The following items appear in the Cornwall Alliance for the Stewardship of Creation Newsletter, October 24, 2007:

Cornwall’s Beisner and Care of Creation’s Brown Speak at Proclamation PCA

The Cornwall Alliance’s Dr. E. Calvin Beisner and Care of Creation’s Rev. Ed Brown spoke as a panel on creation stewardship at Proclamation Presbyterian Church (PCA) in Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania, Sunday evening, October 14. Rev. Brown focused on theological foundations for creation stewardship. Dr. Beisner expressed wide agreement with those and then focused on the scientific and economic evidence that recent and foreseeable global warming are largely natural, cyclical, and not catastrophic, and that it is better stewardship to prepare to adapt to future warming or cooling than to try to prevent future warming. Audio recordings of the talks may be heard at http://www.proclamation.org/audio/ by clicking on the links to the three creation panel presentations.

The following items appear in the Cornwall Alliance for the Stewardship of Creation Newsletter, October 6, 2007:

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1. NASA’s Hansen Reaches Escape Velocity
by James Lewis, American Thinker, August 27, 2007

James Hansen, NASA’s True Believer in the global warming credo, has just been quoted by the Globe & Mail of Canada as follows:

“Prof. Hansen and his colleagues argue that rapidly melting ice caps in Antarctica and Greenland could cause oceans to swell several metres by 2100 - or maybe even as much as 25 metres, which is how much higher the oceans sat about three million years ago.”

In an email to the Globe and Mail, Hansen writes

“If we follow ‘business-as-usual’ growth of greenhouse gas emissions... I think that we will lock in a guaranteed sea-level rise of several meters, which, frankly, means that all hell is going to break loose.”

For all you non-metric folks, 25 meters equals 82 feet, or about as high as an eight-story building. “Several meters” is only about 9-15 feet. That’s the wall of water that is going to drown all the coastal plains of the world if Hansen’s predictions come to pass.

So you have a choice. You can either (a) hop in your car and head for the hills, or (b) consider the very real possibility that Dr. James Hansen has jumped the shark, and is rocketing upward fast enough to achieve orbital velocity. I personally think he has slipped the surly bonds of earth, as the poet says. NASA’s Prophet of Doom is up, up and away, with a beautiful vrroom.

Dr. Hansen is a math modeler in the climate change game. How does he get Planetary Doom from a math model? It’s very simple. You build in “positive feedback loops.” That is, you look in the vast toolbox of climate variables to find just two factors that might reinforce each other in a catastrophic loop. For instance, carbon dioxide in the atmosphere might create a greenhouse effect, which causes more heating, which causes more water evaporation, which causes more greenhouse effect, which causes more heating, etc., etc. Keep looping that, and you raise world temps by just one degree Centigrade, so the polar ice caps melt and the oceans rise, up to 25 meters. See? It’s easy.

The big problem with this scenario is that the climate system almost certainly has negative feedback loops, i.e., causal connections that work to bring temperatures back to a rough baseline. The climate is likely to have self-regulation mechanisms in much the way that our bodies have self-regulating loops to stabilize our temperature, blood sugar, and a hundred other variables. Why does that seem likely? Because the world hasn’t burned up or drowned in quite a long time, even though temperature variations and greenhouse gases have existed for many millions of years. Such factors as clouds and air particulates are believed to lower temperatures. With a little imagination we could easily build math models for self-regulating loops that would tend to stabilize temperatures. (But it might be hard to swing the federal grant support for those models.)

[Editor’s note: As Cornwall Newsletter readers will recall, the climate system certainly does have negative feedback loops, as demonstrated by the work of Cornwall colleague Dr. Roy Spencer, et al., published in Geophysical Research Letters, showing that tropical cirrus clouds, which have a warming effect, diminish with rising surface temperature. See a University of Alabama press release about Spencer et al.’s work here and here. And that’s just one of many negative feedbacks, just what we’d expect in the work of a wise Creator.--ECB]

However, Dr. Hansen is a true True Believer. So he is not bothered by doubt. He is tremendously irritated by the very existence of doubters, however, like Steve MacIntyre of ClimateAudit.org, who has twice punctured Dr. Hansen’s beautiful balloon -- once by knocking down the infamous “hockey stick” curve, and more recently, by showing that Dr. Hansen blew it by claiming that 1998 was the hottest year on record in the continental United States. Turns out that the Dust Bowl was hotter than today, as any farmer might have guessed. Drat it, another beautiful hypothesis, crunched by ugly facts.

