ELCA at Chaos Manor

The Evangelical Lutheran Church in America hit Jerry Pournelle's Chaos Manor Mail (scroll to the end of the day) yesterday when a ELCA layman from Southern California cc'd a letter he'd sent to someone at the ELCA headquarters in Chicago. Exactly what set off Col. Haynes I cannot tell. Perhaps it is the plea released earlier this week for us to sign on to this letter to President-elect Obama "calling for climate justice" (whatever the hell that is). That's the best I can do via Google for something new, though ELCA voices have been parroting the "climate change" mantra for some time. (See the Shellfish blog's articles Hanson: "Spiritual Blasphemy" from last summer and "Call Me Ishmael" or "Gore-d Again" from over a year ago for examples.)

Anyway, read the reaction of an ELCA layman to his church's enthusiasms, as it appears on "the original blog."

HUMAN INDUCED CLIMATE WARMING ???

Gentlepersons:

The ELCA is once more meddling in an issue that is far above your pay grade as ecclesiastics. Clearly, you have to be accepting a premise that you and all ELCA staffers can not evaluate the truth of yourselves ... namely that "Global Warming" is human induced ... if it is, indeed even happening at all. Contrary to what you are basing your latest excursion into non-ecclesiastic issues on, there is ample and well founded scientific evidence in support of a view contrary to the IPCC ... the International Panel on Climate Change of the UN. The most straightforward way to expose yourselves to a scientifically sound source of contrary information is to Google "NIPCC", to reach the Non-Governmental IPCC, here: http://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-a&rls=org.mozilla%3Aen-US%3Aofficial&channel=s&hl=en&q=NIPCC&btnG=Google+Search

How can this be possible? How can a prestigious UN authorized scientific inquiry be in error?

Well, go and see at NIPCC.

Before you do that, permit me to point out an example of a similar mass misapprehension that has now apparently slunk off the public stage without even a polite goodbye.

I speak of the so-called "Hydrogen Economy",,, remember that one?

Not more than a year or so ago that was going to solve all our air pollution problems, make us independent of foreign oil, in fact, make us independent of hydrocarbon fuels, basta, period!

Our esteemed governator here in CA was going to install a number of hydrogen filling stations on our freeways to help the "HE" along.

What happened?

An "inconvenient truth" rose up and smote the HE right out of the nation's awareness.

It would require far more energy from non-hydrogen energy generation to produce the hydrogen than the hydrogen could ever produce by being burned in turn. Now that's a law of physics that you will not find in the Bible, but that is woven into the reality that is God's Universe.

And where was all that energy going to have to come from?

Why by conventional power generation, including coal, petroleum and of course, a vast new investment in nuclear power plants. But did the once so enthused media sources formally announce the "Death of the HE"?

Of course not. That would be too embarrassing, and would generally undermine their credibility.

So, please, before our ELCA is once again led down a dead end garden path by a new array of enthusiastic dunderheads, at least expose yourselves to the hard facts available on the Internet that counter the dominant but false propaganda that has persuaded you and so many other well meaning, scientifically under-educated, enthusiastic would-be do-gooders that they will contribute to saving our precious world by ceasing what they are not doing: causing Global Warming. Please note:

Even if there is Global Warming (and that is also unproven) it does not automatically follow that it is human induced. Realize that in the '60s of the last century the threat was global cooling, and we were regaled with a flood of articles predicting an imminent "little ice age", and about the same time the "Club of Rome" was predicting world wide famine if the world population rose above 5 billion souls... it is now estimated at 6.5 billion.

One interesting example of an argument against the HIGW claim is this: When the same computer simulations used to support the claims of coming HIGW are applied to conditions say, 100 years ago, they fail to properly predict the actual global weather that was subsequently recorded.

Do yourselves, the ELCA as an organization and all of us parishioners a favor and open yourselves to the possibility, just the possibility that we are all being deceived.... yet again. Well, almost all!

And when you have confirmed that, think about concentrating in the future on the proper business of the church, and avoiding a vain search after virtue by climbing aboard the bandwagons pursuing solutions to every purported, claimed catastrophe that looms up in our so-gullible media.

Very sincerely yours,
William E. Haynes
St Paul's Lutheran Church
Rancho Palos Verdes, CA

Thanks, Col. Haynes. Though be prepared to be ignored. Any dissident minds at 8765 W. Higgins Road or www.elca.org have been pretty much sent to places where they can have no influence on the ELCA's public voice.

And for the rest of you, Chaos Manor is linked on my other blog and is highly recommended by Pastor Zip. And for Earth's sake and yours, don't sign this letter; its science is worse than its theology.