Carbon dioxide isn't guilty

Carbon dioxide isn't guilty

by Jay Lehr

August 17, 2009



Address given by Dr Jay Lehr, Science Director of the Heartland Institute, on August 7, 2009, at the Institute for Private Enterprise in conjunction with the Australian Climate Science Coalition.



Global Warming – Why Carbon Dioxide Plays No Role


My primary concern with climate control legislation is the disaster it will have for the less advantaged. If we are going to see poor people throughout the world, particularly in Africa, advance and improve their standard of living it can only be by supplying them inexpensive energy. But with climate control legislation our energy will increase in value and their chances of improving their plight is going to diminish.

I am a strong believer in capitalism. There has never been a better economic system that can advance economic well-being. Socialism cannot work unless by force: you can't level the playing field for all people unless you hold a gun to their head, so capitalism is a better system than socialism.

But capitalists do not have any ethical advantages over socialists and part of our problem today is the greed of capitalist organisations that are at every turn trying to figure out how they can game the system and make money on global warming. So we are really not much talking about science, we're talking about money and political power. There are so many vested interests that are going to make money on carbon trading, which will become the number one traded commodity in the world. It will dwarf energy and oil and whatever grains we use as a traded commodity. The volatility of carbon trading will upset the market forever. We have about two hundred billion trading contracts today and it will grow rapidly to a trillion or more by 2020. People think they can make a great deal of money, unfortunately at the expense of less advantaged people.

Prince Charles supports a non-profit organisation that pays people in Africa not to develop anything, to stay poor, essentially it pays them not to advance. This for reasons that I don't fully understand other than he might feel a little daffy: he feels any human progress is negative.

At the same time, we can think of a green party, a green world, a religion that our kids have now been taught in their schools for a full generation. As standard religion seems to decline, the secular green religion comes on and climate change is just a major example of the green religion and it's very difficult to fight. I'm going to tell you how in basically three stages.

One, I will explain as simply as I can that carbon dioxide plays essentially no role in determining the temperature of the planet. Secondly, that carbon dioxide is not a pollutant, and that without the carbon dioxide we have on the planet we could not exist because vegetation would not exist. Hundreds of millions of years ago when the dinosaurs roamed the world we had five times more carbon than we have today.

We have indeed increased the carbon capacity of our atmosphere from 270 parts a million up to 380 today, and I have no doubt whatsoever that it will rise to 500, hopefully in my lifetime. I say hopefully in my lifetime, not that I hope it will rise fast but that I will live long. To add to my optimism, and you may wish to take everything I say with a grain of salt, at 73 I consider myself at the peak of my career.

When I point out in a couple of different ways that we're not responsible for the warming, and that carbon dioxide is a good thing, not a bad thing, you will obviously recognise the pointlessness of having any legislation. However it isn't pointless for people that are going to make money out of it or gain power out of it. But I hope to give you a package of simple information that each day you can share with people at your dinner table, that you can share in social gatherings like this if you get together and chat, not in a particularly strong science way, but in a manner where you share with people who respect your judgment that you are convinced that man is not responsible for the either ups or downs of the planet. You don't have to teach science, you plant a seed of doubt in the mind of somebody who respects you and they will rethink the whole thing. So slowly and exponentially, if all of you talk to three dozen people in the course of a year, and some of them talk to three dozen people in turn, very slowly we can turn around public opinion.

I was asked at a conference in New York last March where public opinion has to be before we can turn government away from climate change. My answer was 70 per cent, and I believe that's the objective. We need 70 per cent of the public recognising this scam before the government will respond. In the United States we have risen in the past five years from 32-34 per cent recognising that global warming was not man-caused to right now around 54 per cent, so we've turned the corner, we have a slight majority, but not significant in terms of changing the politics of it because they're still not seeing the critical truth.

Let's start at the beginning now, technically. My career in science goes back 55 years but my career in climatology doesn't go back as far, it only goes back to December 3, 1973. Why do I say that? Because on December 3, 1973 a magazine I no longer read, Time magazine in the United States, published this magazine with the cover “The Big Freeze” because it was the beginning of the 70s and global cooling was the issue. But global cooling did not catch the fancy of enough people, did not scare enough people. Sometime in the early 1980s they moved to global warming. I have been studying the issue very seriously ever since.

I kind of like to think that you in Australia might be interested to know that in the United States the opinion of Australia is absolutely amazingly positive. I think I've never heard a negative word said in my country about your country. People in the United States hate France, and the French hate us. And we have mixed emotions about the Canadians; generally positive, but mixed emotions. I've never heard a negative word about Australia so we do think of Australia as an island of sanity.

So let me give you the information. First of all, the numbers. We have a television show in the United States called: “Are you as smart as a fifth grader?” I don't know if it's gotten over here. Well, I'm not going to push you that far, I'm only going to fourth grade arithmetic and here are the numbers that are not arguable. That of all the greenhouse gasses, 90 per cent is water vapour, 4 per cent is carbon dioxide, 4 per cent is methane and 2 per cent are nitrous oxide and a number of flouride compounds. (NOTE: these numbers reflect the estimated relative contributions of the gases to greenhouse warming.) So of all the greenhouse gasses that make this earth habitable - because without them all the thermal energy that comes from the sun to the earth would return back into space if this greenhouse envelope didn't hold enough heat for us to have a planet to survive - only 4 per cent is carbon dioxide.

The shocking number is that, of that 4 per cent, man only contributes 3 per cent. That's our power plants, our automobiles, our own breathing; everything we do on the planet contributes 3 per cent. 97 per cent of the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere comes from the ocean and from plants.

Probably most of you are aware that Albert Gore, whose house is 20 times larger than any of ours here, uses 20 times more energy. It's okay because he buys dispensation from a company that plants trees somewhere. Nobody knows where but somewhere. It turns out that he owns the company.

But planting trees is a very interesting idea for the papal dispensation. It takes a tree about 10 years to get up to speed to absorb carbon dioxide. There are some aeroplane companies that will sell you a carbon credit so you don't feel so badly about flying. That's never stopped Al: he flies in a private jet everywhere. But it takes 10 years for that tree to grow up to where sufficient trees will equal your cross country in the jet. What happens when the tree dies? And what happens to the carbon dioxide? Right back into the atmosphere. There's no net change at all, it's all a joke that the public is not aware of.

If we take the 4 per cent of this carbon dioxide, and the 3 per cent of the 4 per cent that's man-caused - our cars and our factories - and you multiply them together, you will get a number that is 0.12 per cent of a per cent, or just over a tenth of a per cent. So our contribution to the carbon dioxide in the greenhouse gas envelope is just over a tenth of a per cent.

Now let's talk about Australia. Your country's total contribution to the amount of greenhouse gases that are put into the atmosphere by man is around 1 per cent. If you want to reduce it, we start from 0.12, now multiply that by 1 per cent, we're now I think at twelve thousandth of a per cent. And what is the new legislation? How much reduction is it you're aiming for? 5 per cent. So now 4 per cent, times 3 per cent, times 1 per cent, times 5 per cent. There's so many decimal places out there it's ridiculous.

I came here with Peter and he was saying: well, don't you think maybe there is some little impact of man here on the temperature? I said: no, there is none. We don't have instruments that can measure as many zeros out there with regard to what the carbon is. So whatever you do here in Australia will have absolutely no impact whatsoever on the temperature of the earth and you're asked to sacrifice your economic well­being in order to do it.

That's a story that has to be told to the public because I know that Kevin Rudd looks in the eyes of a few children and says “we want to have our national parks survive and if you do, you want to pass this, we need this legislation”. It's scare mongering at its worst. But if you want your parks to survive why wouldn't you want more carbon dioxide in your atmosphere? Everything on this planet is growing better than it has in our lifetime because we have added 110 parts per million of carbon to the atmosphere in the last 50 or so years. The yield of every growing vegetation on this planet has improved. Food is easier to grow.

When is the last time you saw a scary headline about loss of rain forest vegetation? Anyone has seen a headline lately? Really, what did it say? Brazil. Well, it's always in Brazil but the whole thing is dying down.

The fact of the matter is we are growing about two million tonnes of additional vegetation on the equator as a result of the increased greenhouse gases, and now the increased growth in the rain forest along the equator has far outweighed whatever amount of vegetation that was cut down by peasants in order to scratch some food out of the land. There was a loss of rain forests and now there's a very significant advancement of green energy in rain forest.

They're saying that carbon dioxide is a pollutant, then why do you drink Coca-Cola? Why do you drink champagne? Or why do you drink any sparkling beverage? Why would you go up to your loved one and kiss them? You're breathing carbon dioxide in their face. Why would you want to spread a contaminant? It's utterly absurd. The planet would not be lovable without it and it's better for having more. Everything is so upside down. The increase in carbon is all good, it's not bad. The increase in heat was all good – and we're not heating anymore.

Do you know, I don't know anybody in Canada who vacations in Norway. I don't know anybody in the United States that would not love to have the average temperature of their town get two degrees Fahrenheit warmer, and I don't know any old people who would rather live in a cold climate. Cold kills prematurely at five times the rate. Five times the rate. Life expectancy, as a matter of fact, in Norway is lower than most comparable countries. Cold is tougher. Diseases do not generally increase with heat so the whole thesis that carbon dioxide is a bad thing is absolutely false.

Science is done by observation. We measure things, we do experiments, we have hypotheses and we come up with proof, or we come up with no proof. Let me give you some proof of the relationship between carbon dioxide and temperature. Let's start with what you know for sure.

We have been keeping temperature records since 1880. From 1880 to 1940 we had a slight increase in the earth's temperature. From 1940 to 1978 the temperature was very flat. From 1978 to 1998 the temperature went up. From 1998 to the present we have been cooling. What has carbon dioxide done throughout this entire time?

From around the turn of the century when Henry Ford invented his car and all the inventions starting coming on, the first industrial evolution, and then the second industrial evolution following World War II, carbon increases have just gone up in a straight line but the temperature went up, went sideways, went up, went down. There is no relationship at all.

