BBC: Climate is not changing but the discussion is getting hotter

According to new data, Earth’s temperature has not risen for 11 years. Image courtesy of NASA.




Joel Kontinen

Earth’s climate has not become any warmer in 11 years. Up to now, the warmest year was 1998. Although there is more man-made carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, temperatures have not risen.

Surprisingly, this news item was not published on a blog that takes a skeptical approach to climate change but on the science pages of BBC news. According to climate correspondent Paul Hudson, our planet warmed rapidly in the 20th century but now this warming has stopped.

Hudson does not mention Ian Plimmer, the controversial Australian geologist who was known as a fierce critic of creation but is now a self-proclaimed climate skeptic. Instead, he quotes more moderate experts.

Atmospheric scientists do not agree on the reason for the cooling. Dr. Piers Forster of Leeds University, who is a member of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), says that the warming during the past few decades was not due to the sun.

However, solar scientist Piers Corbyn says that the sun’s effect has actually been underestimated.

Hudson also quotes Don Easterbrook, a professor at Western Washington University, who suggests that the oceans have a greater effect on climate than was supposed. The 1980s and 1990s were exceptionally warm. Now we have entered a cooler period that he expects to last 30 years.

Professor Mojib Latif, a member of the IPCC, admits that we might indeed be on our way towards a cooler period. However, he does not expect it to last as long as Easterbrook suggests.

The forecast? According to Hudson, the discussion on the reasons behind climate change is expected to heat up.

Al Gore and the Nobel Committee might also get something to think about. Barack Obama probably got this year’s peace prize partly because of his believe in man-made global warming.


Source:

Hudson, Paul. 2009. What happened to global warming? BBC News (9 October) http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/8299079.stm

Obama’s Peace Prize: Once Again, a Bizarre Choice

In 2003 belief in a literal Adam and a literal Eve most probably cost Raymond Damadian the Nobel Prize in Medicine. Image from the Answers in Genesis Creation Museum.



Joel Kontinen

The Nobel Committee’s decision to grant this year’s Peace Prize to Barack Obama has given rise to much debate about the motives of the Nobel Committee and the political nature of the choice.

In addition, the names of some past Nobel laureates, such as Jasser Arafat and Al Gore, might suggest something about the speculative nature of the Peace Prize.

Obama got his prize by talking. Last year’s laureate, former Finnish president Martti Ahtisaari, actually brought peace to several war-torn countries, for instance Namibia. In contrast, Obama has not brought peace anywhere.

While Obama’s nomination was bizarre, it was by no means the first outlandish decision the Nobel Committee has made. At times, its choices have been anything but noble. In 2003 the Nobel Prize for Medicine was awarded to Paul Lauterbur and Sir Peter Mansfield for their breakthroughs in Magnetic Resonance Imaging ( MRI). However, Raymond Damadian, the pioneer of the field who invented the MRI scanner, was overlooked.

Michael Ruse, a Canadian philosopher of science known for his agnosticism, thinks that the Nobel Committee did not want to bestow the prize on Dr. Damadian since he is a creationist who believes that God took six days to create the world and that the flood of Noah’s day was a real historical event.

It seems that the Nobel Committee did not want to award a scientist who takes a critical view of Darwinian evolution.


Source:

Wieland, Carl. 2004. The not-so-Nobel decision. Recognition denied for achievement of great scientist Raymond Damadian—who is also a creationist. Creation 26 (4): 40-42.

Ben Stein Expelled From the New York Times

Ben Stein has noticed that criticism is not without risks.




Joel Kontinen

For five or six years, Ben Stein wrote a popular bi-monthly column for the New York Times. However, atheists were offended with his 2008 documentary Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed. They also expressed their dislike of his views in the Times.

It seems that there is no room for the Designer in the liberal media.

Then Ben Stein criticised another icon of the left leaning media: Barack Obama or more specifically, his economic policy. Times promptly informed Ben Stein that the paper will no longer publish his column.

In other words, press freedom does not seem to fare well in the USA.



Source:

Stein, Ben. 2009. Expelled From the New York Times. The American Spectator (10 August)

Is Barack Obama's Agenda Anti-Christian?

Image from Wikipedia.


Joel Kontinen

Senator Obama said St. Paul’s teaching on the consequences of rejecting the Creator is an “obscure passage in Romans”. This is a very odd claim. Paul was the greatest theologian of the Christian Church and Romans is probably the most comprehensive account of early Christian theology.

There is nothing obscure in Romans 1. Paul teaches that people intuitively know that there is a Creator God but have refused to acknowledge this. The New International Version puts verse 20 like this: “For since the creation of the world God's invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that men are without excuse. “

Nothing very obscure here. The next verse describes how people reacted to God’s revelation in nature: “For although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him, but their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened.”

Paul says that men exchanged “the truth of God for a lie.” They were immoral, murderers and full of “every kind of wickedness”.

Senator Obama’s views of abortion and same-sex relations are diametrically opposed to what the Bible clearly teaches. In his second letter to the Thessalonians, Paul speaks about “the man of lawlessness” who will lead the rebellion against God. The Bible calls this man the Antichrist who, as his name implies, has an Anti-Christian agenda. Could he be Barack Obama?

The Old Testament Prophet Daniel says that this man “will speak against the Most High and oppress his saints and try to change the set times and the laws.”

History has already seen some little antichrists. The depression of the 1930s brought Adolf Hitler to power in Germany. Like Obama, he succeeded in hypnotising the masses, both Christians and non-Christians, to vote him to power. Hitler changed many laws – to the detriment of Jews, Gypsies and Slavs who were unfortunate enough to live within the clutches of the German eagle.

Keeping this in mind, Obama’s low view of Scripture and his opinion on abortion seem extremely disturbing. In some European nations, abortion was followed by euthanasia. Like in Nazi Germany, it is the defenceless that are persecuted.

While I do not think that Senator Obama is the Antichrist of the Book of Revelation, his views might make him into a little Antichrist that the Gospel writer John warned about in his first letter: “This is the last hour; and as you have heard that the antichrist is coming, even now many antichrists have come.”


Source:

Riley, Jennifer. 2008. Obama Uses Jesus' Sermon to Bolster Gay Civil Unions. Christian Post (4 March). http://www.christianpost.com/article/20080304/obama-uses-jesus-sermon-to-bolster-gay-civil-unions.htm