Not discouraged, however, Dr. Hansen has gone further out on a limb, and has now issued a challenge to our presidential candidates. He wants all the 2008 candidates to sign a Declaration of Stewardship for the Earth and all Creation. (Bold in the original). Dr. Hansen is out to Save the Planet from the fires and floods that he is sure will come, unless we all repent, as per specs.

Personally I’d be happy to volunteer for Stewardship over the Earth and All Creation, like my cats and family. But the humans keep telling me to butt out, and come to think of it, so do the cats. Dr. Hansen probably carries a lot more clout on his little piece of the Earth. But whether his Stewardship, or anybody else’s, extends to All Creation seems unlikely.

Instead, it sounds like Dr. Hansen has joined the Space Patrol.

Houston to Hansen: Do we have a problem?

Hansen: (static-hiss-crackle-click-pop-radio-silence)

Here’s the Hansen Declaration for our presidential candidates to sign.

"Whereas the climate system is nearing tipping points with likely devastating consequences for much of creation;

Whereas the responsibility of the United States for excess CO2 in the air exceeds that of any other nation by more than a factor of three;

Whereas the rest of the world cannot be expected to take needed actions until the United States exercises responsibility and leadership;

Whereas, some lawmakers and executives in the United States appear to be unduly swayed by special interests;

It therefore becomes important for citizens to be keenly aware of the position regarding global warming of all candidates for election."[italics added for clarity]

Notice that James Hansen isn’t talking like a scientist any more. Among scientists there is lively skepticism about the possibility of human-caused global warming. But no one I know believes that climate change will “likely (have) devastating consequences for much of Creation.” Creation is a big place, as space explorers should realize.

A recent survey of climate researchers shows that less than 10 percent believe that mild warming, if it happens, will have negative effects, while about 40 percent think it will have positive effects -- such as maybe lowering the rate of seasonal depression among Dr. Hansen’s presumed relatives in wintry Scandinavia.

So Hansen’s Whereas Number 1 lacks evidence. As for Whereas Number 2, China has now passed the US in C02 emissions. Whereas Number 3 places the onus on the US either to perform the Miracle of Total Carbon Sequestration, or to freeze its economy. Thus the first three Whereases are not as obvious as Dr. H seems to think.

In Whereas Number 4 Dr. Hansen makes an ad hominem charge against skeptics who “appear to be unduly swayed by special interests.” It looks like there’s not an honest skeptic in the bunch. But that isn’t the language of normal science, where it’s considered bad manners to accuse skeptics of bad faith. This sounds like the language of Al Gore.

Hansen’s ideas carry weight only if they are supported by solid evidence. Otherwise he is just speaking ex cathedra, like the Pope in Rome. Science isn’t about religious authority. It’s about facts.

So here’s Dr. Hansen’s pledge for 2008 presidential candidates. Please chant in unison. (“Amens” are optional.)

1. Moratorium on Dirty Coal - I will support a moratorium on coal-fired power plants that do not capture and sequester CO2.

2. Price on Carbon Emissions - I will support a fair, gradually rising, price on carbon emissions, reflecting costs to the environment. Mechanisms to adjust price should be apolitical and economically sound.

3. Energy Efficiency & Conservation Incentives - I will support measures to improve energy efficiency, e.g., rewarding utilities and others based on energy and carbon efficiencies, rather than on the amount of energy sold.[Bold in the original]

These points are profoundly confused.

Number 1 insists that we stop new coal-fired plants that produce C02, until we can bury and “sequester” all that carbon dioxide. But the technology for burying all those C02 emissions doesn’t exist. Optimistic estimates are that by 2030 we may have “some valuable methods” for carbon sequestration. So this is either asking for a miracle, which is not very scientific, or a demand that we stop coal (and oil) power plants, which is neither good economics, nor good politics, nor compassionate social policy. Without oil and coal, people will freeze next winter, Dr. Hansen. (You don’t want that, do you?)

When you turn on your lights today remember that your power likely comes from C02-puffing industrial plants. If your electricity isn’t nuclear or hydro, it’s almost certainly generated by coal or oil or natural gas. Our population is constantly expanding, but Dr. Hansen would put a cap plus a rising tax on energy production. For all our new citizens, born here and immigrants, you can forget about joining our standard of living. Instead, we will have fewer lights, less heating, less air conditioning, less food, less medicine, less industry, and a smaller economy per capita. And yet, Dr. Hansen wants it all to be “economically sound.” This is a novel twist on economic soundness.

The key to it all, according to Hansen, is to institute “a fair, gradually rising, price on carbon emissions reflecting costs to the environment.” But “the environment” is not a person, Dr.H. It’s a metaphor: The Environment doesn’t work to reach its goals, it doesn’t put food on the table, doesn’t argue about what’s fair, and doesn’t pay the costs Dr. Hansen imagines. Hansen’s argument is nothing but the rhetorical device of “personification” in the guise of public policy. It’s the Gaiafication of the Earth.

