‘warming hiatus’).”

It was also stressed that a very modest global warming trend has been in effect for thousands of years.

“[The world has naturally warmed since the end of the Little Ice Age, which is] a good thing – if climate economists are to be believed,” Bradley added. “[Concerning rising sea levels,] the exaggeration appears greater. Both before and after the 1980s, decadal sea-level rise has been a few inches – and it has not been appreciably accelerating.”

The energy expert asserts that the extremist alarmism disseminated by climate change scientists and the activists behind them will fade away into the myths of yesteryear.

“[The alarmist temperature and sea-level predictions] constitute yet another exaggerated Malthusian scare – joining those of the population bomb (Paul Ehrlich), resource exhaustion (Club of Rome), Peak Oil (M. King Hubbert), and global cooling (John Holdren),” Bradley concluded.


This article was originally published at OneNewsNow.com




Environmentalist Lobby Goes After Christian Nominee

Written by Dr. E. Calvin Beisner, Ph.D.

Remember when Bernie Sanders passionately attacked budget office nominee Russell Vought because Vought believes salvation comes only by faith in Jesus Christ—something Christianity has taught for two millennia?

It looks like it’s open season for anti-Christian bigots to hunt down and destroy any Christian nominated to public office—especially if that Christian doesn’t toe the line of environmental political correctness. Forget Article 6 of the Constitution insisting “no religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States.”

Michael Dourson, whom Trump has nominated to head the federal Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) chemical safety office, is taking the same kind of fire. Dourson is an environmental health professor in the University of Cincinnati’s College of Medicine. He’s a “board-certified toxicologist with an international reputation for excellence in environmental risk assessment.” He’s co-published more than 150 papers on risk assessment methods and chemical-specific analyses.

But he’s also a Christian who, like any serious Christian, tries to integrate his faith with all his life. That just doesn’t sit well with some folks.

CUE THE OUTRAGEOUS OUTRAGE

Raymond Barfield, a professor of pediatrics and Christian philosophy at Duke University, is upset. It seems Dourson wrote that chemical analysis provides some evidence that the Shroud of Turin—which allegedly wrapped Jesus in his burial—might be authentic. Dourson’s not sure. Sounds like the attitude of a good scientist to me.

But there’s more. Dourson isn’t convinced that the chemical risks from flame-retardant fabrics outweigh the fire-prevention benefits. He points out that “exposures from consumer products were much lower” than those involved in a study claiming significant risk. That’s a fairly typical weakness of many environmental risk studies. They expose laboratory animals to extremely high levels of a suspect chemical, discover ill effects, then try to extrapolate to human risk at much lower exposure levels.

Barfield disagrees, and seeks to discredit Dourson because he made $10,000 consulting for a flame retardant industry group. Dourson had questioned a study warning of potential harm from flame retardant chemicals because it hadn’t been replicated yet. That’s confusing, because replication is the hallmark of good science.

As a professor of philosophy, which usually requires some knowledge of logic, Barfield should know that attacking Dourson’s motives because of money commits the fallacy of argumentum ad hominem circumstantial. He further labeled Dourson’s argument that the risks from fires are higher than the risks from fire-retardant chemicals as “pure utilitarianism.” That label’s red meat for Christians.

At the root of the philosophy of utilitarianism is a denial of moral absolutes, which makes it incompatible with Christian faith. But Christian ethics doesn’t forbid all consideration of consequences.

Yes, Christianity teaches that some acts are wrong in principle because they transgress the moral law (1 John 3:4) and therefore cannot be justified by any appeal to consequences. But it also teaches that attention to consequences is part of wisdom: “For which of you,” Jesus said, “intending to build a tower, does not first sit down and estimate the cost, to see whether he has enough to complete it?” (Luke 14:28, New Revised Standard Version). “The prudent see danger and hide; but the simple go on, and suffer for it” (Proverbs 22:3).

Confusion Over Faith and Science, Again

Corbin Hiar, an E&E News reporter, says Dourson, who worked at EPA from 1980 to 1995, afterward “led Toxicology Excellence for Risk Assessment, a nonprofit consulting firm that often downplayed chemical hazards for tobacco companies and chemical manufacturers.” This hints at dishonesty. But if Study A ranks a risk at 88 on a scale of 1 to 100 and Study B ranks it at 44, does it follow that Study B has “downplayed” it and so is dishonest? Why not say Study A has exaggerated it and so is dishonest?

