Environmental Stewardship News Round-Up
The following items appear in the Cornwall Alliance for the Stewardship of Creation Newsletter, May 11, 2007:
Interfaith Stewardship Alliance Becomes Cornwall Alliance for the Stewardship of Creation
Welcome to the first edition of the newsletter of the newly named Cornwall Alliance for the Stewardship of Creation. The Interfaith Stewardship Alliance took on the new name both to make more explicit the creation stewardship we have in mind and to tie ourselves more clearly to our foundation document, the Cornwall Declaration on Environmental Stewardship (PDF). Our more vigorous and newly streamlined organization will continue to bring a responsible and balanced Biblical view of the earth’s stewardship to critical issues of environment and economic development.
Also, through the Cornwall Stewardship Agenda, now under development, the reconfigured coalition will work more aggressively with congregations, educational institutions, and other entities worldwide to promote the important principles of the Cornwall Declaration on Environmental Stewardship.
That Declaration is an authoritative document put forward in 2000 that has been signed by approximately 1,500 clergy, theologians, religious leaders and other people of faith. It has come to be viewed as one of the most significant expressions of belief about religion and the environment in modern times.
The Cornwall Alliance is organized and built around the principles of the Cornwall Declaration, and the new name is designed to reflect that. The new name also brings in the very significant concept of the “stewardship of Creation,” which recognizes that God created this world with great wisdom and power, and has entrusted those made in His image, men and women, to exercise faithful stewardship over it. Our new motto expresses our aim: “Bridging Humanity and the Environment through Faith and Reason.”
We are also forming a Cornwall Stewardship Agenda task force designed to take the broad Biblical principles of the Cornwall Declaration and translate them into specific public-policy recommendations. The first two areas the task force will undertake are those of “poverty and development” and “climate and energy.” We’re excited that Dr. Stephen Livesay, president of Bryan College, and Dr. Barrett Duke, vice president of the Southern Baptist Convention’s Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, have agreed to co-chair the task force.
These and other developments were announced at a breakfast seminar in Washington, D.C., May 2 with eight featured speakers. Theologican/ethicist Dr. E. Calvin Beisner and climatologist Dr. Roy Spencer spoke on theological and scientific perspectives on global warming. Rev. Abdul Karim Sesay and energy policy analyst Paul Driessen spoke on impacts of environmental policies on the poor. Theologian Dr. Henry Krabbendam, president of the African Christian Training Institute, and David Rothbard, village project coordinator for Uganda for the ACTI, spoke on new environment and development stewardship initiatives under way in Africa. Rev. Dr. Jay Dennis, senior pastor of First Pastor Church in Lakeland, Florida, spoke on a pastor’s perspective on Biblical stewardship, warning, “When forming political alliances, we need to be very careful not to become too closely associated in the eyes of the world with those whose world views are diametrically opposed to ours.” And Rev. Dr. James Tonkowich, President of the Institute on Religion and Democracy, spoke on “What ‘Population Control’ Reveals About Unbiblical Approaches to Environmentalism.” Janet Parshall, host of Janet Parshall’s America, emceed the seminar and a press conference that followed it.
For more information about the Cornwall Alliance, visit our new and growing website at www.cornwallalliance.org. Our old website, www.interfaithstewardship.org, will continue to function until we have transferred all documents to the new one.
Cornwall Alliance Spokesman Addresses Climate Change Conference at the Vatican
Cornwall Alliance national spokesman E. Calvin Beisner delivered a paper Friday, April 27, at a two-day conference on climate change sponsored by the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace at the Vatican in Rome. His paper (PDF) set forth Biblical reasons to reject manmade global warming alarmism and prioritize economic development for the poor, which he explained would be jeopardized by anti-GW policies. The conference included spokesmen from a variety of positions across the spectrum of climate change science and economics. Top Italian physicist Dr. Atonino Zichichi in particular presented a powerful paper explaining from the perspective of physics why the knowledge necessary to justify AGW alarmism simply does not, and cannot, exist.
Beyond Kyoto--
Environment: As European climate-change policies crumble, the U.S. approach is finding vindication
by Mark Bergin, World, May 12, 2007
“[B]usinesses throughout Europe are laying off employees, outsourcing production, and reining in innovation as a luxury no longer affordable. Michel Wurth, president of Arcelor Mittal France, calls the situation ”absolutely ridiculous."
. . . [Apparently] Bush’s refusal to adopt emissions restrictions is not the vice once imagined. In past years, EU officials chastised Bush for his stubborn rejection of the Kyoto Protocol, a pact adopted by 169 nations to impose mandatory reductions of CO2 emissions. This year, Merkel and Barroso made no mention of the 10-year-old treaty, a stark reversal that underscores a momentous shift in the debate: As Kyoto sputters, stalls, and ultimately fails, the Bush approach proves increasingly credible. . . .