And when we look at ice cores we have 900,000 years of dated ice cores. It's not rocket science. We can date ice when we drill into various glaciers, such as we have in the Antarctic and Greenland. Now, two chemicals are always found in different ice cores. One is carbon, and it will be carbon 14 and carbon 12. The ratio of carbon 14 to carbon 12 tells us how long it's been since that gas bubble was in the atmosphere. We can actually date an ice core to within 50 years. Similarly in the ice bubble there’s an oxygen isotope, oxygen 18, which along with oxygen 16 which is the oxygen we breathe. That ratio of 18 to 16 tells us the temperature when the air was frozen. 900,000 years of records to tell us what the temperature was in the earth all the way back then. And we also can measure the carbon in the bubble, the carbon dioxide itself in the bubble, and know how much carbon dioxide. So we now have this 900,000 year record and what we found is that throughout those 900,000 years it revealed two things.

One, there's been a 1500 year cycle that's gone on forever - while the temperature is going up 5­7 degrees Fahrenheit and down, up and down over 1500 years, and then we have tree rings to support that. But more interesting, we find that the temperature rise always precedes the carbon dioxide rise. It is temperature that causes an increase in carbon dioxide, not carbon dioxide that causes an increase in temperature. This is so logical, this is so obvious. Why is it obvious?

A temperature increase will drive carbon dioxide out of solution in the ocean. The ocean is the primary source of carbon. Well, water contains more carbon dioxide when it's cold than when it's warm. So when the ocean is warm the carbon dioxide comes out.

What happens? Why are you not drinking old, warm Coca-Cola or old, warm champagne? There's no carbon left in it. You keep it cold to keep the carbon in it. Maybe you didn't realise it, maybe you just like it cold. It's not the only reason. If you want to keep the carbonation in, whether it's wine or soft drink, you keep it cold. This is not rocket science. You can teach this to the third or fifth grade science, but the public does not understand.

So this is the observational data that we have.

Now let's see what the other side says. They have mathematical models. I said science is observation, empirical study of the universe. There is not one shred of empirical study, not one shred of evidence, to show that man is increasing the temperature of the atmosphere. What do they have? Why is this so perverse? Here is why.

In our country, we are funding climate models, mathematical model on climate to the tune now, believe it or not, in excess of five billion dollars a year. The climate modelers are mathematicians. Some of you may not be familiar with mathematical models. Well, if you don't understand the physical system you can write an equation that you think simulates how the physics of the universe works. You can write an equation with a number for cloud cover, cloud height, ocean circulation, topography, various movements of air and ocean water, incoming solar radiation, dust in the air, volcanic eruptions. You can write equations for anything.

I can write an equation to determine if and when a plant out there may change colour at the end of summer by knowing how much foliage is on the plant, the nature of the soil that it's growing out of, the moisture content of the soil and maybe I will be right. But if I write that equation about when that plant is going to change colour, and let's say you're judging me, can I go on telling you when it's going to change colour forever? You just watch the plant and see if I'm right. It's a mathematical model that can be proved right or wrong. But the climate modelers can't be proved right or wrong because with these models they're projecting decades; in fact 100 years out in the future. It's nuts.

How accurate is your weather report here in Melbourne for a week from tomorrow? How much money would you place on an event that you're going to do a week from tomorrow based on what the weather report tells you? In fact, we measure weather report accuracy, they're about 56 per cent accurate seven days out; they're really good at telling you what things are going to be like tonight and tomorrow and pretty good the day after tomorrow but their accuracy drops off with days and after seven days. And yet we are asked to believe an equation that cannot be tested. There is no date certain.

If I ask you: what was the last major scare that gripped society - and I will say that it happened in the last 20 years - what was the last major scare that turned out to have no bearing? Y2K. There's always a fear that grips society because fear sells. News loves fear, we know that fear sells. We are genetically predisposed to be fearful. The reason is our ancestors lived in caves - at least the fearful ancestors lived in caves. The ones who are not our ancestors didn't fear going out of the cave - they didn't survive to have us. So only the scaredy cats in the caves survived and they had children who were scared, who had children who were scared, and they had us. We are genetically predisposed to be fearful. The news media knows that, the politicians know that. Scare people.

But Y2K had a major problem that global warming doesn't have. It had a date, just like my foliage on the tree out there. When it's time to change colour, if it doesn't change colour you know I was wrong. We all woke up on January 1 2000 laughing at how we had been duped. But we had an industry that was developed, an industry of people doing research on computers to protect us from self destructing planes falling down, trains falling off the rails when all the computers were unable to go from 1999 to 2000. As evidence against global warming keeps coming forward they just say: uh, huh, we forgot in our equation to put enough weight on particular matter coming out of smokestacks so we're a little bit wrong and we're going to warm a little further out. Now, happily, it's becoming a comedians' joke; it doesn't matter what happens, it's global warming. And they're overdoing it a little bit and I think the joke about everything being global warming is why in the United States we've shifted from 32-34 per cent who don't believe in global warming up to just over 50 per cent.

Of course, I have heard people say that cooling is a result of warming: if it wasn’t for us warming, it would be cooler. I mean, talk about how many people want it both ways. If I ask myself, how many more years of cooling do we need to change public opinion, I don't know that I know the answer to.

I can tell you I'm a sunspot guy. Right now we have less sunspots than we have had in many, many decades and sunspots are more or less atomic explosions that create more heat on the sun than normal and therefore the radiation coming from the sun is reduced and the sun is just very inactive and into a cooling period. This affects the oceanic current, it affects clouds, it is very complicated and it clearly starts with the sun but, based on all the atmospheric physicists I have spoken to, it foreshadows cooling.

You need to know more about models. I told you about mathematical model, but its absolutely amazingly ridiculous because the only grid resolution they can use in a model is about three degree latitude and this means we're talking about hundreds of kilometres. The atmosphere changes in tens of metres to hundreds of metres, they have to average everything and ignore hundreds of variables because in fact if we were to list all of the variables and their interaction in a real climate model, there isn't a computer on the planet that can handle it so it's all about guesstimating and making stuff up to come up with an answer.

One of the interesting things about modelling is that 10 years ago all the models had 7-9 degrees Fahrenheit warmer at the end of the century. Now they all say 2 to 4 per cent. How do they change so dramatically? They get together and they say: what do you want the answer to be? They change the equation to make them a little less scary and a little more reasonable.

I'll give you an example of stuff we know. The arrogance is breathtaking and it's actually all there. I do some work in biochemistry. Our minds have about 25,000 proteins and a protein you can think of as a machine in your body that does a function for you. DNA is a blueprint for all the proteins; basically that's what genes are. So the DNA tells the cell to produce a protein and a protein is an assembly of amino acids - there are 20 amino acids that are required for life.

Any vegetarians here? Very difficult to get healthy vegetarians. I maintain that to be a healthy vegetarian you need a PhD in nutrition because you have to combine non-meat foods to obtain the protein from the animal meat that has all the required amino acids. I talk about that a lot in lectures. A guy one day ran up to me and he says: you're absolutely wrong, I know three healthy vegetarians.

The proteins are very complex molecules made up of a number of amino acids. In order for them to do what they do, whether it's making your hair brown or making your toenails hard or whatever, what they do relates to their shape because after your body forms the protein, the protein folds itself into a shape, a very complex ­structure. If you took a piece of paper and you just squashed it like that, a lot of proteins look like that, folded in a weird way. No biochemist has ever been able to predict what a particular protein would fold itself into after it formed this chemical shape. Not one. And they see the protein in an electro microscope so they can have 1000 predictions and check 1000 end points and they've never done it. And yet the climate modellers project, with endless variables that no computer can handle, what the temperature will be.

So it's totally crazy. That's all they have. But it's about politics, it's about money, it's about power, and I have become an anti-capitalist. In the United States we have the Fortune 500, the 500 biggest corporations. There is not one of them that hasn't bought into global warming. There is not one of them that hasn't turned itself green.

I will end with a few comments on energy. Clearly we have enough fossil fuel, if they allow us to drill for it, for 200 years. The world will get nuclear energy you have probably the best supply in the world. It might take 50 or 100 years. Obviously France is already nuclear, China is building three new nuclear plants, and the United States probably will over the next 10 or 15 years. But wind and solar is what you're telling Australian businesses is their source of energy usage - and they're impossible.

The average coal fired power plant produces 1000 megawatts of energy (a mega is a million, a thousand million is a billion so your average billion watts). In order to duplicate that with wind requires 7500 windmills spaced out over 300 square miles: they can't be close together. And their capacity is limited because no windmill can produce more than a third, or 35 per cent of capacity. It can only produce 35 per cent because they only operate when the wind is over five miles an hour and below 25 miles an hour, they fall apart above 25 and then don't keep turning below five. And that doesn't account for the fact that the maintenance on them is terrible and they're down a huge percentage of the time.

So is solar a kind of saviour? You know, people talk about these fields of mirrors. Where does the sun shine most, the best place to put a field or mirrors? The desert. Ma'am, would you like the job of dusting those mirrors?

This is what we're saying: It's about money, it's about politics, we're losing. Now I hope the vote goes down on 13 August but it will come back three months later. I hope we vote it down in our Senate, but if we do it will come back. Ultimately, all of our countries, all the world is going to have to suffer economically. The real negative people say we'll never put it back together, we'll never undo it. I don't believe that. People tend to change their views when they're going down for the second time and we can turn the world around. So I have the sense I'm asking you to prepare to turn the world around. I mean, keep working trying to keep the legislation down over the next three months. If we win you do everything you can for the rest of your life, talking about the issue calmly and not striking it with people who respect you, ask them to spread the word and in some number of years I have little doubt that we will win the battle.



Note: Text has been edited for publication to remove asides and repetitions.

Jay Lehr has a degree in Geological Engineering from Princeton University and has written 19 books and over 900 journal articles on agricultural economics, agronomy and environmental science. He has testified on 36 occasions to Congressional committees.

Love and Marriage

From Culture Watch http://www.billmuehlenberg.com/
Bill Muehlenberg’s commentary on issues of the day…
Love and Marriage

A very brief news item caught my attention just recently which is worth commenting on. It had to do with where modern marriage is heading, and how some people are seeking to change the usual marriage vows to reflect their own preference for non-commitment.

Here is what the news item said: “Couples are abandoning traditional ‘till death do us part’ wedding vows in favour of those with a get out clause in the event their love ‘shall falter or fail’. Newlyweds are increasingly acknowledging that love does not always last forever and pledging ‘as long as our love lasts’. A few are even making agreements to review the state of the marriage after as little as five years.”

Of course in one sense this is not new. Prenuptial agreements are similar, in that they provide and opt-out clause from day one. Both thus seek to raise the white flag of surrender even before the marriage is embarked upon. This is hardly the solid ground marriage needs to be built upon.