Coming from a scientist this is very weird, just as if Isaac Newton were to personify the force of gravity. It was Aristotle who said that things fell to earth because of the “increased jubilation” they experienced as they rushed closer to Mother Earth. But even Aristotle probably knew that was only a metaphor.

Personification is what young children do when they play with toys: Ken and Barbie dolls are treated like real people in those moments of suspended disbelief. But scientists don’t personify hypercomplex systems like the earth climate.

Yet the personification of Mother Earth is at the core of Dr. Hansen’s Declaration. Hansen demands that “the barriers to efficiency (e.g., utilities making more money if they sell more energy) must be removed.” There, too, he uses words like “efficiency” in his own way, having nothing in common with standard definitions. In Hansen’s economy your energy company won’t get rewarded if they just keep millions of people alive and working. And they certainly won’t get more money by producing more energy. Rather, our new power plants will only earn money if they achieve, let’s call it Hansen Efficiency, defined as “putting out less carbon for the same energy output at rising cost.” Hansen Efficiency is to be achieved with a formula that is “apolitical and economically sound.”

Evidently Dr. Hansen believes that we can escape the basic political question of Cui Bono? or “Who will get the goodies?” In real life, his “apolitical” formula is called a “tax” to punish carbon emissions. It’s a tax we will all pay, as long as we use energy. That includes poor people who want to eat and also get to work. Words mean things, even in economics and politics.

So our NASA eminento has gotten very badly confused. This is the kind of fantasy that Lenin and Stalin used to play with in all those Soviet Five Year Plans . . . .

[Read the full article here.]

Continue reading "Environmental Stewardship News Round-Up"

The following items appear in the Cornwall Alliance for the Stewardship of Creation Newsletter, September 5, 2007:

We begin with two items that drive the nail into the coffin of the mantra that there is “overwhelming scientific consensus” on manmade, catastrophic global warming. The various claims of scientific consensus have never been backed by statistically significant, objective survey data of either topic-qualified scientists or topic-specific peer-reviewed literature (except for Naomi Oreskes’s flawed study of 2004, mentioned in the story below). Actual polls of topic-qualified scientists have consistently shown the opposite: no consensus but a wide variety of views. The first article below shows, via a study of topic-specific peer-reviewed literature, that no consensus exists even for “global warming,” let alone for “manmade” or “catastrophic” global warming or both. The second lists some peer-reviewed publications that challenge the mythical “consensus.” Keep these in mind the next time you run into somebody who says, “But all the scientists say . . . !”--ECB

Survey: Less Than Half of All Published Scientists Endorse Global Warming Theory
by Michael Asher, DailyTech, August 29, 2007

Comprehensive survey of published climate research reveals changing viewpoints

In 2004, history professor Naomi Oreskes performed a survey of research papers on climate change. Examining peer-reviewed papers published on the ISI Web of Science database from 1993 to 2003, she found a majority supported the “consensus view,” defined as humans were having at least some effect on global climate change. Oreskes’ work has been repeatedly cited, but as some of its data is now nearly 15 years old, its conclusions are becoming somewhat dated.

Medical researcher Dr. Klaus-Martin Schulte recently updated this research. Using the same database and search terms as Oreskes, he examined all papers published from 2004 to February 2007. The results have been submitted to the journal Energy and Environment, of which DailyTech has obtained a pre-publication copy. The figures are surprising.

Of 528 total papers on climate change, only 38 (7%) gave an explicit endorsement of the consensus. If one considers “implicit” endorsement (accepting the consensus without explicit statement), the figure rises to 45%. However, while only 32 papers (6%) reject the consensus outright, the largest category (48%) are neutral papers, refusing to either accept or reject the hypothesis. This is no “consensus.”

The figures are even more shocking when one remembers the watered-down definition of consensus here. Not only does it not require supporting that man is the “primary” cause of warming, but it doesn’t require any belief or support for “catastrophic” global warming. In fact of all papers published in this period (2004 to February 2007), only a single one makes any reference to climate change leading to catastrophic results.

These changing viewpoints represent the advances in climate science over the past decade. While today we are even more certain the earth is warming, we are less certain about the root causes. More importantly, research has shown us that -- whatever the cause may be -- the amount of warming is unlikely to cause any great calamity for mankind or the planet itself.