Read the whole story.
Study: Wind shear caused by global warming may help curb hurricanes
By Ken Kaye, Sun-Sentinel.com, April 18 2007
Maybe global warming isn’t spawning more powerful hurricanes, after all.
A new study conducted by two atmospheric experts, one at the University of Miami, has found that global warming is producing increasingly stronger wind shear over the Atlantic, and that might hinder hurricane formation.
That conclusion would seem to temper earlier studies that insist hurricanes are becoming more intense as the atmosphere heats up. . . .
Read the whole story.
See also: “Global warming may spur wind shear, sap hurricanes.”
EasyJet slams ‘snake oil sellers’ in offset market and goes it alone
Dan Milmo, The Guardian, April 30 2007
EasyJet has warned that the carbon offsetting market is riddled with “snake oil salesmen” determined to make excessive profits from green-minded air passengers.
The low-cost airline has delayed the launch of an offsetting scheme for customers because of concerns over its cost. Instead, EasyJet will go it alone by acquiring credits in UN-accredited schemes and selling them back to customers.
Carbon offsetting is one of the most popular means of atoning for CO2-generating activities such as flying or driving to work. It allows consumers to contribute to projects such as tree planting to negate the effect of their flight or commute.
Toby Nicol, EasyJet’s communications director, said the company had been shocked by how much money carbon offsetting firms wanted for their service. “We have been quite surprised at the percentage that the offsetting companies would like to take out of the scheme for administration costs. Between 25% and 30% of every pound put in by consumers would go into administrating the company and that was simply too expensive,” he said. . . .
Click here for the full story.
CNN’s Glenn Beck takes on global warming alarmism
Read the transcript of the TV program here.
Take Population Growth Off List of Global Warming Disaster Causes
The next two items and the comment following them address the link often made between global warming and human population growth--a link that is not scientifically justified and will soon lose all justification for alarm.--ECB
The Left’s Global Warming Solution: No More Children!
Ben Shapiro, National Review Online, May 9, 2007
Proving once again that foolish ideas don’t die or fade away -- they walk the earth eternally, preying on the brains of the living -- scientists at a UK think tank have determined that the greatest threat to the planet is more human beings. “The effect on the planet of having one child less is an order of magnitude greater than all these other things we might do, such as switching off lights,” explains Professor John Guillebaud, co-chairman of the Optimum Population Trust (OPT). “The greatest thing anyone in Britain could do to help the future of the planet would be to have one less child.”
The OPT is hardly the first to jump on the Malthusian bandwagon. The environmental left is in a constant state of apoplexy about the environmental cost of human existence. Back in 1968, Professor Paul Ehrlich published his famous -- and entirely erroneous -- anti-reproduction manifesto, “The Population Bomb.” “The battle to feed all of humanity is over,” Ehrlich claimed. “In the 1970s the world will undergo famines -- hundreds of millions of people are going to starve to death.” His solution: “The birth rate must be brought into balance with the death rate. We can no longer afford merely to treat the symptoms of the cancer of population growth; the cancer itself must be cut out.”
Naturally, no such disaster occurred. . . .
Read the whole story.
Related item: The global warming/population control connection: China’s one-child policy as poster child
Read and see how the fight against population growth--even by means of such inhumane initiatives as China’s one-child policy (which is enforced in part by forced abortions as well as fines and loss of jobs for those who exceed the limit)--gets tied to the fight against global warming. No wonder the Hewlett Foundation, which supports anti-population growth efforts worldwide, also funded the Evangelical Climate Initiative to the tune of $475,000 in 2006.
Comment on both items: Ironically, the Left is way behind the science on population (as it is on the science of climate change). Even if we accept the global warming alarmists’ claim that human action is the chief cause of global warming, rising population will cease being a significant factor in climate change within about thirty to forty years no matter what else we do--and the hypothetically disastrous temperature increases are all projected for well after that. The “new demography”--below-replacement total fertility rate (TFR, number of children born per woman during her childbearing years) leading to declining population--makes the GW alarmists’ case against population simply irrelevant.
Every country in the developed world already has a TFR below replacement rate (2.1), and many already have shrinking populations. Europe is losing about 800,000 people per year, Russia about a million. Some developing countries already have below-replacement fertility. All countries with above-replacement rate fertility have falling TFR. The UN Population Division predicts that population will peak around 2050--and some experts, like Ben Wattenberg in his book Fewer: How the New Demography of Depopulation Will Shape Our Future, argue that it will peak sooner, as early as 2035. The principal cause of falling TFR in every instance is not government-run anti-fertility programs but growing wealth and (especially female) education. Shortly after it peaks (perhaps between 7 and 8 billion, though I think likely lower), world population will begin to shrink, and there is no widely understood or persuasive theory in sight that suggests any reason why it will ever begin to grow again. As Stanley Kurtz points out in a seminal article in Policy Review, “If worldwide fertility rates reach levels now common in the developing [sic--that’s right, developing; the developed countries already have even lower TFRs] world (and that is where they seem headed), within a few centuries, the world’s population could shrink below the level of America’s today.”
