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WeGetIt.org Wednesday Bulletin: Weekly news, analysis, and practical advice on caring for the environment and the poor, Biblically.
April 22, 2009
  1. Misleading statistics
  2. Waiting to exhale
  3. Chuck Colson on global warming and the Black Death

 

Dear Friend,

As you read this week's WeGetIt.org Wednesday Bulletin, please be thinking of friends who would benefit from it, and then forward it to them. Thanks for your support!

Giving lie to (old) statistics

Last week’s press release from the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life, just in time for Earth Day, made quite a splash with its data on religious groups' views on global warming.

But as interesting as the report was, of more interest is what the report doesn’t say:

  1. Why did most media coverage of the release emphasis apparent strong belief in manmade global warming, when the raw numbers can be read very differently?
     
    A majority of Americans (53%) question key aspects of human-induced climate change, with a solid majority of Black Protestants (61%) and white evangelicals (66%) expressing either uncertainty about or disbelief in the widely accepted dogma that global warming is real and people are the problem. White Catholics and mainline Protestants are closer to the national average; the only religious group measured that showed a higher-than-average rate of belief in global warming was--ironically--the religiously unaffiliated. 
  1. And, why did the story get such widespread coverage when its data were all a year old?

    The survey from which they came was done April 23-27, 2008, and the report earlier this month just rehashed old numbers.
Meanwhile, a Gallup poll done March 5-9 of this year shows public growing skepticism; the number of scientists  publicly rejecting manmade warming alarm continues to grow; the more theologically or politically conservative pastors are, the more likely they are (68%) to deny manmade warming; and people who believe the Bible is God's Word are more skeptical of manmade warming than any other population segment in America.

It's official: You're a dangerous polluter!

Despite declining public support for global warming alarmism, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has ruled that greenhouse gases (especially carbon dioxide) are pollution and endanger human health and welfare. If that were true, then every time you exhale you’d be emitting CO2 and would be endangering yourself and everyone else on Earth.

For a little sanity on the subject, we turn to a climatologist, former NASA scientist, and WeGetIt.org supporter, Dr. Roy W. Spencer, who posted some informsation Monday that puts things in perspective. Some abbreviated samples:

  • Is global warming happening now? No one knows because of year-to-year climate fluctuations, but temperatures stopped rising in 2001 and may be entering a significant cooling trend.
  • Is it warmer now than in thousands of years? No--and it was probably significantly warmer in the Medieval Warm Period.
  • Does declining Arctic sea ice evidence manmade global warming? Warming, yes; manmade, no, and recent trends are not significantly different from those of the 1930s.
  • Is Arctic sea ice melt rate increasing? No.
  • Is Antarctic sea ice diminishing? No.
  • Is CO2 a dangerous gas? "Well, if you breathe pure CO2, you will die--from a lack of oxygen, not because CO2 is poisonous. But if you breathe pure oxygen for very long, that will also kill you. Carbon dioxide is necessary for life on Earth; photosynthesis by plants on land and by plankton in the ocean depend on it. And without these forms of life, all the animals (and we humans) would die as well."
  • How much has CO2 risen as a percentage of the atmosphere since 1958? Not much:

mauna-loa-co2-1-percent-scale

        That's right, from a little under 1/2 of 1/10 of 1% to a little over 1/2 of 1/10 of 1%.

  • Is CO2 the main greenhouse gas? No, it's about 3% of the greenhouse effect; water vapor (85% to 90%) and clouds (5% to 10%) outweigh it by far.
  • How much warming would doubled CO2 cause? Not more than 1 degree Centigrade (1/3 the central estimate of the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which depends on computer models that wrongly count clouds as a positive feedback; Spencer's satellite data show they're negative).
What has caused the roughly 1 degree of warming in about the last century? Not CO2, since it hasn't nearly doubled. Probably instead natural cycles, especially cloud responses to the Pacific Decadal Oscillation.

Global warming, population control, and...the Black Death?

Government regulations aren’t the only, or even the most important, consequences of global warming dogma. Citing a call by Jonathan Porritt (chairman of the UK's Sustainable Development Commission) for reduction of Britain's population by half to fight global warming, Chuck Colson points out that the last time that happened, in the 14th century, was because of the plague.

Ironically though, as Colson writes, historians frequently castigate Catholic priests and theologians for saying then that the mass deaths (about 30% to 60% of Europe's population) were God's will. Now, instead, global warming alarmists and other environmental extremists say the same thing is necessary to protect the Earth.

"Actions like this," says Colson, "are why many call environmentalism a 'worldwide secular religion'. Physicist Freeman Dyson rightly calls people like Porritt 'true believers.'”

In Proverbs 8:35 God reminds us that "he who finds me finds life and obtains favor from the LORD.” The idea that people and nature are in competition is unbiblical; in God’s wise design, people and nature can thrive together.

Now, please forward this message to your pastor, other Christian leaders, and friends and urge them to sign the WeGetIt.org Declaration, too!

The more people sign, the stronger the message our leaders will hear that Biblical principles and factual evidence, not media hype about speculative fears like global warming, should guide our care for the environment and the poor.

Gratefully,

-- The WeGetIt.org campaign team

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