Schulte’s survey contradicts the United Nation IPCC’s Fourth Assessment Report (2007), which gave a figure of “90% likely” man was having an impact on world temperatures. But does the IPCC represent a consensus view of world scientists? Despite media claims of “thousands of scientists” involved in the report, the actual text is written by a much smaller number of “lead authors.” The introductory “Summary for Policymakers” -- the only portion usually quoted in the media -- is written not by scientists at all, but by politicians, and approved, word-by-word, by political representatives from member nations. By IPCC policy, the individual report chapters -- the only text actually written by scientists -- are edited to “ensure compliance” with the summary, which is typically published months before the actual report itself.

By contrast, the ISI Web of Science database covers 8,700 journals and publications, including every leading scientific journal in the world.

Related Items:

The Jury is Still Out on Global Warming
by Jeff Jacoby, The Boston Globe, August 20, 2007

Paralyzing Fog of Certainty on Climate
by Debra J. Saunders, San Francisco Chronicle, 12 August 2007

Senate EPW Committee Staff Member Catalogues Recent Peer-Reviewed Publications that Undermine Catastrophic Manmade Warming Claims
by Marc Morano, U.S. Senate Committee on Environment & Public Works - The Inhofe EPW Press Blog, August 20, 2007

Washington DC – An abundance of new peer-reviewed studies, analysis, and data error discoveries in the last several months has prompted scientists to declare that fear of catastrophic man-made global warming “bites the dust” and the scientific underpinnings for alarm may be “falling apart.” The latest study to cast doubt on climate fears finds that even a doubling of atmospheric carbon dioxide would not have the previously predicted dire impacts on global temperatures. This new study is not unique, as a host of recent peer-reviewed studies have cast a chill on global warming fears.

Read the whole article here.

Continue reading "Environmental Stewardship News Round-Up"

A letter to the editor in today’s Atlanta Journal-Constitution in response to two op-eds in that paper: “Global Warming: No urgent danger; no quick fix,” by Patrick J. Michaels and “Global warming: Don’t take skeptics at face value,” by John Sibley.

A taste: “Sibley the politician resorts to ad hominem attack on those with whom he disagrees. Michaels the scientist appeals to evidence.” Scroll down to the second letter to see the whole thing.

The following items are the continuation of the Cornwall Alliance for the Stewardship of Creation Newsletter, August 15, 2007:

Those first five major developments are themselves worthy of an entire issue of this newsletter, and the last two are significant as well. But here are some additional stories worth noting since our last issue:

1. Natural explanation for all climate variability in last century?
Science Daily, August 1, 2007

[University of Alabama climatologist Roy Spencer informed us of this article, writing, “a new paper in Geophysical Research Letters (GRL) claims all climate variability in the last century is (gasp) NATURAL! (I wonder if the mainstream media will cover this?)”--ECB]

In the mid-1970s, a climate shift cooled sea surface temperatures in the central Pacific Ocean and warmed the coast of western North America, bringing long-range changes to the northern hemisphere.
After this climate shift waned, an era of frequent El Ninos and rising global temperatures began.

Understanding the mechanisms driving such climate variability is difficult because unraveling causal connections that lead to chaotic climate behavior is complicated.

To simplify this, Tsonis et al. investigate the collective behavior of known climate cycles such as the Pacific Decadal Oscillation, the North Atlantic Oscillation, the El Nino/Southern Oscillation, and the North Pacific Oscillation.

By studying the last 100 years of these cycles’ patterns, they find that the systems synchronized several times.

Further, in cases where the synchronous state was followed by an increase in the coupling strength among the cycles, the synchronous state was destroyed. Then. a new climate state emerged, associated with global temperature changes and El Nino/Southern Oscillation variability.

The authors show that this mechanism explains all global temperature tendency changes and El Nino variability in the 20th century.

Title: A new dynamical mechanism for major climate shifts

Authors: Anastasios A. Tsonis, Kyle Swanson, and Sergey Kravtsov: Atmospheric Sciences Group, Department of Mathematical Sciences, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, Milwaukee, Wisconsin, U.S.A.

Source: Geophysical Research Letters (GRL) paper 10.1029/2007GL030288, 2007

Continue reading "Environmental Stewardship News Round-Up (cont.)"

The following items appear in the Cornwall Alliance for the Stewardship of Creation Newsletter, August 15, 2007:

For openers, a cardinal explains the connection between religious faith (or unbelief) and public discourse:

Some of the hysteric and extreme claims about global warming are also a symptom of pagan emptiness, of Western fear when confronted by the immense and basically uncontrollable forces of nature. Belief in a benign God who is master of the universe has a steadying psychological effect, although it is no guarantee of Utopia, no guarantee that the continuing climate and geographic changes will be benign. In the past pagans sacrificed animals and even humans in vain attempts to placate capricious and cruel gods. Today they demand a reduction in carbon dioxide emissions.