No, you didn’t read that wrong. That’s what it says: “within a few centuries, the world’s population could shrink below the level of America’s today”--i.e., to less than 1/20 present population.
--ECB
Take polar bears off the list of global warming-endangered species: their numbers are growing, not shrinking
Read the whole story.
Take Kilimanjaro off the list of global warming proof texts
Read to find that “lower precipitation—and not rising temperatures on the summit—is the main cause for the Kilimanjaro glaciers’ retreat.”
Take more frequent hurricanes off the list of global warming impacts: Scientist doubts warming-hurricane link
Miami, May 2 (UPI) -- Chris Landsea, a scientist at the National Hurricane Center in Florida, says there is no link between global warming and the frequency of hurricanes. Landsea said in a study released Tuesday that previous claims of a link were unreliable, since researchers underestimated the number of storms that occurred before the satellite era, The Miami Herald reported Wednesday.
Some hurricane scientists, including Massachusett Institute of Technology’s Kerry Emanuel, say global warming has contributed to an increased number of hurricanes.
Landsea says three hurricanes each year, on average, went uncounted during the late 1800s and the first half of the 20th century -- before satellite storm monitoring was used to track storms.
“When you add those storms back into the record, we don’t see any new trend,” Landsea said. “There’s no link to global warming that you can see at all.” . . .
Read the rest of the story.
Put the sun back at the top of the list of global climate drivers
Tom Bethell summarizes some reasons.
Related item: Scientist calls recent global warming cyclic, predicts diminished warming by 2015, ending by 2040, then cooling to 19th-century levels
Retired meteorologist David Dilley offers a foretaste of the results of fifteen years of research into primary climate forcing mechanisms that result in cyclical warming and cooling.
Marshall Institute blasts Supreme Court ruling on EPA & CO2 (PDF)
April 1, the day that the Supreme Court ruled that the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) had authority to regulate carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions from automobiles, was a day of bitter triumph. A triumph of judicial activism over factual and dispassionate analysis, a triumph of ideology over objective analysis and legal precedent, a triumph of political science—the blend of science, hypothesis and orthodoxy—over science and facts, and a triumph of image over reality. . . .
Read the whole article (PDF).
Study: Cap-and-Trade Carbon Emissions Policy Would Transfer Wealth from Poor to Rich . . .
Fred Lucas, CNSNews.com, May 11, 2007
(CNSNews.com) - Critics of global warming call the proposed “auction” of carbon credits a form of taxation that would hurt poor consumers the worst, yet some experts believe such auctions might be the best way for countries around the world to pay the heavy costs of reducing their industrial emissions.
“A cap and trade would result in a massive wealth redistribution from the poor and working class to the wealthier Americans,” said Sen. James Inhofe (R-Okla.), the ranking member of the Environment and Public Works Committee and leading global warming skeptic.
. . . . Inhofe cited an April study by the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) that stated the burdens such a policy could have on American consumers.
Consumers “would face persistently higher prices for products such as electricity and gasoline,” according to the CBO report.
“Those price increases would be regressive in that poorer households would bear a larger burden relative to their income than wealthier households would,” the report said. . . .
Read the full article and the full CBO report (PDF).
Related Item: . . . and Put a $4,500 and Growing Climate Tax on American Families
Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT) have proposed the “Global Warming Pollution Reduction Act” aimed at combating climate change. The proposed partisan bill (S.309) is supported by another 15 senators, including: Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-NY); Sen. Barack Obama (D-IL); Sen. Christopher J. Dodd (D-CT); Sen. Joseph R. Biden (D-DE); Sen. Daniel K. Akaka (D-HI); Sen. Russell D. Feingold (D-WI); Sen. Daniel K. Inouye (D-HI); Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-MA); Sen. Frank R. Lautenberg (D-NJ); Sen. Patrick J. Leahy (D-VT); Sen. Robert Menendez (D-NJ); Sen. Jack Reed (D-RI); Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI); Sen. Barbara A. Mikulski (D-MD), and Sen. Benjamin L. Cardin (D-MD).
FACT: A new MIT study concludes that the Sanders-Boxer approach would impose a tax-equivalent of $366 billion annually, or more than $4,500 per family of four, by 2015. And the annual costs will grow after 2015.
Read the whole article and the MIT study (PDF).
Ethanol may create dirtier air
Seth Borenstein, Associated Press
Switching from gasoline to ethanol — touted as a green alternative at the pump — may create dirtier air, causing slightly more smog-related deaths, a new study says.