Of course part of the problem is modern man has managed to totally disconnect sexuality from procreation. Until recently, everyone knew that they went together, and one without the other was hardly even considered. As Ogden Nash once quipped, “The reason for much matrimony is patrimony”.

Thus marriage as an institution has always been about two chief social ends: the regulation of human sexuality, and the provision for the next generation that arises from that sexual union. And these two have always been bundled together.

It was especially because of the next generation – but not limited to it – that marriage was always seen as a lifelong social bonding. And almost all human societies therefore gave high value to marriage, knowing that a good marriage makes for a good family, and good families makes for a good society.

But the real problem with this whole concept of temporary marriage is the fundamentally faulty notion of love that underpins it. Today when we speak about love most people mean something like feelings, or lust, or sex. Love of course has something to do with these three things, but is certainly not the same as those three.

Love, in a more sober age, meant things like commitment, self-sacrifice and willing the best for the beloved. Indeed, most cultures have realised that mere romantic love is the least vital aspect about love. Love is so much more than feelings. Feelings of course come and go, and in that sense we fall in and out of love all the time.

But that is exactly why the marriage vows have been the way they have been for such a long time. It is exactly because we have known that the feelings and emotions of love are fickle, temperamental and temporary, that we featured the “till death do us part” clause.

Indeed, so different was our understanding of love and marriage until recently, that we could very rightly speak about “for better or for worse, for richer or for poorer, in sickness and in health”. Real love was about dedication, loyalty, commitment and perseverance, not mere fleeting emotions.

Real love was about sticking with the partner of one’s vows, loving them to the end. It was always about true love, which always wills the highest good to the other person. It is the very opposite to selfishness and self-centredness. No marriage can work with two people fiercely clinging to their own rights.

A genuine marriage is about renouncing one’s rights and declaring one’s commitment to the well-being and good of the beloved. Thus marriage works on loving commitment, not selfish individualism.

But these new marriage vows clearly reflect such selfishness and me-first-ism. They are all about the individual, and not about the couple, or about any potential offspring of that couple.

Thus they are a perfect reflection of the age of self we now live in. We may well be one of the most self-centred generations in human history. Everything is about me, me, me. So we have taken an institution like marriage, which is fundamentally a social, giving institution, and turned it into a personal, taking institution.

Marriage both as a concept and as an individual union will not last with this fixation on selfishness. Of course it was never meant to. German theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer once very wisely said in one of his wedding sermons, “Love does not sustain your marriage, but marriage sustains your love.”

That has always been the right way of looking at marriage. And without this way of looking at marriage, we will be in an awful mess. I probably have fallen out of love with my wife zillions of times. But I have also fallen in love with her zillions of times. That is the nature of human relationships.

They have their ups and downs. But the truth is, a good marriage, like anything else worthwhile in life, must be worked at. Wonderful marriages do not pop out of thin air. They are the end result of two people who are committed to each other – warts and all –and who are committed to their marriage.

A marriage will never work with two people who are only in it for themselves. Marriage works when two people put the other first, and see marriage as a valuable and noble institution which must daily be worked on and improved.

Sure, there will be setbacks and progress, momentum and lulls, high and lows. And any married couple will have their fair share of fights. But the right attitude is the key. As Ruth Bell Graham once remarked, “A good marriage is the union of two forgivers.”

So if you are seriously considering marriage, my first word of advice to you would be to abandon any foolish thoughts about using such self-destructive phrases as “as long as our love lasts”. That is a recipe for disaster, and will pretty well guarantee that your marriage will be very short-lived indeed.

Angels

I hope Mums feel proud of their status at all times

A Newborn's Conversation with God
A baby asked God, "They tell me you are sending me to earth tomorrow, but how am I going to live there being so small and helpless?"
God said, "Your angel will be waiting for you and will take care of you."
The child further inquired, "But tell me, here in heaven I don't have to do anything but sing and smile to be happy."
God said, "Your angel will sing for you and will also smile for you. And you will feel your angel's love and be very happy."
Again the small child asked, "And how am I going to be able to understand when people talk to me if I don't know the language?"
God said, "Your angel will tell you the most beautiful and sweet words you will ever hear, and with much patience and care, your angel will teach you how to speak."
"And what am I going to do when I want to talk to you?"
God said, "Your angel will place your hands together and will teach you how to pray."
"Who will protect me?"
God said, "Your angel will defend you even if it means risking its life."
"But I will always be sad because I will not see you anymore."
God said, "Your angel will always talk to you about Me and will teach you the way to come back to Me, even though I will always be next to you."
At that moment there was much peace in Heaven, but voices from Earth could be heard and the child hurriedly asked, "God, if I am to leave now, please tell me my angel's name."

God said, You will simply call her, "Mum."

Anon

Discipline overthrown by the new-found tyranny of niceness

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Kenneth Minogue | March 21, 2009

Article from: The Australian

WHY have the British (and to some extent other Anglophones) allowed family and school life to collapse so extensively?

The collapse has not happened on all levels of society but it is widespread enough to affect everyone. The statistics, for what they are worth, are remarkable. According to Dispatches, a program aired on British television in January, a poll conducted for the National Union of Schoolmasters-Union of Women Teachers suggested that 97 per cent of teachers had disruptive children in their classes. Almost three-quarters (74.4 per cent) claimed to have problems with physically aggressive children, while almost half (45.5per cent) noted the disruptive behaviour of a minority was a daily occurrence.

In some British primary schools, each class is equipped with women who function as behaviour support assistants. They take over the disruptive children and thus allow the tranquillity needed for a little actual teaching. A difficult child, reported Dispatches, might be asked to choose -- choose! -- whether he was prepared to go back into class and behave, otherwise he would be shepherded into a "quiet room" without distractions to cool down. These children are 10 or younger, and the pathos of their being asked to make choices when they have never acquired the integrated mentality needed for that sophisticated act is piteous to behold.

Think back before the watershed 1960s and the contrast is instructive. Then, children had defined places in a classroom and learned rapidly the decorum necessary for school life. There was no question of choosing whether or not to behave because there was an order of conduct enforced by the teacher and it applied to everyone. The teacher was an authority figure and, like all authority figures, inspired a certain amount of fear, part of which depended on the possibility of physical punishment. Such punishment was seldom used, but it was part of an understood world. As a supply teacher in a variety of primary and secondary modern schools across Brixton, south London, for 18 months in those days, I only once had occasion to call for the cane, which was sent (with the caning record book) straight up from the headmaster's office. As I raised the cane over the offender's hand, a chorus came from the class: "Mustn't raise the cane above your shoulder, Sir, LCC (London County Council) regulation." These were children who had not yet been accorded the absurdity of rights, but they understood very well that they lived under a rule of law.

The insistent question is this: How is it that so many schools have moved from the orderly world of that time to the violent distraction and educational failure of today? It is a complicated story in which the causal links can only be speculative. We must recognise, of course, that we are a different society from that of two generations ago, better no doubt in some ways, worse in others, and the causal links we detect are only part of the story.

To lose one's grip on the centrality of punishment in our civilisation is to destroy the crucial balance between punishment and reward. Without the balancing severities of punishment and criticism, praise and reward take on the aspect of bribes, which demeans those who give and those who receive. But themanagers of our world increasingly resort to inducements.

Seventeen and 18-year-olds from poor families in Britain have been given educational maintenance allowances to induce them to stay on at schools after the age of 16. Schools reported that most of the beneficiaries exploited the system, turning up to the classroom only to qualify for the grant.

The idea that people should be paid to perform their duties is a pure case of the corruption that has doomed underdeveloped countries to poverty. The destruction of the punishment-reward balance is importing the same moral collapse here.

The niceness movement, then, is a central part of the answer to the question: How have we moved from the disciplined and largely successful schools we had before 1960 to the disorderly educational failure common, though obviously not universal, today? Much that happens in schools depends on family life, of course, and some of the most radical changes clearly have little to do with politicised compassion.

From television to the mobile phone, the enclosed character of family life has been opened to outside influences, of which the most powerful is probably the peer group. The peer group locks individuals into the much narrower experiences of contemporaries rather than the intergenerational wisdom of the family.

Nevertheless, the niceness movement has powerfully changed family life. Sixties' liberation detested the frustrating conventions by which (to put it crudely) sex had to be traded for commitment. Commitment is painful, especially to individuals with little talent for controlling impulse. Many restrictive conventions were abandoned so that the young should be free to follow wherever their impulses might lead.

Divorce became easier, yet the number of couples getting married dramatically declined. This left many of the resulting children in an unstable world, especially if they belonged to what was euphemistically called a single-parent family. Single parenthood often resulted from misfortune and could work well, but public concern has focused lately on one cohort of such abbreviated families: that of teenage pregnancy. In the past, the pregnant teenager faced painful options: the shotgun marriage, adoption or the backstreet abortionist. The state responded compassionately by providing accommodation and financial support to these young people.

But many of the children of such relationships grew up to be no less feckless and impulsive than their mothers. In the 1990s, the British government made a late start in trying to identify the fathers of these children, partly to pay for child support and partly to involve men as well as women in these problems. They have not had much success. The children of such unions have been prominent in the annals of gangland and delinquency. This is a classic case of compassion in one generation leading to misery in the next.

My argument is, then, that the collapse of family and school discipline largely results from a dominant moral sentiment that we may call "the niceness movement". Niceness as a political sentiment has many departments -- political correctness is one, for example -- but I am concerned largely with its sentimental undermining of authority in family and classroom. The selling point of this niceness was, as it were, that pupils would become a nicer, gentler generation, but in fact the disorderly tendencies that teachers soon lost the power to check have spilled over into the playground, where bullying has long been increasing, and from the playground this disorder has spread into the streets. Thus can politicised compassion lead to misery.

Moral vices prosper by dressing themselves as virtues. Niceness presents itself as benevolence but is often merely an evasion of hard decisions that the realities of human nature require. And it has spread throughout our societies because it is often popular with voters. The road to hell, it is said, is paved with good intentions, and so is a good deal of democratic politics.

One last point about this moral corruption: it is in important ways irreversible. I have emphasised that the campaign against physical chastisement in schools and families is an important element in the collapse of discipline. But one cannot have discipline back merely by changing the rules because it would need a platoon of soldiers to deal with the riots likely to follow any revival of the cane. Nor could one withdraw the rights to sustenance that dependent mothers have acquired in the 20th century.

