Tag Archives: Global Warming

2010 World Religions Summit: convocation of loons

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Religious leaders who have little better to do are meeting to pontificate on the “moral, ethical and spiritual” crisis of our time: what used to be called – before it was largely debunked – “Global Warming” but now goes by the less easily pinned down “Climate Change”. One thing I do know: the climate is definitely changing in Oakville. This morning it was raining and this afternoon it is sunny.

According to this gathering of spiritual Stasi, the time for persuasion, reason, education and even “conversation” is over: it’s time for compulsion:

World religious leaders today grappled with how best to compel governments and citizens to address the issue of climate change.

During the second day of the 2010 World Religions Summit here, some urged their own institutions model the very behaviours they are demanding politicians adopt as policy. Others said their own faith traditions are already doing that. Some urged more education of faith communities while others said the situation is already “beyond education” and requires intervention.

United Church Moderator Mardi Tindal thinks that having a “green” church is an expression of what she believes in, leading one to conclude that the ultimate expression of her belief would be to bulldoze United Church buildings everywhere and plant trees in their place. Something to look forward to:

Tindal also spoke about the environmental initiatives undertaken by inter-faith communities in Canada, including the Greening Sacred Spaces program, which ensures that “our buildings are responsible expressions of what we believe in.”

Pandit Roopnauth has noticed an even bigger blight than un-green United Church buildings: humanity. He takes the dim view that we are parasites. He didn’t elaborate on whether mankind should be exterminated to make way for more of Mardi Tindal’s trees, but I suspect it was at the back of his mind:

Pandit Roopnauth Sharma of the Hindu Federation said people need to be reminded that “we are the biggest parasites on earth. We take and take and give nothing back.”

The combined wisdom of the Baptist, Anglican and Muslim contingents was that we should use less energy, find out what makes people poor and not forget affluent nations – the lingering suspicion being that they shouldn’t be affluent.

It’s little wonder that there are few left in the West who take any religion seriously.

Pseudo-Christian eco-babble in the Diocese of Niagara

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When I interviewed Dr. George Sumner, principle of Wycliff College recently at the Anglican General Synod, we had the following exchange about attempting to run a program like Fresh Expressions in a diocese that has, for all intents and purposes, abandoned the Gospel:

David: I talked to another of your professors about Fresh Expressions. The concern I raised was what would the techniques he was teaching be used to express – would it be the Gospel?
Rev. Dr. George:  I think encouraging the church to let many flowers bloom evangelistically is good. You know, the flowers will thrive or they’ll die – like the parable of the sower. The fact that the professor in question himself is a theologically grounded is not irrelevant. These things are not just techniques – the Gospel is never a technique.

David: My point is that that was all very well, perhaps, while he was still involved, but once it was handed over to a less than orthodox diocese, it would no longer be a Fresh Expression of the Gospel, but something else.
Rev. Dr. George:  Maybe I’m an optimist.

David: I’m not accused of that very often.

This is a recent video by the Diocese of Niagara extolling the eco-expiatory benefits of using green certified cleaning products. The email contact at the end of the video is freshexpressions@niagara.ca. I’m tempted to send this to Dr. Sumner to curb his optimism.

The Anglican Church of Canada in the bosom of Mother Earth

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Well, the armpit, at least. In the “News From our Partners” section of its web site, the Anglican Church of Canada has a pointer – actually, like so much else in the ACoC, the pointer is screwed up – to a document called Cochabamba – Universal Declaration of the Rights of Mother Earth. In it you will find a Declaration of the Rights of Mother Earth, including:

Article 1. Mother Earth
(1) Mother Earth is a living being.
(2) Mother Earth is a unique, indivisible, self-regulating community of interrelated beings that sustains, contains and reproduces all beings.
(3) Each being is defined by its relationships as an integral part of Mother Earth……

Article 2. Inherent Rights of Mother Earth
(1) Mother Earth and all beings of which she is composed have the following inherent rights:
(a) the right to life and to exist;
(b) the right to be respected;
(c) the right to regenerate its bio-capacity and to continue its vital cycles and processes free from human disruptions;
(d) the right to maintain its identity and integrity as a distinct, self-regulating and interrelated being…….