Nearly 200 more people would die yearly from respiratory problems if all vehicles in the United States ran on a mostly ethanol fuel blend by 2020, the research concludes. . . .
Read the whole article. and Jacobson’s study (PDF).
Comment: Of course the much faster way in which ethanol can kill is by burning corn that the poor in Latin America need for tortillas. But environmentalists, global warming alarmists especially, don’t seem much concerned about the impact of their policies on poor people, especially those of the wrong color. So if a little concern about the impact of ethanol-generated smog on rich people, especially those of the right color, can slow the ethanol bandwagon, so be it.--ECB
GW Alarmist James Hansen Lauds GW Alarmist Al Gore
Comment: This is the same James Hansen who has claimed overwhelming consensus on manmade catastrophic global warming ever since 1988--when the scientific research was in its infancy. It’s also the same James Hansen whom Gore lauds all the time. And it’s the same James Hansen who received a $250,000 grant from the Heinz Foundation, headed by Democratic Senator John Kerry’s wife Theresa Heinz Kerry, and soon thereafter made his first-ever presidential endorsement, of--surprise, surprise!--John Kerry.--ECB
Global Warming May Be Spurring Allergy, Asthma
Dr. Ziska’s Ragweed Loves Carbon Dioxide; Toxic Pollen in Cities?
Gautam Naik, The Wall Street Journal, May 3, 2007
There’s growing scientific evidence that global climate change is linked to the dramatic rise in allergies and asthma in the Western world.
Studies have found that a higher level of carbon dioxide turbocharges the growth of plants whose pollen triggers allergies. In 2001 Lewis Ziska planted ragweed -- the main cause of hay fever in the fall -- at urban, suburban and rural sites near Baltimore. The plots had the same seeds and soil and were watered in the same way. Yet the downtown plants soon exploded in size, flowering earlier and producing five times the pollen of rural plants. The city pollen was a lot more toxic, too. The likely cause? The city plants experienced warmer temperatures and 20% more carbon dioxide, the effect of more cars and pollution.
For the whole story, click here.
Comment: Warmer temperatures and higher CO2 certainly increase the growth and fruit rate of ragweed and other pollen producers--as they do that of practically all other plants. However: (a) The fact of some global warming is not proof of anthropogenic cause. (b) The warming tied to increased urban pollen counts is specifically urban warming and therefore largely, perhaps totally, explained by the urban heat island effect. (Even in a region experiencing cooling of 0.1 degree C over a decade, a city experiencing warming of 0.2 degree over the same decade will have net warming of 0.1 degree.) It is therefore misleading to say, as the headline does, “Global warming may be spurring allergy, asthma.” Warming and enhanced CO2 are, but the warming is largely urban/local, not global, and the spur may be more from that than from enhanced CO2. (c) The research reported has not distinguished the contributions of heat and CO2 to rising pollen counts, but both undoubtedly contribute. (d) Heightened CO2 concentration enhances pollen production just because it enhances almost all plant production--including agricultural crop production. By looking only at the down side (increased pollen) and not at the up side (increased wheat, corn, soybeans, barley, apples, oranges, forests, and all other plants), the article presents a biased impression of the impact of enhanced CO2 on life.--ECB
The big climate scare 30 years ago (PDF)
Don’t miss this one! See the PDF for Newsweek’s treatment of the conclusive science of global cooling and the absolute necessity of immediate and drastic political action to stop it. As Yogie Berra would say, “It’s like deja vu all over again!” Note especially the closing paragraph:
Hmmm. The politicians never did act to prevent global cooling, and guess what? Nobody’s afraid of it now (even though the solar cycle suggests a cooling beginning around 2012).--ECB
Interfaith Stewardship Alliance Becomes Cornwall Alliance for the Stewardship of Creation
Welcome to the first edition of the newsletter of the newly named Cornwall Alliance for the Stewardship of Creation. The Interfaith Stewardship Alliance took on the new name both to make more explicit the creation stewardship we have in mind and to tie ourselves more clearly to our foundation document, the Cornwall Declaration on Environmental Stewardship (PDF). Our more vigorous and newly streamlined organization will continue to bring a responsible and balanced Biblical view of the earth’s stewardship to critical issues of environment and economic development.
Also, through the Cornwall Stewardship Agenda, now under development, the reconfigured coalition will work more aggressively with congregations, educational institutions, and other entities worldwide to promote the important principles of the Cornwall Declaration on Environmental Stewardship.
That Declaration is an authoritative document put forward in 2000 that has been signed by approximately 1,500 clergy, theologians, religious leaders and other people of faith. It has come to be viewed as one of the most significant expressions of belief about religion and the environment in modern times.
The Cornwall Alliance is organized and built around the principles of the Cornwall Declaration, and the new name is designed to reflect that. The new name also brings in the very significant concept of the “stewardship of Creation,” which recognizes that God created this world with great wisdom and power, and has entrusted those made in His image, men and women, to exercise faithful stewardship over it. Our new motto expresses our aim: “Bridging Humanity and the Environment through Faith and Reason.”