This does not mean that there will not be a backlash against politicised decency as its nastier consequences become intolerable. That backlash is likely to make the well-judged pains of past practice look merciful indeed. But that is what happens when moral structures collapse.

Standpoint

Kenneth Minogue is emeritus professor of political science at the London School of Economics. His publications include The Liberal Mind, Nationalism, The Concept of a University, and Alien Powers: The Pure Theory of Ideology.

By C.S. Lewis Man or Rabbit?

“Can’t you lead a good life without believing in Christianity?” This is the question on which I have been asked to write, and straight away, before I begin trying to answer it, I have a comment to make. The question sounds as if it were asked by a person who said to himself, “I don’t care whether Christianity is in fact true or not. I’m not interested in finding out whether the real universe is more what like the Christians say than what the Materialists say. All I’m interested in is leading a good life. I’m going to choose beliefs not because I think them true but because I find them helpful.” Now frankly, I find it hard to sympathise with this state of mind. One of the things that distinguishes man from the other animals is that he wants to know things, wants to find out what reality is like, simply for the sake of knowing. When that desire is completely quenched in anyone, I think he has become something less than human. As a matter of fact, I don’t believe any of you have really lost that desire. More probably, foolish preachers, by always telling you how much Christianity will help you and how good it is for society, have actually led you to forget that Christianity is not a patent medicine. Christianity claims to give an account of facts—to tell you what the real universe is like. Its account of the universe may be true, or it may not, and once the question is really before you, then your natural inquisitiveness must make you want to know the answer. If Christianity is untrue, then no honest man will want to believe it, however helpful it might be: if it is true, every honest man will want to believe it, even if it gives him no help at all. As soon as we have realised this, we realise something else. If Christianity should happen to be true, then it is quite impossible that those who know this truth and those who don’t should be equally well equipped for leading a good life. Knowledge of the facts must make a difference to one’s actions. Suppose you found a man on the point of starvation and wanted to do the right thing. If you had no knowledge of medical science, you would probably give him a large solid meal; and as a result your man would die. That is what comes of working in the dark. In the same way a Christian and a non-Christian may both wish to do good to their fellow men. The one believes that men are going to live forever, that they were created by God and so built that they can find their true and lasting happiness only by being united to God, that they have gone badly off the rails, and that obedient faith in Christ is the only way back. The other believes that men are an accidental result of the blind workings of matter, that they started as mere animals and have more or less steadily improved, that they are going to live for about seventy years, that their happiness is fully attainable by good social services and political organisations, and that everything else (e.g., vivisection, birth-control, the judicial system, education) is to be judged to be “good” or “bad” simply in so far as it helps or hinders that kind of “happiness”. Now there are quite a lot of things which these two men could agree in doing for their fellow citizens. Both would approve of efficient sewers and hospitals and a healthy diet. But sooner or later the difference of their beliefs would produce differences in their practical proposals. Both, for example, might be very keen about education: but the kinds of education they wanted people to have would obviously be very different. Again, where the Materialist would simply ask about a proposed action “Will it increase the happiness of the majority?”, the Christian might have to say, “Even if it does increase the happiness of the majority, we can’t do it. It is unjust.” And all the time, one great difference would run through their whole policy. To the Materialist things like nations, classes, civilizations must be more important than individuals, because the individuals live only seventy odd years each and the group may last for centuries. But to the Christian, individuals are more important, for they live eternally; and races, civilizations and the like, are in comparison the creatures of a day. The Christian and the Materialist hold different beliefs about the universe. They can’t both be right. The one who is wrong will act in a way which simply doesn’t fit the real universe. Consequently, with the best will in the world, he will be helping his fellow creatures to their destruction. With the best will in the world ... then it won’t be his fault. Surely God (if there is a God) will not punish a man for honest mistakes? But was that all you were thinking about? Are we ready to run the risk of working in the dark all our lives and doing infinite harm, provided only someone will assure us that our own skins will be safe, that no one will punish us or blame us? I will not believe that the reader is quite on that level. But even if he were, there is something to be said to him. The question before each of us is not “Can someone lead a good life without Christianity?” The question is, “Can I?” We all know there have been good men who were not Christians; men like Socrates and Confucius who had never heard of it, or men like J. S. Mill who quite honestly couldn’t believe it. Supposing Christianity to be true, these men were in a state of honest ignorance or honest error. If there intentions were as good as I suppose them to have been (for of course I can’t read their secret hearts) I hope and believe that the skill and mercy of God will remedy the evils which their ignorance, left to itself, would naturally produce both for them and for those whom they influenced. But the man who asks me, “Can’t I lead a good life without believing in Christianity?” is clearly not in the same position. If he hadn’t heard of Christianity he would not be asking this question. If, having heard of it, and having seriously considered it, he had decided that it was untrue, then once more he would not be asking the question. The man who asks this question has heard of Christianity and is by no means certain that it may not be true. He is really asking, “Need I bother about it?” Mayn’t I just evade the issue, just let sleeping dogs lie, and get on with being "good”? Aren’t good intentions enough to keep me safe and blameless without knocking at that dreadful door and making sure whether there is, or isn’t someone inside?” To such a man it might be enough to reply that he is really asking to be allowed to get on with being “good” before he has done his best to discover what good means. But that is not the whole story. We need not inquire whether God will punish him for his cowardice and laziness; they will punish themselves. The man is shirking. He is deliberately trying not to know whether Christianity is true or false, because he foresees endless trouble if it should turn out to be true. He is like the man who deliberately “forgets” to look at the notice board because, if he did, he might find his name down for some unpleasant duty. He is like the man who won’t look at his bank account because he’s afraid of what he might find there. He is like the man who won’t go to the doctor when he first feels a mysterious pain, because he is afraid of what the doctor might tell him. The man who remains an unbeliever for such reasons is not in a state of honest error. He is in a state of dishonest error, and that dishonesty will spread through all his thoughts and actions: a certain shiftiness, a vague worry in the background, a blunting of his whole mental edge, will result. He has lost his intellectual virginity. Honest rejection of Christ, however mistaken, will be forgiven and healed—“Whosoever shall speak a word against the Son of man, it shall be forgiven him.” 1 But to evade the Son of Man, to look the other way, to pretend you haven’t noticed, to become suddenly absorbed in something on the other side of the street, to leave the receiver off the telephone because it might be He who was ringing up, to leave unopened certain letters in a strange handwriting because they might be from Him—this is a different matter. You may not be certain yet whether you ought to be a Christian; but you do know you ought to be a Man, not an ostrich, hiding its head in the sand. But still—for intellectual honour has sunk very low in our age—I hear someone whimpering on with his question, “Will it help me? Will it make me happy? Do you really think I’d be better if I became a Christian?” Well, if you must have it, my answer is “Yes.” But I don’t like giving an answer at all at this stage. Here is door, behind which, according to some people, the secret of the universe is waiting for you. Either that’s true or it isn’t. And if it isn’t, then what the door really conceals is simply the greatest fraud, the most colossal “sell” on record. Isn’t it obviously the job of every man (that is a man and not a rabbit) to try to find out which, and then to devote his full energies either to serving this tremendous secret or to exposing and destroying this gigantic humbug? Faced with such an issue, can you really remain wholly absorbed in your own blessed “moral development”? All right, Christianity will do you good—a great deal more good than you ever wanted or expected. And the first bit of good it will do you is to hammer into your head (you won’t enjoy that!) the fact that what you have hitherto called “good”—all that about “leading a decent life” and “being kind”—isn’t quite the magnificent and all-important affair you supposed. It will teach you that in fact you can’t be “good” (not for twenty-four hours) on your own moral efforts. And then it will teach you that even if you were, you still wouldn’t have achieved the purpose for which you were created. Mere morality is not the end of life. You were made for something quite different from that. J. S. Mill and Confucius (Socrates was much nearer the reality) simply didn’t know what life is about. The people who keep on asking if they can’t lead a decent life without Christ, don’t know what life is about; if they did they would know that “a decent life” is mere machinery compared with the thing we men are really made for. Morality is indispensable: but the Divine Life, which gives itself to us and which calls us to be gods, intends for us something in which morality will be swallowed up. We are to be re-made. All the rabbit in us is to disappear—the worried, conscientious, ethical rabbit as well as the cowardly and sensual rabbit. We shall bleed and squeal as the handfuls of fur come out; and then, surprisingly, we shall find underneath it all a thing we have never yet imagined: a real Man, an ageless god, a son of God, strong, radiant, wise, beautiful, and drenched in joy. “When that which is perfect is come, then that which is in part shall be done away.” 2 The idea of reaching “a good life” without Christ is based on a double error. Firstly, we cannot do it; and secondly, in setting up “a good life” as our final goal, we have missed the very point of our existence. Morality is a mountain which we cannot climb by our own efforts; and if we could we should only perish in the ice and unbreathable air of the summit, lacking those wings with which the rest of the journey has to be accomplished. For it is from there that the real ascent begins. The ropes and axes are “done away” and the rest is a matter of flying. 1 Luke xii, 10. 2 I Cor. xiii, 10.

Existence of God - proof

From This Rock - Catholic Answers

A Proof of the Existence of God

By James Kidd

The First Vatican Council taught that the existence of God can be proven by our reason alone:

God, the origin and end of all things, can be known with certainty by the natural light of human reason, through the things that he created. (Dei Filius 2)

But the Church has never offered an actual proof of God; it has left that to the philosophers. Although many have attempted to prove God’s existence, what they end up with is mere arguments. They may be quite persuasive, but they lack the metaphysical certitude of a mathematical proof. They may presuppose some bit of knowledge, or they may leave room for possible doubt.

But the medieval understanding of God, which St. Thomas Aquinas espoused, does not allow for doubting his existence. The proof that follows is a paraphrasing of the Angelic Doctor’s many writings that dealt with this subject. It proves the existence of a being that is one, immutable, eternal, infinite, omniscient, and omnipotent.

In fact, you can be more certain that God exists than that you are reading this article right now.

A Brain in a Vat

Let’s start by taking a position of radical doubt. Suppose for a moment that you are not really a human being with an actual body. In reality, you are nothing more than a brain floating in a vat of fluids, with electrodes attached to various parts of your exterior that allow evil scientists to manipulate you into thinking that what you perceive is actually there, when in fact it is nothing more than an imaginary world constructed by the scientists. Right now, they are making you think that you are reading this article when in fact you are not.

