Global Warming Debate Still Cooling

 

In any any area of study within the natural sciences, there are usually data which may be contradictory and many times opinions regarding the meaning of data even when studies yield consistent data.  So why do we not hear about conflicting data and opinions regarding the issue of global warming?  Why has the information been so one sided?  Are there not data and voices which do not support the concept of global warming?  Why have we not heard the other side?  I’ve posted before about this here and here and have recently come across some interesting information from the Cato Institute.  Read the entire report.  I’ve posted the Executive Summary here.

In the last two years, a remarkable amount of disturbing news has been published concerning global warming, largely concentrating on melting of polar ice, tropical storms and hurricanes, and mass extinctions. The sheer volume of these stories appears to be moving the American political process toward some type of policy restricting emissions of carbon dioxide. It is highly improbable, in a statistical sense, that new information added to any existing forecast is almost always “bad” or “good”; rather, each new finding has an equal probability of making a forecast worse or better. Consequently, the preponderance of bad news almost certainly means that something is missing, both in the process of science itself and in the reporting of science. This paper examines in detail both recent scientific reports on climate change and the communication of those reports.

Needless to say, the unreported information is usually counter to the bad news. Reports of rapid disintegration of Greenland’s ice ignore the fact that the region was warmer than it is now for several decades in the early 20th century, before humans could have had much influence on climate. Similar stories concerning Antarctica neglect the fact that the net temperature trend in recent decades is negative, or that warming the surrounding ocean can serve only to enhance snowfall, resulting in a gain in ice. Global warming affects hurricanes in both positive and negative fashions, and there is no relationship between the severity of storms and ocean-surface temperature, once a commonly exceeded threshold temperature is reached. Reports of massive species extinction also turn out to be impressively flawed.

This constellation of half-truths and misstatements is a predictable consequence of the way that science is now conducted, where issues compete with each other for public support. Unfortunately, this creates a culture of negativity that is reflected in the recent spate of global warming reports.

For goodness sake, I’m a bit disturbed that an issue as important to our economy has received so little honest debate.  It seems that all the MSM, most of the liberal university types and even the President have not critically looked at the other side.   

New Era of Priestly Formation?

 

A new program of priestly formation has been mandated for US seminaries.  We can only pray that such reform will produce the kind of priests that lead God’s people to Him.  I have my doubts as do others.  From the Roman Catholic Blog:

All of these things are good, but unfortunately, it seems like too little, too late. Having two years of Theology is terrific if you are studying the right kind of Theology and have orthodox teachers. Weeding out candidates with homosexual tendencies is a wonderful idea, but why wasn’t this done in the first place, and how can we be sure that these norms will be properly implemented?

Most importantly, what about cases where the fox is guarding the hen house? What if the very people in charge of implementing these guidelines (including bishops) are of dubious orthodoxy, homosexual, or both? Catholic seminaries throughout the country have been documented to have more than their fair share of agenda-driven, dissenting liberals and homosexuals. There are also a lot of well intentioned, well meaning, but poorly formed men in some formation programs; men with lots of degrees, but a poor understanding of sound, orthodox, Catholic Theology. There are also good men, who know the truth, but remain silent. They are afraid to make waves because they know they are outnumbered or that they will pay dearly for not towing the party line.

And isn’t this true as well?

In the past, many priests were poorly schooled in philosophy, theology, Sacred Scripture, traditional spirituality and the like, and instead trained as social workers with little sense of the supernatural. With such poor formation, the liberal ideas of society quickly invade and take root in the mind, which the often well-intentioned priest or seminarian re-interprets as the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Hence, rather than discussions of personal sin, eternal salvation or damnation, grace, original sin, etc., the priest is only able to talk about the standard social “sins” of the day: racism, sexism, “homophobia”, pollution, etc.

When is the last time that you heard a priest preach on sexual sin or divorce?  We are bombarded with the evils of “secular” sin but not those sins of which Jesus clearly spoke.  Pray for our priests and those considering the priesthood.

