Tag Archives: Global Warming

News

Does Al Gore really believe in global warming?

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Satellite global temperature measurements 1979 - July 2017
Satellite global temperature measurements 1979 – July 2017

I think that if the rich Democrats who warn us about global warming really believed in global warming, rather than just scamming people out of their wealth, then we should be able to see it in their personal decisions about energy consumption. For example, they should fly commercial instead of on private jets, and they should live in modest homes that use less than average amounts of electricity.

Let’s take a look at what Al Gore is like in real life.

The Daily Caller explains:

On Friday, Al Gore’s sequel to “An Inconvenient Truth” – “An Inconvenient Sequel: Truth to Power” – arrives in movie theaters across the country. But there’s another inconvenient sequel worth noting and, like most sequels, this one is even worse than the original.

Gore’s hypocritical home energy use and “do as I say not as I do” lifestyle has plunged to embarrassing new depths.

In just this past year, Gore burned through enough energy to power the typical American household for more than 21 years, according to a new report by the National Center for Public Policy Research. The former vice president consumed 230,889 kilowatt hours (kWh) at his Nashville residence, which includes his home, pool and driveway entry gate electricity meters. A typical family uses an average of 10,812 kWh of electricity per year, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.

It gets worse.

Last September alone, Gore devoured 30,993 kWh of electricity. That’s enough to power 34 average American homes for a month. Over the last 12 months, Gore used more electricity just heating his outdoor swimming pool than six typical homes use in a year.

The National Center for Public Policy Research obtained the environmentalist’s energy-usage information from individuals at the Nashville Electric Service, the utility that provides electricity to Gore’s home and much of Middle Tennessee.

[…]Spending more than $1,800 a month on an energy bill would sink most Americans, but it’s pocket change to Gore. He has manipulated environmental concerns into a big business. When his term as vice president ended in 2001, Gore’s net worth was less than $2 million. Today, Gore is worth an estimated $300 million.

[…]Astonishingly, Gore also owns at least two other homes – a penthouse in San Francisco and a farmhouse in Carthage, Tennessee – so his carbon footprint is even larger than it appears.

It doesn’t look like Al Gore is serious about global warming. If he were serious he would be living in a smaller house, driving smaller cars, and using less electricity.

Maybe Al Gore is an exception, though. Let’s take a look at Elon Musk and big corporations that support global warming alarmism.

The center-left The Hill reports:

Take Elon Musk, for example. Two of his companies, Tesla and SolarCity, have accepted billions in global-warming-predicated government loans and federal tax credits. Put another way, Musk has a multibillion-dollar personal stake in global warming.

Nor is mogul Musk alone. GE, Microsoft, Google, JP Morgan, Bank of America, Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley – all benefit from “warmist” tax equity arrangements that allow them to take a 30 percent federal investment tax credit when financing solar projects.

That preferential tax treatment can be worth hundreds of millions of dollars per deal. In 2013, for example, Goldman Sachs offered a $500 million financing arrangement for SolarCity rooftop solar leases.

Goldman Sachs has also been associated with other solar projects beholden to the federal taxpayer for financial backing. They include the Desert Sunlight utility solar project (with over $350 million in stimulus funds and a nearly $1.5 billion loan guarantee from the Department of Energy) and the Alamosa Solar Generating Project (with cash grant from Treasury exceeding $35 million and a more than $90 million loan guarantee from the Department of Energy).

GE’s Shepherds Flat wind farm received over $1.2 billion in federal and state subsidies, despite the Obama administration’s estimation that it would “likely move without the [Department of Energy] loan guarantee.” The Obama administration also determined the climate benefits fell short of the total subsidies by a factor of six.

Google, General Electric, Chevron, BP, and Statoil are among a host of companies that own Ivanpah, the solar farm boondoggle that has cost Californians and federal taxpayers hundreds of millions

So, when you see these big billionaires lecturing the rest of us on how we need to rein in our energy consumption, recycle, etc. you need to understand why they may have a reason for keeping the Big Lie going. The most elementary reason of all: welfare. The reason that these big corporate global warmists advocate for global warming is the same reason many rank-and-file Democrats vote for big government: they like to collect welfare.

News

Temperature measurements plunge after Australia removes “adjustments”

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Satellite global temperature measurements 1979 - July 2017
Satellite global temperature measurements 1979 – July 2017

(Image source: Data from University of Alabama, Huntsville)

Of course the temperature measurements went down after the measuring process was adjusted to report the raw data.

The Australian reports.

Excerpt:

Recorded temperatures at the Bureau­ of Meteorology’s Thredbo Top automatic weather station have dropped below -10C in the past week, after action was taken to make the facility “fit for ­purpose”.

A record of the Thredbo Top station for 3am on Wednesday shows a temperature reading of -10.6C. This compares with the BoM’s monthly highlights for June and July, both showing a low of -9.6C.

The BoM said it had taken immed­iate action to replace the Thredbo station after concerns were raised that very low temperatures were not making it onto the official record. Controversy has dogged the bureau’s automatic weather station network since Goulburn man Lance Pigeon saw a -10.4C reading on the BoM’s website on July 2 automatically adjust to -10C, then disappear.

Later independent monitoring of the Thredbo Top station by scientist Jennifer Marohasy showed a recording of -10.6C ­vanish from the record.

BoM initially claimed the adjustments were part of its quality control procedures. But bureau chief executive Andrew Johnson later told Environment Minister Josh­ Frydenberg that investigations had found a number of cold-weather stations were not “fit for purpose” and would be replaced.

Several other temperature measurement stations are also receiving the fix to stop adjusting the raw data:

An in-house investigation that includes two independent experts has been called. The bureau said it rejected allegations aired in some media outlets that it had sought to tamper with temperature data.