From this point of extreme skepticism, we will prove beyond all possible doubt that God exists.

1. One cannot deny one’s own existence.

Cogito, ergo sum. Even if you’re just a brain in a vat, your own existence can be verified simply by the fact that you perceive—that is, you see, hear, smell, taste and touch things. Whether or not your perceptions are accurate is another question, but even if you doubt your own existence, you must exist, for it is impossible for a non-existent thing to doubt. In fact, the very act of doubting proves that you exist. Therefore, denying your own existence is a contradiction in terms. I can deny yours and you can deny mine, but I can’t doubt mine, nor can you doubt yours.

2. There is at least one thing that exists.

It is possible for you to be deceived in your perception. In fact, it’s conceivable that every one of your perceptions is a delusion. But even if that is the case—even if nothing you think exists actually exists—you still must exist.

Entity is the word we have for anything that exists. You exist, so you are an entity.

3. There is such a thing as existence.

You can know with certainty that there is at least one entity, at least one thing of which the term existence can be predicated. If there were no such thing as existence, nothing would exist, not even you. But, as we have seen already, that is impossible.

As Aquinas would say, there must be an "act of being" in which all entities participate. This act of being must itself exist; it must be an entity. Thomas calls this entity esse, which is Latin for "to be" or "to exist."

4. The nature of esse is actuality.

Now that we have established that esse is an entity, we must ask: What is the nature of this entity? What is its definition?

To answer these questions, we must consider existence by itself, apart from everything else.

What do we mean when we say that something exists? We mean that it is actual. For example, an acorn is actually an acorn and potentially a tree. A tree is actually a tree and potentially lumber. Lumber is actually lumber and potentially a desk. A desk is actually a desk and potentially firewood. Firewood is actually firewood and potentially ashes.

In other words, a thing is actually what it is right now; it is potentially what it might be in the future.

Now when we say that something exists, we normally refer to actuality rather than potentiality. For instance, if I held up an egg and said, "This egg exists," you would understand me, because what I am saying is "This egg is actual" or "This is actually an egg." But if I held up the egg and said, "This chicken exists," that would not make sense to you, because even though the egg is potentially a chicken (that is, the chicken exists potentially), the concept of existence applies primarily to the egg’s actual state and only secondarily to its potential state.

Now potentiality is still a form of existence, but we realize that it is, in some sense, inferior to actuality. In other words, potentiality is a "shade" of existence the same way that pink is a shade of red. Just as we would say that pink lemonade is red but not in the same way that Hawaiian punch is red, so we say that potentiality exists but not as much as actuality does. Actuality is the fullness of existence.

So, again, taking the brain-in-a-vat hypothesis, you know that you are actual, even if nothing else you perceive exists.

5. Esse is nothing but pure actuality.

Potentiality is a privation of actuality. That is, it is not a thing in itself but the absence of something. In the same way, darkness is not a substance itself but the absence (or privation) of light.

Now a thing considered in itself contains nothing but its fullness. The nature (or essence) of light consists of nothing but light itself; it does not contain darkness. Therefore, the essence of esse contains nothing but its fullness, actuality. There is no potentiality in the nature of esse. Thus, the essence of esse is pure actuality, just as the essence of light is pure light.

Thomas argues that all entities participate in esse insofar as they are actual. Therefore, that in which they participate—esse—must be actual. In fact, it cannot admit of any potentiality.

6. Esse not only does exist but must exist.

Existence itself is pure actuality, with no potentiality in it. This means that the essence of existence is nothing other than existence. Existence is its own essence.

From this it follows that esse itself must exist, for if it did not, it would violate its own essence, which is impossible.

7. Esse is distinct from everything else that exists.

You can know from step 1 that you exist, and we know from step 3 that esse exists. But we also know that the two are not identical.

Let’s say you’re just a brain in a vat, that everything you perceive is an illusion. You can still recognize that, while you are actual in some ways, you are potential in other ways. You actually perceive that you’re reading this article right now; you’re potentially perceiving something else. You are actually existing right now; you potentially exist five minutes from now. Moreover, anything else that may exist has the same attribute: Its essence is composed of both actuality and potentiality.

But, as we saw in step 5, esse is nothing but pure actuality. Thus, it must be distinct from any other entity.

8. Esse must be one.

If there were more than one esse, then there would be distinctions among them. But distinctions imply limitations, and limitations imply potentiality. But since esse is pure actuality, it has no limitations, which means there is no distinction in esse. Therefore, there is only one esse.

9. Esse must be immutable.

Change involves potentiality. In order for something to change, it must first have the potential to change; it must have a potentiality that is to be actualized. But since esse is purely actual, it has no potential to change. Therefore, esse is unchanging.

10. Esse must be eternal.

Time is nothing but the passing of the future into the present into the past. It is the changing of the not-yet into the now into the no-longer. But because esse does not change, it does not change from the future to the present to the past. It must be outside the realm of time, which means that there is no future, present, or past with esse. In other words, esse is non-temporal, or eternal.

11. Esse must be infinite.

Space is nothing but the changing of the over-here to the over-there. Anything that is actually here is potentially there. But because esse is immutable, it must be outside the realm of space. It has no spatial constraints—that is, esse is infinite.

12. Esse must be omniscient.

Even if you’re a brain in a vat, you can perceive that you have the capacity to know. Because you are only partly actual, and esse is purely actual, esse must know all there is to know. That is, esse is all-knowing, or omniscient.

13. Esse must be omnipotent.

You can perceive that you have the capacity to do some things that are logically possible. Since you are only partly actual, and esse is purely actual, esse must be able to do all things that are logically possible. That is, esse is all-powerful, or omnipotent.

We have thus proven the existence of a being (esse) that not only does exist but must exist and is one, unchanging, eternal, infinite, omniscient, and omnipotent. This matches our definition of God that we stated at the beginning.

We can conclude, then, that even if all of your sense perceptions are false, even if you are nothing but a brain in a vat being manipulated by scientists into believing that you are reading this article right now when in fact you are not, there are two things you can know with absolute, 100 percent certainty: (1) You exist, and (2) God exists.

Homophobia? really....!

You would wonder why and how the progressive commentators and the intelligentsia in the Western world would take offense at the pope's words as translated from the Latin by Rt. Rev Michael Campbell OSA, Coadjutor Bishop of Lancaster

(small excerpt of the Pope's address To the curia 22 Dec 2008 )

[ .....Joy as the fruit of the Holy Spirit ­ with this we come to the central theme of Sydney which, precisely, was the Holy Spirit. In this retrospective glance I
would like to refer, by way of synthesis, to the orientation implicit in such a theme. Keeping before our eyes the witness of Scripture and of Tradition, four dimensions of the theme "Holy Spirit" are easily recognised.

1. The first is the affirmation which we find at the beginning of the account of creation: there we hear of the Creator Spirit which hovers over the waters, creates the world and constantly renews it. Faith in the Creator Spirit is an essential part of the Christian Credo. The fact that matter carries within itself a mathematical structure, is full of spirit, and forms the foundation on which the modern natural sciences rest. Only because is structured in an intelligent fashion is our spirit competent to interpret it and to actively refashion it. Because this intelligent structure proceeds from the same Spirit Creator which has given the spirit to us, it brings with it a task and a responsibility. The ultimate foundation for our responsibility towards the earth rests on our beliefs about creation. The earth is not simply our possession which we can plunder according to our interests and desires. It is rather a gift of the Creator who has designed its intrinsic laws and with this has given us the basic directions for us to adhere as stewards of his creation. The fact that the earth, the cosmos, mirror the Creator Spirit, clearly means that their rational structures which, transcending the mathematical order, become almost palpable in our experience, bear within themselves an ethical orientation. The Spirit which has formed them, is more than mathematics, he is the Good in person, using the language of creation, and points us to the way of right living.

Since faith in the Creator is an essential part of the Christian Credo, the Church cannot and should not confine itself to passing on the message of salvation alone. It has a responsibility for the created order and ought to make this responsibility prevail, even in public. And in so doing, it ought to safeguard not only the earth, water, and air as gifts of creation, belonging to everyone. It ought also to protect man against the destruction of himself.
What is necessary is a kind of ecology of man, understood in the correct sense. When the Church speaks of the nature of the human being as man and woman and asks that this order of creation be respected, it is not the result of an outdated metaphysic. It is a question here of faith in the Creator and of listening to the language of creation, the devaluation of which leads to the self destruction of man and therefore to the destruction of the same work of God. That which is often expressed and understood by the term "gender", results finally in the self-emancipation of man from creation and from the Creator. Man wishes to act alone and to dispose ever and exclusively of that alone which concerns him. But in this way he is living contrary to the truth, he is living contrary to the Spirit Creator. The tropical forests are deserving, yes, of our protection, but man merits no less than the creature, in which there is written a message which does not mean a contradiction of our liberty, but its condition. The great Scholastic theologians have characterised matrimony, the life-long bond between man and woman, as a sacrament of creation, instituted by the Creator himself and which Christ ­ without modifying the message of creation ­ has incorporated into the history of his covenant with mankind.

This forms part of the message that the Church must recover the witness in favour of the Spirit Creator present in nature in its entirety and in a particular way in the nature of man, created in the image of God. Beginning from this perspective, it would be beneficial to read again the Encyclical Humanae Vitae: the intention of Pope Paul VI was to defend love against sexuality as a consumer entity, the future as opposed to the exclusive pretext of the present, and the nature of man against its manipulation. ...... ]

The process of erroneous religions

Post lifted from the Catholic Answers Forum

Dec 1, '08, 1:53 am
onenow1 is online now
Senior Member


Satans' Master Plan...



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THE MASTER PLAN OF THE DEVIL. THE DEVELOPMENT OF MODERN ERRORS...

For approximately seventeen centuries men acknowledged that authority comes only from God, and temporal rulers sought the approval and the blessing of their bishops who, by divine right, ruled in their dioceses as successors of the Apostles. Then came the Philosophists. As always, the Power of Darkness used pride to achieve his aims, the pride of human reason. As always he called the Light, Darkness and the Darkness, Light (Isaiah 5:20). That is why the Medieval times are now referred to as the "Dark Ages"; (in fact, the Dark Ages were pre-Medieval), and why Philosophism is referred to as "Enlightenment".