We Want a New Catholic Church, And We Want it Now!

 

Isn’t this cute?  An ex-Jesuit Robert Blair Kaiser and friends want to found a new “catholic” church in the United States.  You see, according to our former padre (to summarize):

The Fathers of Vatican II ushered in a golden age of openness, tolerance, and progressive action. Unfortunately, the dark forces of John Paul II and his diabolical collaborator, Josef Cardinal Ratzinger, clamped down on this movement of the Spirit, dragging the Church back to the Dark Ages. In light of this, thinking Catholics need to reclaim their Church — and maybe even start an American Catholic Church of their own.

Thank the heavens that we will be spared from the “dark ages” that Benedict XVI is planning. Here’s part of the plan:

We will write a Declaration of Autochthony, one that will challenge our priest-people and our people-people to work out a constitution for the American Church that carefully puts aside the Rome-based secretive, half-vast, culturally-conditioned legalisms codified in canon law in return for the kind of servant Church envisioned at Vatican II.

And don’t think that they think that this is to be an easy task.

This will be a political battle in a Church that has gotten us used to the idea that there’s something shady, maybe even something sinful, in trying to overturn the old pyramidal structure. We plead “not guilty” to that charge. But we do plead guilty in our wish to overturn — at least in the United States — what the last pope called “the divinely instituted hierarchical constitution of the Church.”

Check out the website at http://www.takebackourchurch.org/.  Here’s the mission statement:

Seeking ownership and citizenship (read control) in the people’s Church (mind you it is no longer Christ’s Church, we’re in charge) envisioned (by us) at Vatican II, attended by accountable (we mean elected by the masses not selected by the Holy Spirit), listening (meaning manipulated) servant-bishops.

This guy better get busy before all the gray-haired liberal Vatican II type heretics are dead.  They’ve got a lot of work to do!

Rich Liberals Hate Wal-Mart, Poor Liberals Cannot Afford to

 

I’ve had conversations on several occasions with liberal friends regarding Wal-Mart.  Is Wal-Mart good for or is it a blight on the communities in which they do business?  Almost without thinking, they will attack Wal-Mart because of minimum wage pay, non-union workforce, slave labor in China, and on and on.  Hell, there are websites devoted to “reforming” Wal-Mart.  I’ve been of the mind that Wal-Mart provides not only jobs but lower prices to poor families and I’ve recently come across a study suggesting that this is in fact the truth.

Wal-Mart over the 1985-2004 period can be associated with a cumulative decline of 9.1% in food-at-home prices, a 4.2% decline in commodities (goods) prices, and a 3.1% decline in overall consumer prices as measured by the Consumer Price Index – All Items, which includes both goods and services. These estimates are in line with other researchers’ estimates of Wal-Mart’s price effects. This impact amounts to consumer savings of $263 billion by 2004, which is the equivalent of $895 per person or $2,329 per household.

I doubt that the average lower income family is nearly as upset with Wal-Mart as the rich liberals seem to be.  For the rich libs, a couple of thousand a year is nothing, but for the working poor and those on fixed income, it may be the difference between a meal or two or shoes for their kids.  Next time your liberal friends begin ranting about Wal-Mart, ask them when they last had to choose between food and clothing.

The Politics of AIDS

 

Bill and Melinda Gates, through their charitable foundation, have done for the cause of AIDS then any other individuals or private organizations, ever.  Heroes to those with AIDS?  The answer is yes if you support AIDS research and treatment and…are willing not to suggest that abstinence may have some role to play in slowing the AIDS epidemic.  Bill got boos for suggesting this very idea in his address to the 16th International AIDS Conference.  What exactly did Bill say that was so offensive?  Here’s a portion of the speech:

Let’s consider what this means for universal treatment. Right now, nearly 40 million people are living with HIV. The annual treatment cost per person includes about $130 for first-line drugs,and more than $200 for personnel, lab work, and other expenses. That means that the annual cost of getting treatment to everyone in the world who is HIV positive would be more than $13 billion a year,

This $13 billion figure doesn’t count the cost of much more expensive second-line therapies,which many patients will need. Moreover, these figures assume no increase in the number of people living with HIV – yet we’re averaging 4.6 million new infections a year.

