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News

Vermont governor blames tropical storms on global warming

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Here’s the interview of the left-wing site Democracy Now.

Excerpt:

AMY GOODMAN: You have a climate cabinet—you’re unusual in this way, Governor Shumlin—in Vermont, dealing with the issue of climate change. Can you talk about something that the networks, as they covered what wasn’t happening in New York and then came very late to what is happening in Vermont, have not talked about through this massive coverage, and that is those two words, “climate change” or “global warming”?

GOV. PETER SHUMLIN: Well, you know, I find it extraordinary that so many political leaders won’t actually talk about the relationship between climate change, fossil fuels, our continuing irrational exuberance about burning fossil fuels, in light of these storm patterns that we’ve been experiencing. Listen, since I’ve been sworn in as governor just seven months ago, I have dealt with—this is the second major disaster as a result of storms. We had storms this spring that flooded our downtowns and put us through many of the same exercises that we’re going through right now. We didn’t used to get weather patterns like this in Vermont. We didn’t get tropical storms. We didn’t get flash flooding. It wasn’t—you know, our storm patterns weren’t like Costa Rica; they were like Vermont.

And the point is, we in the colder states are going to see the results of climate change first. We are. Myself, Premier Charest up in Quebec, Governor Cuomo over in New York, we understand that the flooding and the extraordinary weather patterns that we’re seeing are a result of our burnings of fossil fuel. We’ve got to get off fossil fuels as quickly as we know how, to make this planet livable for our children and our grandchildren. And I do think that there’s a relationship between the storms that we’ve been getting here in Vermont and the example, frankly, of what—they are an example of what lies ahead for us.

Yes, it’s politicians like this that cause oil prices to go through the roof because they refuse to develop domestic sources of energy. And when you raise the price of oil and gas, you raise the prices of food, and anything else that needs to be transported.

But I digress… is the Vermont governor right about tropical storms never happening in Vermont? Let’s see.

Excerpt:

1927 November – A tropical storm spawned torrential rains as it rose over the Green Mountain in Vermont, Nov. 3-4. The record flooding caused $40 million in damage and killed 84 people in Vermont and 1 in Rhode Island. The storm ended as snow in the mountains. Note that this flood was unrelated to the 1927 Mississippi Flood.

1938 September – New England Hurricane of 1938 – Strong Category 3. Wind gusts reached Category 5 strength in eastern Connecticut, Rhode Island and southern Massachusetts west of Buzzards Bay and Cape Cod. The anemometer at the Blue Hill Observatory registered a peak wind gust of 186 m.p.h. before the instrument broke. The hurricane lost strength as it tracked into interior areas of New England, but it is believed to have been at Category 2 intensity as it crossed into Vermont and at minimal Category 1 intensity as it tracked into Quebec. The storm killed over 600 people and is considered to be the worst hurricane to strike New England in modern times.

Ooops!They’ve had hurricanes in Vermont… and those are much worse than tropical storms.

But what about scientists… what do pro-global warming scientists think of the link between hurricane frequency and global warming?

Excerpt:

Ever since Hurricane Katrina in 2005, hurricanes have often been seen as a symbol of global warming’s wrath. Many climate change experts have tied the rise of hurricanes in recent years to global warming and hotter waters that fuel them.

Another group of experts say there is no link. They attribute the recent increase to a natural multi-decade cycle.

What makes this study different is Knutson, a meteorologist with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s fluid dynamics lab in Princeton, N.J.

He has warned about the harmful effects of climate change and has even complained in the past about being censored by the Bush administration on studies on the dangers of global warming.

He said his new study argues “against the notion that we’ve already seen a really dramatic increase in Atlantic hurricane activity resulting from greenhouse warming.”

The study, published online Sunday in the journal Nature Geoscience, predicts that by the end of the century the number of hurricanes in the Atlantic will fall by 18 percent. The number of hurricanes making landfall in the United States and its neighbors will drop by 30 percent because of wind factors. The biggest storms – those with winds of more than 110 mph – would only decrease in frequency by 8 percent.

So what are we to make over the media freaking out over hurricane tropical storm Irene?

As Dennis Prager argues, meteorologists can’t even predict the intensity of a “hurricane” one day before the event, but they are certain about their predictions for catastrophic global warming. Is that not “irrational exuberance”? I can see why politicians on the left would sign on to this – they are always trying to make everyone equal by limiting individual freedoms and regulating businesses.

Commentary

Historian James Hannam debunks myths about Christianity and science

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James Hannam has written a book about Christianity and the history of science.

The Daily Caller has posted an interview with James Hannam.

James Hannam is the author of “The Genesis of Science: How the Christian Middle Ages Launched the Scientific Revolution,” set to be officially released Monday.