As always, the Devil acted with subtlety: he did not bring in Communism immediately, he brought in Modern Democracy first, knowing that the one would lead to the other. The lures inherent in the first would more easily lead to the destruction of man by the second. The Devil acted with cunning. So shrewd is he that even Christians were deceived. To make a thorough job of it he instilled into modern minds the myth of historical inevitability. "We must march with the times" we are told, as if the times were not what we are making them!

A SUBTLE AND GRADUAL PROCESS...

The present state of the world is not due to chance, it is the outcome of the everlasting struggle between good and evil. The Devil knows that his fight against God has to be gradual if it is to have any chance of success. Therefore, he began his fight in the 16th century by dividing Christianity.

When the first battle had been won, the Devil moved from the religious field into the philosophical field, and conceived Rationalism, which put human reason before Revelation.
Christians being already divided, there was no single front to defend the primacy of Divine Revelation.

The interpretation of Divine Revelation being divided against itself, it could not resist the claim of the so-called primacy of human reason. Human reason appeared more reliable, and so the new philosophy installed itself. It naturally followed that man began to think about an earthly paradise.

Hence Rationalism begot Human Messianism (i.e. Humanism). It was then logical that man should not want to be impeded by standards of moral conduct. He had to be free from all restraints, and his reason alone was going to tell him how to act and behave.

Thus came into being the doctrine of Liberalism. Almost immediately, this doctrine extended to every field of human activity, especially economics, politics and science. From being philosophical, it became practical a way of life, the philosophical origin of which, most people do not suspect nowadays.

AN UNHOLY TRINITY...

After this, Human Messianism combined with Liberalism to set up CAPITALISM, an economic system based on greed and usury, which paves the way for Communism. Rationalism and Liberalism combined to give birth to the principle of POPULAR SOVEREIGNTY, being free and reasonable, every human being was to make all decisions.

Rationalism, and Human Messianism, combined to give birth to SCIENTISM (or the cult of Technology, the worship of the work of man, i.e. TECHNOLATRY) whereby we expect salvation from better and higher production, an error which was observed by Pius XII in his 1952 Christmas message. We speak of "Progress" in terms of industrialisation, completely unaware of "the undeniable advantages of an economy based chiefly on agriculture". (Pius XII)

DIABOLICALLY LOGICAL...

Thus, the unholy trinity, that is, Rationalism, Human Messianism, and Liberalism, laid the ground-work for all the evils which are destroying modern society. Observe how gradual the process has been:
a) Difference in religious views (affecting the soul).
b) Alteration in philosophical thinking (affecting the intellect).
c) Organisation and purpose of the physical world (affecting the will).

Observe how logical the development:
a) REFORMATION (dividing Christianity to weaken Divine Revelation).
b) RATIONALISM (doubting that man can rely on Divine Revelation).
c) HUMAN MESSIANISM (asserting that man can rely on himself).
d) LIBERALISM (trusting man wholly).
e) CAPITALISM (Human Messianism plus Liberalism).
f) DEMOCRACY (Rationalism plus Liberalism).
g) TECHNOCRACY (and Technolatry) - (Nationalism plus Human Messianism).

These developments are too gradual and logical to leave any doubt that there is an Intelligence behind it. This Intelligence is that of the Power of Darkness.

A number of Saints have said that, in the Latter Days, evil will be done by men of good will. There is no doubt that many Catholics believe in good faith that we are living in an age of progress, and that Modern Democracy IS Progress. The superficial advantages which it presents hide from many its intrinsic nature, the errors on which it is based, and the evils which accompany it.

The deception of the Devil has worked. Author Unknown...

Quote=onenow1, I like to read this every once in awhile Christian Knight,I think it brings a little more understanding of reformation history into perspective.

For 2000yrs the Catholic Church is still here, same place same station same doctrines. As Jesus said ! The gates of Hell Shall not prevail.

Did you ever wonder, why till this day Christian churches continue to split into newer factions, I don't think this is the work of the Holy Spirit

In the gospels remember what Jesus said a house divided against itself will not stand.

Peace, onenow1

Climate Change Illusions

An article from Quadrant

Environment

Illusions of Climate Science

William Kininmonth

How have we come to a situation where, as some polls suggest, most Australians are so concerned about dangerous climate change that they will put aside the very tools and technologies that have sustained clean air, clean water, nutritious food and long life? More importantly, is the perceived danger real and will the reduction of carbon dioxide emissions avert the perceived danger? Although there are many uncertainties to be resolved, it is clear that the community has been the subject of more than two decades of heavily biased propaganda.

In spite of claims to the contrary, there is no consensus of scientists supporting the findings and recommendations of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. There exists a large and vocal group of highly qualified dissenters (often denigrated as sceptics, deniers or worse). Published letters and opinions in the press suggest the scientific community is still divided and the community has not succumbed to the propaganda of human-caused global warming. Many in the community, with every justification, are awaiting more information about the costs and the economic and social impacts before lining up to march behind the government’s carbon dioxide reduction banner.

A widely accepted conviction that dangerous climate change is actually pending will be required before the community will support the government’s strategy to shut down fossil-fuel-dependent industries and willingly abandon the energy-dependent and satisfying lifestyle activities they enjoy. After all, in the cause of saving the planet we will all be required to give up a wide range of personal freedoms that we currently take for granted. We will want to be in full agreement that the alleged dangers are real and present, and that the course of government-imposed actions really will avert them.

Are the Dangers of Human-Caused Climate Change Real and Present?

The notion of human-caused global warming has its origins in late-nineteenth-century speculation about the causes of past climate shifts, especially the ice ages when large parts of North America and Europe were under kilometres of ice. Svante Arrhenius of Sweden argued that intermittent volcanic activity, and the injection of huge amounts of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, had regulated retreats and advances of glaciations, but this theory has now been discarded. The Serbian Milutin Malenkovich’s early-twentieth-century calculations linking the glaciations to changing characteristics of the earth’s orbit around the sun is now in favour. Nevertheless, speculation linking potential global warming to the burning of fossil fuels, based on Arrhenius’ theory, continued through the middle twentieth century.

During the 1960s and 1970s computer modelling was being developed to advance weather prediction. As they advanced, weather prediction models were adapted to crudely simulate climate, and a number of simple “what if?” experiments were carried out. For example, what would happen to Earth’s temperature if the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere was doubled, or trebled? Some of these crude experiments suggested that increased carbon dioxide might significantly raise the temperature of the earth.

As a consequence of the early modelling experiments, the issue of dangerous human-caused global warming was a consistent underlying theme of a series of international and intergovernmental environmental conferences that preceded the formation of the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) in the early 1970s.

The 1979 First World Climate Conference held in Geneva played a crucial role in alerting the world community to the need for a better understanding of climate systems, climate change and mitigation of its harmful effects. Global cooling and the possibility of earth slipping into the next ice age had been dominant themes in the years leading up to the conference. However, the possibility of human-caused global warming was recognised and received attention. The Conference Declar-ation noted: “it appears plausible that an increased amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere can contribute to gradual warming of the lower atmosphere, especially at high latitudes”.

In 1985, mainly at the instigation of UNEP, but co-sponsored by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) and the International Council of Sciences (ICSU), a conference was held in Villach, Austria, to review the impact of human-caused carbon dioxide emissions on climate. Following the presentation of invited papers the Conference Statement was forthright: “As a result of the increasing concentrations of greenhouse gases, it is now believed that in the first half of the next century a rise of global mean temperature could occur which is greater than any in man’s history.” It was asserted that planning for the future should not be based on historical data, because human-caused emissions of carbon dioxide were contributing to global warming and climate change. Based on then available computer models, estimates were given of a 1.5°C to 4.5°C temperature rise and a sea level rise of between 20 and 140 centimetres from a doubling of carbon dioxide concentration in the atmosphere.

The Villach Statement was the basis for instigating a series of national and international conferences. The essential purpose of the conferences was to raise community awareness of the danger from burning fossil fuels and raising atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations. In Australia, the then Commission for the Future and CSIRO were leading players in the local promotion, including sponsoring of the December 1987 conference of invited scientists, “Greenhouse: Planning for Climate Change”. A 1988 international conference in Toronto, of invited environmental bureaucrats and scientists, was the first to specifically call for a 20 per cent reduction of carbon dioxide emissions in order to prevent future dangerous climate change.

The very strong and active role being played by UNEP and the environment movement generally in the promotion of human-caused global warming became of concern to the more conservative science-orientated WMO. The concern was twofold: first that the policy proposals were running far ahead of perceived scientific understanding; and second, the lead in climate matters was being usurped by UNEP. WMO and UNEP agreed that a thorough review of the science associated with carbon dioxide and its impacts on climate should be carried out. The two agencies co-sponsored the formation, in 1988, of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), under UN auspices, as an authoritative source of advice to governments.

The IPCC presented its first assessment report at the 1990 Second World Climate Conference. In essence, the findings confirmed that there is a greenhouse effect and that increasing atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide resulting from human activity will enhance the greenhouse effect. However, the report highlighted the many scientific uncertainties and noted it was not possible to predict the timing, magnitude or regional impacts of the enhanced greenhouse effect. Nevertheless, in spite of the uncertainties, the IPCC provided an estimate of between 0.2°C and 0.5°C temperature rise per decade and 6 centimetres per decade sea level rise over the coming century, based on computer models.

The IPCC First Assessment Report was endorsed by the 1990 Second World Climate Conference, and an associated ministerial meeting issued a declaration calling for the negotiation of a treaty to restrict carbon dioxide emissions and prevent dangerous climate change. The UN established an Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee that met six times between February 1991 and May 1992 and presented its Framework Convention on Climate Change for endorsement by governments at the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro in June 1992. From the Convention:

“The ultimate objective of this Convention and any related legal instruments that the Conference of the Parties may adopt is to achieve, in accordance with the relevant provisions of the Convention, stabilization of greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere at a level that would prevent dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate system. Such a level should be achieved within a time frame sufficient to allow ecosystems to adapt naturally to climate change, to ensure that food production is not threatened and to enable economic development to proceed in a sustainable manner.”

What is not generally understood is that the objective of the Convention is not to prevent climate change, dangerous or otherwise, but to prevent dangerous climate change caused by human activity. This is underscored in the Definitions to the Convention: “‘Climate change’ means a change of climate which is attributed directly or indirectly to human activity that alters the composition of the global atmosphere and which is in addition to natural climate variability observed over comparable time periods.”