We are also forming a Cornwall Stewardship Agenda task force designed to take the broad Biblical principles of the Cornwall Declaration and translate them into specific public-policy recommendations. The first two areas the task force will undertake are those of “poverty and development” and “climate and energy.” We’re excited that Dr. Stephen Livesay, president of Bryan College, and Dr. Barrett Duke, vice president of the Southern Baptist Convention’s Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, have agreed to co-chair the task force.
These and other developments were announced at a breakfast seminar in Washington, D.C., May 2 with eight featured speakers. Theologican/ethicist Dr. E. Calvin Beisner and climatologist Dr. Roy Spencer spoke on theological and scientific perspectives on global warming. Rev. Abdul Karim Sesay and energy policy analyst Paul Driessen spoke on impacts of environmental policies on the poor. Theologian Dr. Henry Krabbendam, president of the African Christian Training Institute, and David Rothbard, village project coordinator for Uganda for the ACTI, spoke on new environment and development stewardship initiatives under way in Africa. Rev. Dr. Jay Dennis, senior pastor of First Pastor Church in Lakeland, Florida, spoke on a pastor’s perspective on Biblical stewardship, warning, “When forming political alliances, we need to be very careful not to become too closely associated in the eyes of the world with those whose world views are diametrically opposed to ours.” And Rev. Dr. James Tonkowich, President of the Institute on Religion and Democracy, spoke on “What ‘Population Control’ Reveals About Unbiblical Approaches to Environmentalism.” Janet Parshall, host of Janet Parshall’s America, emceed the seminar and a press conference that followed it.
For more information about the Cornwall Alliance, visit our new and growing website at www.cornwallalliance.org. Our old website, www.interfaithstewardship.org, will continue to function until we have transferred all documents to the new one.
Cornwall Alliance Spokesman Addresses Climate Change Conference at the Vatican
Cornwall Alliance national spokesman E. Calvin Beisner delivered a paper Friday, April 27, at a two-day conference on climate change sponsored by the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace at the Vatican in Rome. His paper (PDF) set forth Biblical reasons to reject manmade global warming alarmism and prioritize economic development for the poor, which he explained would be jeopardized by anti-GW policies. The conference included spokesmen from a variety of positions across the spectrum of climate change science and economics. Top Italian physicist Dr. Atonino Zichichi in particular presented a powerful paper explaining from the perspective of physics why the knowledge necessary to justify AGW alarmism simply does not, and cannot, exist.
Beyond Kyoto--
Environment: As European climate-change policies crumble, the U.S. approach is finding vindication
by Mark Bergin, World, May 12, 2007
“[B]usinesses throughout Europe are laying off employees, outsourcing production, and reining in innovation as a luxury no longer affordable. Michel Wurth, president of Arcelor Mittal France, calls the situation ”absolutely ridiculous."
. . . [Apparently] Bush’s refusal to adopt emissions restrictions is not the vice once imagined. In past years, EU officials chastised Bush for his stubborn rejection of the Kyoto Protocol, a pact adopted by 169 nations to impose mandatory reductions of CO2 emissions. This year, Merkel and Barroso made no mention of the 10-year-old treaty, a stark reversal that underscores a momentous shift in the debate: As Kyoto sputters, stalls, and ultimately fails, the Bush approach proves increasingly credible. . . .
Read the whole story.
Study: Wind shear caused by global warming may help curb hurricanes
By Ken Kaye, Sun-Sentinel.com, April 18 2007
Maybe global warming isn’t spawning more powerful hurricanes, after all.
A new study conducted by two atmospheric experts, one at the University of Miami, has found that global warming is producing increasingly stronger wind shear over the Atlantic, and that might hinder hurricane formation.
That conclusion would seem to temper earlier studies that insist hurricanes are becoming more intense as the atmosphere heats up. . . .
Read the whole story.
See also: “Global warming may spur wind shear, sap hurricanes.”
EasyJet slams ‘snake oil sellers’ in offset market and goes it alone
Dan Milmo, The Guardian, April 30 2007
EasyJet has warned that the carbon offsetting market is riddled with “snake oil salesmen” determined to make excessive profits from green-minded air passengers.
The low-cost airline has delayed the launch of an offsetting scheme for customers because of concerns over its cost. Instead, EasyJet will go it alone by acquiring credits in UN-accredited schemes and selling them back to customers.
Carbon offsetting is one of the most popular means of atoning for CO2-generating activities such as flying or driving to work. It allows consumers to contribute to projects such as tree planting to negate the effect of their flight or commute.
