Many moons ago I led a school strike. The cause was just – I thought – we were protesting against the raising of the school-leaving age to 16! I remember leading all 600 pupils in a walk out in front of the school. As the headteacher, Mr Smith, approached me, I noticed that the pupils behind me and my friend had gone strangely quiet. “What are you doing David?”. “We’re on strike sir! Protesting against the unfair raising of the school leaving age”. “You…and whose army”. “all of the pupils sir”. “Have a look behind you, David”. I turned round and there was no one there – my fellow pupils had all scarpered! I got the belt and learned my lesson that sometimes children engaging in political action can be quite fickle!
I was reminded of that this past week with the so-called children’s strikes against Climate change. Unlike my wee escapade where support was drummed up by marching past the classrooms, this one came about as a result of online activism. Pupils not only in the UK, but in Europe and Australia have got involved in what seems to have been quite an orchestrated event. Here for examples are some Australians joining in:
In some ways this can be seen as something positive – to be celebrated, rather than denigrated. Is it not good to see children and young people politically engaged and actively involved? Personally I think it is excellent and to be encouraged. What harm could one day of school do? Neil Mackay writing in The Herald was typical of many commentators:
But there is hope, and it lies with the young, with Generation Z, kids now in their mid to late teens. They are not slaves to short-termism like their parents and grandparents – these young people think long-term. Just look at the school strikes over climate change that are popping up like partisan units across the nation. These young people have read, they’ve thought and they’ve come to a conclusion about the long-term welfare of our planet – the biggest and most complex question facing humanity –and they’re prepared to personally rattle the cages of the old guard to achieve the change they want. I cannot wait for a future when I can vote these young Gen Z-ers into power and hope that unlike the generations before them they put the Age of Stupid to the sword.
Nicola Sturgeon concurred, stating that they “give us a cause for optimism in a dark world” https://www.eveningtelegraph.co.uk/2019/02/15/nicola-sturgeon-praises-pupils-on-climate-change-strike/?sso-c=MC41MzQ4MTMwMCAxNTUwNTc0Njgx
Cause for hope? I felt a Whitney Houston song coming on!
I believe the children are our are future
Teach them well and let them lead the way
Show them all the beauty they possess inside
Give them a sense of pride to make it easier
But….
There is another side to this. When I saw the video below it chilled my bones. This was posted by an activist who thought that school pupils marching through the streets of Brighton and chanting ‘F….Theresa May’ was somehow indicative of a future hope.
The schools must be empty! Over 800 kids out of class for the Brighon #ClimateStrike pic.twitter.com/5IDhQxOXpX
— Callum Cant (@CallumCant1) February 15, 2019
Mob Rule and Manipulation
This was not spontaneous protest by concerned children. This is mob rule and hysteria whipped up by social media. This was not children rebelling against their teachers and the establishment – this was children conforming to their teachers and establishment. The national union of headteachers commended the ‘strikes’, most politicians did, as did much of the media. It’s a weird kind of rebellion that is endorsed by those in authority! If you doubt that – just think about what would happen to any child who went on strike to protest about children being killed in the womb, or in favour or Brexit or against Transgender indoctrination. Would Sturgeon and the politicians be tweeting their admiration for their political activity? If children ever dared question the current cultural zeitgeist they would be dealt with through the full force of the law (probably citing ‘hate crime’)! ..
I should add here that I think the children are right to be concerned about climate change and the planet. However they are in danger of falling into the trap of just blameshifting. ‘It’s the government’s fault’. But the reality is that climate change involves all of us. When Wilberforce campaigned against slavery – those who joined in – including children – agreed to give up sugar. I will take these children a whole lot more seriously when they stop asking their parents to act as taxi drivers (honestly mum, we’ll walk to school!), cut down on mobile phones and ensure they eat only locally sourced produce! That would be radical…!
Although I would not go as far as the German chancellor Angela Merkel who seemed to think it was all the fault of the Russians! Strange how none of the usual suspects started screaming about ‘outside’ interference in our politics.
Mass Indoctrination
Along with mob rule you need the mass indoctrination. With the advent of the internet and the dumbing down of our education system which is now generally used for social engineering and teaching children what to think, not how to think – the scope for indoctrination on an Orwellian scale is greater than ever.
The political elites want to ensure that all children, not just their own, are indoctrinated into their doctrines. I came across two chilling indicators of this. . Gerry Hassan, an influential Scottish commentator has argued for private schools to be closed. I suspect that there will also be moves to have home schooling removed. Tie this in with TIE (Time for Inclusive Education) which in theory is about preventing bullying and making every child feel safe, supported and included (who could argue against that?!) but in reality is about imposing Queer theory philosophy upon every child in Scotland. In terms of the poster above the reality is that many children (ie. those who grow up in Christian, Islamic or even atheist homes with a different perspective on human sexuality) will not feel safe, supported and included at school.
If you doubt that TIE is about indoctrination then here is something else that our children are being subjected to. A serving political leader is being held up as an Icon to our children. The fact that he is also the Green Leader is a bonus. We are not too far away from our school children being taught about our Great Glorious Leaders, who must be worshipped as Icons!
The New Red Brigades.
Chairman Mao realised the potential of having malleable mass student social protest movements in 1966 and 1967. His cultural revolution is a warning to us. The manipulation of children in order to further a government agenda is something to regret not rejoice over. I think our society is developing the conditions that make this much more possible. We treat adults like children and children like adults. We want children to be able to vote because we think that we can tell them how to vote. We teach them what to think not how to think. We have the media that is able not only to influence but also to spy upon their every move. Our police and governments now think they can police people’s thoughts. We are all school children to be indoctrinated, manipulated and if that fails, cowed into submission. If you doubt the intimdatory potential of this – consider this message as indicative of what the mob means:
Those who deny the demands of the youth of the world shall suffer the consequences
And of course we have the doctrines of hate – hate speech, hate thoughts, hate actions. If you don’t agree with the new doctrines you are guilty of hate. Orwell saw it coming. The Twitter mob leads to the real mob.