--Cardinal George Pell, Archbishop of Sydney, in a speech last year at Naples, Florida

A number of very significant developments have taken place just recently relative to the debate about manmade catastrophic global warming. To put it bluntly, the paradigm is falling apart as piece after piece goes missing. For a general overview, see Cornwall Alliance colleague (and University of Alabama climatologist and senior research scientist) Roy Spencer’s reader-friendly summary here.

Just last week three events occurred that should give Al Gore and other GW activists the chills (but probably won’t because they aren’t listening):

First, the ubiquitous claim that 1998 was the hottest year on record and the 1990s were the hottest decade on record for United States surface temperatures got thoroughly debunked. Instead, it turns out that 1934 is the hottest year and the 1930s were the hottest decade. The ten hottest years since 1880 are now, in descending order, 1934, 1998, 1921, 2006, 1931, 1999, 1953, 1990, 1938, 1939, with three of the top ten in the last decade but four in the 1930s. NASA’s Goddard Institute of Space Studies has quietly--no press release, no public announcement, no explanation offered on the website--changed its posted graph to show the new data. You can see the raw data here, and here’s a plot of it, the blue line showing annual figures, the black a five-year mean, of variations from a longer mean:

The significance of this is not immediately obvious. Certainly it reminds of the tentative nature of all scientific data and of the ease of human error. The mistake in the NASA data should have been obvious because it resulted in a major, sudden jump in the data--something that alerts statisticians to contamination of data. One graph, taken from here, depending on the old data that shows the jump clearly is this:



The correction of the GISS data also indicates that, for US surface temperature since 1880, there is no significant period-long trend. Is this significant only for US surface temperature and insignificant on a global scale? Good question. Probably not. It certainly raises the question whether similar data contamination affects other major regional data sets. It reminds also of the dubious credibility of all surface temperature records granted urban heat island effect, movement of measuring stations, changes of measuring equipment, etc.--problems critics have often raised. More immediately, however, even without such similar errors in other data, it suggests the need to reduce estimates of warming on the global scale. This is because (a) the Southern Hemisphere already showed no significant warming trend, and (b) the US data have always been an important part of the data for the Northern Hemisphere. This entails that the data for the Northern Hemisphere need to be scaled downward proportionally, although DailyTech blogger Michael Asher suggests probably only by about 1-2 percent.

For some good discussions of this, see these links:
1; 2; 3; 4; 5; 6.

In a related event, hackers apparently distressed by the revelation of NASA’s errors--a revelation that stemmed from investigations by manmade global warming critic Steve McIntyre--launched a DDOS (Denial of Service) attack on McIntyre’s website knocking it off the Internet. (Its webmaster expects to have the site back up again at a different server with a better firewall soon. Try it from time to time till you get through.) If you can’t refute your opponent’s argument, you can always punch him in the mouth--or knock him off the Internet! (I.e., DDOS is the high-tech equivalent of argumentum ad bacculam, appeal to force. For more of the other side’s appeal to force, item #4, “Hot Head,” among the numbered stories below.)

Continue reading "Environmental Stewardship News Round-Up"

The following items are the continuation of the Cornwall Alliance for the Stewardship of Creation Newsletter, July 2, 2007:

19. Debunking global warming alarmism
by Mark Corcoran

[Editor’s note: Nothing new or brilliant here, just a nifty, quick summary of inconvenient facts for GW alarmists to deal with.--ECB]

Here are some “inconvenient truths” – There is no scientific consensus on global warming. Climate is always changing, with or without man. Hurricanes are not getting worse; our tendency to build houses in their path is getting greater. Many big businesses lobby for global warming policies that will increase their profits… and our costs.

The Medieval Warm Period was significantly warmer than temperatures today and was a golden age for agriculture, innovation and lifespan. The media ignore evidence that would deflate global warming fears and exaggerate that which cuts “their way.” The media have alternated between global cooling scares and global warming for a century. The South Pole is getting colder. Not a single hurricane hit the US in 2006. We have just emerged from the Little Ice Age. The early twentieth century warming was more rapid than the modern warming, in between which was a cooling. Many climate experts doubt the media-proclaimed global warming alarmism.

It is the Greens who seek to censor science and intimidate dissent and debate. Just a couple of truths you should know.

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In an article at Fast Company (interesting in its own right for explaining how he remade himself after the 2000 election from failed politician to highly successful businessman), Al Gore, champion of environmentalism, said, “For whatever reason, the business world rewards a long-term perspective more than the political world does.”

