News

Is the EPA paying researchers to produce only the results they want?

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Atmospheric temperature measurements though April 2015
Atmospheric temperature measurements though April 2015

This remarkable story is from the Daily Signal.

It says:

Researchers from Harvard University, Syracuse University and four other institutions used climate models to predict the impact the EPA’s proposed carbon emissions reductions would have on human health. And not surprisingly, it turned out the government’s plan was not just among the options that would produce positive results but was, in fact, the best way to achieve the goals.

But there was a line in this story that sets it apart. Jonathan Buonocore, a research fellow at Harvard’s Center for Health and the Global Environment, told U.S. News the EPA did not participate in the study or interact with its authors.

But it seems the agency did participate and did interact with the authors.

The chain of emails went back and forth as the researchers and the agency both sought to add participants to the call. The fact the research showed precisely what the government wanted it to and that the government’s own proposal, when mimicked by researchers, produced the best results further raise suspicion.

[…]The scientists who produce this government-favored research not only have begun to cash in at taxpayers’ expense, but they’ve also begun to ask the agency for help with fundraising.

The study’s authors got about $45 million in research grants from the EPA, and that is taxpayer’s money.

But surely scientists who are critical of bigger government receive the same government-funding and support, right? After all, research is about truth, and the government just funds research that is truth-focused, right?

Not so much:

Willie Soon, an astrophysicist with the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, co-authored a paper published in January that found the models used in the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change are laced with mathematical errors. Soon then endured an avalanche of criticism of his funding sources and implications he had shaped his findings to please them.

It mattered not that he got only about $60,000 per year from the one “compromised” source or that the compromised source was the Smithsonian or that he had not known where the Smithsonian got the money it paid him.

Then, a few days after the New York Times piece on Soon appeared, Congress got into the act. Rep. Raul Grijalva, D-Ariz., ranking minority member on the House Natural Resources Committee, sent letters to seven universities asking for documents on climate change research connected with scientific skeptics who have questioned the premise of anthropogenic (man-made) global warming.

This was followed by a letter from Sens. Edward J. Markey, D-Mass., Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., and Sheldon Whitehouse, D-R.I., to 100 fossil fuel companies, trade groups, and other outfits “to determine whether they are funding scientific studies designed to confuse the public and avoid taking action to cut carbon pollution, and whether the funded scientists fail to disclose the sources of their funding in scientific publications or in testimony to legislators.”

Indeed, the deck remains stacked against those who dare to stray from the government message on global warming, and the conflicts of interest seem concentrated on the researchers and scientists who accept government money, according to William Happer, a professor of physics at Princeton University.

“Unless you accept the alarmist position and the dictates of the [Obama] administration, you cannot typically receive government funding,” said Happer.

It’s no wonder that so many Republicans, myself included, put the EPA in the list of Departments we would abolish. For me it’s the Department of Education, the EPA, the Department of Energy and IRS. Just get rid of the public sector bureaucracy at the federal level and push it down to the state and local levels. And privatize as much of it as possible.

News

Are there any candidates Christians can get excited about in 2016?

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Iowa Republican Primary Poll
Iowa Republican Primary Poll

Well, at the Faith and Freedom Coalition’s “Road to Majority” conference, four candidates shined – according to the left-wing Politico, no less.

Intro:

At the latest GOP cattle call, about a dozen presidential contenders rolled through a Washington, D.C. ballroom over a three-day period to tout their socially conservative bona fides at the Faith and Freedom Coalition’s “Road to Majority” conference. Most of the 2016 hopefuls managed to impress evangelical and other conservative Christian voters by championing religious freedom, highlighting support for traditional marriage and stressing the importance of family and family values.

Here’s their summary of the 4 winners:

Ted Cruz

Cruz flat-out owned this event, firing up the crowd like no other candidate did — attendees were still talking about him two days after he spoke. The Texas senator delivered a rousing call to action aimed at the evangelical community, saying that 50 million of them sat home in 2012 but could make the difference in 2016. “If people of faith show up, if we stand for our faith and our liberty and the Constitution, we will win and turn the country around,” he said. To a rapt crowd, Cruz did his best Reagan impression when he promised “Morning is coming. Morning is coming.” And he tore into what he framed as the Obama administration’s assault on religious liberty — a prominent theme at the conference. When Cruz finished, the crowd mobbed him.