Article 3. Obligations of human beings to Mother Earth
(1) Every human being is responsible for respecting and living in harmony with Mother Earth…..
(d) ensure that the pursuit of human wellbeing contributes to the wellbeing of Mother Earth, now and in the future;

The ACoC is a member church of Kairos, the organisation peddling this twaddle; I was surprised not to see “I am Fred Hiltz and I approve this message” at the end of the document.

Good news for the meteorological division of the Anglican Church of Canada

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After decades of painstaking research, the world renowned meteorologists of the Anglican Church of Canada have finally discovered something more to be shunned than unfashionably dated sins which, after all, merely imperil our immortal souls: carbon dioxide.

The science is clear: global warming is happening faster than ever and humans are responsible. Global warming is caused by releasing what are called greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. The most common greenhouse gas is carbon dioxide. Many of the activities we do every day like turn the lights on, cook food, or heat or cool our homes rely on energy sources like coal and oil that emit carbon dioxide and other heat-trapping gases. This is a major problem because global warming destabilizes the delicate balance that makes life on this planet possible. Just a few degrees in temperature can completely change the world as we know it, and threaten the lives of millions of people around the world.

They were tempted to say that we are headed for hell on earth, until the House of Bishops reminded them that the ACoC no longer believes in hell.

Fear not! It was all a mistake; Anglican clergy are being sent back to weatherman school – it’s actually getting colder:

Contrary to the commonly held scientific conclusion that the Earth is getting warmer, a scientist who has written more than 150 peer-reviewed papers has unveiled evidence for his prediction that global cooling is coming soon.

The hottest new trend in climate change may be global cooling, some researchers say.

Contrary to the commonly held scientific conclusion that the Earth is getting warmer, Dr. Don Easterbrook, emeritus professor of geology at Western Washington University and author of more than 150 peer-reviewed papers, has unveiled evidence for his prediction that global cooling is coming soon.

“Rather than global warming at a rate of 1 F per decade, records of past natural cycles indicate there may be global cooling for the first few decades of the 21st century to about 2030,” said Easterbrook, speaking on a scientific panel discussion with other climatologists. This, he says, will likely be followed by “global warming from about 2030 to 2060,” which will then be followed by another cooling spell from 2060 to 2090.

Easterbrook spoke before a group of about 700 scientists and government officials at the fourth International Conference on Climate Change. The conference is presented annually in Chicago by the Heartland Institute, a conservative nonprofit think tank that actively questions the theory of man’s role in global warming. Last year the Institute published Climate Change Reconsidered, a comprehensive reply to the United Nations’ latest report on climate change.

“Global warming is over — at least for a few decades,” Easterbrook told conference attendees. “However, the bad news is that global cooling is even more harmful to humans than global warming, and a cause for even greater concern.”

Al Gore’s carbon jackboot print

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Having made millions of dollars telling the serfs what they have to give up to make this world a better, cleaner place for him to live in, Al Gore has Add an Imagespent some of this well-earned cash on a little cottage where he can get away from all the pollution, noise and inconvenient-truth-nagging that the rest of us have to put up with.

From the National Post:

What is a multi-multi-millionaire Nobel Prize winner and environmental super-crusader to do with the riches that keep piling up from his international mission to save the planet?

If you’re Al Gore, you spend a chunk of it on yet another mega-home, this one in Montecito, California, a pleasant community for really, really rich people along the Pacific Coast near Santa Barbara.

The Los Angeles Times reported recently:

Former Vice President Al Gore and his wife, Tipper, have added a Montecito-area property to their real estate holdings, reports the Montecito Journal.

