Holiness in the Ozone Layer

Our holiness is our primary environmental contribution - for was it not when sin entered that environment corrupted. 

p37 Isaiah By The Day

Costing the earth!

The taxpayers alliance evaluate the cost to taxpayers of environmental lobbying and the legislation that can follow. A double whammy. 

Thou Shalt Not

The Climate Horror Show

Here is the conclusion to a long and quite detailed article giving an overview of where things are at with regard to 'global warming' and 'climate change':

Climate change is a genuine phenomenon, and there is a nontrivial risk of major consequences in the future. Yet the hysteria of the global warming campaigners and their monomaniacal advocacy of absurdly expensive curbs on fossil fuel use have led to a political dead end that will become more apparent with the imminent collapse of the Kyoto-Copenhagen process. I have long expected that 20 or so years from now we will look back on the turn-of-the-millennium climate hysteria in the same way we look back now on the population bomb hysteria of the late 1960s and early 1970s--as a phenomenon whose magnitude and effects were vastly overestimated, and whose proposed solutions were wrongheaded and often genuinely evil (such as the forced sterilizations of thousands of Indian men in the 1970s, much of it funded by the Ford Foundation). Today the climate campaigners want to forcibly sterilize the world's energy supply, and until recently they looked to be within an ace of doing so. But even before Climategate, the campaign was beginning to resemble a Broadway musical that had run too long, with sagging box office and declining enthusiasm from a dwindling audience. Someone needs to break the bad news to the players that it's closing time for the climate horror show.

And this is another very helpful article breaking down the different strands of argument that there are around this issue and evaluating them.

HT: Justin Taylor

A Rapid Change in the Climate

Today Christopher Booker has written an article on a new book by Christopher Booker [The Real Global Warming Disaster: Is The Obsession With 'Climate Change' Turning Out To Be The Most Costly Scientific Blunder In History?]. Ok, so the guy is going to talk this up then! And the 'alarmism/conspiracy theories' cuts both ways. But even having said all that, again, here are some very salient points.

First he says this:

We all know the basic thesis: that thanks to mankind burning fossil fuels, the world's temperatures are hurtling upwards, and that unless the most drastic action is taken, we can look forward to an unprecedented global catastrophe - droughts, hurricanes, killer heatwaves, melting icecaps, sea levels rising to the point where many of the world's major cities are submerged.

All this is what has been predicted by the expensive computer models relied on by the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (the IPCC), which the politicians tell us we must trust as the ultimate source of authority on the future of the world's climate.

On every side we are told that 'the science is settled', that '2,500 of the world's top climate scientists' agree that these terrifying predictions will all come true unless we take the most drastic action. So carried away have they all been by this belief that scarcely a single politician dares question it.

Yet the oddest thing which has become increasingly evident in the past year or two is the fact that almost none of these things is happening, certainly not in the way those computer models have been predicting. Although carbon dioxide levels have continued to increase, temperatures have not been rising in the way the computer models all agree they should have done.

In the past decade, the overall trend of temperatures has been not upwards, but down.

The hard evidence tells us that there have actually been fewer major droughts, hurricanes and heatwaves in recent years than there were in earlier decades

And second, this is not just a intra-science debate, but has cash value to you and I. And the arguments are powerful too; they involve some people suddenly being enabled to wield a lot of power:

exactly a year ago, Parliament passed, virtually unopposed, what was far and away the most expensive new law ever put before it. On the Government's own figures, the Climate Change Act is going to cost Britain £18 billion a year - that's £720 for every household in the country - every year from now until 2050.

Read his article here.

Green bins and Gospel

Ben Merkle has written a nice (short) piece showing how dangerous it is for Christians to buy into the whole 'environmental' project: 

For the Christian, the seemingly evenhanded argument looks something like this: global warming is a real threat to creation, a Christian doctrine of creation gives the stron­gest motivation possible for one to be concerned about the creation, thus Christians have a good reason to work with environmentalists in preserving creation, and maybe we can use this as an opportunity to witness to them as we sit on the curb together and sort the clear glass from the colored glass. But this approach misses the point where evangelism needs to begin. In making environmentalism our common cause, we have begun sharing in idolatry rather than con­fronting it.

You can read how he continues here.

He concludes like this:

Any truly Christian response to the Global Warming alarmists must be uncompromising on two points. First, it must be clear that only the Gospel will clean the earth and nothing else will. Men who are in rebellion against the Gos­pel are in rebellion against the earth, no matter what they say to the contrary. These men need the atoning work of Jesus Christ, the only cure. All true renewing of the earth subsequently flows from this cure. Second, the Christian life is a life of gratitude. Global Warming nuts insist on guilt. They insist on guilt because guilt produces a rabid frenzy which has the illusion of progress. But as an enduring moti­vation to work, guilt is nothing to gratitude. We are thank­ful for everything that God has given us. This includes the beauty of God’s creation. And when we look at the natural world with Christian gratitude, we can’t help but want to clean it up.

The Guilt Industry

Calling all job seekers. At a time of diminishing employment opportunities, there's a sector of the British economy that continues to expand. For the right type of applicant, it often offers above-average remuneration with attractive perks, notably an assumption of moral superiority.

You won't find it listed in the "sits vac" columns, as such. That's because this booming business embraces many organisations, across a range of activities: charities, social work, local and national politics, even journalism.

It is the Guilt Industry. No, not the gilt industry (though that too is flourishing, thanks to the Government's borrowing binge). The Guilt Industry is completely different; it provides a living for those with an eagerness to demonise fellow citizens who spurn "progressive" values. [for the rest of Jeff Randall's article click here]

Bearing up quite well thanks

So, are polar bears in danger from global warming or not? This article suggests not so much. Welcome to to the world of 'objective' science.