For the Sake of the Planet? Enviromentalism & Children

By Church Colson @ www.breakpoint.org Joan Blades describes herself as, among other things, a "nature lover" and a "mother." She is also a co-founder of the liberal activist group MoveOn.org and a regular contributor to the liberal blog The Huffington Post. In a recent post, Blades wrote about an article she read in her local paper. It described a group that supports the kind of measures Blades expected liberals like Huffington Post readers to support: health care for children, "fair wages," and flexible work schedules for moms. What Blades found surprising were some of the comments that came into the paper's website. One person "reasoned" that if he has to pay $25 for a dog license, why should parents expect help when they "choose" to have kids. Another commenter simply wrote, "Can't feed 'em, don't breed 'em." Of course, this is the Internet we're talking about. Still, Blades felt compelled to refute the erroneous assumption underlying those comments, that "choosing to have a child is purely an individual act" and not "a contribution to society as a whole." Their response to Blades's response was—what else?—more of the same. A "chunk of the replies" objected "to contributing to the wellbeing of children" because they did not want to "reward or encourage" "indiscriminate breeders." To be fair, many of the replies were supportive of Blades's views. Still, there were enough people using terms like breed and critters, terms normally associated with animals, to prompt Blades to write another article. This anti-natalism is not limited to liberals. A few years ago, at a dinner I attended, a conservative Christian advocated sterilizing poor women as a solution to welfare dependency. And today, leading immigration-reform groups have links to zero-population growth advocates. The divide is not between Republican and Democrats or liberals and conservatives—it's between those who regard children as a blessing and those who view them as, at best, a burden. While Blades is right when she says that plain selfishness accounts for some of the hostility to families with children, there is something else at work here as well. As Catholic writer Erin Manning says, the belief that growth in human population should be controlled is "an important tenet of mainstream environmentalism." Environmentalists agree that "there are too many people on the earth," and that repairing environmental damage requires "aggressive measures to limit and restrict human population." In contrast to the Christian idea of stewardship, which "wishes to conserve and protect the natural resources of the planet for the sake of future generations," this viewpoint "wishes to eliminate future generations for the sake of the planet." This is only one example of the cultural message today driven home to Americans: that is, that large, or even medium-sized, families are an impediment to the good life. Even if the kids are not yours, their existence will have a negative impact on you—whether it's higher taxes or global warming. Blades was rightly disturbed by the sentiments expressed, but she should not have been surprised—not in a culture where being a "nature lover" and a "mom" is viewed as a contradiction in terms.

AMS CERTIFIED WEATHERMAN STRIKES BACK AT WEATHER CHANNEL CALL FOR DECERTIFICATION

Posted by Marc Morano marc_morano@epw.senate.gov

After EPW blog post yesterday Weather Channel Climate Expert Calls for Decertifying Global Warming Skeptics http://epw.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=PressRoom.Blogs&ContentRecord_id=32abc0b0-802a-23ad-440a-88824bb8e528 check out this blog post from ABC-TV Alabama affiliate weatherman James Spann http://www.jamesspann.com/blog.htm

Also check out Weather Channel response to the controversy http://epw.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=PressRoom.Blogs&ContentRecord_id=3ab9e37d-802a-23ad-430e-1c42aad22006&Region_id=&Issue_id=

From Spann blog - his bio:

"In 2005 I upgraded the AMS seal of approval to the new "Certified Broadcast Meteorologist" designation. The CBM is the highest level of certification from the AMS, and involves academic requirements, on-air performance, a rigorous examination, and continuing education.Official bio here: http://www.abc3340.com/news/talent.hrb?i=188

The Weather Channel Mess

January 18, 2007 | James Spann | Op/Ed

Well, well. Some “climate expert” on “The Weather Channel” wants to take away AMS certification from those of us who believe the recent “global warming” is a natural process. So much for “tolerance”, huh?

I have been in operational meteorology since 1978, and I know dozens and dozens of broadcast meteorologists all over the country. Our big job: look at a large volume of raw data and come up with a public weather forecast for the next seven days. I do not know of a single TV meteorologist who buys into the man-made global warming hype. I know there must be a few out there, but I can’t find them. Here are the basic facts you need to know:

*Billions of dollars of grant money is flowing into the pockets of those on the man-made global warming bandwagon. No man-made global warming, the money dries up. This is big money, make no mistake about it. Always follow the money trail and it tells a story. Even the lady at “The Weather Channel” probably gets paid good money for a prime time show on climate change. No man-made global warming, no show, and no salary. Nothing wrong with making money at all, but when money becomes the motivation for a scientific conclusion, then we have a problem. For many, global warming is a big cash grab.

*The climate of this planet has been changing since God put the planet here. It will always change, and the warming in the last 10 years is not much difference than the warming we saw in the 1930s and other decades. And, lets not forget we are at the end of the ice age in which ice covered most of North America and Northern Europe.