The Impossible Burden
More than all the above what concerns me is that our leaders and commentators are placing an impossible burden on children. No – they cannot save the planet. They cannot save their friends or their families. They cannot save themselves. This is an impossible burden to place on children – which can only end in defeat, disillusion and disappointment. The Greatest Love of All, cited above, continues:
Let the children’s laughter remind us how we used to be
Everybody searching for a hero
People need someone to look up to
I never found anyone who fulfill my needs
A lonely place to be
And so I learned to depend on me
‘I learned to depend on me’. That is a lonely place to be. I learned to depend on our Great Leaders. That is a desperate place to be. What a burden to place on our young people! There is another burden that the Bible speaks of.
10 I have seen the burden God has laid on the human race. 11 He has made everything beautiful in its time. He has also set eternity in the human heart; yet no one can fathom what God has done from beginning to end. 12 I know that there is nothing better for people than to be happy and to do good while they live. 13 That each of them may eat and drink, and find satisfaction in all their toil—this is the gift of God. 14 I know that everything God does will endure forever; nothing can be added to it and nothing taken from it. God does it so that people will fear him.
The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.
Let the little children come to me…
There IS hope. But it is not in mob hysteria or any of the current ideologies of our rulers. Hope is found in Christ.
Instead of teaching our children that they are the saviours of the world, we should be introducing them to the Saviour of the world!
Well said!
School’s out. Egged on by so-called climate-change scientists who were so wrong on global warming yet have got their propaganda taught as fact in our schools for decades. It’s a sinister and much more dangerous ‘evolution of Evolution’ as it is obviously justifying ‘revolution’. No wonder anarchists are showing such glee, having brain-washed a generation into becoming little Jeremy Corbyns.
And no wonder he wants to reduce the electoral age. What a combination our intellectual betters have cooked up – a poisonous soup of support for Islam, sodomy and trans-genderism heated by invented global warming with a garnish of antisemitism. The perfect welcome for the man-of -sin?
Arctic sea ice volume is less than 25% of its 1979 value; The Greenland Ice sheet has been losing mass at the rate of 286 gigatonnes per year on average since 2002; Australia has, for the second consecutive summer, (along with much else of the southern hemisphere) endured record breaking temperatures, in places approaching 50C; The Jet Steam in the northern hemisphere has been destabilised by loss of northern ice, cauing it to become wavier, dragging warmer air further north and colder air further south. So, as a consequence there has been crazy weather – record heat, record cold, record rain, record drought.
Without a stable climate you will not be able to grow food for 7 billion people. The climate warming is also linked to staggering insect losses. 76% of flying isnects in Germany disappeared between 1989 and 2016; a similar study in Puerto Rico evidenced a 98% decline in ground isnects over a 35 year period. Youa re going to have a hard time hrowing food with a dying or dead biosphere.
Whilst it is true that ‘Hope is found in Christ’, Jesus is not making any significant impact on reducing the damage caused by humans. These young people, not all of course, are genuinely concerned for the future of the earth and the creatures that share this space with us.
This is why veganism, for example, is growing amongst young people, because they care about the earth. Maybe the church should be more active and support them in their cause.
The belt: so that’s where you got your thick skin from!? And ducking and diving to avoid thrown chalk and blackboard dusters
It all reminds me of “Teach your children well” which also includes the line “teach your parents well” by Crosby Stills and Nash. Roots and fruits from the past, within (my) living memory, student days.
Here is the official music video which is pertinent today, just change the cause(s):
https://youtu.be/dQOaUnSmJr8
Crosby, Stills & Nash Lyrics
“Teach Your Children”
You, who are on the road
Must have a code that you can live by
And so, become yourself
Because the past is just a goodbye
Teach your children well
Their father’s hell did slowly go by
And feed them on your dreams
The one they picks, the one you’ll know by
Don’t you ever ask them why
If they told you, you would cry
So just look at them and sigh
And know they love you
And you (Can you hear?) of tender years (And do you care?)
Can’t know the fears (And can you see?) that your elders grew by (We must be free)
And so, please help (To teach your children) them with your youth (What you believe in)
They seek the truth (Make a world) before they can die (That we can live in)
Teach your parents well
Their children’s hell will slowly go by
And feed them on your dreams
The one they picks, the one you’ll know by
Don’t you ever ask them why
If they told you, you will cry
So just look at them and sigh
And know they love you
Im with you completely on the ‘f**k Theresa Mey’ thing. This is indoctrination of the worst kind. As you say, it’s welcome that kids are concerned about action on climate change albeit workable solutions are hard to come by. There are no easy answers and environmentalists disagree over whether nuclear (and even fracked gas) might be part of the solution, for example.
Depressing that people like Jude immediately jump on this and assert there is no real evidence of climate change (wake up and smell the coffee) and link it to evolution, which I assume he also denies. Pathetic frankly. It’s also quite unnecessary because you don’t need to deny the substance of an argument to object to the way the argument is being framed. It doesn’t follow from an affirmation of climate change that we must therefore abandon our cars and central heating and move into caves. It’s depressingly predictable that some professing Christians miss no opportunity to diss evolution. Still….