Pardon me, but, can this really be an environmentalist? Aren’t environmentalists fond of claiming that businessmen never think farther ahead than the next quarterly report?

That’s not the only line in the article that raises an eyebrow. Later Gore says, “The line between news and entertainment is blurred”--apparently oblivious to his own contribution through his “documentary” film An Inconvenient Truth.

And then there’s the report that “Current TV [of which Gore is a part owner] is making money, about a 10% margin on cash flow.” Profit margins lower than that in the petroleum industry have been called obscene. When will environmentalists condemn Current TV’s profits?

Then there’s the reference to Generation Investment Management, another of Gore’s new business ventures. It handles carbon offsets and carbon trading, markets driven by the global warming fears Gore promotes. Recall that Gore’s Nashville home uses 20 times as much electricity as the average American home. Gore excuses himself by saying he buys carbon offsets. It’s understandable if he doesn’t mention the company from which he buys them--Generation Investment Management.

And finally there’s this paragraph:

[Gore’s geekiness] helps explain why, despite the interest from so many Democrats in his political aspirations, he seems genuinely distanced from the idea of running for President--at least for now. “What politics has become,” Gore explains at one point during our discussion, “is something that requires a kind of tolerance for artifice and manipulative communications strategies that I just find I have in very short supply. I just don’t have the patience for things that seem to be greatly rewarded in today’s political system.”

Hmmm. You don’t say?

Related item:

21. Gore promotes 7-point pledge for other people to stop global warming

But remember: he won’t pledge to bring his own residential energy use down from 20 times that of the average American household.--ECB

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22. Briefly Noted

Giant ancient penguins liked it hot

Study shows strong links between solar variability and climatic changes

Nearly three-fourths of public believe global warming is natural, not manmade

Climate alarmists fail to claim record cold and snows in South Africa & Australia as evidence for global warming

Portland teens make a musical global warming plea

Global warming threatens to dry up the Ganges and endanger a species of Hindus

Go vegetarian: Stop global warming

Solar shield could be quick fix for global warming

Gloom and doom in a sunny day

Composting waste contributes to global warming

The following items appear in the Cornwall Alliance for the Stewardship of Creation Newsletter, July 2, 2007:

1. Alma’s Mater: The violent hypocrisy of some peace & justice Christians
by Russell Moore, Touchstone, A Journal of Mere Christianity

“Peace and justice” Christians are insistent in telling us they do not wish to move away from the protection of unborn life when they point to other social issues. They simply seek to “expand” Christian social witness from the “Religious Right’s” narrow focus on abortion and marriage to the full range of life issues.

We’re not pro-abortion, they assure us. It’s just that we believe that life doesn’t begin at conception and end at birth. We believe, they say, that global warming and quality daycare and an increased minimum wage are pro-life issues too.

Let us grant that for the moment, setting aside the fact that we know abortion is murder but do not know what God would have us do about global warming. Let us look at the kind of political activists who are drawn to the big tent of the “peace and justice” movement.

Worship & Violence

Last summer, the Reverend Donna Schaper, pastor of Judson Memorial Baptist Church, an American Baptist congregation in New York City, wrote in Tikkun magazine about aborting her daughter, a daughter she named “Alma.”

She wrote that she doesn’t apologize for or even regret her decision. Abortion, she said, has been a positive development, allowing sex to be “recreational” for both men and women. In a chilling line, she declared, “I did what was right for me, for my family, for my work, for my husband, and for my three children.” She continued:

I happen to agree that abortion is a form of murder. I think the quarrel about when life begins is disrespectful to the fetus. I know I murdered the life within me. I could have loved that life but chose not to. I did what men do all the time when they take us to war: they choose violence because, while they believe it is bad, it is still better than the alternatives.

Now, Schaper writes in recent days for “God’s Politics” weblog—one of the leading forums of the “peace and justice” movement—on the subject of, of all things, responding to violence. In response to the Virginia Tech massacre, Schaper offers a “small guide for good worship” for Christians in response to acts of violence.

These include her suggestion to involve “diverse constituencies” in the worship. As she puts it: “This (in my view) is not the time to invoke the name of Jesus so much as the name of the God beyond God. Don’t alienate people who may never have wanted religious connection before!”

It would be appropriate and commendable for that weblog to ask a self-confessed murderer to speak to the issue of violence. After all, a repentant and forgiven murderer stands as one of the pillars of the foundation of the Church, the former Saul of Tarsus. A repentant killer could speak to the horror of violence, as one culpable and redeemed.

