[asa] Falwell on Global Warming

Here is an email today from Jerry.

Burgy

Date: November 20, 2006
From: Moral Majority and Liberty Alliance
By: Jerry Falwell

Evangelicals and Global Warming

There is a developing cultural divide occurring within the evangelical
community over an unlikely subject: global warming.

On one side, we have Southern Baptist-in-name-only Al Gore touting the
potential ruin of the planet in his film “An Inconvenient Truth.”
Joining
with him, somewhat surprisingly, has been the upstart Evangelical
Climate
Initiative (ECI), which has called for sweeping reform to combat global
warming in what it terms a Bible-based response to the issue.

Curiously, the ECI, which includes 86 prominent church leaders, has
linked with abortion-on-demand and population control organizations that
are touting global warming as genuine science.

The ECI’s decision to join the global warming wars compelled two
conservative evangelical think tanks — the Institute on Religion &
Democracy and the Action Institute for the Study of Religion & Liberty —
to suggest the ECI has been “exploited” by the abortion-rights
community.
They note that this strange union could actually “give anti-Christian
ideologies unmerited moral and theological cover.”

Indeed, it could.

On the other hand, a position from which I am writing, there are those
who believe that, while the earth appears to have slightly warmed in
recent years, there is legitimate question as to whether this has been
caused by human activity or by natural cycles.

So, a group of evangelicals has united to counter the efforts of the
ECI.
This group, the Interfaith Stewardship Alliance (ISA), is a gathering of
scholars and pastors (yes, they can coexist) who believe that
“evangelicals should be wary of the politicization and bad science of
global warming alarmism.”

The problem is that when evangelicals jump on board with liberal groups
that are advancing climate alarmism, the so-called major media is there
to trumpet their action. As such, when the Interfaith Stewardship
Alliance’s released its “Call to Truth, Prudence and Protection of the
Poor,” which contains a “detailed biblical and scientific response to
the
much-heralded Evangelical Climate Initiative,” it was virtually ignored
by the media.

Another frequently ignored element in the global warming debate is the
fact that so-called solutions to the problem will damage the American
economy.

Bill Saunders, director of the Family Research Council’s Center for
Human
Life and Bioethics and Human Rights Council, recently wrote: “If the
effects of global warming are real and, in the future, humans face
hotter
summers and higher sea levels, the solution is not restricting energy
access and limiting economic growth. That is quite unlikely to solve the
problem. It is certain to lead to economic recession in developed
countries, invariably keeping undeveloped countries in poverty as their
growth is dependent on the strength of developed nations.”

So we must address any real climate changes with legitimate solutions
that do not hinder economic development in our nation. The world will
certainly suffer if America is monetarily punished.

Nevertheless, the United Nations is touting global warming as an
issue as
problematic as terrorism.

This week, Sen. James Inhofe dismissed a U.N. meeting on climate change
as “a brainwashing session,” proclaiming that "The idea that the science
(on global warming) is settled is altogether wrong.”

He’ll certainly be pilloried by those who believe we should not question
the facts of global warming.

I thank God that we have reasonable men like Sen. Inhofe (R-Okla.) who
are willing to take a stand.

Finally, I think it’s interesting that, according to the NOAA National
Climatic Data Center, the last two months in the continental U.S. have
been cooler than average.

The organization reported: “The combination of a cooler-than-average
September and October dropped the year-to-date national temperature from
record warmest to third warmest for the January through October 2006
period. The record warmest January through October occurred in 1934.”

I imagine if the scientists of 1934 had the technology we enjoy today,
they would have been predicting global warming in their era, as well.
The
only problem would have been that their fellow scientists in the 1970s
would be predicting a massive global freeze in the near future. Of
course, that didn’t happen.

In other words, cooler heads must prevail in this global warming debate,
especially in the evangelical community.

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Received on Wed Nov 22 00:08:14 2006