I was troubled by some of the footage of the strike but couldn’t quite put my finger on why. You’ve hit the nail on the head. Probably we disagree on the substance of some of the specific issues you raise but I think we agree on our unease of how they’re being discussed. It’s encouraging that youngsters are more engaged but worrying that not only is there a reasonable chance their views are absorbed from dogmatic adults, so too is an attitude that hardly allows dissent. As I’ve said before, it’s troubling when not only are opposing voices labelled ‘fascist’ (a ridiculous assertion in the context), those that support the right of opposing voices to speak are also labelled fascist, or else ‘fascist enabler’.
Well said, Alex Staton.
“Depressing that people like Jude immediately jump on this and assert there is no real evidence of climate change (wake up and smell the coffee) and link it to evolution, which I assume he also denies. Pathetic frankly. It’s also quite unnecessary because you don’t need to deny the substance of an argument to object to the way the argument is being framed. It doesn’t follow from an affirmation of climate change that we must therefore abandon our cars and central heating and move into caves. It’s depressingly predictable that some professing Christians miss no opportunity to diss evolution. Still….”
Like David below, I need to point out what I did not say! No one can argue there is no climate change – it’s been changing ever since creation and will continue to change (as long as the earth remains!). But, having first predicted a new Ice Age just a few years ago and global warming more recently ( for which, on their own admission, some who are part of this dodgy science, fiddled the figures) they duck and weave to forecast a few degrees warming by the end of this century. Something that only God can know and as this is a forum primarily to share the biblical world view, why should we not, quite legitimately, do just that?
The clash of world views, between those who have found the Bible route to life, living and eternity to be true, is in increasing focus. According to the signs, we are in the end-times.
If believers do not speak out, as Jesus said, even the very stones will speak. It’s because, as a fast asleep church, we have not effectively challenged the worldly world views that the world is in the mess it is in. The Bible is history before it happens for those with eyes to see and ears to hear. There is no end to the opinions of men (Ecclesiastes) and neither scientism, politics or man’s religion will rescue mankind. When Jesus comes soon, as our Saviour’s list of signs in his Olivet discourse in Matthew 24 makes clear, there will be shock and awe (weeping and gnashing of teeth) when every eye sees him, realises their blindness in life and bow in either worship or fear (for every knee shall bow at the name of Jesus when he returns). Yes, we will all have got some things wrong, which is why salvation is only through repentance and the broken body, shed blood and resurrection that we may be saved. Not for how good we think we are or for our endless arguments that lead nowhere but to doom and gloom and Orwellian government…
“Something that only God can know and as this is a forum primarily to share the biblical world view, why should we not, quite legitimately, do just that?”
Shockingly arrogant. You apparently consider the 98% of climate scientists that believe climate change is a significant problem that needs to be addressed, which includes many Christians, are clearly opposed to your ‘Biblical worldview’. No doubt you think much the same of Christian geologists that believe the earth is billions of years old and that the fossil record reveals the evolutionary nature of life on earth over countless aeons, among which I include myself, are equally opposed to your so-called ‘Biblical worldview’. Don’t worry, I’m not going to try to start a side thread on the alleged evils of climate and evolutionary science because it’s usually fruitless and almost invariably boring. Besides there are more important things Christians can be saying. Any brand of gospel proclamation that like yours takes every opportunity to bang on its anti-science anti-intellectual drum regardless of the subject at hand gets very tiresome. Depressing really.
Hi Alex, I have done much research on the evidence related to the subjects we are discussing and wrote my Kindle ebook Magna Carta R.I.P? in 2015 to reveal the conspiracy realities peddled by liberal/Marxists that you are clearly taken in by – hook, line and sinker.
98% of the world population probably does not believe in the inerrancy of the Bible but God does not rely on our votes to prove his truth. Climate change is a fact and that is not the argument. It is how scientists are so arrogant as to understand it sufficiently to know what the average temperatures may be in 80 years time especially as the global warming predictions were wrong and their previous Ice Age idea was so abruptly abandoned. You can check yourself that some of the foremost meteorologists are the most sceptical and have not joined the clamour for reducing greenhouse gases etc. Some scientists see the recent tilting of the earth’s axis as the possible cause of the ice cap melting, as do the Inuit who are actually witnessing it on the ground. Others put it down to unusual activity of the sun.
Meanwhile the world is told that it is the most serious threat to our existence. The Bible acknowledges that man has not cared for the earth and pollution is an inescapable fact but this world/the people in it, can only be saved by repenting of sin and accepting Jesus Christ as their own personal Saviour. This is the main message of this and Solas as I understand it and I am surprised that so few on these forums are ‘contending for the faith once delivered to the saints’, as Jude puts it in his letter to the church. The events in the book that follows it, Revelation, are what the world and Christians in particular, should be focused on, not scientism or politics – except in seeing that the world’s woes and issues are part of the signs of the times that Jesus warns us of in Matthew 24 and Mark 21.
To claim we have “repented of sin and accepted Jesus Christ as our own personal Saviour, while continuing to treat the world He gave us as alternately our toyshop and our dustbin, is at best a failure to listen to His words, and at worst an actual blasphemy.
We are no better then than those Jews the prophet Jeremiah called to account for thinking that they could carry on regardless abusing their land and one another while trusting in “the temple of the Lord” (which surely He would not want to see brought under by His enemies!) to protect them. That’s magical thinking, not faith – and God will not be controlled by a so-called “faith” that treats His promises as a bargain.
There is not one prer reviewed paper in the sceintific literature from the 1970s (or any other time) in which scientists predicted another ice age.