Toby Nicol, EasyJet’s communications director, said the company had been shocked by how much money carbon offsetting firms wanted for their service. “We have been quite surprised at the percentage that the offsetting companies would like to take out of the scheme for administration costs. Between 25% and 30% of every pound put in by consumers would go into administrating the company and that was simply too expensive,” he said. . . .
Click here for the full story.
CNN’s Glenn Beck takes on global warming alarmism
Read the transcript of the TV program here.
Take Population Growth Off List of Global Warming Disaster Causes
The next two items and the comment following them address the link often made between global warming and human population growth--a link that is not scientifically justified and will soon lose all justification for alarm.--ECB
The Left’s Global Warming Solution: No More Children!
Ben Shapiro, National Review Online, May 9, 2007
Proving once again that foolish ideas don’t die or fade away -- they walk the earth eternally, preying on the brains of the living -- scientists at a UK think tank have determined that the greatest threat to the planet is more human beings. “The effect on the planet of having one child less is an order of magnitude greater than all these other things we might do, such as switching off lights,” explains Professor John Guillebaud, co-chairman of the Optimum Population Trust (OPT). “The greatest thing anyone in Britain could do to help the future of the planet would be to have one less child.”
The OPT is hardly the first to jump on the Malthusian bandwagon. The environmental left is in a constant state of apoplexy about the environmental cost of human existence. Back in 1968, Professor Paul Ehrlich published his famous -- and entirely erroneous -- anti-reproduction manifesto, “The Population Bomb.” “The battle to feed all of humanity is over,” Ehrlich claimed. “In the 1970s the world will undergo famines -- hundreds of millions of people are going to starve to death.” His solution: “The birth rate must be brought into balance with the death rate. We can no longer afford merely to treat the symptoms of the cancer of population growth; the cancer itself must be cut out.”
Naturally, no such disaster occurred. . . .
Read the whole story.
Related item: The global warming/population control connection: China’s one-child policy as poster child
Read and see how the fight against population growth--even by means of such inhumane initiatives as China’s one-child policy (which is enforced in part by forced abortions as well as fines and loss of jobs for those who exceed the limit)--gets tied to the fight against global warming. No wonder the Hewlett Foundation, which supports anti-population growth efforts worldwide, also funded the Evangelical Climate Initiative to the tune of $475,000 in 2006.
Comment on both items: Ironically, the Left is way behind the science on population (as it is on the science of climate change). Even if we accept the global warming alarmists’ claim that human action is the chief cause of global warming, rising population will cease being a significant factor in climate change within about thirty to forty years no matter what else we do--and the hypothetically disastrous temperature increases are all projected for well after that. The “new demography”--below-replacement total fertility rate (TFR, number of children born per woman during her childbearing years) leading to declining population--makes the GW alarmists’ case against population simply irrelevant.
Every country in the developed world already has a TFR below replacement rate (2.1), and many already have shrinking populations. Europe is losing about 800,000 people per year, Russia about a million. Some developing countries already have below-replacement fertility. All countries with above-replacement rate fertility have falling TFR. The UN Population Division predicts that population will peak around 2050--and some experts, like Ben Wattenberg in his book Fewer: How the New Demography of Depopulation Will Shape Our Future, argue that it will peak sooner, as early as 2035. The principal cause of falling TFR in every instance is not government-run anti-fertility programs but growing wealth and (especially female) education. Shortly after it peaks (perhaps between 7 and 8 billion, though I think likely lower), world population will begin to shrink, and there is no widely understood or persuasive theory in sight that suggests any reason why it will ever begin to grow again. As Stanley Kurtz points out in a seminal article in Policy Review, “If worldwide fertility rates reach levels now common in the developing [sic--that’s right, developing; the developed countries already have even lower TFRs] world (and that is where they seem headed), within a few centuries, the world’s population could shrink below the level of America’s today.”
No, you didn’t read that wrong. That’s what it says: “within a few centuries, the world’s population could shrink below the level of America’s today”--i.e., to less than 1/20 present population.
The fertility decline will bring its own problems along with it, as any economist of demography recognizes. For the tip of the iceberg, consider these four paragraphs from the introduction to Kurtz’s article:
Declining birth rates mean that societies everywhere will soon be aging to an unprecedented degree. Increasing life expectancy is also contributing to the aging of the world’s population. In 1900, American life expectancy at birth was 47 years. Today it is 76. By 2050, one out of five Americans will be over age 65, making the U.S. population as a whole markedly older than Florida’s population today. Striking as that demographic graying may be, it pales before projections for countries like Italy and Japan. The United Nations estimates that by 2050, 42 percent of all people in Italy and Japan will be aged 60 or older.
