Author: empower

by Elgin Hushbeck

I am skeptical of the theory that human activity is causing the earth to warm at a rate that is threatening. I freely admit that I am not now, nor have I ever been a climatologist, and for some this means I am not allowed to have an opinion or reach a conclusion in the matter. I am just supposed to sit down and blindly accept whatever the high priests of science pronounce. But I don’t.
I ask questions. I look at the arguments made on both sides, and have reached a conclusion that is in opposition to the consensus view. Frankly, I find that historically I am in pretty good company. At one point it ran against the scientific consensus to believe that rocks fell from the sky; only the unenlightened believe such things. Now we know that meteorites do exist.
When the theory of plate tectonics was proposed, it ran against the settled consensus view in geology, and opposition was expressed as, “If we are to believe this hypothesis, we must forget everything we learned in the last seventy years and start all over again.” (Hushbeck, 2007)   Because of this its proponent, Alfred Wegener, was rejected and denounced and had to leave his country to find a teaching position, and then in another field.   Then there was the scientific consensus that was Eugenics.   So I do not rate consensus that highly and instead look at the evidence.
When it comes to the evidence, I have been blessed, or cursed, depending on your point of view, to have been following this debate for 40 years. And for 40 years the alarmists have been consistently wrong. They have gone from predicting a new Ice Age to Global Warming and now, since we have not been warming since the mid-90s, they cover their bases with the generic term Climate Change.  In recent months, I have seen some reports about how the data has been “reevaluated” during this pause, so as to find some warming, but I remain skeptical. On several occasions in the past they have been caught, at the least, distorting the data.
More importantly for me, the alarmists have attacked anyone who disagrees with them as being somehow biased, selling their soul to big business, or just being evil. This is the irrational fallacy of ad hominem attack, and fallacies hardly make for sound arguments. In addition they actively try to suppress differing points of view. (The latter being a small part of a much larger problem of enforced conformity by the left.)
For me the four key questions are:
Are we warming? In the long run probably, as we are coming out of a Mini Ice Age and are still below the average temperature for the last 10,000 years, which itself is below the long running average. After all Greenland got is name when people lived there in settlements that are now frozen.
Are we the primary cause? Probably not, as there have been many more significant periods of warming and cooling in the past long before we could have had any impact. Given that the current claims are based on computer models that have consistently been wrong, I see no reason to hold otherwise.
Is there anything we can do about it? Even if the first two answers are yes, the plans put forth would have little if any actual effect on the climate. Any effect they had would be greatly outweighed by their negative impact on people, particularly people in the third world who would benefit the most from economic development and growth. As a Christian I do value the planet, but I value people more.
Is warming a bad thing? Probably not. It would certainly cause disruption, but considering that far more people die each year from cold related causes than from heat related causes, and much of the land mass is currently in colder regions, warming would probably be a net positive.
One other factor.  As an engineer, I do know a little about control systems.   The earth’s climate has numerous such systems, and if climatology is like any other science, I suspect these are far more numerous and far more complex than we now know or understand. I suspect that our lack of understanding of these systems is a primary factor in the models being so consistently wrong.
For the planet to have survived as it has this long, these systems must be robust and strong. For example, in very simple terms, increasing temperatures causes more evaporation, leading to more clouds, which reflect more sunlight out into space, cooling the planet – note until recently the climate models have not factored in cloud cover. Increased CO² means more food for plants, and this means more plants, which then consume more CO². If the climate was as fragile as climate alarmist claim, we would not be here in the first place as the climate would have spun out of control long ago.
So I remain skeptical. Maybe if the models had a track record of 40 years of accurate prediction, I would think otherwise, but they don’t.  And until the alarmist give up their irrational arguments to support their claims, I am likely to remain skeptical.

by Elgin Hushbeck

One of the issues that divides Christians on the right and left, and the right and left in general, is their view of government and the market place. This, in and of itself, raises some interesting questions concerning how and why we develop the values and positions we hold. How much do our political opinions influence our religious views, and how much do our religious views influence our politics? In this post, however, I will look at the left’s preference for government over the market place, and whether or not their underlying assumptions are correct.
For many Christians on the left, looking to government to address social ills and problems is an easy choice, at least when the government is in some fashion a democratic form of government. This is because they see government as an institution led by people they elected who operate as an expression of the people’s will. They regard it as an institution that is guided by values such as equality and a concern for the poor that they share.
The market place on the other hand is governed by large corporations, led by people they do not know, people they have no say over, and motivated by less desirable values such as greed. In fact, as my co-host Chris Eyre, on Global Christian Perspectives, labeled it, “satanic.” Thus when the question is, where should we look to address a social problem such as dealing with the poor, or health care, it is an easy choice.
As someone on the right, it is probably not that surprising that I would disagree with many of these characterizations. For example, I make a distinction between big business and the market place. In fact I would probably agree with much of the left’s critique of big business. The really big difference is that I see government as even worse.
While the left’s description of democracy is good in theory, it hardly lines up with reality.   Its most basic flaw is that it assumes that those elected to government will act in the interest of others over themselves.
The problem with such a view was elegantly summed up in Federalist 51 (by either, Hamilton or Madison) in the famous statement on the reasons for divided powers and limited government:

It may be a reflection on human nature, that such devices should be necessary to control the abuses of government. But what is government itself, but the greatest of all reflections on human nature? If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary. In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself.

This is particularly problematic as government becomes more distant from the people. One could argue that this is just democracy in action, yet numerous real world factors such as gerrymandering of districts, advantage of incumbency, campaign finance laws tha,t in reality, only make it harder to unseat incumbents, influence of special interest groups and lobbyist, to mention a few, insulate those in office from the people.   Such factors are not an aberration, but are rather now the norm as government becomes more centralized and powerful. (For a more complete discussion of some of these factors see my book: Preserving Democracy.)
In a consumer based market place, however, one has some economic say by choosing where to spend one’s money. This requires that the consumers have real choices and businesses must compete for their business. In such a marketplace, to succeed, a business must be concerned with their customers’ wants, wishes and ability to pay.
Not only can such a system work in theory, it can and has worked, and has resulted in the greatest increase in the standard of living for more people than any other economic system. As Arthur C. Brooks has pointed out, because of such policies, “The number of people in the world living on a dollar a day—a traditional poverty measure— has fallen by 80 percent since 1970, from 11.2 percent of the world’s population to 2.3 percent” (Brooks, A. C. (2012). The Road To Freedom, New York: Basic Books., p. 72).
Granted no system is perfect, and problems remain, but as we move closer to a true consumer based marketplace, things get correspondingly better. On the other hand, as government is asked to do more, it grows larger and the problems are exacerbated. Rather than being a defender of the public against big business, only the large and well connected can have influence.
Thus for me the choice is clear.  Government cannot live up to the ideas of the left, and in fact the larger it grows, the more likely it is to be a defender of big business. Not only can a consumer based capitalism make people’s lives better, but it also allows more freedom as well.