My grandfather had a very similar experience of comradely desertion at the point of actual delivery as a newly-elected shop steward – very different from fighting in the trenches, as many a soldier has found since. And more than a few Christians have experienced it “coming out” for Christ, or defending those under popular disgrace. I’m no more immune than the next person to simple cowardice in the face of (even misused) authority.
In my own generation, we too were talked down to when suggesting that a world bristling with weapons of mass destruction, in the hands of leaders already freely exhibiting the will to mass slaughter, might just not be a great idea. Are we any better off now for having been roundly ignored?
So now our young are “easily led” (as if their elders weren’t – ha!) and too immature at 16 to have the vote – yet many of the same people saying that are dead keen to hold a certain young lady *fully* accountable for her decisions and actions at a younger age still, even to the extent of effectively exacting a death penalty from her guiltless baby. It’s not only children who fail to link one thing to another and see an inconsistency… but if we all survive I’m sure they’ll learn the same hypocrisies we are now so diligently teaching them.
“The national union of headteachers commended the ‘strikes’, most politicians did, as did much of the media. It’s a weird kind of rebellion that is endorsed by those in authority!”
I’m not convinced that that means the children’s protest was wrong, it quite possibly means that the protest did not go far enough. I think you are right when you point out that Wilberforce’s protest involved sacrifice and I think I agree with you, that this protest supports those in power who pay lip service to climate change but are unwilling to sacrifice anything. Reminds me of the historian in Davos who pointed out the number of people who took private jets to hear David Attenborough speak about climate change. Maybe the answer is more protests!
Where I do disagree with you is this idea that any child that has ‘left wing’ views has been indoctrinated, with I suppose the idea that anyone who has the opposite being free thinking. It’s kind of the same argument you used with university students and Brexit, the idea that any student Brexiteer is free-thinking and any Remainer is indoctrinated. It just seems like a lazy argument reserved for right wing radio hosts trying to rile up those who only think in black and white. I remember being vehemently pro-life and anti-equal marriage in my evangelical high school and that was definitely not ‘free-thought’ on my part at the time.
I am very happy for people to comment on my blog. I am not happy for people to comment on what I have not said – as though I have said it. I did not say (nor do I believe) that any child who has left wing views has been indoctrinated. I’ll let you off this time but please don’t repeat the offence! I just don’t have time to correct these kind of misrepresentations. Please be more careful in future.
David – have you heard about the Scottish Govt consultation on hate crimes (which closes on 24 Feb)? There are concerns for freedom of speech with the proposed expansion of the “stirring up hatred” offence. Maybe you could highlight for blog readers??
Yes – I have written some articles on this and just did something for the BBC on it…
And this is the sort of thing that deeply concerns me, not just as a Christian but as someone apparently liable to be thrown out of the country if it’s considered for the good of the people. (I hold dual citizenship – it used to be a source of pride and delight, as a double subject of the Queen, to which the EU was an added bonus – but now renders me potentially a genuine “citizen of nowhere” subject to the whim of whatever régime can insert itself into power.)
Those eagerly cheering the conversion of British citizenship from a birthright to a favour dependent on “good behaviour” decided in secret by unknown officials at the will of a Minister, and the institution of different punishments for the same crime depending on who your parents or grandparents were, have no idea what they risk letting loose. You and I are both old enough to remember the abuses of the Soviets and Communist Chinese…
I haven’t heard of TIE before, but I have heard quite a bit about the “No Outsiders” programme.
It is certainly not about picking winning minorities and losing minorities, but about ensuring that children from different backgrounds are comfortable studying together.
Like it or not, being openly gay or trans is not a crime. Being Muslim or Jewish is not a crime. Schools will have students who are gay, trans, Muslim or Jewish and children who have family members who are gay, trans, Muslim or Jewish.
Schools that approach welfare and safeguarding as a zero sum game will fail children. That’s more serious than just their time in the classroom as it will impact them their entire lives – perhaps even feeling pushed into behaviour that harms themselves or others.
A confused post! No one is arguing that being gay, Jewish or Muslim – is or should be a crime. And No Outsiders or TIE is not about ‘ensuring that children from different backgrounds are comfortable studying together’. It is entirely about indoctrinating children into one particular sexual philosophy.
No Outsiders is what it says on the tin.
I’ve copied this from their website
What is our Aim?
Teach children about the Equality Act 2010 and British Values
Reduce vulnerability to radicalisation and extremism
Prepare children for a life in modern Britain
Teach children to be proud of who they are while recognising and celebrating difference and diversity
Develop resilience in children.
Create a positive school ethos where everyone feels they belong
What it says on the tin is meaningless. And false. There are outsiders – anyone for example who would hold to a biblical position on marriage. There is no diversity and difference in these mono cultural social engineering schools. What are ‘British values’? All the above is chillingly Orwellian…kind of depressing that you buy into it…
I heard an extensive interview on the subject, David and the intention is to bring together children from families with different views, not to privilege one set of views over the other.
Don’t be so naive. Of course that is the reason given. But in reality it does privilege one view. Thats the point of the whole thing…
Oh dear, oh dear. You’ve ‘done some research’. That’ll be on the internet then. Actually I’m a professional geologist. I have a degree from a very decent university and have been practicing for nearly 20 years. But you’re not interested in that because you’ve ‘done some research’. And you’ve ‘done some research’ on climate change. I’m glad you concede climate change is a fact. It is also a fact that the rate of carbon dioxide and methane emissions have been polluting the atmosphere has risen almost exponentially in the last 150 years or so. The rate of warming is alarming. We’re seeing the effects of climate change right now. We have a very credible culprit. Climate has indeed changed over geological time (I’m a geologist – I know about these things) usually in response to unusually volcanic CO2 emissions such as the Deccan Traps which are thought to have contributed to the demise of the dinosaurs. Excuse me if you think they all drowned in the Flood 6000 years ago. You’ve done the research after all.
