The “Climate Change” Danger

Review of the book “Fossil Future: Why Global Human Florishing Requires More Oil, Coal, and Natural Gas – Not Less”, by Lew Rockwell.

Quote:

Epstein thinks that the danger from global warming has been exaggerated, but though he presents extensive evidence in support of this, his main contribution lies elsewhere. He argues that modern civilization depends on fossil fuels and that far from curtailing their use, we need to spread them to the impoverished parts of the world. So great are the benefits from using the fuels that only a true “end of the world” nightmare caused by CO2 emission could require that we shift to other energy sources, and despite the alarmists’ caterwauling, this nightmare is most unlikely to occur. Moreover, Epstein holds that the benefits of fossil fuels are so obvious that only a defect in thinking could have induced people to ignore them. He is a philosopher as well as an energy economist, and he expertly identifies the false thought pattern that has led to our current confusions.

Epstein says, “Whenever we hear about what the ‘experts’ think, we need to keep in mind that most of us have no direct access to what most expert researchers in the field think. We are being told what experts think through a system of institutions and people…. Understanding how this system, which I call our ‘knowledge system,’ works and how it can go wrong is the key to being able to spot when what we’re told the ‘experts’ think is very wrong—about fossil fuels or anything else.”

Rerum Novarum: A Manifesto for the Ages

Article by Sebastian Wang.

Excerpt:

In our own time, the relevance of Leo XIII’s teaching is obvious. We live in economies where the forms of capitalism have been retained but the substance hollowed out: markets in name, but in practice dominated by a nexus of government and corporate power; competition in rhetoric, but in reality a game for those who can pay for access and influence. The same moral principles that led Leo to reject socialism oblige us to reject this corporatist order. The goal is not to level all differences of wealth, but to ensure that wealth is obtained and held by right, not by privilege; that property is widely held; that the worker has a path to independence; and that the State remembers it exists to serve persons, not to manage them.

Make Birth Control Illegal Again

Article by Mary Proffit Kimmel.

Excerpt:

One hundred years ago, no one thought birth control was okay. In 1920, the Anglican Communion declared,

We utter an emphatic warning against the use of unnatural means for the avoidance of conception, together with the grave dangers—physical, moral and religious—thereby incurred, and against the evils with which the extension of such use threatens the race. (Lambeth Conference 1920, Resolution 68)

By 1930, they had changed their tune to: “The Conference believes that the conditions of modern life call for a fresh statement from the Christian Church on the subject of sex” (Lambeth Conference 1930, Resolution 9). Ominous words. The conference proceeded to follow this logic on to alarming conclusions:

[I]n those cases where there is such a clearly felt moral obligation to limit or avoid parenthood, and where there is a morally sound reason for avoiding complete abstinence, the Conference agrees that other methods may be used, provided that this is done in the light of the same Christian principles. The Conference records its strong condemnation of the use of any methods of conception control from motives of selfishness, luxury, or mere convenience. (Resolution 15)

This landmark declaration rendered the Anglicans the first major Protestant denomination to approve of artificial contraception. Since then, most others have followed suit.

Despite the Anglican Church’s outcry against “selfishness, luxury, [and] mere convenience,” these vices have come to dominate the sphere of sexual ethics and even legislation.

God alone can bind our nation together

Article by Daniel Inman in “The Critic”.

Excerpts:

Here still lies the unique responsibility and opportunity of the Church of England. Informed by the post-liberalism that has shaped so much of public life in the past thirty years, the Church has too often been colluded with those who would reduce the nation to a set of “communities” — religious and secular — who share only fragments of a common moral language. It can hardly be surprising, then, that the evidence of young people returning to church suggests they come not for the softened rhetoric of progressive piety, but to encounter a mysterium tremendum — something deeper and more enduring than a wellness talk or the bureaucratic activism of the lanyard class. They are drawn when the Church dares to draw upon its liturgical, symbolic and aesthetic depths, animated by the countenance of God, pointing each of us beyond politics and markets to that “Fatherhood” which can bind us together and which alone can sustain civilisation.

[. . .]

Here are salient lessons for both Church, Crown and Parliament. If a new archbishop of Canterbury continues the Church of England’s enthusiasm for self-flagellation and ignorance of its own traditions of political theology, it may miss its final opportunity to hold not only itself together, but also the nation. And while our present Sovereign understands the power of symbol and religion to bind the nation together, will this be true of the next generation? Or will the forces of the day conspire to further disenchant the nation until what remains of us is a common enthusiasm for mental-health programmes and the national football team?

‘Settled Science’ Is Getting Unsettled as Government Support Wanes

Article (referring to the US government) by H. Sterling Burnett.

Extract:

For the first time in more than a decade, climate alarmists must seriously engage with climate realists on climate science questions. Recently, the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) release of “A Critical Review of Impacts of Greenhouse Gas Emissions on the U.S. Climate,” by a group of prominent scientists including John Christy, Ph.D.; Judith Curry, Ph.D.; Steven Koonin, Ph.D.; Ross McKitrick, Ph.D.; and Roy Spencer, Ph.D., has forced alarmists to address realists’ longstanding questions, concerns, and critiques of the argument that humans are causing dangerous climate change, rather than dismissing them out of hand because the “science is settled.”

The DOE report, among other things, debunks claims that climate change is causing worsening extreme weather events, discusses why rising carbon dioxide (CO2) levels have a decreasing influence over global temperatures, and how the same increase in CO2 is causing a beneficial global greening, and it examines the myriad currently poorly understood natural factors that complicate attributing rising temperatures and changes in climate to human energy use.

UK Met Office Flirts With Conspiracy Theory as it Slams Critics of Its ‘Junk’ Temperature Measuring Sites

Article by Chris Morrison.

The UK Met Office has lurched into conspiracy theory territory in a desperate attempt to rescue scientific credibility in its Net Zero-weaponised ‘junk’ temperature measuring network. In a recent public pronouncement, it claimed: “The efforts of a small number of people to undermine the integrity of Met Office observations by obscuring or misrepresenting facts is an attempt to undermine decades of robust science around the world’s changing climate.” The astonishing outburst relates of course to the recent revelations of the Daily Sceptic and a number of citizen sleuths. In March 2024, the Daily Sceptic disclosed that nearly 80% of all UK measuring sites are so poorly located they have massive temperature ‘uncertainties’. Meanwhile, Ray Sanders and Dr Eric Huxter have provided convincing proof of the lamentable state of the unnatural heat-ravaged network and its tendency to produce elevated temperatures and short-term heat spikes.

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