Climate Silliness

Climate science silliness – also known as “man-made global warming” – is continuing to lose followers as more scientists begin to tell us what they really think in spite of the environmental correctness police:

As we took stock of the events of 2008, a headline in The Daily Telegraph of London caught our attention: “2008 was the year man-made global warming was disproved.” This is contrary to everything the American media has been reporting, right through the bitter cold and snowfall of the past month. . . .

Christopher Booker writes in his “Warming Disproved” column that there are three significant respects in which the tide has turned on the global warming fear mongers. “First, all over the world, temperatures have been dropping in a way wholly unpredicted by all those computer models which have been used as the main drivers of the scare,” he writes. Furthermore, arctic sea ice ended the year at the same level as in 1979, despite predictions that the polar ice cap would be gone. “Secondly,” Booker says, “2008 was the year when any pretence that there was a ‘scientific consensus’ in favor of man-made global warming collapsed,” and, “Thirdly, as banks collapsed and the global economy plunged into its worst recession for decades, harsh reality at last began to break in on those self-deluding dreams which have for so long possessed almost every politician in the western world.” In short, the evidence is counter to global warmists’ claims, “consensus” doesn’t exist, and it is not economically feasible to combat a phantom problem. Somehow, though, we doubt this will deter Al Gore and his minions.

For example, in an innovative move, the EPA has suggested branding dairy cows with a tax of $175 each as a means of controlling greenhouse gases (our guess is CO2 may not be the objectionable gas here). Beef cattle would get hit with a tax of $87.50, hogs maybe $20. Large herds would need a permit. Got to control those gases.

“Somebody Help Me!”

Quoting Gary North:

One of the familiar phrases in American culture is this: “Keeping up with the Joneses.” The idea behind this phrase is that we all prefer to be graded on the curve. This begins in grade school, where we are taught to grade ourselves above all other skills, which is why it’s called grade school, I guess. We assess our level of success by looking around us. We look at those who are closest to us, and we attempt to estimate by whatever is visible just how well we are doing.

Keeping up with the Joneses is a good policy for as long as the Joneses are moving ahead. The free market has let the Joneses move up, beginning around 1775 — 1800 at the latest.

Problem: when the United States government and the Federal Reserve System join forces to adopt policies that will push the Joneses over a cliff, it is unwise to keep up with the Joneses.

Outward appearances are deceiving. We tell our children this. “You can’t judge a book by its cover.” But if this is true, then we should not allow ourselves to be graded on the economic curve.

Our neighbors may not be doing very well, but they conceal this by the use of debt. It appears that they are getting ahead of us, when in fact they are falling behind. Maybe they are borrowing against the equity in their homes. Maybe they are borrowing on their credit cards. They are trading their future for the trappings of success.

So are the Federal Reserve System and the United States Treasury — a scale of deception unique in history. They are rapidly turning America into Potemkin Village.

Those of us who worry about extensive consumer debt would regard it as falling behind whenever we find ourselves in a percentage of indebtedness that equals the level which our neighbors regard as normal.

Obviously, we do not know the level of debt of our next-door neighbors. We don’t ask people how much debt they have in relation to their assets. To do so would be considered impolite. Americans are amazingly reticent to talk about their wealth. They don’t even talk about this to their adult children, who have a stake in their future. So, we really do not know how well our neighbors are doing. What we do know is that they keep buying new cars. Maybe they improve their landscaping. Beyond this, we have very little idea how well they are doing.

We know the outward appearances are deceiving. We also know that most people do not want to admit publicly that they are in a bind.

Several years ago, there was a funny TV ad starring a man named Stanley Johnson. Stanley looked like a complete success. He had a smiling face. He belonged to the right set. But, as he admitted late in the ad, he was up to his eyeballs in debt. He did not know what to do. “Somebody help me,” he said. . . .

Read more. . . .

Quoting Jonathan Edwards

“We should ‘seek first the kingdom of God.’ (Mat. 6:33) We ought above all things to desire a heavenly happiness; to be with God and dwell with Jesus Christ. Though surrounded with outward enjoyments, and settled in families with desirable friends and relations; though we have companions whose society is delightful, and children in whom we see many promising qualifications; though we live by good neighbors, and are generally beloved where known; we ought not to take our rest in these things as our portion. We should be so far from resting in them, that we should desire to leave them all, in God’s due time. We ought to possess, enjoy and use them, with no other view but readily to quit them, whenever we are called to it, and to change them willingly and cheerfully for heaven.” (Sermon, “The True Christian’s Life a Journey Toward Heaven”)

Knowledge Is Necessary

Quoting John Adams:

John Adams

“Liberty cannot be preserved without a general knowledge among the people, who have a right, from the frame of their nature, to knowledge, as their great Creator, who does nothing in vain, has given them understandings, and a desire to know; but besides this, they have a right, an indisputable, unalienable, indefeasible, divine right to that most dreaded and envied kind of knowledge; I mean, of the characters and conduct of their rulers. … Wisdom and knowledge, as well as virtue, diffused generally among the body of the people, being necessary for the preservation of their rights and liberties…”

Are You A Thinking Christian?

From: The Desk of James Boice

“Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world.” This sentence in Romans 12:2 has two key words: “world,” which is actually “age” (aion, meaning, “this present age” in contrast to “the age to come”); and “do not conform,” which is a compound having at its root the word “scheme.” So the verse means, “Do not let the age in which you live force you into its scheme of thinking and behaving.” The idea is that the world has its ways of thinking and doing things and is exerting pressure on Christians to conform to it. But instead of being conformed to the world, Christians are to be changed from within to be increasingly like Jesus Christ. The chief problem with the evangelical church is that we have been increasingly conformed to this world’s patterns and that, if we are to see a new reformation, we will have to break away from these patterns and seek to recover the authentic biblical gospel, learning again to think and act in God’s way.

The first phrase of Romans 12:2 is a warning against worldliness, of course. But as soon as we use the word ‘worldly’ we have to make clear what real worldliness is. When I was growing up in a fundamentalist church I was taught that worldliness was such pursuits as smoking, drinking, dancing, and playing cards. A Christian girl might say, “I don’t smoke, and I don’t chew, and I don’t go with boys who do.” But that is not what Romans 12:2 is about. To think of worldliness only in those terms is to trivialize what is a far more serious and far more subtle problem.

The clue to what is in view here is that in the next phrase Paul urges, as an alternative to being “conformed” to this world, being “transformed by the renewing of your mind.” This means that he is concerned about a way of thinking rather than merely a way of behaving, though right behavior will follow naturally if our thinking is set straight. The worldliness we are to break away from and repudiate is the world’s “worldview,” what the Germans call Weltanschauung, a comprehensive, systematic way of looking at all things. We are to break out of the world’s categories of thinking and allow our minds to be molded by the Word of God instead.

In our day Christians have not done this very well, and that is the reason why they are so often “worldly” in the other senses too. In fact, it is a sad commentary on our churches, verified by numerous polls, that Christians in general have nearly the same thoughts, values, and behavior patterns as the world around them. (Whatever Happened to the Gospel of Grace?)