No Damascus Road

But Schaper has walked no Damascus Road. She has justified and celebrated the taking of an innocent human life, an act she says she knows is murder. And yet she is the one, for “God’s Politics,” who can instruct us on how God views violence, indeed how to worship in its wake. It is a revealing choice.

About this much the “peace and justice” Christians are correct: The gospel informs us how to view—and how to feel about—the bloodthirstiness of this present darkness. The wreckage of Eden is all around us—from the bloody Abel-shaped stain in a field somewhere in the Ancient Near East to the gruesome presentation of the Baptist on a platter at Herod’s banquet to the crazed slaughter on the campus of Virginia Tech to the jihadists’ crucifixion of Christians in Sudan to the calculated flushing of infant remains down a garbage disposal at the neighborhood “women’s clinic.”

Christians should not be surprised to see random or calculated acts of violence. After all, we serve a brutally executed Messiah who still bears the marks of such violence in his hands and side. We understand that, as the Apostle John tells us, “the whole world lies in the power of the evil one” (1 John 5:19). And we understand from our Lord that this cosmic ruler is both a “murderer from the beginning” and “the father of lies” (John 8:44). The lies then cover for the murder—as they did from the ancient taunt in the Garden, “You will not surely die” (Gen. 3:4), to the government-sponsored query, “What is truth?” (John 18:38), and right on to the present day.

Our lack of surprise at such violence, however, should not lead to complacency. The prophets rail against the shedding of innocent blood, including the prophet Amos, who denounced violent Ammonites who “have ripped open pregnant women in Gilead, that they might enlarge their border” (Amos 1:13).

The messianic kingdom promised us is one in which “they shall not hurt or destroy in all my holy mountain” (Is. 11:9). The anti-violence of the new order is directed to the protection of those who the world thinks do not warrant such protection. Thus, Solomon sings of the coming reign of his greater Son: “For he delivers the needy when he calls, the poor and him who has no helper. He has pity on the weak and needy, and saves the lives of the needy./ From oppression and violence he redeems their life, and precious is their blood in his sight” (Psalm 72:13–14).

Such kingdom priorities are not negotiable, even if they cut down on opportunities to pray the opening prayer at Democratic—or, increasingly, Republican—party gatherings.

Neutralized Life

There are some “peace and justice” Christians who remain true to their convictions. Ronald Sider of Evangelicals for Social Action, for example, remains (in my view) naively pacifistic, and he too often equates the Sermon on the Mount with the federal budget priorities of the Democratic Caucus of the United States House of Representatives. But he has refused to be a religious beard for the Godless Party.

We wish we could say the same for other leading “peace and justice” Christians. When Jim Wallis advises pro-abortion politicians how to “neutralize” the life issue among religious voters—“neutralize” it, that is, without actually protecting the life and liberty of unborn Americans—he is playing a very old role in American politics: the political chaplain who claims divine sanction for a party’s existing policies. Right-wing churchmen of another era neutralized the law-and-order issue among middle-class voters by condemning lawlessness, but ignored lynching when it suited the politicians with whom they curried favor.

Whatever the inclusion of Ms. Schaper by the “God’s Politics” weblog tells us about the “peace and justice” movement, her writing does tell us that it is much easier to be politically selective about peace and justice, and serve a political movement on its terms, when one doesn’t mention Jesus.

— Russell D. Moore, for the editors of Touchstone
[Editor’s note: Russell Moore, dean of theology at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, KY, is active with the Cornwall Alliance.--ECB]

Donna Schaper’s comments can be found here.

The following items are the continuation of the Cornwall Alliance for the Stewardship of Creation Newsletter, June 21, 2007:

23. We all use solar energy
by Greg Rummo, New Jersey Sunday Herald, June 3, 2007 (PDF)

. . . Life on this planet as we know it would be impossible without our sun. Earth would be a frozen wasteland with a temperature only slightly above absolute zero. Its oceans and atmosphere would be solid. One day, the sun’s finite reserves of hydrogen will be used up and it will wink out — cosmically speaking. None of us will be around to witness the event. We are and always have been dependent on solar energy. But not just the energy that streams into our atmosphere and falls on our continents and oceans in real time.

This process has been going on for a few years. And over these millennia, the sun’s energy has been captured, utilized for some very complex biochemistry and the end products stored for a rainy day in the earth’s future.

Put in very simple terms: when a photon of sunlight falls on a molecule of chlorophyll in the cell wall of a green plant, biochemistry happens. The earth’s forests, prairies and algae-dotted oceans act like huge sponges soaking up atmospheric carbon dioxide. Inside the plant’s cell walls, the sun’s energy is harnessed to disassemble atmospheric carbon dioxide and combine it with water to produce sugar and molecular oxygen which plants release back into the atmosphere for you and me to breathe.

