Helpful translation of global warming article

I recently ran across this fascinating article entitled Why Christians Can’t Believe in Man-Caused Global Warming. It’s was a bit long so I thought I’d take a few minutes summarize its contents for you.

The author seems to use “leftists,”  “liberals,” “socialists,” “Democrats” and “anti-Christians” interchangeably throughout the piece, so I will just use “Leftists” for clarity.

Here we go:

Christians believe humankind is God’s all-time favorite creation because He tells us so in the Bible. But leftist/socialists often known as Democrats think humans are an evil, toxic blight bent on destroying the planet through heinous activities like gassing up our cars. Boom. This is the war of the opposing worldviews going on today and it’s worldwide. It encompasses every important issue including man-caused global warming.

Translation: Leftists hate humanity and this caused them to make up global warming.

Leftists think homo sapiens started out as a random blob of cells zapped by electricity (no word on where the cells and electricity came from without a primal source such as God) that evolved into a greedy, evil animal with the magical ability to control the climate. Never mind that we can’t control or even predict tsunamis, earthquakes, or next week’s weather — all we need is a few computer models and a religious faith in our own brilliance to foretell the temperature 30 years from now.

Translation: Leftists and scientists can’t be trusted.

Arrogant leftists who think that by banning the earth’s homemade fuels like coal, oil and gas they can control the climate should heed God’s challenge to Job: “Where were you when I laid the foundations of the earth? Tell Me, if you have understanding, Who determined its measurements? Surely you know! Have you commanded the morning since your days began, And caused the dawn to know its place…Have you entered the treasury of snow…By which way is light diffused, Or the east wind scattered over the earth? Can you lift up your voice to the clouds, That an abundance of water may cover you? Can you send out lightnings, that they may go, And say to you, ‘Here we are!’? Would you indeed annul My judgment? Would you condemn Me that you may be justified? Have you an arm like God?” (Job Ch. 38: 4-5, 12, 22, 24-25, 34-35, Ch. 40: 8-9)

Translation: God controls the climate, period, and if anyone thinks otherwise, they are arrogant Leftists.

God uses some divine sarcasm to school us that He alone, not man, commands the weather, from the snow and frost to the wind, rain and lightning. Get over yourselves, measly humans; I’ve got this, He says. So Christians aren’t worried if the climate changes. It’s obvious to us that God set up natural elements that shift the climate over the eons from warmer to cooler and back again in historically well-known cycles. Just a few decades ago the big panic was global cooling that would freeze the planet in its tracks. The latest raving lefty bugaboo is global warming. Big whup.

Translation: Human’s couldn’t possibly cause climate problems because God is really powerful.

Leftist non-believers who call God a bearded sky-monkey ignore that ten years after Al Gore’s dark warnings, literally none of his predictions have come true: no islands have drowned; nor have the huge populations who were to die from rising seas or heat-blasted crops actually expired; the polar ice caps not only stubbornly refuse meltdown but ironically their ice is so thick it traps climate research ships. And the polar bears are just fine, in fact thriving.

Translation: Al Gore (and other Leftists) was wrong about some things.

Despite NASA scientists finding global temperatures have only increased 1.4 degrees Fahrenheit since 1880, despite Al Gore and the UN’s serious errors in promising massive climate disasters, despite the fact (from the U.S. Geological Survey among others) that only .038 percent of earth’s atmosphere is actually carbon dioxide so to reduce it would be totally futile, liberals insist that carbon fuels must be eradicated to save the earth. Since those fuels drive economic prosperity both here and in desperately poor countries, the leftists who like to think they’re compassionate “progressives” are really in the most basic sense anti-progress and anti-poor people.

Translation: Al Gore and the UN (and other Leftists) were wrong about some things. Leftists want to us to stop using fossil fuels and they don’t care that poor countries would get hurt.

Christians aren’t worried about climate change because they hold the biblical view that God has a master plan that favors His human children: “’For I know the thoughts that I think toward you,’ says the Lord, “thoughts of peace and not of evil, to give you a future and a hope. Then you will call upon Me and go and pray to Me, and I will listen to you. And you will seek Me and find Me, when you search for Me with all your heart.’”( Jeremiah 29:11- 13)

Translation: God will not let bad things happen to us.

The Lord God even considers His human creation so special He made us “in His own image…male and female He created them.” (Genesis 1:27) Shocking: a Supreme Being so politically incorrect he thinks there are only two genders!

Translation: I’m mentioning genders for some reason.

We are the only creatures God made as images of Himself, sharing with us some of His spirituality, His ability to love, to forgive, to reason, and to live creatively. Human consciousness is inarguably different from and far more advanced than that of animals. While God clearly thinks humans are very special, the left reviles us as just another animal but more irredeemable and deplorable; they think dolphins are a superior species.

Translation: God made human special, but Leftists hate humans.

Yet we’re so special that God entrusted us to “have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, and over every living thing that moves on the earth.” Genesis 1:28 This includes dolphins. Lefties’ heads explode in thunderous volleys over this one. “Dominion” is defined in the dictionary as “power or right of governing and controlling” — anti-Christians insist that God here gives evil man permission to despoil and demolish the planet.

Translation: Leftists think it’s okay with God to destroy the Earth.

But of course this is nonsense; why would a person bulldoze his own home? We are to be caretakers and good stewards of the planet. God meant we should care tenderly for his creation as a farmer tends his crops or a rancher her cattle, horses, and sheep. But because we are in charge of the animals we can also eat them.