The couple spent $8,875,000 on an ocean-view villa on 1.5 acres with a swimming pool, spa and fountains, a real estate source familiar with the deal confirms. The Italian-style house has six fireplaces, five bedrooms and nine bathrooms.

This makes four mega-homes for the Gores, who have made vast amounts of money urging people to reduce the amount of energy they consume. It’s safe to say approximately everyone in the world (give or take a plutocrat) has fewer mega-homes and uses less energy than the Gores. Nine bathrooms? Is that because it’s so far from one end of the house to the other that Mr. Gore’s bladder can’t hold out? And six fireplaces: because in California, unlike, say, Canada, it gets cold in the winter, and the Gore’s need six fireplaces. Five wouldn’t be enough. Plus fountains. You can’t have enough fountains, especially as they consume no energy at all. The water just spouts into the air of its own volition.

h/t Directorblue

Obsessive compulsive global warming fears

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In this article, Australian and New Zealand psychiatrists don’t connect the last couple of dots by actually saying that global warming fear is an obsessive compulsive disorder in its own right; so I am doing it for them. How many of those suffering from this disorder are employed by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, I wonder?

A recent study has found that global warming has impacted the nature of symptoms experienced by obsessive compulsive disorder patients.

Climate change related obsessions and/or compulsions were identified in 28% of patients presenting with obsessive compulsive disorder. Their obsessions included leaving taps on and wasting water, leaving lights on and wasting electricity, pets dying of thirst, leaving the stove on and wasting gas as well as obsessions that global warming had contributed to house floors cracking, pipes leaking, roof problems and white ants eating the house.

Hope ‘n climate change from Canada’s churches

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Perhaps this is how it will end for the both United Church and Anglican Church of Canada: an ever increasing obsession with bogus causes by an ever decreasing band of eccentrics struggling to have their communities of congruence taken seriously:

“We have to work together in communities of congruence…. We must be prepared to speak the truth even in the midst of denial and even in the midst of ridicule,” said Mardi Tindal, moderator of the United Church of Canada.

Tindal said that in the course of advocating for climate change action, she has learned that “there is a deep hunger for hope” among people, and that “you and I are actually in a position to offer it.”

Meanwhile, to remind Mardi Tindal who is really in charge:

Arctic winds responsible for much of the loss of sea ice

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In December 2009, the Anglican Church of Canada implored its membership – whose size is diminishing far more rapidly than Arctic ice – to petition parliament to combat melting sea ice in the Arctic:

What was, only a few years ago, seen as one possibility among several has now become an undisputed fact: Climate change is real and is having increasingly serious impacts on the environment and people. More worrisome, its impact is stronger and faster than was predicted even a short time ago. Artic [sic] ice is melting much faster than expected, so are the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets. In Canada, we see impacts of changing climate in the melting of permafrost in the North and weather- related events such as floods and droughts in the South. The changes are taking place at an increasing speed and the predictions are repeatedly turning out too optimistic.

Oops. It appears that strong winds are causing much of the loss of Arctic sea-ice:

Strong winds and not global warming are to blame for much of the record-breaking loss of ice in the Arctic Ocean in recent years, new research reveals.

Ice blown out of the Arctic area by winds can explain the one-third drop of sea ice since 1979, scientists believe.

The study helps to explain the huge loss of ice in the region during the summers of 2007 and 2008, after which some commentators suggested the Arctic Ocean would be ice-free during the summertime within a decade.

Still, there is probably enough wind generated by the ACoC to blow all the ice back again.

Being green makes you mean

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Says the Guardian

According to a study, when people feel they have been morally virtuous by saving the planet through their purchases of organic baby food, for example, it leads to the “licensing [of] selfish and morally questionable behaviour”, otherwise known as “moral balancing” or “compensatory ethics”.

This goes go a long way to explain the behaviour of the Anglican Church of Canada, which is very keen on green.