Hannam earned his undergraduate degree in physics from St. Anne’s College at Oxford University and a PhD in the History and Philosophy of Science from Cambridge University. He has been published in numerous scholarly and non-scholarly publications and is also the author of “God’s Philosophers.”

Wow, we could certainly use more scholars like this to plead our case.

That article features 10 questions and answers with Dr. Hannam, and here are the three best ones:

2. You contend that contrary to popular belief, there was great scientific advancement during the Middle Ages because of the Church. How did the Church help spur this scientific discovery and why do most people believe the Church was a hindrance to science?

The Church made math and science a compulsory part of the syllabus at medieval universities for anyone who wanted to study theology. That meant loads of students got grounding in these subjects, and professors could hold down jobs teaching it.

The myth that the Church held back science dates from the “enlightenment” when Voltaire and other French philosophes invented it to attack the Catholics of their own day as impediments to political progress.

[…]4. You write that it is a myth that people in the Middle Ages believed the world was flat. How did this supposedly erroneous notion about the Middle Ages become part of our conventional wisdom?

The earliest record I’ve found of this myth is from a book by Sir Francis Bacon written in the sixteenth century. Sir Francis was a Protestant who claimed believing the Earth is flat was evidence for medieval Catholic stupidity. So the myth started off as Protestant propaganda but was soon used to denigrate the Middle Ages in general.

5. What are some of the other great myths of the Middle Ages that we haven’t touched upon so far but our readers would find intriguing?

There are loads! For example, witch trials didn’t get going until the Renaissance and reached their peak in the seventeenth century, so they are not really medieval at all. Even medieval torture devices like the iron maiden turn out never to have existed until 1800 when they were invented as gruesome hoaxes. My favorite myths, because they are so ridiculous, is that a pope excommunicated Halley ’s Comet and that medieval theologians liked to ask how many angels can dance on the head of a pin.

If you get objections about Christianity and science, now’s your chance to prepare your answers. It’s amazing how people who don’t know the history believe what they want to believe. And I think that is interesting – it shows that the Bible is right in diagnosing the human condition. We don’t know, because we don’t want to know. We speculate, because we want to have a buffer to do what we want without having to be accountable.

Hmmn. Isn’t it funny that in secular public schools, atheists don’t put more science into the curriculum, but instead inject more religion, e.g. – Darwinism, global warming, feminism, socialism, multiculturalism, etc. Ideology, not math and science. But the religious people put in math and science.

News

Fox News: cowardly atheists refuse to debate William Lane Craig

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Is this what atheism amounts to?
Is this what atheism amounts to?

From Fox News.

Excerpt:

American Evangelical theologian William Lane Craig is ready to debate the rationality of faith during his U.K tour this fall, but it appears that some atheist philosophers are running shy of the challenge.

This month president of the British Humanist Association, Polly Toynbee, pulled out of an agreed debate at London’s Westminster Central Hall in October, saying she “hadn’t realized the nature of Mr. Lane Craig’s debating style.”

Lane Craig, who is a professor of philosophy at Talbot School of Theology in La Mirada, Calif., and author of 30 books and hundreds of scholarly articles, is no stranger to the art of debate and has taken on some of the great orators, such as famous atheists Christopher Hitchens and Sam Harris. Harris once described Craig as “the one Christian apologist who has put the fear of God into many of my fellow atheists”.

Responding to Toynbee’s cancellation, Lane Craig commented: “These folks (atheists) can be very brave when they are alone at the podium and there’s no one there to challenge them. But one of the great things about these debates is that, it allows both sides to be heard on a level playing field, and for the students in the audience to make up their own minds about where they think the truth lies.”

[…]Others have refused to challenge Lane Craig, too, including Richard Dawkins, one of the Four Horseman of the new Atheist movement, which include Hitchens, Harris and Daniel Dennett.

Craig has debated Hitchens, Harris and Dennett, and defeated them all easily.

More:

Dawkins, who has labeled the Roman Catholic Church “evil” and once called the Pope “a leering old villain in a frock,” refused four separate invitations, extended through religious and humanist organizations, to take part in debates with Lane Craig during his fall tour.

The controversy wafted into the British press after fellow atheist and philosophy lecturer, Daniel Came, accused Dawkins of simply being afraid, saying, “The absence of a debate with the foremost apologist for Christian theism is a glaring omission on your CV and is of course apt to be interpreted as cowardice on your part.”

Here’s an example of William Lane Craig debating the famous atheist Christopher Hitchens, arguably the top popular atheist in the world today.

Here’s a review of that debate fromCommon Sense Atheism, a popular atheist web site.

