Y Safle

In an off topic digression (my fault… did I mention I’m something of a pedant?!) on the Minthegap blog, a commentator called Anna wrote:

and as for your comment Stephen, I have nothing to say but that our definition of piracy differs. Burning a couple of CDs for friends is piracy. I don’t think its wrong, but tis against the law and is defined to be piracy.

It is against the law, but of your law actually calls it piracy, then your law is an ass.

Piracy is robbery committed at sea, or sometimes on the shore, by an agent without a commission from a sovereign nation. Seaborne piracy against transport vessels remains a significant issue (with estimated worldwide losses of US$13 to $16 billion per year), particularly in the waters between the Pacific and Indian Oceans, off the Somali coast, and in the Strait of Malacca and Singapore, which are used by over 50,000 commercial ships a year. A recent surge in piracy off the Somali coast spurred a multi-national effort led by the United States to patrol the waters near the Horn of Africa to combat piracy. While boats off the coasts of South America and the Mediterranean Sea are still assailed by pirates,the Royal Navy and the U.S. Coast Guard have nearly eradicated piracy in U.S. waters and the Caribbean Sea.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piracy

Record companies want us to think of copying of music as a high crime, so they link it with robbery and pillage on the high seas. And yet it is clearly not. They include film clips and adverts that tell us that if we tape someone else’s music, we are contributing to organised crime and the drug problem. But we are clearly not.

There is an attempt at guilt by association here, and yet if you consider the issue, there is often not even any kind of theft except in some spurious legal doctrine.

Consider if someone takes a copy of an mp3 from someone else to listen to. That taking is a breach of copyright law. The content is not licensed to the person who took it, and thus the copyright owner may say that he has no right to do so.

But if that person would not have bought that music (and we must be very sure he would not have done so), then in what way has he deprived the copyright owner of his property? The owner still owns the copyright, and he is not out of pocket. So where is the theft?

Of course, with the ability to buy mp3s at very low cost now, the point may be moot. If someone wants an mp3, they presumably have means to get it themselves. The theft comes then in depriving the copyright owner of their payment.

But we should still bear this principle in mind when we consider license agreements on software with restrictive clauses, or attempts to otherwise skew rights in favour of the companies who have bought the copyright on works. Copyright is only legitimate if it works in the interest of the public (as are patents for that matter).

So what do we have? A crime that is not always morally reprehensible (except inasmuch as disobeying law is reprehensible) being deliberately compared to murder, pillage and robbery on the high seas, drug trafficking and organised crime.

And then the same companies pushing these unhelpful analogies manage to get a law passed in the US that makes it illegal for you to even point to a place that might tell someone how they might circumvent copy protection systems! So much for freedom of speech!

Someone wrote to me regarding the amount of carbon dioxide we are producing, saying:

It is your opinion that the amount of carbon dioxide being put in the atmosphere is not puny, it is not an established fact.

We know what we are pumping into the atmosphere. We know that we have
increased CO₂ levels in the atmosphere by more than a third since the 19th century.
This is not my definition of puny.

Human emissions are dwarfed by the emissions of termites.

I am unconvinced by this claim. I have seen no sources, and it seems highly unlikely to be correct. However, the fact that the natural carbon cycle pushes CO₂ into the atmosphere in vast quantities is
irrelevant, because it is only an issue if you are relying upon vegetation
to act as a permanent carbon sink – which it will not.
What termites do, and have always done, remains in perfect balance: A
termite cannot produce CO₂ if it does not eat. Termites eat
wood – not fossil fuels – so the carbon dioxide they release into the
atmosphere has been locked up in wood for at most a hundred years or so.
They are part of the natural balance

Burning fossil fuels releases carbon locked up for millions of years. This
is additional carbon dioxide to that produced each year by termites and
other living creatures. Unlike the activities of living things, this burning
of fossil fuels is not in balance – and growing forests will not solve the
problem, because of those pesky termites.

Consider it another way. Let us suppose you have a houeshold budget. Each
year you receive an income, which consists of salary and dividends on
investments. Your outgoings each year go on cost of living and a small
amount of investment.

Now if our outgoings are no larger than our income, then everything is just
fine. Indeed, your investment will grow slowly.

But now consider what would happen if you increased your cost of living, by
purchasing bigger cars, private jets and so forth. Suppose that your cost of
living alone now exceeded your income by half as much again. How would you
finance this?

Instead of growing investments slowly, you would eat rapidly into your
capital.

And if your capital is not very large, then before you know it, you will
have no capital left, and be worse off than when you began – because you now
have no dividend income either!

This is the way it is with the carbon budget. Until now, the carbon cycle
has recycled nearly all carbon back into the atmosphere, helped by termites
and other living creatures – including us! But the budget has been balanced,
and little by little, carbon has been tucked away.

But for the last century we have been squandering that capital, and pushing
carbon back into the atmosphere beyond the means of the earth to cope with
the increase.

Blaming termites and flatulent cows (or even breathing humans) is the straw
man. It is our eating into the carbon capital that is the problem – not the
natural process of the carbon cycle.