Good scientific method considers data more important than real or imagined motive. Does Hiar have any evidence that Dourson fabricated, suppressed, or otherwise misused data? It appears not. Hiar goes on to write:

Dourson’s writing on Christianity embraces scientific uncertainty.

In the epilogue to his 2016 book on the shroud, he said Wikipedia ‘has a vast amount of information on the Shroud, much of which seems well researched.’ Yet in the same paragraph, he adds that ‘a web search will also uncover any number of websites that offer credible, and sometimes conflicting, information. Such is the life of a walk in either science or faith or both.’

Oh, that’s troubling! Embracing “scientific uncertainty”! No scientist has ever embraced uncertainty! I guess that’s why the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has a four-page document, “Guidance Notes for Lead Authors of the IPCC Fourth Assessment Report on Addressing Uncertainties,” and the words uncertainty or uncertainties appear over 100 times just in the first 58 pages of its 1,535-page “Fifth Assessment Report.”

But Hiar isn’t finished. He quotes a Christian minister who finds Dourson’s comment troubling. Rev. Mitch Hescox, president and CEO of the Evangelical Environmental Network, says, “There is a difference between science and faith. Faith is a matter of belief. Science, on the other hand, is hopefully viewed with a rational mind ….”

So does Hescox consider Christian faith irrational? That would put him in a very tiny camp even among Christian mystics—who are a tiny camp among all Christians. After all, the Apostle Paul instructs Christians to “test everything; hold fast to what is good” (1 Thessalonians 5:21). Most Christian thinkers take seriously the Apostle Peter’s admonition, “Always be ready to make your defense to anyone who demands from you an accounting for the hope that is in you” (1 Peter 3:15).

Not only are science and faith not antithetical, they’re inextricable. Science rests on faith. Indeed, it rests specifically on, and historically grew out of, the Christian worldview that a rational God created an orderly universe to be understood and manipulated by rational people made in his image.

Your Belief in God Makes You Irrational

Hiar has one other beef with Dourson, and it’s probably his biggest: “Dourson’s writing also seems to suggest a belief in the theory of intelligent design, which uses God to explain phenomena for which scientists haven’t found definitive answers.”

Hiar’s definition of intelligent design is wrong. It doesn’t “use God to explain phenomena for which scientists haven’t found definitive answers.” Instead, it argues, as microbiologist Douglas Axe puts it, that “tasks we would need knowledge to accomplish can only be accomplished by someone who has that knowledge.” That’s true whether we can explain them or not.

It recognizes skyscrapers and essays on philosophy (which we can explain as the product of architects and philosophers) and the irreducibly complex sub-cellular machines studied by microbiology (which we cannot explain as anything other than the product of knowledge and planning) as the result of such tasks.

As Axe demonstrates in his book, refusing to recognize things that can only be the product of knowledge as the product of knowledge is a “bad frame for interpreting the data.” It’s what metaphysical materialists, naturalists, and anti-theists are forced to do by their presupposition, as mathematician, geneticist, and evolutionary biologist Richard Lewontin wrote:

It is not that the methods and institutions of science somehow compel us to accept a material explanation of the phenomenal world, but, on the contrary, that we are forced by our a priori adherence to material causes to create an apparatus of investigation and a set of concepts that produce material explanations, no matter how counter-intuitive, no matter how mystifying to the uninitiated. Moreover, that materialism is absolute, for we cannot allow a Divine Foot in the door.

Also, Never Help People Out of a Religious Impulse

But Barfield has one other objection. In defending his industry-funded research that led to his conclusion that secondhand smoke doesn’t constitute a high risk, Dourson said, “Jesus hung out with prostitutes and tax collectors. … Why should we exclude anyone that needs help?”

Barfield, apparently privy to Dourson’s inner conscience, says, “But it bothers me that someone would draw on their religious tradition to justify something that is clearly not motivated by their religious tradition.” Notice Dourson didn’t justify the study’s conclusions by that. He justified his willingness to “hang out with” a despised client. Does Barfield think everyone accused of wrongdoing has no right to be defended? And does he think every time an unsavory character is found innocent the verdict is wrong?

What we’re really seeing in Hiar’s and various other attacks on Dourson (hereherehereherehere, and more) is pretty simple: a well-coordinated attack by anti-Christian bigots linked to politically correct environmental alarmists.