Your understanding of what scientists do is dismal. We use our theories and models to make predictions. Among other things use numerical models to make predictions about the behaviour of groundwater in the medium term. Climate scientists use highly sophisticated numerical models to predict changes to climate. You rightly point out that early models made predictions about cooling. The point is that unlike you professional scientists change their predictions in response to better data. They don’t mind being proven wrong, they really don’t. It’s how we make scientistific progress.
Incidentally who are these ‘foremost meteorologists’ . There is around 97% consensus as I’ve already said. Those opposing have their own agenda. We need to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. How we do that is a separate question but your insistence God will make it right is absurd and ultimately heretical. God doesn’t act like that. He doesn’t simply clear up the mess when we cock up.
I’ve been called many things but I’ve never been accused of pursuing a Marxist agenda. Truth told I’m more libertarian than liberal. I don’t know what Biblical inerrancy has to do with it though. It doesn’t tell us about dinosaurs and has nothing on anthropogenic climate change. It tells us only that we have an obligation to use the created world and its resources justly. Environmentalists have the same principle but call it sustainability. It’s about ‘meeting our own needs without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their needs’. It’s about justice and seems rather biblical. But clearly you don’t care. As long as you’re alright Jack.
You’ll excuse me if I decline your offer of your book. I’ve read the nonsense your peddling a thousand times. Might I respectfully suggest you do some research?
Thank you for proving how far away you ‘professionals’ are from your ultimate conclusions! This is your own statement:
” We use our theories and models to make predictions. Among other things use numerical models to make predictions about the behaviour of groundwater in the medium term. Climate scientists use highly sophisticated numerical models to predict changes to climate. You rightly point out that early models made predictions about cooling. The point is that unlike you professional scientists change their predictions in response to better data. They don’t mind being proven wrong, they really don’t. It’s how we make scientistific (sic) progress”.
The God of all creation does not have to rely on ‘models’. Or change his predictions (they’re called prophecy!) All of the 300 or so prophecies on Jesus’s first coming were one hundred percent true, such that the odds are too high to calculate.
To quote my book which you are too condescending and superior to download and read!:
Peter Stoner, Professor Emeritus of Science at Westmont College in Santa Barbara, California, calculated the probability of one Person fulfilling just 48 prophecies to be (1 with 127 zeros):
1 in 10,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000!
THIS AMOUNT OF PROOF IS OVERWHELMING. With the odds being so great for one Person to fulfil just 48 prophecies, one must wonder what the odds would be for one Person to fulfil all 108 prophecies. Fulfilled prophecy is indisputable proof:
• That Jesus is the Messiah.
• That God knows the end from the beginning.
• That God is in control.
• And the Bible is the Word of God.
How long do your models need to become irrefutable facts? Like the recent boobs actually admitted after they were shown to be wrong and the fiddling of data admitted:
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/earth/environment/10916086/The-scandal-of-fiddled-global-warming-data.html
https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2018-11-14/climate-scientists-admit-major-math-error-after-global-warming-study-debunked
Your own admission that scientists switched from Ice Age cooling to Global Warming proves no virtue on their part when they were just cooking the books. You will always have to keep going back to the drawing board as climate change is far too complex to call.
Perhaps your invention of ‘scientistific progress’, though inadvertent, shows you are just human after all and sums up the confusion in scientists ranks?
By the way, I did not call you a liberal/Marxist. If you will read that again, I said you are ‘taken in’ by their agenda, which is, of course to impose Orwellian utopia on the world – a process that is getting ever closer.
There are around 1500, five times the number of prophecies for Christ’s return and the end of history conditions on the earth that are set down in scripture. They reward serious study by scientists or laymen alike and convinced believers stand by them all – that is why we are ‘contending for the faith, once delivered to the Saints’. Salvation is offered to all, as is freedom and free-will and there is no other name by which we may be saved, but Jesus.
Even if you get all your models perfected it does not change God’s eternal purposes one jot…
Jude
We have an observation record dating back 100-150 years which shows the global mean temperature rising as we pollute more and more.
It doesn’t take a science degree to read a thermometer
Nor to read Bible prophecy!
For the time will come when people will not put up with sound doctrine. Instead, to suit their own desires, they will gather around them a great number of teachers to say what their itching ears want to hear. 2 Timothy 4:3
Shockingly naive view of Biblical prophesy a very long way off what most people in conservative reformed churches such as the Free Church of Scotland which David belongs to and I loosely align myself with. I might add that it’s not really done to cite yourself in proof of a point 🤣🤣🤣
Quote: If you doubt that – just think about what would happen to any child who went on strike to protest about children being killed in the womb, or in favour or Brexit or against Transgender indoctrination. Would Sturgeon and the politicians be tweeting their admiration for their political activity?
That’s already happened of course. Don’t forget March for Life 2019, Covington High school boys and the accusations of racism.
Jude this is important and goes beyond debates about climate change important though that is (There is no longer any serious debate. When it was thought that climate change could give rise to an ice age – and this was in the context of the impacg of global *warming* on the globe as a whole not any believe temperatures over all are falling – the science was young and we hadn’t the intense computer modelling power we have now.) The point is all scientists use models to make predictions. Science that doesn’t make predictions- that only describes and catalogues- is rather boring. Models are used to try to understand complex systems and to suggest further areas of data gathering. My hydrogeological models are usually simpler than climate models but they’re derived from first principles- the known science of groundwater flow – and are calibrated to available data. If they suggest we need more data to better understand what’s going on we go to get it. It’s the same with climate models and more qualitative models such as those used to describe the mega structure of the earth and its processes.
