The Lord's Liars

In the face of tremendous evidence of the need to respond to the reality of climate change, there are still more than a few laggards in positions of power and prestige who continue to misuse their power.

Some of them even think that they are doing the Lord's work.

This is from Media Matters.

In his March 12 sermon at the Thomas Road Baptist Church in Lynchburg, Virginia, where he serves as senior pastor, Rev. Jerry Falwell, founder and chairman of the Moral Majority Coalition, claimed that "scientists who are not on the payroll of the government" believe that "the jury's still out" on the existence of human-caused global climate change.

One week earlier, in his March 5 sermon, Falwell similarly said of global climate change, "I don't think the science supports it." In fact, contrary to Falwell's claim, it is a small minority of scientists who dispute findings that global warming is caused by human activities.

In his March 5 sermon, Falwell cited his skepticism of scientific evidence of global warming as the basis for his opposition to the Evangelical Climate Initiative (ECI), a project partially funded by the Hewlett Foundation and backed by a group of 86 evangelical Christian leaders who are concerned about the effects of climate change.

As The New York Times reported February 8, the group -- including "the presidents of 39 evangelical colleges, leaders of aid groups and churches, like the Salvation Army, and pastors of megachurches, including Rick Warren, author of the best seller 'The Purpose-Driven Life' " -- signed a statement that "climate change is a real problem and that it ought to matter to us as Christians."

(snip)

In his February 11 weekly column, Falwell wrote of the initiative: "Many of the people who signed this document are my friends -- some are dear friends. Nevertheless, I have felt compelled to oppose their effort because I believe that global warming is an unproven phenomenon and may actually just be junk science being passed off as fact."

Meanwhile, the insurance industry is beginning to wake up.

Insurance industry feels the heat of global warming
Boston Globe
By Derrick Z. Jackson, Globe Columnist
March 15, 2006

NEITHER TIM WAGNER nor Mike Kreidler imagined how climate change would intrude into state insurance regulation. Wagner, the director of the Nebraska Department of Insurance, said the reality is literally pelting him.

''While you can't correlate it directly, in the Plains states we've had severe droughts," Wagner, 63, said over the telephone. ''We've had fires in Texas and Oklahoma. There's a terrible drought in Arizona right now.

When we get rain, we seem to get more and more severe hail. I just drove to Kansas City. My nephew is in Iraq and we went to see his family. Our brand-new car got pummeled while it was parked in north Kansas City. We didn't lose any glass, but plastic parts of the car rack and a piece of the bumper was hanging off.

I don't think I remember being in a hail storm like that in my lifetime."

Kreidler, 62, the Washington state insurance commissioner, has seen his Pacific Northwest weather go from a drought emergency last winter to floods this winter.

''Obviously a trigger for the threshold of getting our attention was Katrina and the number of hurricanes we've been having," Kreidler said in a phone interview. ''But even in Washington the vagaries in weather patterns make you suspicious."

The suspicions moved Kreidler, a former Democratic congressman, and Wagner, a registered Republican, to form a task force for the National Association of Insurance Commissioners to assess the impact of climate change on the American insurance industry.

They hope to join a discussion that has been going on for years in Europe, where insurers Swiss Re and Munich Re have warned of massive financial losses from storm patterns aggravated by global warming.

''When you couple changes in climate with changes in demographics where at this point 70 percent of our population resides within 50 miles of a coastline, and the fact that property values of those areas have increased significantly, it just seemed that we had to recognize the issue," Wagner said.

Munich Re calculated that last year was the most expensive on record for natural catastrophes, with losses of over $210 billion. Windstorm destruction in just the United States, the Caribbean, and Mexico cost $83 billion, most of it, of course, coming from Hurricane Katrina."

(snip)

Wagner and Kreidler said they do not know yet what their task force will recommend.

They do say that the time for Americans to hide from global warming is over. "

Somebody needs to remind the good pastor from Lynchburg,

that liars might well go to hell.

But liars who knowingly use the Lord as their shield,

on an issue that may well endanger hundreds of millions

of innocent souls,

might well find a particularly prepared dark, deep, hellish cell,

waiting for these mendacious malfactors.

Perverting the truth,

and misleading the innocent,

Is as good a definition of evil as I know.

On second thought, maybe this guy is working for the lord.

The other one.


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art courtesy of Warren Criswell