E. Calvin Beisner, Ph.D., is founder and national spokesman of The Cornwall Alliance for the Stewardship of Creation and former associate professor of historical theology and social ethics at Knox Theological Seminary.
This article was originally posted at TheFederalist.com



A Biblical View of Climate Change

Last year I was at lunch with an evangelist. After the meal, he handed our waitress a Gospel tract. I wanted to reinforce his compassion, so I told the young lady that her relationship with God was the most important thing in the world. She responded, “Yeah, that and global warming!” She proceeded to tell us that she wakes up in fear of what may happen to the earth during her lifetime. I was shocked. I asked her if she was familiar with the old Sunday school song, “He’s Got the Whole World in His Hands.” She said, “Yes.” I told her it was true.

I left that meeting with a deeper awareness of the politics of fear.

The Left uses fear to get people to act. Environmentalists argue that a growing human population using growing amounts of energy from fossil fuels is causing catastrophically dangerous global warming. The Left prescribes two cures.

First, replace fossil fuels with wind, solar, and other renewables. But as Dr. E. Calvin Beisner (of the Cornwall Alliance for the Stewardship of Creation) explains, abundant, affordable, reliable energy is indispensable to lifting and keeping any society out of poverty, and fossil fuels are and for the foreseeable future will remain our best source of that energy. Wind, solar, and other renewables are diffuse, expensive, and unreliable. Substituting them for fossil fuels makes energy more expensive, thus slowing, stopping, or even reversing the conquest of poverty in the developed world while impoverishing many in the developed world.

Second, slow, stop, and finally reverse population growth. Environmentalists openly advocate reducing the world’s population to 500 million, i.e., getting rid of 9 out of 10 human beings. How? Partly through homosexuality and transgenderism, but also through government-run “family planning” programs that invariably involve highly incentivized and often even forced use of contraceptives, sterilization, and abortion.

Efforts to control population have unintended consequences. For example, from its start in 1979 China’s one-child policy has led to sex-selected abortions, with male births outnumbering female by about 115 to 100, resulting in about 33 million more Chinese men than women. In turn, this has fueled demand for pornography and prostitution, much of which is met by sex-trafficking that has become so bad that the U.S. State Department has named China among the world’s worst offenders.

All of these things led to our inviting Dr. Beisner to speak for our events in April. I was convinced that the climate change debate had to be addressed from a Christian perspective.

Dr. Beisner did an amazing job helping people of faith to understand why this issue is a conservative, pro-life concern. He ably integrated Biblical worldview, theology, and ethics with excellent science and economics to help our audiences understand how climate alarmism threatens family, freedom, and prosperity—and how to respond to it.

Yes, climate change is a pro-family issue.

As anyone knows who has counseled couples on the verge of divorce, one of the most common causes is financial stress. Poverty harms families. Driving up energy prices increases poverty and so undermines the family.

To that end, it is a very good thing, indeed, that President Donald Trump decided to withdraw from the Paris Accord on climate change.

Learn More:  If you’d like to learn more, Dr. Beisner’s presentation was video-recorded and is now posted on the IFI YouTube channel. This 90-minute presentation will leave you much better informed and with a deeper understanding of why Christians should actively oppose the climate alarmist agenda. You can watch it here below, or click HERE.

Please subscribe to the IFI YouTube channel.

Read more about Dr. Beisner and the Cornwall Alliance for the Stewardship of Creation and please visit their blog, EarthRisingBlog.com.

You can also follow them on Twitter @CornwallSteward, and “like” their Facebook page HERE.


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Exiting the Paris Climate Agreement

Written by Dr. E. Calvin Beisner

Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt appeared on “Fox & Friends” April 13 and said, “Paris is something we really need to look at closely, because it’s something we need to exit, in my opinion.”

Why? “It’s a bad deal for America. China and India had no obligations under the agreement until 2030, we front-loaded all of our costs, at the expense of jobs.”

That’s a good start. It should resonate well with Americans who use electricity at home or work and gas or diesel in their cars — i.e., pretty much all of us.

But if Mr. Pruitt wants to expand public support, he needs to make six other important points.

First, Bjorn Lomborg, accepting climate-change advocates’ assumptions about how much warming comes from carbon dioxide, showed in a peer-reviewed study that implementing all provisions of all signers to Paris would prevent only 0.306 degrees Fahrenheit of global warming by 2100.