Not enough is known about the effects of adding CO₂ to the
atmosphere to say for certain that burning fossil fuels leads to any
problem at all.

Enough is known to say that it is very likely to cause a problem, and that a
problem consistent with that expected is being seen.
To wait for more is foolhardy – indeed sinful.

For instance, some scientists have suggested and
are working on proving or disproving that increased temperatures, if they
do exist, will cause more evaporation of ground and ocean water, which
creates more clouds, which may block more sunlight, which could
allow the earth to cool,

What is the temperature on Venus? About 464 °C on average. What is the temperature on Mercury? About 167°C on average. Why is Venus hotter?

No sources are cited again, but this argument appears to be quite wrong. If we warm the oceans they release more CO₂.

Someone raised an old bugbear that evangelists are in it for the money.

John Wesley (when asked to give an account of his taxable assets by a tax collection officer) replied that he had a silver teaspoon, but beyond that he did not think he had any such assets.

There are still many people with a like attitude today, but unfortunately all our attention is constantly turned towards the brood of vipers who spend every last minute begging money from their professional multimedia operations.

I don’t think they are really radicals in any sense: they do exactly what politicians do, and what the entertainment industry does. They package and sell a product, “guaranteed” to make you happy and prosperous, but when you part with your money and remove the trimmings you find you are left with nothing.

That is not Christianity. It is not representative of the Church, and many Christians openly oppose these people, but I guess that turning the tables on the moneychangers is old news (and the moneychangers have lawyers now).

I wrote a post yesterday about Martin Durkin’s junk science programme on global warming designed to convince people with no knowledge of the issue that – in his words – global warming is not our fault. I took issue with a number of points, including the graph on which Durkin manipulated temperature data to make it look as though the post war cooling period was much larger than it actually was.

Someone (Jason) commented that my own graph, that I included for comparison, had a trend line that seemed to hide the post war cooling period. The graph had come from a previous article where it was demonstrating that the warming trend had not (contrary to the arguments of some) stopped in 1999. The trend line is superfluous to establishing the deceit of Durkin’s graph.

Whilst the data is quite clear in the graph, demonstrating the point, I considered the point, and thought that it would be better if I construct a new graph, comparing Durkin’s data and at least one well respected source of historic climate data. I have used Crutem 3v, because I had it available after creating the previous graph.

The problem is that Durkin’s data is not published anywhere. The “source: NASA” attribution hides the fact that the graph has been redrawn and in fact now matches no known data set. Thus I carefully used a ruler(!!) to reconstruct the data set from Durkin’s graph. It is not perfect, but it is pretty close. (You can check it against the original included in yesterday’s post).

I then plotted Durkin and the Crutem 3v dataset (which is a bit “wiggly lined” in Durkin’s words). In order to average out the wiggly lines and make it more directly comparable with Durkin’s data, I calculated a 10 year moving average and plotted this.

This average, I think, suggests that Durkin’s dates are a little off in his data – but the shapes do approximate to something similar (a 5 year moving average was too granular for Durkin’s graph).

So here is the complete graph. Click on the thumbnail to see it full size. I have shaded the same area that Durkin shaded – the period of post war cooling due to industrial aerosols prior to the agreements to reduce these. Notice particularly how much more strongly the temperature anomaly grows after this period than in Durkin’s graph. Bear in mind that in Durkin’s graph, his team made up these data for this period.

I wrote the other day about the “Global Warming Swindle” programme on channel 4 recently, and how one of the scientists, Carl Wunsch, has objected to how he has been misquoted and edited to seem to be saying the opposite of what he was actually saying.

Someone replied to me:

> Aside from Carl Wunsch, all the other Scientists interviewed
> in the documentary were very strident in their views that Co2
> is irrelevant to climate change, and that the scientific data
> points to the sun as the major driver in climate change, and
> that the Global Warming Theory is nothing more than hype and
> panic dressed up as science.

> Why not explain how the rest of the scientists interviewed
> have no credentials? Regardless of *who* was interviewing
> them, (Durkin) they made their views very clear.

I have no intention of attacking the credentials of the scientists involved, as that would be ad hominem. It is relevant that the programme makers have no scientific background, because of the way they have consistently, over the course of a decade,
misrepresented science. As journalists, their lack of scientific balance creates good controversy, which is good for their ratings.

But it is not balanced, considered or scientific.

Whilst I won’t indulge in ad hominem attacks on the scientists, I do note that there was no new material in this programme, and every point raised has been refuted before (and much of it was downright wrong!)

I mentioned that the graph looked like it had been doctored to exaggerate the post war cooling. “The Independent”, a British newspaper, looked into that very point. They asked channel 4 and the programme makers where the data had come from. The graph on the programme (click on the thumbnail to the right to see this graph full size), the source claims to be NASA. However, Durkin eventually admitted that it had been taken from another obscure publication published in the medical sentinal by some climate change sceptics. Further investigation revealed no such diagram, but something similar for terrestrial northern hemisphere temperatures from weather stations in the top third of the globe.