When you look at a forest, you are really seeing hundreds of years of solar energy, stored in wooden structures. You can cut down a tree and burn it or send it to a mill and cut it up into lumber for the housing industry. A tree is in reality, a sink of solar radiation that can be used either for the production of heat and light by burning (a process chemists call oxidation) or as a building material to insulate man from the elements—to keep him warm in other words.

But the story even gets better if we extrapolate further back in time.

Earth scientists tell us that long ago, the climate on our planet was mostly tropical. This rain forest-like climate covering our planet was very conducive to the growth of green plants. ExtremeScience.com explains that during the Jurassic and Cretaceous periods a “profusion of plant and animal life left behind generous organic materials from their decay…(which) built up over millions of years undisturbed. They were eventually covered by younger, overlying sediment and compressed, giving us fossil fuels such as coal, petroleum and natural gas.”

The reality is this: All of us are using solar energy, not just the techno-geeks with the flat panels on the roofs of their homes. Every time you flip a switch in your home or depress the accelerator in your car, you are using solar energy. Just because you weren’t there to witness the biochemistry and the geology behind its creation doesn’t negate the fact.

Continue reading "Environmental Stewardship News Round-Up (cont.)"

The following items appear in the Cornwall Alliance for the Stewardship of Creation Newsletter, June 21, 2007:

1. Southern Baptist resolution says humans not entirely to blame for global warming
Associated Press, June 14, 2007

San Antonio - Southern Baptists approved a resolution on global warming that questions the prevailing scientific belief that humans are largely to blame for the phenomenon and also warns that increased regulation of greenhouse gases will hurt the poor.The global warming debate has split evangelicals, with some not only pressing the issue but arguing humans bear most of the responsibility for the problem because of greenhouse gas emissions. Other evangelicals say talking about the issue at all diminishes their influence over more traditional culture war issues such as abortion, gay marriage and judicial appointments.

The SBC resolution, approved near the end of the denomination’s annual meeting Wednesday, acknowledges a rise in global temperatures. But it rejects government-mandated limits on carbon-dioxide and other emissions as “very dangerous” because they might not make much difference and could lead to “major economic hardships” worldwide.

Originally, the measure also backed more government-funded research into global warming’s causes and alternative energies to oil. But the resolution was amended to drop that language, in part over concerns that it would endorse strong government engagement in the issue.

The two-day annual meeting of the nation’s largest Protestant denomination, which boasts 16.3 million members, ended Wednesday night. . . .

The global warming resolution acknowledges humans bear some responsibility for rising temperatures while urging caution, said Barrett Duke, vice president for public policy and research with the SBC’s Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission.

“It does not deny there has been a recent warming trend in average global temperatures,” said Duke, who helped write the measure. “What it does do is call for more objective analysis in the data that would explain causes of the warming we’re experiencing.”

The resolution stands in contrast to a statement last year signed by 86 evangelical leaders that said human-induced climate change is real, and that the consequences of warming temperatures will cause millions of people to die, most of them “our poorest global neighbors.”

[Comment: Notice how the media frequently refer to the Evangelical Climate Initiative as signed by 86 evangelical leaders but ignore the facts that its signers lacked relevant expertise and that the Interfaith Stewardship Alliance’s (now Cornwall Alliance’s) “Call to Truth” (PDF) was signed by far more leaders (PDF), including scores with relevant expertise in science and economics? This is how the media spin the news.--ECB]

The SBC statement frames the global warming debate as a moral issue with profound implications for the poor - but does so through a different lens.

“Our concern is for the vulnerable communities as well,” Duke said. “But we think if the data is being misinterpreted, and policies are being implemented to reduce the human contributions, those policies are bound to drive up the costs of goods and services for poor and underdeveloped parts of the world.”

Related item:

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2. Southern Baptists doubt human cause, government solution to global warming
by Marv Knox, Associated Baptist Press News, June 15, 2007

SAN ANTONIO (ABP) -- The Southern Baptist Convention rejected scientific claims that humans are to blame for global warming and dismissed the governmental efforts to reverse it. . . .

Messengers did not object to the basic claims contained in the global-warming resolution: that global temperatures have risen for decades as Earth emerges from the Little Ice Age, “scientific evidence does not support computer models of catastrophic human-induced global warming,” and major steps to reduce greenhouse gass would unfairly impact the world’s poorest people. . . .

Read the whole article here.

Related item:

Al Mohler interviews Cornwall Alliance advisory board member Dr. Russell Moore on global warming after Moore testifies to Senate Environment and Public Works committee.

Continue reading "Environmental Stewardship News Round-Up"