Public understanding of science and what scientists do is woefully poor. It’s poor in the UK and worse in the US. We have people buying into food fads, dreadful understanding of the difficult political issues around climate change (not deniers but hopelessly naive about how science can tackle it), anti-vaccers, anti-frackers, whatever ridiculous notion the idiot Gwyneth Paltrow comes out with, ‘alkaline diets’ as cures for cancer, homeopathy, quack psychology and loads more. It’s depressing when Christians compound that with the absurd notion we don’t bother because it’s all in Biblical prophecy. You do realise just how much you benefit from scientists making models?
Hi, I do have personal knowledge of this as one of my sons is an internationally known Phd seismologist and civil engineer for a US company and uses models all the time when designing foundations for such as nuclear power stations etc. I understand completely that the calculations have to allow for likely variables and over periods of up to one hundred years or more. As a Christian he understands that God may overrule our best guesses and our timelines.
I would suggest though, that seismology, being a more defined discipline than climatology, may be a little less dependent on the models. It certainly needs sufficient accuracy to ensure his company gains repeat contracts.
The difference with climatology is surely that there are too many variables and too little dependable data to say. Yes, by all means give it your best guess, but acknowledge that others who interpret differently may be correct in the end. The dogmatism that, just in the brief years has switched from cooling to warming is not sufficient evidence (and flawed
through some deliberate fiddling as is public knowledge) to impose massive taxes, which will fall mainly on the poor in all parts of the world. Like the unanimous governmental push towards diesel despite many dissenting voices, the consensus has been proved wrong and the fall-out is only just beginning to be felt. I would love to have an electric car, but the arguments about provision of sufficient generating capacity and forecast inadequacy of clean generation again does not augur well for the future of EV’s in the timescales being adopted by governments. It seems very likely that those projections will have to be revised and we may never achieve full electrification or even very near it. (My own prediction is that governments will make personal ownership out of reach, and SDEV’s will make it impractical anyway – an imposed regime to end personal liberty. An interesting subject for another thread).
All of these very real dilemmas are the legitimate subject of biblical history and prophecy which encourages prudence in those matters which God has placed in man’s stewardship.
However, we have trusted too much in our own cleverness and intellect to the point that our creator God’s word is not only marginalised but completely shut out of modern education, politics and even serious discussion. We in the church have to take most of the blame as we have repeatedly given ground to secularism, stayed largely aloof of politics and public life, failed in leading by moral and social example and in every way failed to contend for the faith. The few of us that still point to ‘the ancient paths’ face apathy, hostility, vilification and mockery. Since the adoption of laws favouring certain minorities, we are now contending with the loss of livelihood and the very real threat of criminal charges and incarceration. When tolerance is only for those things that a particular society deems politically correct we are entering a fearful Owellian future.
Now, hurt feelings and vague definitions of so-called hate crime have led to the rise of no-platforming in universities and the impending imposition of Newspeak disguised as education in fake and genuine news – only, of course, as judged by intellectual liberal Marxists masquerading as saviours of humanity.
If you believe in our Magna Carta freedoms this is our chilling future, it bears serious contemplation:
http://prophecynewswatch.com/article.cfm?recent_news_id=2943
Alas there’s little merit continuing to debate with Jude. He has better insight that the overwhelming scientific consensus on climate change – although he hasn’t provided any peer reviewed research to show why it’s wrong. He rather despises ‘professionals’ (his quote marks) apparently because, unlike him, they respond to real data, even to the point of completely revising their understanding if necessary. This is the one thing Jude is not prepared to do. On the contrary, he rather despises it.
He concedes that the climate is changing. What he’s not prepared to concede is that the rate of change is unprecedented. This is apparent from geology. There have been several periods of marked warming in geological history consequent on natural events. They were frequently catastrophic in their impact on life on earth.
Contemporary climate change is almost certainly predominantly anthropogenic. It’s ridiculous to assert that because there was climate change in geological history – does he even believe in ‘geological history’ – the cause must be the same. The common cause is carbon dioxide. The difference is the source. And in Christian terms, it’s heretical to insist that it’s all fine because God will end the world anyway. The end will indeed come: tomorrow, next year, next century, next millennium? We don’t know and we’re warned against speculating. Meantime we owe it to our generation and future generations to use and tend the resources God’s earth gives us justly and sustainably.
Most of us take no pleasure at the thought that global warming could disproportionately adversely affect some of the poorest countries on earth. The science is converging on the expectation of more extreme weather events. On average, hotter summers and harsher winters although how this plays out depends on other factors. In Northern Europe the prediction is for hotter summers and stormier winters, which is what we’re seeing. Climate is changing and we have a prime culprit: anthropogenic CO2.
I suspect what Jude really struggles with is his confusion between the science and the politics. There are several schools of thought on what to do about it. On one extreme there are those that think we should all move back into caves. Actually, it’s usually that other people should move back into caves. The self-righteous activists continue to buy organic at Waitrose and drive a Prius or BMV hybrid. They take their disused Chardonnay bottles to the bottle bank with religious dedication. At the other extreme are those who because of their own political agenda refuse to recognise anthropogenic climate change at all. Then there are those of us that recognise the science is sound and that we need to do something about anthropogenic climate change but that something needs to reckon with the fact people are not going to make enormous sacrifices in their standard of living for a threat they don’t see as imminent. We’re not easily going to give up our comforts. So perhaps the technology that has brought us to this place will help us out of this place. That’s my own position which is why not only am I interested in renewable power but also low carbon solutions such as nuclear and even ‘clean’ fossil fuels with carbon capture. Possible solutions are complex and involve interactions between multiple technologies across many disciplines.