If you don’t like to listen to me, find another meteorologist with no tie to grant money for research on the subject. I would not listen to anyone that is a politician, a journalist, or someone in science who is generating revenue from this issue.

In fact, I encourage you to listen to WeatherBrains episode number 12, featuring Alabama State Climatologist John Christy, and WeatherBrains episode number 17, featuring Dr. William Gray of Colorado State University, one of the most brilliant minds in our science.

WeatherBrains, by the way, is our weekly 30 minute netcast.

I have nothing against “The Weather Channel”, but they have crossed the line into a political and cultural region where I simply won’t go.

Perspectives on the Warming of the Globe

By Ian Clarey @ http://ruminationsbythelake.blogspot.com/

I'm amazed at how often global warming comes up in conversation. Some examples: I was entering the elevator in my apartment building and there was a twenty-something university student in there staring at me oddly, not moving his cart full of laundry. As the door closed behind me, in an eastern European accented voice he commented on the weather. In all his days in Toronto, so says he, there had never been a December without snow. "It's global warming." I replied that the weather comes in cycles and that we are in a period of warmth and should enjoy it. "No, this is man-made, and the earth is slowly warming." The elevator opened and we parted ways. Friends of mine have watched the recent Al Gore documentary, An Inconvenient Truth, to which the issue of global warming is a central theme. Again, we are told that man made emissions have been released into the atmosphere causing excessive warmth. Polar bears are dying, the ice in the Arctic isn't freezing, and we should prepare for a global flood of Noahic proportions. This morning a good family friend of my in-laws (and myself I might add), sent an email based on her having watched Gore, et al. She expressed concern and dismay for not having realised the consequences of global warming earlier. Finally, I thought, I should post my thoughts on this issue. What I thought I would do is provide some links to articles that I have found helpful on dispelling the hysteria over global warming. I'll annotate them giving a summary and thoughts on each link. I'll be interested to read what you guys think out there in the blogosphere. So, without further adieu: A Global Warming Primer - Robert Blackstock Blackstock was, at the time of writing, a PhD student at Auburn University and taught environmental economics. Although this was written in 2001, it is a helpful introduction to the issue of global warming, giving a definition, an excursus into recent environmental concerns such as the "global cooling" paranoia of a previous generation, the inefficiency of computer modelling (helpful for those who watched Al Gore), the inaccuracy of collected data on global temperature, and the monetary gain for organisations such as WWF who rely on this kind of uproar about the environment. The final paragraph of this article provides helpful advice: focus on the important issues, not the periphery: "So, the question that Americans must ask is this: 'Do environmental problems exist?' The answer is yes, they do—but anthropogenic global warming is not one of them. Unfortunately, as long as people are distracted by the myths, their attention will not be centered on the facts." The Global Warming Scam - Nima Sanandaji and Fred Goldberg This article is much more recent than the previous, having been written in 2006. Sanandaji is a Cambridge graduate and runs a Swedish think-tank called Captus and is the editor of their journal. Goldberg, having written his parts of the article from a polar trip, teaches at the Royal School of Stockholm. The authors show that the research involved on the issue of global warming is relatively inconclusive and that there are many views regarding it. As some journals have reported, ice in the north is actually constant and in some instances thicker than others are saying. They also point to the variety of polar bear populations and that though some are depleting others are constant and even others are growing. Their concluding paragraph refers to "doomsday" theories and there is no reason to scare the populace into thinking that the world is warming to deadly degrees. Unprecedented Global Warming? - Michael Heberling This article comes from one of my favourite journals, The Freeman. The author is president of Baker College Center for Graduate Studies in Flint, Michigan. The article details the nature of Kyoto and shows how its two assumptions, that global warming is man-made and that there are unprecedented levels of global warmth are not tenable. Heberling pays particular attention to the latter showing the levels of global temperature change in history, from medieval warmth (which was warmer than today's climate) to the warmth of the 1940s that wasn't man-made. The final sentence of the articles is telling: "Enjoy the warm weather, while it lasts!" Meaning, obviously, that we'll go through another cycle of cooling. An Inconvenient Truth - Ronald Bailey This is a review of Al Gore's movie written by someone sympathetic to the notion that the earth is warming because of man-made pollutants in the atmostphere, yet disagrees seriously with Gore's slide-show. He provides a lot of counter-evidence to Gore's and outlines the emotionally driven rhetoric shown throughout the documentary. For the last year or so I have been thinking on how, as an evangelical Christian, I can have better stewardship over God's creation. It is sin to abuse the earth, of that there is no doubt. We are called by God to take care of our environment, and because of that mandate, all Christians should shame non-Christians in our care for the earth. Sadly, this is not always the case. I would love to know what organizations that are worth supporting. Sadly, eco-theology is often left-wing and liberal, advocating theologies that I could not attach my name to. What should we do, as Christians, to provide for the environment without falling to earth-worship?