Bobby Jindal

The Louisiana governor, who is expected to announce his presidential bid next week, is trailing badly in the polls but his appearance Friday was a chance to impress evangelicals — and he seized the moment. More than just about any other candidate, Jindal is a champion of religious liberty, and at the Faith and Freedom conference, he came out swinging. He blasted big business for making an “unnatural alliance” with liberals who opposed controversial religious freedom measures in Indiana and Arkansas. He tweaked Obama and Clinton for, in his view, “evolving” to support same-sex marriage only when the polls suggested it was safe — something Jindal pledged he would never do. He warned darkly that freedom, particularly religious freedom, is under assault, a stance that went over well with the crowd.

Scott Walker

The Wisconsin governor, the son of a preacher, met an enthusiastic crowd as he keynoted the closing session on Saturday night. The audience greeted him with a standing ovation after the president of Concerned Women for America introduced him by ticking through his record of opposition to abortion rights, and the speech itself was punctuated by attendees standing up to applaud. He reiterated his support for religious liberty, and his recitation of his confrontation with unions was well-received. But the biggest and most sustained applause of the night came as the governor offered a hawkish riff on foreign policy, tearing into the Obama administration for its approach to ISIS, Syria and Iran. Walker, who has been seeking to burnish his national security credentials ahead of an all-but-certain presidential run, appeared most energized during that portion of the speech — and the audience responded.

Carly Fiorina

The former Hewlett-Packard executive, who has shined at other GOP cattle calls, did it again Saturday. Attendees, particularly female attendees, were buzzing about her morning speech on the final day of the conference. Some noted that they had gone in knowing little about her, but had come out impressed with her resume and her energetic speech, praising her delivery as clear and direct. For Fiorina, who is known as her party’s most frequent and vigorous critic of Hillary Clinton, raising her standing in the polls is essential — her long-shot bid all but depends on qualifying for the primary debate in August, an event she nodded to in her remarks.

My first choices are Scott Walker, Bobby Jindal and Ted Cruz. I like Walker the best, though, because he has more accomplishments than Cruz (who is not able to build consensus to get legislation moved forward) and his state is doing better financially than Bobby Jindal’s Louisiana (Louisiana is struggling with a huge budget deficit).

News

William Lane Craig offers advice to Christians considering marriage

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This post is a 3 in one: one lecture, one question and answer, and another lecture – all on different topics. My friend Neil S. requested this so I’m posting it.

I got this lecture from the Reasonable Faith web site.

Dr. William Lane Craig is the top living Christian apologist and debater in the world today, and has 2 Masters degrees and 2 Ph.Ds. He also has scores of academic publications including books from Oxford University Press, etc.

The MP3 file is here. (14.5 Mb, about 41 minutes)

Topics:

  • the stresses of ministry on marriages
  • the Christian position on divorce
  • balancing marriage with academic pursuits
  • the importance of marrying the right person
  • Dr. Craig’s politically incorrect advice for choosing a spouse
  • Advice for men: Marry someone who believes in you and who supports you in your calling
  • Advice for women: Be the kind of person who can commit to being a helper and supporter
  • Advice for men: Beware of the career woman who will put their career over supporting you in your calling
  • Advice for women: Be careful about marrying if you think that your goals are more important than your husband’s goals
  • Advice: Don’t try to find the right person for you but instead focus on learning about marriage and preparing for marriage
  • Advice: Flee youthful lusts and pursue righteousness, love and peace
  • Advice: God intends for sex to be within the bounds of marriage, so you need to guard yourself against unchastity
  • Advice for men: be careful what images and movies you see with the goal of keeping your chastity
  • Advice: your highest responsibility after your relationship with God is your spouse, and your studies are third
  • Advice: it’s better to drop classes or give up your graduate studies entirely rather than destroy your marriage
  • Advice for women: understand that you have to work at the marriage in order to help your man finish his studies
  • Advice: set aside a period of the day for communicating and bonding with your spouse
  • Advice: cultivate the ability to talk with your spouse on a personal level, and maintain eye contact
  • Advice for men: do not break eye contact with your wife, and also hold her hand when communicating
  • Advice: do not be embarrassed to seek out a marriage counselor, but make it a good counselor
  • Advice:  don’t just be doing stuff for your mate, but also be vulnerable and transparent with your mate
  • How your relationship with your wife helps you with your relationship with God
  • How do you handle the rebellion of children without being overbearing and authoritarian?