We need to do everything possible to bring down treatment costs, and I’m sure we will make progress there. But even if you take very optimistic numbers, when you extrapolate 5 to 10 years, you quickly see that there is no feasible way to do what morality requires – treat everyone with HIV – unless we dramatically reduce the number of new infections.

The harsh mathematics of this epidemic proves that prevention is essential to expanding treatment. Treatment without prevention is simply unsustainable.

We have to do a much better job on prevention.

Right now, one of the most widely practiced approaches to prevention is the ABC program, for“Abstain, Be faithful, use Condoms.” This approach has saved many lives, and we should expand it. But for many at the highest risk for infection, ABC has its limits.

The reaction is instructive.  No matter how much one does to help the cause of AIDS, anything suggested that in any way inhibits irresponsible sexual behavior must be condemned.  Forget that this abstinence is the ONLY sure means of preventing the spread of AIDS though sexual contact, the primary means by which the disease is spread.  For liberals, true compassion for AIDS means allowing thousands and perhaps millions to contract the disease, suffer and perhaps die so long as any restriction on their sexual activity is avoided.

More on “Tolerance”

 

“Tolerance” is the cry of the secular world.  It is invoked to beat those of faith into “acceptance” (also a common cry) of all behaviors and lifestyles.  Tolerance was once a characteristic of confessional governments toward other faiths.  Today tolerance is turned against those who believe. Rev.Thomas D. Williams provide great insight into the current state of “tolerance.”

The language of tolerance was first proposed to describe the attitude that confessional states, such as Anglican England and Catholic France, should adopt toward Christians of other persuasions (though no mention was made of tolerance for non-Christian faiths). The assumption was that the state had recognized a certain confession as “true” and put up with other practices and beliefs as a concession to those in error. This led, however, to the employment of tolerance language toward religion. The philosophes would downplay or even ridicule religion in the firm belief that it would soon disappear altogether. Thus, separation of church and state becomes separation of public life and religious belief. Religion was excluded from public conversation and relegated strictly to the intimacy of home and chapel. Religious tolerance is a myth, but a myth imposed by an anti-religious intellectual elite.

This “tolerant” mentality is especially problematic when applied in non-confessional countries — such as the United States — where an attitude of tolerance is not that of the state religion toward unsanctioned creeds, but of a non-confessional secular state toward religion itself. Language of religious toleration of Christianity in Saudi Arabia would be a marked improvement over present conditions, and consistent with a confessional Muslim state’s belief that Christianity is a false religion. In a non-confessional state, such language is more pernicious.

Moreover, as a virtue, tolerance seems to have distanced itself so far from its etymological roots as to have become another word altogether. Thus the virtue of “tolerance” no longer implies the act of “toleration,” but rather a general attitude of permissiveness and openness to diversity. A tolerant person will not tolerate all things, but only those things considered tolerable by the reigning cultural milieu. Tolerance therefore now has two radically incompatible meanings that create space for serious misunderstandings and abuse.

If tolerance is the greatest civic virtue, then culture, morality and ultimately society descend to depths of darkness from which there can be no recovery.  “Tolerance” may in fact pose the greatest risk to Western civilization today.

Compendium of the Catechism of the Catholic Church

The Compendium of the Catechism of the Catholic Church can be found online at:

http://www.vatican.va/archive/compendium_ccc/documents/archive_2005_compendium-ccc_en.html.

Strickland is Bad for Ohio Taxpayers

 

Here’s where Blackwell and Stickland stand on taxation of Ohio votes.