The negotiations for the UN Framework Convention were carried out against a background of politics rather than science and logic. Many undercurrents could be clearly discerned that reflected the various vested national and regional interests.

Developing countries saw the issue starkly: whether the problem was real or not it was created by industrialised countries; it was for industrialised countries to fix and there should be money for compensation to developing countries that would be affected; and there should be technology transfer to ensure developing countries did not make the same “mistakes”. The association of small island states was most vocal in this respect—their very existence was claimed to be threatened by rising sea levels and they should receive refuge and compensation.

The oil exporting countries of the Middle East were concerned at where these negotiations were heading, seeing a potential drying up of revenues. At every point there was denial of a problem, emphasis on the dangers of nuclear energy as a “clean” alternative, and attempts to water down any agreements for action.

The newly independent countries of the former Soviet Union sought special recognition because economic downturn was leading to the closure of older inefficient and “dirty” factories. Credits for newer technology with fewer emissions were expected to lead to investment through a clean development mechanism.

Most intriguing was the obvious tension between the European Union and the United States. The former had a high investment in nuclear energy and was rapidly converting from coal to offshore natural gas; it could also see offset benefits from the modernisation of industry in the former East Germany. The EU was in a strong position to comply with a low-end requirement for 20 per cent reduction in emissions from the propitious 1990 baseline, especially with the potential of expanding nuclear energy—despite the experience of Chernobyl. In contrast, the much publicised nuclear accident of Three Mile Island had raised very strong public opposition and the USA had little prospect of expanding nuclear energy. Any move to impose energy constraints through reduction in carbon dioxide emissions would hit the US industry base with its reliance on fossil fuels, especially coal. There was clearly potential to shift the comparative advantage for producing goods and services from the USA to the EU, with advantages for European economies.

Now that the first Kyoto period is drawing to a close there are added political complications through the rapid industrialisation of developing countries, especially the economies of China, India and Brazil. Whether or not there is consensus about the underlying scientific assertions, the next round of negotiations for post-2012 commitments is going to be difficult, given that the bulk of new emissions will come from developing countries and that they have emphatically and repeatedly refused to countenance any limitations on their use of carbon-based fuels.

Are the Alleged Impacts of Climate Change Exaggerated?

In Australia the assertions of dangerous human-caused climate change, and even runaway global warming, are being fanned by varying interests who should know better, or who, at least, should check the facts. Drought and problems of the Great Barrier Reef are being promoted as diabolical issues that can only be addressed by emissions reduction, despite the overwhelming evidence that the current climate experience is but a repeat of past droughts when we were far less able to offset the economic losses with income from other industries. The argument put by many, that the drought conditions of the past decade are so severe that they can only be the cumulative outcome of environmentally-unfriendly human activity, cannot be sustained. It ignores a large body of accumulated scientific and historical knowledge to the contrary, and is a resort to illusion.

Australia’s documented history, incorporating its cultural and economic development within the constraints of its relatively harsh climate, is relatively short. Drought and other vicissitudes of climate have been ever-present dangers and have been dominant in shaping the pattern of settlement and development. The twentieth century opened with much of the country in the grip of the “Federation Drought” that commenced in the middle 1890s and continued in parts until about 1905. The decade around the First World War, the late 1930s and through to the early 1940s, and the middle 1960s were all prolonged periods of generally low rainfall, especially in parts of eastern Australia. Although there were short but intense drought periods, such as 1982–83, the second half of the century was generally wetter than the first, until the early 1990s and the beginning of the current dry period.

There is currently a focus on the state of the Murray-Darling Basin and the condition of the lower Murray River, as if the current low river flows had not happened before. However, during the Federation Drought the basin suffered significant rainfall deficiency and by late 1902 the Darling and Murray Rivers had virtually run dry. In 1914 the Murray downstream of Swan Hill was reduced to a series of stagnant pools. Prolonged low rainfall during the 1940s again resulted in stress on the rivers of the Basin and the Murray River ceased to flow at Echuca in April 1945.

One of the great myths that gained currency during the recent debate on human-caused global warming is that higher temperatures will cause more droughts. However, continental rainfall largely has its origins in evaporation from the surrounding oceans. The fact is that evaporation increases by more than 6 per cent with each degree Celsius of sea surface temperature rise and, as a consequence, warmer temperatures will generate more rainfall. The great wind-blown sand dunes of Central Australia did not form during the warmer Holocene Optimum between 5000 and 10,000 years ago but during the colder, drier glacial period more than 20,000 years ago. During the Holocene Optimum the subtropical deserts of the world were blooming and teeming with life. In the past, a warmer world with higher sea surface temperatures has been beneficial and enhanced Australia’s summer monsoon and winter rainfall.

What we find is that maximum temperatures are lower during wetter years, when there is more cloud and wetter soil from which evaporation keeps the surface cooler. During very dry years there is less cloud and very little cooling evaporation; maximum temperatures are consequently higher. It is the clouds, rainfall and soil moisture that regulate temperature. It should be noted that the all-time daily maximum temperatures of Adelaide, Melbourne and Sydney occurred during January 1939, as a heatwave progressed across southern Australia at the culmination of two years of regional drought. The high temperatures followed the drought—the drought did not follow the high temperatures.

Many other mythologies that link possible dire outcomes with global warming have their origins in studies following the major El Niño event of 1997–98. The shift in seasonal weather patterns during the event caused many tropical and middle latitude regions to experience drought, while other regions experienced excessive rainfall and flooding. The uncommon weather sequences and seasonal rainfall patterns resulted in a range of ecological responses, most of which were deemed undesirable because they were outside the boundaries of usual experience. Land and water management systems became stressed, much community infrastructure was damaged or destroyed, and ecological changes promoted the spread of a range of diseases.

Drought in many equatorial and tropical forests and grasslands made these lands susceptible to fire; outbreaks that occurred were generally unmanageable because of inadequate planning and response infrastructure. The accompanying smoke promoted respiratory and eye infections; the stagnation of streams and waterways led to pollution accumulation and to the outbreak of a range of pollutant-related diseases.

Elsewhere, excessive rainfall caused waterlogging of fields, flooding, and destruction of private and community infrastructure. Expansion of insect populations, especially mosquitoes, meant that the carriers could spread disease more readily. Higher incidences of encephalitis, dengue fever and malaria could be linked directly to the changed environmental conditions. As a general rule, the increased incidence of disease occurred in countries that did not have the resources on hand for rapid deployment to control the outbreaks, either through insect control or for medication.

According to a US assessment, the global impact from the 1997–98 El Niño event included 24,000 deaths, 533,000 people suffering illness, 6 million persons displaced, 111 million persons adversely affected, and a direct loss of US$34 billion.

The 1997–98 El Niño event, and information from earlier events, provided a valuable database for linking changed climatological conditions to environmental, community and industrial impacts. The real value of this database is in the formulation of response strategies so that, in the future, resources are marshalled and potential impacts can be mitigated. For example, early response will prevent the build-up of insect populations and reduce the spread of disease; medications will be available for treatment of eye and respiratory diseases where smoke is a problem; and water purifiers can be mobilised to ensure clean water.

Unfortunately, the raw data relating unmanaged ecosystem responses and community impacts from the local and limited duration seasonal climate anomalies of the El Niño events have been extrapolated to give potential impacts of human-caused climate change. However, directly extrapolating future impacts from past experience can be misleading. For example, the expansion of mosquito populations and increased disease incidence to a hypothetical future climate gives a very scary but exaggerated scenario. This, of course, is the intention.

There are two essential pieces of information that the proponents of the theory of dangerous human-caused climate change do not discuss. First, the impact statistics relate to largely unmanaged systems. For example, malaria was endemic throughout northern Europe before the draining of marsh lands and the imposition of good public health regimes. Would it not be important to implement appropriate public health measures in the countries still subject to these diseases in order to reduce their incidence, whether or not the world is getting warmer or cooler? Second, it is legitimate to ask whether reduction in carbon dioxide emissions is the most sensible and cost-effective approach to controlling a range of endemic diseases.

Is Dangerous Human-Caused Global Warming a Reality or an Illusion?

The case for dangerous human-caused global warming rests solely on the projections of computer models. Without such projections, which have consistently been in the range of a 1.5°C to 4.0°C global temperature rise from a doubling of carbon dioxide concentration, there would be no basis for alarm. The low-end computer projections exceed the range of temperature variation of the past 10,000 years—the experience that ranged between the Holocene Optimum and the Little Ice Age. The high-end projections approach the temperature and climate range between the major ice ages, including advance and retreat of continental ice sheets and sea level variation of more than 130 metres. Sediment analysis from ocean cores suggests that the range of tropical temperature variation across the glacial cycles was only about 3°C, although the range was much larger over the polar regions.

There is, however, much observational and theoretical evidence to suggest that the computer projections are fanciful. Even the evolution of computer modelling of climate suggests that the projections should be treated with extreme caution. Importantly, the oceans and their circulations are the thermal and inertial flywheels of the climate system; as the ocean circulation changes, the atmosphere and its climate respond. Our knowledge of subsurface ocean circulations and their variability is limited. Without this vital input, projections of future climate are tenuous at best.

The computer models used as the basis of projections at the 1985 Villach Conference and later for the 1990 IPCC first assessment had no dynamic ocean circulation. The ocean was represented by a water slab with prescribed energy transfers. It was assumed that the ocean surface temperature variations would respond to changing atmospheric temperatures as forced by carbon dioxide increases. To determine the effect of carbon dioxide a model would be brought to equilibrium to generate the “control” climate; the atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration would be doubled and run to equilibrium, giving the “response” climate. The difference between the “response” and the “control” was deemed to be the impact of carbon dioxide.

The IPCC initiative and the negotiations for the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change gave worldwide impetus and increased government funding for the rapid development of climate modelling. The 1995 IPCC second report was able to draw on results from climate models that by then included dynamic ocean circulations. A weakness of these early coupled ocean–atmosphere models was a tendency to warm, even without carbon dioxide forcing. Many of the projections of carbon dioxide forcing came from models that took the difference in warming between control and response where both experienced warming. In other models the ocean–atmosphere energy exchange was constrained and adjusted to maintain a steady global temperature in the control. The same artificial constraints were applied to the response.