Can societies that old sustain themselves? That is the question inviting speculation. With fertility falling swiftly in the developing nations, immigration will not be able to ameliorate certain implications of a rapidly aging West. Even in the short or medium term, the aging imbalance cannot be rectified except through a level of immigration far above what Western countries would find politically acceptable. Alarmed by the problems of immigration and assimilation, even famously tolerant Holland has begun to turn away immigrants en masse — and this before the recent murder of filmmaker Theo Van Gogh, which has subsequently forced the questions of immigration and demography to the center of the Dutch political stage.
In short, the West is beginning to experience significant demographic changes, with substantial cultural consequences. Historically, the aged have made up only a small portion of society, and the rearing of children has been the chief concern. Now children will become a small minority, and society’s central problem will be caring for the elderly. Yet even this assumes that societies consisting of elderly citizens at levels of 20, 30, even 40 or more percent can sustain themselves at all. That is not obvious.
Population decline is also set to ramify geometrically. As population falls, the pool of potential mothers in each succeeding generation shrinks. So even if, well into the process, there comes a generation of women with a higher fertility rate than their mothers’, the momentum of population decline could still be locked in. Population decline may also be cemented into place by economics. To support the ever-growing numbers of elderly, governments may raise taxes on younger workers. That would make children even less affordable than they are today, decreasing the size of future generations still further.
--ECB
Take polar bears off the list of global warming-endangered species: their numbers are growing, not shrinking
Read the whole story.
Take Kilimanjaro off the list of global warming proof texts
Read to find that “lower precipitation—and not rising temperatures on the summit—is the main cause for the Kilimanjaro glaciers’ retreat.”
Take more frequent hurricanes off the list of global warming impacts: Scientist doubts warming-hurricane link
Miami, May 2 (UPI) -- Chris Landsea, a scientist at the National Hurricane Center in Florida, says there is no link between global warming and the frequency of hurricanes. Landsea said in a study released Tuesday that previous claims of a link were unreliable, since researchers underestimated the number of storms that occurred before the satellite era, The Miami Herald reported Wednesday.
Some hurricane scientists, including Massachusett Institute of Technology’s Kerry Emanuel, say global warming has contributed to an increased number of hurricanes.
Landsea says three hurricanes each year, on average, went uncounted during the late 1800s and the first half of the 20th century -- before satellite storm monitoring was used to track storms.
“When you add those storms back into the record, we don’t see any new trend,” Landsea said. “There’s no link to global warming that you can see at all.” . . .
Read the rest of the story.
Put the sun back at the top of the list of global climate drivers
Tom Bethell summarizes some reasons.
Related item: Scientist calls recent global warming cyclic, predicts diminished warming by 2015, ending by 2040, then cooling to 19th-century levels
Retired meteorologist David Dilley offers a foretaste of the results of fifteen years of research into primary climate forcing mechanisms that result in cyclical warming and cooling.
Marshall Institute blasts Supreme Court ruling on EPA & CO2 (PDF)
April 1, the day that the Supreme Court ruled that the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) had authority to regulate carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions from automobiles, was a day of bitter triumph. A triumph of judicial activism over factual and dispassionate analysis, a triumph of ideology over objective analysis and legal precedent, a triumph of political science—the blend of science, hypothesis and orthodoxy—over science and facts, and a triumph of image over reality. . . .
Read the whole article (PDF).
Study: Cap-and-Trade Carbon Emissions Policy Would Transfer Wealth from Poor to Rich . . .
Fred Lucas, CNSNews.com, May 11, 2007
(CNSNews.com) - Critics of global warming call the proposed “auction” of carbon credits a form of taxation that would hurt poor consumers the worst, yet some experts believe such auctions might be the best way for countries around the world to pay the heavy costs of reducing their industrial emissions.
“A cap and trade would result in a massive wealth redistribution from the poor and working class to the wealthier Americans,” said Sen. James Inhofe (R-Okla.), the ranking member of the Environment and Public Works Committee and leading global warming skeptic.
. . . . Inhofe cited an April study by the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) that stated the burdens such a policy could have on American consumers.
Consumers “would face persistently higher prices for products such as electricity and gasoline,” according to the CBO report.
“Those price increases would be regressive in that poorer households would bear a larger burden relative to their income than wealthier households would,” the report said. . . .
Read the full article and the full CBO report (PDF).
Related Item: . . . and Put a $4,500 and Growing Climate Tax on American Families
Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT) have proposed the “Global Warming Pollution Reduction Act” aimed at combating climate change. The proposed partisan bill (S.309) is supported by another 15 senators, including: Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-NY); Sen. Barack Obama (D-IL); Sen. Christopher J. Dodd (D-CT); Sen. Joseph R. Biden (D-DE); Sen. Daniel K. Akaka (D-HI); Sen. Russell D. Feingold (D-WI); Sen. Daniel K. Inouye (D-HI); Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-MA); Sen. Frank R. Lautenberg (D-NJ); Sen. Patrick J. Leahy (D-VT); Sen. Robert Menendez (D-NJ); Sen. Jack Reed (D-RI); Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI); Sen. Barbara A. Mikulski (D-MD), and Sen. Benjamin L. Cardin (D-MD).