Translation: Actually God wants us to take care of the Earth. This includes eating animals, which is relevant somehow.

When the Creator gave humans the duty to protect the animals he made, He gave Christians even more responsibility as environmentalists than non-believers can ever claim. Of course, humankind can, and sometimes has, been derelict in our duty and we must strive to do better.

Translation: Christians care way more about the Earth than Leftists.

But notice God never gives man dominion over the climate: over the skies or the rain or the thunderbolts, or the atmosphere’s greenhouse gases. God makes it clear He will take care of all that. In the beginning He very carefully calibrated earth’s atmosphere to support life. The atmosphere contains 99 percent oxygen and nitrogen. A bit more or less and earth would be uninhabitable. Carbon dioxide is only a trace element like about a dozen other gases.

Translation: God never gave Man dominion over the climate, therefore Man cannot possibly affect it.

Christians know that God makes generous provision for His creation, in ways unbelievers never grasp. Is it an accident of evolution that the earth provides a free, all-you-can-eat grass buffet for the herbivores that depend on it, while those animals in turn supply the carnivores with entrees? And could it be that God in his pre-planned genius placed the dinosaurs and plants here millions of years ago so their carbonized remains would eventually give us humans the carbon fuel we need to run civilization, thereby improving our lives?

What a crazy idea – that God actually wants the best for us.

God is likely very pro-carbon since the coal, oil, gas, and water power He gave us took His humans out of their caves and huts, transforming their meager camping-out-all-the-time existence into the miracle of modern prosperity. Carbon fuels have introduced us, via electricity, to the joys of cooking, heating, air conditioning, dishwashers, microwaves, flat screen TVs, computers, and car road trips, to name just a few.

Translation: God deliberately created neato fuel so would be able to use it for all kinda of stuff.

But I don’t think God is in favor of the “renewable energy” of wind and solar because turbines and solar collectors are murder machines for the precious birds that God wants us to protect. Millions of them have been sliced and diced by the turbines and scorched to death by solar panels. Big problem, greenies. Plus they need carbon fuel back-up.

Translation: God hates renewable energy because it kills birds!

To believe global warming will destroy the planet you have to believe that God placed a carbon poison pill in His creation that would lead to human prosperity and then to human annihilation. But God promises us good, not malevolence. So we answer: “The earth is the Lord’s and the fullness thereof; the world, and they that dwell therein.” Psalm 24:1 And we’re good with that.

Translation: God wouldn’t have made this neato fuel for us if was going to cause a problem. Case closed.

So there we go. An airtight case with impeccable logic and intellectual honesty. Plus some verses from the Bible.

Enjoy!

Telecine project – part 7 – first capture!

I redesigned and simplified and camera bracket, then drilled holes in the projector plate and bolted everything together.

One thing I noticed immediately is that the glass between the camera and the film was dirty and scratched. As far as I can tell, I don’t actually need it — it was there to protect the film from the (very bright and hot) lamp and the spinning shutter. So I removed it entirely. Continue reading Telecine project – part 7 – first capture!

Telecine project – part 6 – bracket mark 3

Arducam and lens bolted onto bracket

I got a good print of my mark 3 bracket (I skipped mark 2), and the camera bolted  on nicely. Part of the lens support snapped off — too thin. The lens support caused other problems as well — it blocks the screwdriver from reaching one of the screw heads; and it also gets in the way of the focus ring on the camera. More on that later. Continue reading Telecine project – part 6 – bracket mark 3

Telecine project – part 5 – first 3D printed parts

Holder and the Cree XM-L LED

My wonderful wife bought me a Monoprice Select 3D Printer V2, so I was able to get a few parts made! The LED holder turned out pretty well (on the third try).

I haven’t been able to try the LED yet, because I still need to figure out the driver/relay circuits. I am also realizing that I will probably need a heat sink on this sucker. Continue reading Telecine project – part 5 – first 3D printed parts

The ambient spirit

Christians speak often about the “spirit of the age.” By this we generally mean materialism, relativism or a handful of other isms. It’s generally something easy to label and therefore easy to oppose. What we fail to recognize is that this “spirit” is often subtle, cultural, ambient. Like a color filter over a light source, it affects everything and everyone, including us. Continue reading The ambient spirit

Lenten thoughts

Verses

  • Psalm 119:145-172
  • Exodus 7:8-24
  • 2 Cor 2:14-3:6
  • Mark 10:1-16

God, so painfully bright and achingly pure. We bask for a split second then must mix in something else to dial down the sheer terror, or we must surely be undone. To convince ourselves that we are not so bankrupt, so small.

We add Guns. ‘Merica. Money. Tradition. Theology.

We re-create God in our image. We imagine that we deserve. That we can — and must — condemn. We find fulfillment in other things and people. A god that is not so Other.

But deep in our spirit, we wish to be laid bare again, to know we are nothing, yet of infinite value and worth because of that Great Someone.

Perhaps — just perhaps — there is no greater gift than to be undone. To be given the eyes of a child, able to see unclouded past the shadowing drapes of ourselves. To enter the furnace, knowing it means the end, yet to Be. The flame is in us, and we are in the flame. We are alight, and yet not consumed.

And after passing through the fire, let us live more lightly, more compassionately, more aware, more wise. And less for those things that obscure the light within us.