But Jude knows better. He has peer reviewed research that says it’s not happening. Where is it? And if that doesn’t work, God won’t let it happen anyway. God didnt prevent endless massive extinctions in geological history and he doesn’t prevent frequent natural and manmade disasters of enormous proportion. What makes Jude so sure God will intervene in this one to make it alright?
Hello again Alex,
“Little merit in debating with Jude”.
Sadly true. It would take a seismic shift to move either of us from our current positions.
You are stuck in your worldly scientific groove and I am stuck in my Bible-believing eschatological groove.
I wonder why you and others on this avowedly Christian site prefer to joust on the scientific and political level and seem unmoved by the astounding accuracy of biblical prophecy and its salutary warnings?
“What makes Jude so sure God will intervene in this one to make it alright?”
The Bible.
Paul says to be ready to give a reason for the hope that is within us through Jesus’s death on the cross and resurrection. He also cites the blessed hope of the church – that he is coming back to receive his own. John 3:16 is often quoted in isolation but read the following verses:
“For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him. Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe stands condemned already because they have not believed in the name of God’s one and only Son.”
Also, as we are commanded to be watchmen on the walls we are struck by how the signs of the times indicate the closeness of His return:
“Therefore keep watch, because you do not know on what day your Lord will come. But understand this: If the owner of the house had known at what time of night the thief was coming, he would have kept watch and would not have let his house be broken into. So you also must be ready, because the Son of Man will come at an hour when you do not expect him.”
This is our priority as Christians. Whatever speculations are distracting the world and many in the church too, it is our urgent responsibility to point to God’s solutions.
Your arrogant claim that noone that disagrees with you follows the Bible does neither you nor the wider church any favours. Your idiotic opposition to science sometimes makes life unnecessarily difficult for scientists that are Christians in a secular world that has been led to believe that Christianity is inherently anti-intellectual and anti-science. My own view is that it’s nothing of the sort – and there have been countless numbers of highly influential Christian scientists in the earth and life sciences and other disciplines – and that ignoring scientific evidence in trying to understand how our universe works represents an unbiblical disparaging of the material world God created.
You have no scientific evidence to support your claim that the conclusions of climate scientists that the climate is not changing in response to anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions. You appear to consider it quite unnecessary to even try. Instead you bang on about various unspecified prophecies you insist trump real evidence. I reckon I know the content of the Bible fairly well and nowhere do I recall reading that God will simply override our efforts to destroy the environment. On the contrary we find a large amount of data that suggests that failing to take care of the natural environment – managing it sustainably in modern parlance – will lead to degradation and despoiliation. There’s a fair amount of material on not using environmental resources greedily without recognising the needs of the vulnerable. I might suggest that this by itself ought to challenge Western nations that rely on cheap intensely exploited resources from some of the poorest parts of the world. This includes activities likely to contribute to the effects of climate change in countries particularly vulnerable to sea-level change or drought. To ignore this in favour of only what’s happening in one’s backyard (“we could do with a bit more sunshine”) is selfish. The bible is concerned with environmental ethics.
You can argue about what you do about climate change. You might argue, wrongly in my view, there’s no nothing that can be done but it strikes as wicked to ignore the thing completely. You also might argue about how best to target climate change, either in terms of encouraging reductions in energy use and GHG emissions or developing new technologies that maintain current levels of usage whilst managing or reducing GHGs. But that’s quite separate from the fundamental question itself.
It’s depressing that some individuals so refuse to consider the possible implications if climate change and other environmental threats that they simply refuse to accept it might be happening – fingers in their ears, hands over their eyes – particularly when they’re Christians with very little sense of how their own actions might affect others. Im certainly not pretending there are easy answers (and there’s a great deal of hypocrisy amongst environmentalists and ‘green’ Christians) but I fail to see how God does not require us to at least recognise that our sometimes greedy over-exploitation of the earth’s resources have caused problems not only for the environment itself but possibly also for some of the most vulnerable people on earth. This is only what is said in the Old Testament.
Two final comments. First, you do realise that the science you so disparage is largely responsible for providing the resources whose overuse produced our climate crisis? Second, I do wish people like you would drop the sanctimoniousness and stop assuming that everyone that doesn’t share your outlook isn’t interested in God what has to say. It’s idiotic, clearly not true and most of all intolerably self-righteous. It’s not clever and it’s not appealing.
Alex, I actually wouldn’t argue with the OT commands to take care of the earth. I am as sickened as anyone about the pollution we have caused, though not necessarily always by intention
.
I began my career in business in the plastics industry at the time when it was almost universally hailed as miracle material and enhanced our lives in so many ways – thanks largely to science . The ultimate disposal was never broached in the 60’s when I moved on into the petro-chemical industry – now there’s another hot potato (but I won’t be tempted to go there in this post!). Neither was the down-side of asbestos which was the mainstay of the large UK group I worked for in marketing melamine, polyester/glass fibre and other resins that we sent worldwide. Thermosetting and thermoplastics, the moulds and machinery all seemed part of our brave new 20th Century world as we produced millions of convenience items at lower and lower cost .
It is only recently that the true cost to the planet is being realised and recycling being tackled long after the horse has left the stable.
I could have chosen to have what you might have seen as a more civilised academic discussion. That is, if I was not much more concerned to highlight large parts of the Bible that, as we have enjoyed our technological ride into the noughties, have been side-lined and even ignored.