Excerpt:

I just returned from the debate between William Lane Craig and Christopher Hitchens at Biola University. It was a bigger deal than I realized. Over 3,000 people were there, and groups from dozens of countries – including Sri Lanka, apparently – had purchased a live feed.

Of three recent Craig debates, I was most looking forward to his matchup with Morriston, which has yet to be posted online. I was somewhat excited for his debate with Carrier, which was disappointing. I was least excited for this debate with Hitchens, but it was the only one in my area, so I went.

The debate went exactly as I expected. Craig was flawless and unstoppable. Hitchens was rambling and incoherent, with the occasional rhetorical jab. Frankly, Craig spanked Hitchens like a foolish child. Perhaps Hitchens realized how bad things were for him after Craig’s opening speech, as even Hitchens’ rhetorical flourishes were not as confident as usual. Hitchens wasted his cross-examination time with questions like, “If a baby was born in Palestine, would you rather it be a Muslim baby or an atheist baby?” He did not even bother to give his concluding remarks, ceding the time instead to Q&A.

So why isn’t there a British atheist brave enough to face Craig on his UK speaking tour?

Well, what William Lane Craig offers in his debates is a set of deductive arguments that are logically valid, and supported by the latest scientific evidence (which he has published in peer-reviewed scientific journals), and the consensus of academic historians, using standard historical methods. Atheists are ill-equipped to respond to this case, because atheism is not really a rational worldview that is based on evidence. It’s really adopted because people cannot be bothered with the demands of the moral law. They make these faith commitments about there being no evidence, or that religious people have blind faith, or that all religions are the same (especially the ones they haven’t studied), or that religion is unfalsifiable. But the root cause is simply the desire to not have to care about right and wrong.

Consider the famous agnostic Aldous Huxley:

“I had motives for not wanting the world to have a meaning; consequently assumed that it had none, and was able without any difficulty to find satisfying reasons for this assumption. The philosopher who finds no meaning in the world is not concerned exclusively with a problem in metaphysics, he is also concerned to prove that there is no valid reason why he personally should not do as he wants to do, or why his friends should not seize political power and govern in the way that they find most advantegous to themselves… For myself, the philosophy of meaningless was essentially an instrument of liberation, sexual and political.” — Aldous Huxley in Ends and Means, 1937

What about the atheist philosopher Thomas Nagel?

“In speaking of the fear of religion, I don’t mean to refer to the entirely reasonable hostility toward certain established religions and religious institutions, in virtue of their objectionable moral doctrines, social policies, and political influence. Nor am I referring to the association of many religious beliefs with superstition and the acceptance of evident empirical falsehoods. I am talking about something much deeper–namely, the fear of religion itself. I speak from experience, being strongly subject to this fear myself: I want atheism to be true and am made uneasy by the fact that some of the most intelligent and well-informed people I know are religious believers.

I want atheism to be true and am made uneasy by the fact that some of the most intelligent and well-informed people I know are religious believers. It isn’t just that I don’t believe in God and, naturally, hope that I’m right in my belief. It’s that I hope there is no God! I don’t want there to be a God; I don’t want the universe to be like that.”
(”The Last Word” by Thomas Nagel, Oxford University Press: 1997)

The famous philosopher Mortimer Adler rejected religion for most of his life because it “would require a radical change in my way of life, a basic alteration in the direction of my day-to-day choices as well as in the ultimate objectives to be sought or hoped for …. The simple truth of the matter is that I did not wish to live up to being a genuinely religious person.”

As G.K. Chesterton says,”The Christian way has not been tried and found wanting, it has been found to be hard and left untried“. Atheists want to believe that there is no God, so they do. And they carefully avoid studying anything that might threaten what they want to believe – or having to debate people who might challenge what they want to believe. What you will see from atheists instead of a willingness to study science and to debate qualified Christians is things like one-line ads on the sides of buses, lawsuits forbidding people to exercise their right to free speech, and demands that Christians not oppose abortion and slavery – because that cramps their pursuit of pleasure, don’t you know.

Here’s an example of an atheist learning about history from Bart Ehrman, a famous secular historian:

Of course, William Lane Craig has debated Bart Ehrman (video) as well. And defeated him. Badly.

Atheism really isn’t a knowledge tradition. It’s not really something that they think is true – it’s just that they want to be hedonists, and they want you to stop making them feel guilty with your moral superiority and moral judgments and your “unfair” moral prohibitions on bestiality and infanticide. Often, these people believe that the universe is eternal, that there are millions of unobservable universes, and that unobservable aliens can explain the origin of life. Craziness. And yet they are allowed to vote. I’m scared that these people can vote – especially since most of them voted for 1.65 trillion dollar annual deficits, because of “hope and change”. Maybe we should try to reform the education system to help them to get used to arguments, evidence and debates.