Ken Blackwell champions limited government and controlled spending.  During the 1990s he served on the congressionally-appointed National Commission on Economic Growth and Tax Reform.  In 1998 he co-edited a book with Jack Kemp, entitled, “IRS v. The People: Time for Real Tax Reform.”  In 2003, Ken Blackwell opposed the Ohio legislature’s tax increase and successfully fought for partial repeal of the Ohio Sales Tax increase.  He has publicly criticized the Ohio legislature for increasing Ohio state government spending by over 70% in 10 years.  In 2006, Ken Blackwell led state lawmakers to pass a law that for the first time in history limits future increases in Ohio taxes and spending.
During Ted Strickland’s 12-year tenure in the US Congress, he  voted to increase social security and gas taxes by more than 30%, and voted for the the largest tax increase in US history. He has consistently voted against tax cuts including tax relief measures for married couples, farmers, military personnel, small  businesses and the self-employed.  In 2005, Ted Stickland received a 13% rating from the National Taxpayers’ Union and an 8% rating from Americans for tax reform.

Ohio is loosing jobs because Ohio is loosing businesses to other states with lower tax burdens.  The answer to Ohio’s employment problems is to create a favorable tax situation to attract new residents and businesses.  Only a vote for Blackwell this fall moves Ohio to a pro-business atmosphere.

Why Raising the Minimum Wage is a Bad Idea

 

A local professor has written about a proposal to link the minimum wage to congressional pay raises.  And he provides several reasons why this is not a good idea:

First, when things cost more, people buy less. That’s a fact, just like gravity.

The minimum wage is the price of low-skilled labor. Raising it means employers will buy less and instead buy relatively more skilled labor and machines. Or they might shift low-skilled jobs to cheaper countries.

That’s a bad idea because the second reason to oppose raising the minimum wage is that it stops low-skilled workers from getting skills. A job that pays minimum wage is usually simple or unpleasant manual work. People take these jobs precisely because they lack skills. To get skills, however, they need jobs. Job-related experience and training transform low-skilled employees into high-skilled employees. People shut out of entry-level jobs won’t get that chance if they can’t get hired.

Third, the minimum wage helps the haves, not the have-not’s. It helps skilled employees by stopping people with fewer skills from competing with them on price.

Selling Organs in China?

 

Here’s a transcript concerning a Tony Jones interview with David Kilgour, a member of the Canadian parliament for 26 years.  He asserts that the Chinese are killing members of Falun Gong and selling their organs.

TONY JONES: I’ll give you the opportunity to do that. I just want to this to you, it does seem to me, reading your report in detail, there are only two possibilities here. One is you’ve uncovered a new form of evil we’re yet to see and the other is you’ve been taken in by an incredibly sophisticated hoax that would make the ‘Hitler Diaries’ seem simplistic by comparison. How are we to know which it is, because having read your report I’m completely uncertain.

DAVID KILGOUR: I’m surprised because just about everyone who has read it from Europe, from Brussels to Berlin to Paris to London that I’ve spoken to is persuaded any reasonable person reading the report would think that we are right. As you know, we give 18 different kinds of evidence. Mostly the most convincing, as you know, is the people in these institutions telling us, essentially, that they have Falun Gong prisoners ready and available to be harvested and we give websites in China telling people who can come and have organ transplants within a week. We give, for example, today I was… a resident of Canberra, Chen Yang, was telling us how she was treated abominably while she was in a work camp, but only the Falun Gong prisoners were examined carefully medically, with blood tests, their computer-assisted blood transplants. From the 18 kinds of evidence we looked that the case is simply overwhelming. As terrible as this is, that this is happening on a large scale in many locations in China.

Whether or not the accusations are correct, we cannot yet be certain.  However, given the history of Chinese human rights abuses, the world needs to engage the Chinese and make it clear that such abuses, if confirmed, will not be tolerated by the rest of humanity. 

An additional witness to organ harvesting is reported missing after meeting with European officials.