There is a period of Q&A at the end. There is another piece of advice that comes out in the Q&A for women: take an interest in your spouse’s work even if you don’t care about it, and ask him about it every day and try to understand it. Go to the man’s workplace and see what he does. Go to his presentations. Get involved in the man’s ministry and help him in practical ways. Another piece of advice is to not paper over the differences – it’s good to argue, because it means that problems are being confronted and worked through. Husbands should have a good male friend to talk to, and wives should have a good female friend to talk to.

I like how Dr. Craig has thought about how to have a successful marriage, how to choose the right woman, and how to love his wife. I like how he calls out men on the chastity thing. I think that chastity is more important for men than for women, because it’s the men who take the lead in choosing and pursuing the right woman for their plan, and their judgment cannot be clouded by the desire for premarital sex.

It’s the man who is accountable for making the marriage count for God, he will never be able to achieve anything if chooses a wife is merely pretty, rather than being a good learner, resourceful, hard-working, organized and effective. She is the one who has to be chief of staff and take care of the details of his plan to lead the family. (In my case, the plan is 1) impact the church with apologetics, 2) impact the university with apologetics, 3) advocate for laws and policies that protect religious liberty, right to life, marriage and family, and 4) raise Children who will remain Christian and have an influence for Christ and his Kingdom). A man can’t choose a woman who is merely attractive and fun-loving – she will never be willing to commit to doing the hard work that will allow the family to achieve anything as a team.

This is important: don’t choose a woman who isn’t willing to help you with your plan to serve God. And don’t choose a woman who is more interested in fun and thrills than learning and working to achieve a goal. If she is not able to commit to tasks and finish what she starts, then she is not for you. That’s what good women do – they are not content to talk about big plans and not achieve then, they are doers. They find ways to get the job done through organization, discipline and self-sacrifice.

Secondly, here is my previous post on Dr. Craig’s advice for married couples, where he gives 5 points of advice for married couples.

Here are the main pieces of advice Dr. Craig gives:

  1. Resolve that there will be no divorce
  2. Delay having children
  3. Confront problems honestly
  4. Seek marital counseling
  5. Take steps to build intimacy in your relationship

And here’s the controversial one (#2):

2. Delay having children. The first years of marriage are difficult enough on their own without introducing the complication of children. Once children come, the wife’s attention is necessarily diverted, and huge stresses come upon you both. Spend the first several years of marriage getting to know each other, working through your issues, having fun together, and enjoying that intimate love relationship between just the two of you. Jan and I waited ten years before having our first child Charity, which allowed me the finish graduate school, get our feet on the ground financially, establish some roots, and enjoy and build our love relationship until we were really ready to take on the responsibilities of parenthood. The qualifier here is that if the wife desperately wants children now, then the husband should accede to her wish to become a mother, rather than withhold that from her. Her verdict should be decisive. But if you both can agree to wait, things will probably be much easier.

Third and finally, here is a previous post on Dr. Craig’s advice for choosing a good spouse, with illustrations from his own marriage.

For example, Bill’s first story about Jan occurs early after their marriage while he is working on his first Masters degree at Trinity:

And it was also at that time that I began to see what an invaluable asset the Lord had given me in Jan. I remember I came home from classes one day, and found her at the kitchen table with all the catalogs and schedules and papers spread out in front of her and she said, “look! I’ve figured out how you can get two Masters degrees at the same time that it would normally take to get one! All you have to do is take overloads every semester, go to all full-time summer school and do all these other things, and you can do two MAs in the time it takes to do one!”

And I thought, whoa! Are you sure you really want to make the commitment it takes to do this kind of thing? And she said, “Yeah! Go for it!” And it was then I began to see that God had given me a very special woman who was my supporter – my cheerleader – and who really believed in me. And as long as she believed in me, that gave me the confidence to dream bigger dreams, and to take on challenges that I had never thought of before.

If you want to hear another Christian husband talk about how his wife supports him, listen to this lecture called “Giants in the Land” with Dr. Walter Bradley. It’s actually my favorite lecture. I also really like his testimony lecture. If you’re looking for guidance, these are some of the people I would recommend.