FACT: A new MIT study concludes that the Sanders-Boxer approach would impose a tax-equivalent of $366 billion annually, or more than $4,500 per family of four, by 2015. And the annual costs will grow after 2015.
Read the whole article and the MIT study (PDF).
Ethanol may create dirtier air
Seth Borenstein, Associated Press
Switching from gasoline to ethanol — touted as a green alternative at the pump — may create dirtier air, causing slightly more smog-related deaths, a new study says.
Nearly 200 more people would die yearly from respiratory problems if all vehicles in the United States ran on a mostly ethanol fuel blend by 2020, the research concludes. . . .
Read the whole article. and Jacobson’s study (PDF).
Comment: Of course the much faster way in which ethanol can kill is by burning corn that the poor in Latin America need for tortillas. But environmentalists, global warming alarmists especially, don’t seem much concerned about the impact of their policies on poor people, especially those of the wrong color. So if a little concern about the impact of ethanol-generated smog on rich people, especially those of the right color, can slow the ethanol bandwagon, so be it.--ECB
GW Alarmist James Hansen Lauds GW Alarmist Al Gore
Comment: This is the same James Hansen who has claimed overwhelming consensus on manmade catastrophic global warming ever since 1988--when the scientific research was in its infancy. It’s also the same James Hansen whom Gore lauds all the time. And it’s the same James Hansen who received a $250,000 grant from the Heinz Foundation, headed by Democratic Senator John Kerry’s wife Theresa Heinz Kerry, and soon thereafter made his first-ever presidential endorsement, of--surprise, surprise!--John Kerry.--ECB
Global Warming May Be Spurring Allergy, Asthma
Dr. Ziska’s Ragweed Loves Carbon Dioxide; Toxic Pollen in Cities?
Gautam Naik, The Wall Street Journal, May 3, 2007
There’s growing scientific evidence that global climate change is linked to the dramatic rise in allergies and asthma in the Western world.
Studies have found that a higher level of carbon dioxide turbocharges the growth of plants whose pollen triggers allergies. In 2001 Lewis Ziska planted ragweed -- the main cause of hay fever in the fall -- at urban, suburban and rural sites near Baltimore. The plots had the same seeds and soil and were watered in the same way. Yet the downtown plants soon exploded in size, flowering earlier and producing five times the pollen of rural plants. The city pollen was a lot more toxic, too. The likely cause? The city plants experienced warmer temperatures and 20% more carbon dioxide, the effect of more cars and pollution.
For the whole story, click here.
Comment: Warmer temperatures and higher CO2 certainly increase the growth and fruit rate of ragweed and other pollen producers--as they do that of practically all other plants. However: (a) The fact of some global warming is not proof of anthropogenic cause. (b) The warming tied to increased urban pollen counts is specifically urban warming and therefore largely, perhaps totally, explained by the urban heat island effect. (Even in a region experiencing cooling of 0.1 degree C over a decade, a city experiencing warming of 0.2 degree over the same decade will have net warming of 0.1 degree.) It is therefore misleading to say, as the headline does, “Global warming may be spurring allergy, asthma.” Warming and enhanced CO2 are, but the warming is largely urban/local, not global, and the spur may be more from that than from enhanced CO2. (c) The research reported has not distinguished the contributions of heat and CO2 to rising pollen counts, but both undoubtedly contribute. (d) Heightened CO2 concentration enhances pollen production just because it enhances almost all plant production--including agricultural crop production. By looking only at the down side (increased pollen) and not at the up side (increased wheat, corn, soybeans, barley, apples, oranges, forests, and all other plants), the article presents a biased impression of the impact of enhanced CO2 on life.--ECB
The big climate scare 30 years ago (PDF)
Don’t miss this one! See the PDF for Newsweek’s treatment of the conclusive science of global cooling and the absolute necessity of immediate and drastic political action to stop it. As Yogie Berra would say, “It’s like deja vu all over again!” Note especially the closing paragraph:
Climatologists are pessimistic that political leaders will take any positive action to compensate for the climatic change, or even to allay its effects. They concede that some of the more spectacular solutions proposed, such as melting the arctic ice cap by covering it with black soot or diverting arctic rivers, might create problems far greater than those they solve. But the scientists see few signs that government leaders anywhere are even prepared to take the simple measures of stockpiling food or of introducing the variables of climatic uncertainty into economic projections of future food supplies. The longer the planners delay, the more difficult will they find it to cope with climatic change once the results become grim reality.
Hmmm. The politicians never did act to prevent global cooling, and guess what? Nobody’s afraid of it now (even though the solar cycle suggests a cooling beginning around 2012).--ECB
Comments
#1 2007-05-15 09:48 (Reply)
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