It has been reported online that electronic smart cards were allegedly fitted to the BoM’s automatic weather stations, which put a limit on how low temperatures could be recorded in official weather data. The BoM declined to comment ahead of the internal review.

[…]On her website yesterday, Dr Marohasy said it was not the recording­ devices that were at fault. “To be clear, the problem is not with the equipment; all that needs to be done is for the smart-card readers to be removed,” Dr Marohasy said.

And this was not a situation where the government, which had been lying, corrected itself. Oh no! Challenges to the faked government data came from outside the government, as Bureau of Meteorology minister explained:

“The first we heard of the ­problem was in early July after (The Australian) approached the Bureau­ of Meteorology,” the ­minister said.

You might remember a recent scandal where it was discovered that scientists in the UK had been adjusting the temperatures to “hide the decline” of temperatures in their simulation code.

Here was the data before hiding the decline:

Raw temperature measurements before hiding the decline
Raw temperature measurements before hiding the decline

And here was the data after:

Raw temperature measurements after hiding the decline
Raw temperature measurements after hiding the decline

That second graph, with “Mike’s Nature trick” to “hide the decline” was sent then to the IPCC to influence climate policy. I have no doubt that socialist governments were very grateful for this “evidence”. Just what they needed to get a mandate from the masses to control businesses and consumer spending were grateful for this hiding of the decline, and rewarded the scientists with many research grants. This is why we call global warming alarmists “watermelons”: green on the outside, and red on the inside.

If you’ve never heard of that Climategate story from 2009 before, you should definitely read about it.  Here is a good single post that explains what happened.

Podcasts

Can a person be postmodern and a Christian at the same time?

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Can a person be postmodern and a Christian? Not for long
Can a person be postmodern and a Christian? Let’s look at their leader

Wow. Postmodern “Christian” Brian McLaren has completely abandoned traditional Christianity. McLaren, you may already know, spear-headed the “emergent church” movement – an attempt to fuse postmodern relativism with liberal Christianity.

Greg Koukl and Kevin DeYoung analyze his latest book “A New Kind of Christianity”.

The MP3 file is here.

Details:

Kevin DeYoung – Brian McLaren’s New Kind of Christianity
Host: Greg Koukl

Guest: Kevin DeYoung – Brian McLaren’s “New Kind of Christianity” (00:00:00)
Commentary: Reality vs. Religion? The Modern Upper Story Leap (00:56:39)
Guest: Dennis Prager – Reality vs. Religion (01:52:25)

We’re interested in the first hour of the three-hour show.

Topics of hour one:

  • What is Brian’s view of Creation?
  • What is Brian’s view of the Fall?
  • What is Brian’s view of Scripture?
  • What is Brian’s view of Truth?
  • What is Brian’s view of sin and Hell?
  • What is Brian’s view of the Fall?
  • What is Brian’s view of atonement?
  • How did Brian’s leftist political views infect his theology?
  • How did postmodernism affect Brian’s epistemology?
  • How faithful is Brian in interpreting the text?

There’s also a nice blog post about Brian McLaren by Melinda from Stand to Reason, too.

Excerpt:

McLaren doesn’t think the Bible is to be taken literally. For instance, the Garden of Eden story isn’t about sin and the Fall, rather it’s a “compassionate coming of age story.”  Consequently, the whole idea of sin and Hell is a horrible overreaction and has caused the church to offer a violent message and image all these years.  It follows from this interpretation then, that there is no need for the cross and Jesus’ death and resurrection.  Those are violent ideas resulting from a bad reading of the Bible.

And a couple of longer reviews are linked.

Tim Challies and Kevin DeYoung have written excellent and more in-depth reviews of McLaren’s new book and I highly recommend them.

I highly recommend you listen to this podcast and if you know anyone who is being influenced by the (non) religious left, take a look at the articles, especially the DeYoung article, which is quite good.

A generous “orthodoxy”?

And finally, here is a review of another much earlier Brian McLaren book by Biola University professor of philosophy Doug Geivett – one of my absolute favorite people. This is back when McLaren was just starting to leave orthodox Christianity behind.

Excerpt:

Brian McLaren’s book A Generous Orthodoxy (Zondervan, 2004) has been called a manifesto of the “emerging church” — a movement that is rethinking Christianity against the backdrop of postmodernism. McLaren is the founding pastor of Cedar Ridge Community Church in Spencerville, Md.

[…]In using the term “orthodoxy” for his position, McLaren is making a political move to subvert traditional evangelical theology. “Orthodoxy,” as he uses it, is whatever happens to be in vogue and culturally dominant. Also, an important theme among postmodernists has to do with the nature of belief — they doubt that people have, or need, good reasons to believe as they do, so they emphasize behavior over belief. (This probably explains why McLaren’s book relies less on evidence and argumentation and more on rhetoric.) However, in de-emphasizing the importance of belief, McLaren and other postmodernists overlook three things.

First, belief is the engine that drives behavior. The best way to cure wrong action is to identify false beliefs. Second, all people — even postmodernists — have definite beliefs about the things that matter most. They can’t help it. While McLaren resists the invitation to state clearly what he believes — for example, about the eternal destiny of nonbelievers — surely he has some view of the matter and that view influences his approach to the proclamation of the gospel. (As a pastor, he should have good ideas about this and a host of other issues of theological significance.) Third — though postmodernists sneer at the idea of evidence — evidence matters because it’s how we determine what’s true and is crucial to ordering our lives according to truth. In this respect, the postmodernist is out of step with the culture because human beings are by nature evidence-gatherers.

Very important to understand where these postmodern “Christians” are coming from, and where they end up when they’ve worked their mystical anti-realism through to its conclusions.