The issues surrounding the natural tendency of the coupled models to warm were claimed to have been overcome by the time of the 2001 IPCC third report. Unforced computer simulations extending over a period of 1000 years showed no long-term global temperature trend and no significant periodic oscillations. On this basis, the IPCC asserted, “The warming over the past 100 years is very unlikely to be due to internal variability alone, as estimated by current models.” This was also the report that promoted the infamous “hockey stick” representation of global temperature over the past 1000 years—essentially the straight handle of constant temperature for 900 years followed by the blade of rising temperatures of the past century.

The combination of unvarying computer simulation and apparently steady temperatures before the rapid industrialisation and then temperature rise of the twentieth century was powerful imagery to support the propaganda that the warming of the twentieth century was human-caused. Unfortunately the “evidence” was all a mirage. The statistical analysis underlying the “hockey stick” has been shown to be fatally flawed; a wide range of compelling historical, cultural, archaeological and paleo data support the Medieval Warm period–Little Ice Age–modern warm period climate cycle. Moreover, there is no strong evidence that the current temperatures are warmer than those of the Medieval period from the ninth to the thirteenth centuries when, for example, there were thriving settlements on Greenland.

Although the IPCC case for an unvarying climate, unless externally forced, rests on the performance of computer models, the proposition does not accord with either evidence or logic. The oceans are a relatively large mass of cold dense fluid that is constantly in motion, largely driven by surface wind stress, although tempered by topography, tropical surface heating and salinity variations. The atmospheric circulation responds to tropical heat and moisture exchange from the underlying oceans and the atmosphere transports heat to polar regions. It would be truly remarkable for two interacting fluid layers on a rotating spherical surface not to produce significant periodic variations on a range of time-scales. The observed inter-annual and decadal variations of climate and the multi-centennial time-scale of some overturning circulations contradict the assertion of the IPCC that the climate system has only limited internal variability. The evidence provides support for the view that there is significant internal variability of the climate system that gives rise to variations on a range of time-scales.

The 2007 IPCC fourth report has claimed that, based on contemporary computer model simulations, the temperature rise of the last half-century is very likely caused by human activity, particularly carbon dioxide emissions. This claim is made even though there is only limited correlation between fossil-fuel-based carbon dioxide emissions and twentieth-century global temperature rise. The economic stagnation and limited growth of carbon dioxide emissions in the decades between the world wars was accompanied by significant rise in global temperature; the rapid increase in fossil fuel usage in the decades following the Second World War coincided with declining global temperatures. It was only after the middle 1970s that temperatures again increased, and mainly over the continental areas of the northern hemisphere, but the temperature trend has again plateaued during the last decade.

The IPCC rationale is that emissions of aerosols during the early years of the postwar industrial boom reflected more solar radiation back to space and therefore constrained global temperatures against the enhanced greenhouse effect of increasing carbon dioxide concentrations. According to the rationale, following the implementation of national Clean Air Acts the aerosol emissions were eliminated, allowing the enhanced greenhouse effect to emerge and force up temperatures in the 1980s and 1990s. Models with carbon dioxide and aerosol forcing were able to reproduce the twentieth-century global temperature record with a degree of fidelity.

Credulous supporters have accepted the seemingly plausible IPCC rationale and its associated computer simulations without questioning the underlying foundations. First, as the IPCC report notes, there is a very low level of understanding about the interactions between radiation and atmospheric aerosols. Second, there are no observations for the magnitude and distribution of atmospheric aerosols—the aerosol forcing of the computer models is without validation. Third, there is no explanation as to why the late-twentieth-century warming was mainly over the northern hemisphere land areas despite the carbon dioxide increase being well mixed across both hemispheres. Fourth, there is no reason given for the recent hiatus of temperature increase. The “evidence” is no more than model tuning with plausible parameters. The faith in the computer models, on which the IPCC’s climate predictions are based, is misplaced.

The current global temperatures are relatively warm but not too dissimilar from those before Earth entered the current glacial phase about 5 million years ago; the current global temperature is only marginally cooler than the temperature peaks achieved during each of the interglacials of the last half-million years as earth recovered from successive ice age periods. A casual observer of the record might readily conclude (and not be far wrong) that there is a natural upper limit that earth’s temperature asymptotes towards.

Although not in the context of global warming, in 1966 C.H.B. Priestley (then Chief of CSIRO’s Division of Meteor-ological Physics) wrote of the limitation of temperature by evaporation in hot climates. High daytime maximum temperatures are reached over arid lands of the tropics where only radiation loss and conduction are available to rid the surface of energy absorbed from the sun. Where the land surface is wet or covered in vegetation the temperature is considerably lower because the additional evaporation of latent energy has a powerful cooling effect; evaporation (and latent heat exchange to the atmosphere) increases almost exponentially as temperature rises. The combined radiation, conduction and evaporation losses from the oceans and wet or vegetated surfaces can offset the absorption of solar energy at a lower temperature than when evaporation is absent.

The principle is identical for carbon dioxide forcing and its enhancement of the greenhouse effect. The magnitude of the down-welling long-wave radiation at the surface increases as the concentration of carbon dioxide increases. There is a corresponding rise in surface temperature that is constrained by the increase in surface energy losses (radiation emission, conduction and evaporation of latent heat). The earth’s surface is predominantly water or well-vegetated land; increasing evapor- ation of latent heat is a dominant factor in the additional energy loss under carbon dioxide forcing. It is the additional evaporation of latent heat that will constrain surface temperature response to human-caused carbon dioxide emissions.

The mathematical formulation of surface temperature response to carbon dioxide forcing is straightforward, even considering water vapour feedback. For a doubling of carbon dioxide concentration the global average surface temperature increase from 280 ppm (before industrialisation) to 560 ppm (towards the end of the twenty-first century) will only be about 0.5°C.

Why then, it might be asked, do computer models give projected temperature increases that are nearly an order of magnitude larger; and why are there claims of dangerous “tipping points” and potentially runaway global warming?

The likely answer to these questions is the recent revelation that computer models grossly under-specify the rate of increase of evaporation with temperature, the factor that constrains surface temperature increase. In 2006, US researchers Isaac Held and Brian Soden reported that, on average, the rate of increase of evaporation with temperature in computer models used for the IPCC fourth assessment is only about one third of the expected value. In 2007, Frank Wentz and his US colleagues repeated the earlier finding and, on the basis of satellite analysis of rainfall, confirmed the expected rate of increase of evaporation with temperature as the appropriate value.

The significance of the computer model shortcomings identified by the US researchers can be appreciated from the mathematical formulation of feedback amplification. As surface temperature rises under carbon dioxide forcing, it warms the overlying atmosphere and further enhances the long-wave radiation back to the surface from the atmosphere. The feedback amplification has a term of the form [1 / (1 – r)], where r is less than unity. As r increases the amplification will also increase. The term r is linked to evaporation such that any underestimation in the specification for the evaporation term causes r and the feedback amplification to be anomalously large. As the rate of increase of evaporation approaches zero then r approaches unity and the projected amplification is very large. The gross under-specification of evaporation in computer models gives inflated values of r and exaggerated amplification of global surface temperature to carbon dioxide forcing.

In the more extreme computer models, the erroneous specification of evaporation response means that the models are approaching computational instability and the global temperature projections give the appearance of “runaway global warming”. Of course, the projections are erroneous. The exaggerated surface temperature increase associated with the computer model projections is a direct consequence of the failure of the model specification and does not represent the true sensitivity of the earth’s temperature to carbon dioxide forcing. In reality, surface evaporation from the oceans and vegetated land areas will constrain surface temperature increase to about 0.5°C for a doubling of carbon dioxide concentration, which cannot be considered as dangerous.

Unfortunately, those who are entrusted with building and validating the computer models seem to be blind to the inherent failings—the models have cost so much to build but the presentation of being accurate and useful is fallacious. In many countries, such as Australia and the UK, research funds have been specifically allocated by Environment ministries to generate climate projections in order to underpin and give credence to environmental impositions, including indirect taxation and restriction of a range of personal freedoms targeted solely at reducing carbon dioxide emission.

The CSIRO has taken state funding for the purpose of generating specific predictions for land use planning and water resource management at the regional level. But we should note that the CSIRO has legal disclaimers of responsibility for the truth or veracity of these predictions in case they turn out to be incorrect or misleading. The CSIRO apparently has no confidence in its computer predictions—all the risk is with the user.

Notwithstanding that computer models exaggerate the magnitude of warming, there continue to be NGO commentators and advocates who claim the danger is even more horrific than the IPCC suggests. The claim is that it is the higher temperature projections that are the more realistic and that as the temperature passes a tipping point then irreversible runaway global warming will take off. Such claims are without scientific foundation because of the constraining effect of surface evaporation that is grossly under-specified in computer models.

Is There a Sound Case for Carbon Emissions Reduction?

Australians are now being bombarded by an intense government-funded propaganda campaign to encourage people to accept the reality of dangerous human-caused climate change and support early action for “carbon pollution” reduction. The scaremongering about dangerous climate change is based on the erroneous computer model projections and the unsubstantiated extrapolations of a range of climate impacts that are only realistic if no adaptive or mitigating measures are taken.

In the absence of computer models there would be little credence given to the view that the relatively small warming of the second half of the twentieth century was due to carbon dioxide emissions; there would certainly be no credence given to the possibility of irreversible runaway global warming over the coming century. Cool heads would note that most of the earth’s surface is either ocean or freely transpiring vegetation and that surface evaporation will continue to constrain surface temperature rise, as it always has done.

The likely magnitude of human-caused global warming is so low that it will not be discernible against the background of natural variability in the climate record. Thus national or internationally co-ordinated efforts to impose carbon dioxide emission reduction for the purpose of preventing climate change will be a tremendous waste of resources. The real danger is that government-instigated measures to drastically downsize a wide range of fossil-fuel-dependent industries in order to achieve emission reduction targets will actually be effective. Such success will destroy jobs and will limit future development opportunities, with no discernible impact on climate. Then the government will realise that it is much easier to change the economy than to change the climate, and it will also find that the direction and impacts of change will be equally unpredictable.

William Kininmonth is the former head of Australia’s National Climate Centre. He was an Australian representative and consultant to the World Meteorological Organization on climate issues and is the author of Climate Change: A Natural Hazard (Multi-science Publishing Co., 2004). He will be among the speakers at the Australian Environment Foundation’s annual conference, “A Climate for Change”, in Canberra this month.