What would it cost? Unofficial estimates by the United States, European Union, Mexico and China amount to $739-$757 billion per year.

Those parties account for about 80 percent of signatories’ emissions reduction pledges. Other pledges would have similar costs per unit, implying something in the range of $185-$189 billion.

All told, $924-$946 billion. Per year. Every year from 2030 to the end of the century. “And that’s if the politicians do everything right. If not, the real cost could double,” Mr. Lomborg said.

So, for $65-$132 trillion, we might — if the alarmists are right — reduce global average temperature by a third of one degree by 2100. That’s $212-$431 billion per thousandth of a degree of cooling.

Second, if carbon dioxide’s warming effect is smaller than alarmists allege, two things follow: First, there’s not as much warming ahead to fear. Second, the cooling effect of reduced emissions will be less than thought, and the cost per unit higher.

Empirical evidence is mounting that the climate models on which climate-change advocates rely overstate carbon dioxide’s warming effect.

As University of Alabama climatologist John Christy testified before the U.S. House Science, Space and Technology Committee March 29, the models call for warming of 0.389 degrees Fahrenheit per decade. But weather balloon measurements find only 0.2 degrees Fahrenheit, satellite measurements 0.211 degrees Fahrenheit and re-analyses of data from major weather centers around the world 0.221 degrees Fahrenheit.

Observed warming is about one-half to three-fifths what the models predict.

It’s not just “climate skeptics” who see this. Astrophysicist Ethan Siegel, in an article meant to refute “climate skeptics,” reported that global temperature has been rising at 0.072-0.144 degrees Fahrenheit per decade — one-fifth to one-third the modeled rate.

This implies two things: First, carbon-dioxide emissions will drive only one-fifth to three-fifths as much warming as the models predict. Second, implementing the Paris agreement will reduce global temperature in 2100 by only one-fifth to three-fifths what Mr. Lomborg calculated, or 0.061-0.184 degrees Fahrenheit.

That raises the cost per thousandth of a degree of warming prevented to $353 billion to $2.16 trillion.

That’s money that could instead be used to provide electricity, drinking water, food, sewage sanitation, infectious disease control, health care, improved housing, expanded industry and other services to help the world’s poor far more than an imperceptible reduction in global warming.

Third, other empirical studies give even more reason to think carbon dioxide’s warming effect is even smaller.

The calculations above assumed that all observed warming 1979-2016 was caused by rising carbon-dioxide concentration. But carbon dioxide is probably not the sole or even primary driver.

In a peer-reviewed research report last fall, “On the Existence of a ‘Tropical Hot Spot’ and the Validity of EPA’s CO2 Endangerment Finding,” Mr. Christy teamed up with meteorologist Joseph D’Aleo and econometrician James P. Wallace III to show that “there is no statistically valid proof that past increases in Atmospheric CO2 Concentrations have caused the officially reported rising” temperatures.

Their analysis showed that, after separating out the impacts of the El Nino-Southern Oscillation, changes in solar activity, and the 1977 “Pacific Shift,” no additional warming trend occurred over the relevant period.

Consequently, no correlation remained between carbon dioxide (rapidly rising) and global temperature trends (flat except those driven by El Nino-Southern Oscillation).

Fourth, that study implies that the “Tropical Hot Spot” implied by computer climate models does not exist. Since that was crucial to EPA’s carbon dioxide “endangerment finding,” the finding was unjustified and should be reversed.

Fifth, whatever the risks from its tiny warming effect, adding carbon dioxide to the atmosphere has positive effects.

Plants need carbon dioxide for photosynthesis. On average, every doubling of atmospheric carbon-dioxide concentration causes a 35 percent increase in plant growth efficiency.

Consequently, plants increase their ranges and make food more abundant. The world’s poor benefit most. One survey of hundreds of studies concluded that increased atmospheric carbon dioxide 1960-2012 added $3.2 trillion in crop yields and would add nearly $10 trillion more through 2050.

Sixth and finally, since the endangerment finding was wrong, the EPA should reverse it. There is no reason to call life-giving carbon dioxide a pollutant, and the Paris climate agreement really is “something we need to exit.”

E. Calvin Beisner is founder and national spokesman of the Cornwall Alliance for the Stewardship of Creation.


Take ACTION: Click HERE to send a message to President Trump and his administration via the White House web-form to encourage them to get the United States out of the Paris Climate Agreement.


This article was originally posted at The Washington Times