It is on our watch that not only the environmental pollution has been building up to crisis proportions (though we may not agree on solutions), but the more destructive and pervasive moral pollution, also due to selfishness, abdication of responsibility and, not least, in ignoring the many warning signs.
This is why my concentration in these forums is to bring our hearts and minds to bear on the helter-skelter slide away from the spiritual into the temporal which has led to the falling away from the Judeo/Christian precepts that for hundreds of years put God at the centre of our foundational laws and practices.
I hope this might correct some of our misunderstandings and explain why my priorities are to “contend for the faith once delivered to the saints”. It is why I am sure that it is way past time when our churches were preaching and teaching not only the love of God in sending his son to save us, but the full counsel of the whole Bible insofar as we can grasp its pre-eminence and its prophetic urgency. If that is arrogance and self-righteousness then I plead guilty…
There is an increasing concern in parts of the secular world about the possibility of civilisation going off a cliff, or even of human extinction.
The ecological collapse has more than one aspect. There is the climate catstrophe, with the polar ice melting and consequent weather weirding. There is also a biosphere collapse.
We may get sentimental about elephants or orang utans but I submit that it is the death and decline of the smaller creatures – the insects on land and the phytoplankton in the oceans – that should concern us more. These are at the bottom of the food web by which God sustains us. we will not last long without food and it would be foolish for humanity to just assume – as most do – that food will always flow out of ths supermarkets.
The ecological collape has clear eschatological implications. However, in my experience, trying to get Christians to think beyond their theological paradigms for the End Times is well nigh impossible. Thus, they are usually as much in the dark as the rest of humanity. When an individual has a terminal medical diagnosis he or she, even if not a believer, may seek aid and advice from a pastor or a priest. But from whom will they seek solace when the notion of human extinction becomes more widely known?
There is no notion of human extinction at man’s hand in the Bible . That is nothing to do with our paradigms but everything to do with reading and understanding the prophetic books which tell clearly of end-times when God’s patience with man will have run out. Yes, there is a great reckoning coming, but it will be at his hand and in his timing. It will be a judgement for moral and spiritual sin as well as our pollution of the planet. Many watchmen believe it will be very soon as the world is as wicked now as when God destroyed the earth with the Noahic flood. Too bad if I am walking into deep doo-doo with those who treat that as myth. Jesus Christ believed it and so did the apostles, hence Jesus’s own words here in Luke, confirming Genesis: “For as were the days of Noah, so will be the coming of the Son of Man.”
And in Matthew 24:37-39
“But as the days of Noah were, so shall also the coming of the Son of man be.
For as in the days that were before the flood they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day that Noah entered into the ark,
And knew not until the flood came, and took them all away; so shall also the coming of the Son of man be.”
The whole of Matthew 24 gives Jesus’s signs of the times, in plain sight in our day, and says all should be watching for them.
I prefer the makers handbook to atheistic hypothetical notions.
Jesus is coming soon! If you have not read it, please, for your own eternal destiny, read it, repent of ignoring his word and seek him with all of your heart.
“Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you.” Matt 7:7
Scientific laws are neither atheistic nor Christian, except that they were put there by God Himself.
If human extinction beckons, then it is likely that the Lord’s return is near since the clear implication of Scripture is that some humans will be left alive at the time of His Coming.
But just consider the facts. A study published in a peer reviewed journal in 2017 shows a 76% decline in flying insect biomass in protected areas of Germany between 1989 and 2016; a study published in the scientific literature in 2018 shows a 98% decline in ground insects in Puerto Rico; Arctic ocean phytoplankton declined from 4.5 microgtams per cublic litre in 1960 to just 0.5 in 2010.
Other studies have been published. The ongoing extinction event appears to be affecting other speices within the foodweb. Birds feed on insects, for example, and have declined.
You have set up a strawman in your argument. No, the Bible does not mention human extinction. It doesn’t mention television either. It is not “Old Moore’s Almanac.”
What the Bible does talk about is an evnt or process that is so bad, so horrendous, that unless the Lord returns there be no flesh left alive.
Jude who said anything about wiping out the human race? It could happen I guess – God uses means to accomplish his purposes – although the reality is that homo sapiens is extremely adaptable. We’ve made our home in some of the most inhospitable places on earth from the hottest and most barren to the coldest and most barren. It’s quite possible that future technology will allow us to live in even more inhospitable surroundings such as the Moon or even Mars. The issue here however is one of justice for the most vulnerable societies on earth; those particularly affected by sea-level rise and drought. A very modest sealevel rise, for example could have devastating effects for low lying countries such as Bangladesh, a nation riven by poverty. As a Christian surely you agree that we in the wealthy West owe it to them to treat them justly; not to act in such a way that significantly disadvantages them? Don’t you? God also obliges us to look after the environment for its own sake, as his creation. We don’t have the right to exploit it to destruction.
Like too many, your religion has made you incapable of seeing beyond yourself. Christianity is not merely individualistic – or even mainly individualistic- because it is focussed on communities in relationship with God and each other. Not a single one of the verses you quoted has any relevance to the topic at hand. You appear certain that our actions have no impact on others or that God will hold us accountable, or even that our actions don’t have repercussions for ourselves. Most will see your position as essentially heretical.
I guess there’s little merit pursuing this. Your only response appears to be to quote screeds of irrelevant scripture. And there’s the sanctimoniousness of course. “I prefer the Makers handbook to atheistic hypothetical notions”. Please. These alleged atheist notions are coming from Christians.
Humans are very adaptable – the species we rely on for food, cleaning water and so on, are not so adaptable.