Eventually the data was tracked down to some data that had come from NASA but ended in the 1980s. It turns out that the line from the early 1980s onwards was extended by hand, and not correctly (and even then only to the year 2000). Mr Durkin admitted that his graphics team had extended the time axis along the bottom of the graph to the year 2000. “There was a fluff there,” he said. He also said: “The original Nasa data was very wiggly-lined and we wanted the simplest line we could find.”

I downloaded two data sets and plotted the results, and you can see how different the graph should actually look (click the thumbnail on the right for fullo sized image).

Now what about what the scientists said? The cosmic ray theory is part of a new book by Nigel Calder and Henrik Svensmark. The fundamental flaw with the theory is that whilst Svensmark posits a role for cosmic rays in cloud formation, there is no trend in cosmic rays, and there is no trend in cloud formation. Dr Gavin Scmidt from Nasa demonstrates five missing steps from Svensmark’s data to his conclusions in his press release (and now his book).

“We’ve often criticised press releases that we felt gave misleading impressions of the underlying work,” Schmidt says, “but this example is by far the most blatant extrapolation beyond reasonableness that we have seen.” None of this seems to have troubled the programme makers, who report the cosmic ray theory as if it were an accepted (and indeed only acceptable) explanation.

As “the Guardian” reports:

Professor John Christy speaks about the discrepancy he discovered between temperatures at the Earth’s surface and temperatures in the troposphere (or lower atmosphere). But the programme fails to mention that in 2005 his data were proved wrong, by three papers in Science magazine.

Christy himself admitted last year that he was mistaken. He was one of the authors of a paper which states the opposite of what he says in the film. “Previously reported discrepancies between the amount of warming near the surface and higher in the atmosphere have been used to challenge the reliability of climate models and the reality of human-induced global warming. Specifically, surface data showed
substantial global-average warming, while early versions of satellite and radiosonde data showed little or no warming above the surface. This significant discrepancy no longer exists because errors in the satellite and radiosonde data have been identified and corrected.”

Also from the Guardian:

The film’s main contention is that the current increase in global temperatures is caused not by rising greenhouse gases, but by changes in the activity of the sun. It is built around the discovery in 1991 by the Danish atmospheric physicist Dr Eigil Friis-Christensen that recent temperature variations on Earth are in “strikingly good agreement” with the length of the cycle of sunspots.

Unfortunately, he found nothing of the kind. A paper published in the journal Eos in 2004 reveals that the “agreement” was the result of “incorrect handling of the physical data”. The real data for recent years show the opposite: that the length of the sunspot cycle has declined, while temperatures have risen. When this error was exposed,
Friis-Christensen and his co-author published a new paper, purporting to produce similar results. But this too turned out to be an artefact of mistakes – in this case in their arithmetic.

So Friis-Christensen and another author developed yet another means of demonstrating that the sun is responsible, claiming to have discovered a remarkable agreement between cosmic radiation influenced by the sun and global cloud cover. This is the mechanism the film proposes for global warming. But, yet again, the method was exposed as faulty. They had been using satellite data which did not in fact measure global cloud cover. A paper in the Journal of Atmospheric and Solar-Terrestrial Physics shows that, when the right data are used, a correlation is not found.

The programme failed to mention that we know now that the post war global cooling was caused by atmospheric aerosols, despite the fact this is now well understood. It did not mention that the medieval warm period was northern atlantic only. It *did* state that the medieval warm period was warmer in Europe than it is now, whereas we
know now that this was not so – that it is now considerably warmer than it was then. (16 year old data was used to contest the opposite).

The history was wrong too. The suggestion that Nigel Calder discovered someone with a novel theory about burning coal to create a greenhouse effect in the 1970s is about 100 years late. Svante Arrhenius discovered the greenhouse effect and suggested burning coal to warm up the climate in 1895. (He was Swedish, so perhaps felt a warmer climate would be agreeable!)

Tim Ball gave some of the most strident polemic with the least data. I cannot remember him making any scientific point (his specialism, when he was still publishing, was historical Canadian climate) but he made many specious claims. He said that it was as though a car was broken and the climate scientists ignore the engine and transmission and look at one bolt only to try and fix the engine.

That is exactly what he, and the other handful of sceptics on the programme were doing. They ignore all the climate science, and look at only a few narrow points that bolster their own opinions. The IPCC has looked at solar forcings and included these in their report.

These sceptics are ignoring the science. Why? I don’t know. But just because a handful of scientists are looking at a single bolt, don’t ignore the thousands of diligent and intelligent scientists who have encountered all these issues and looked at them carefully, but are looking at the engine and transmission.

Should we get involved in apologetic debates? And what do we hope to achieve with them?

I believe the most important method
of witnessing is through our personal testimony. That apologetic reasoning
is very occasionally succesful in winning people for Christ is undeniable. I
had a friend who became a Christian by such persuasion of the evidence, but
ultimately even he would not have become a Christian were it not for his
friendship with Christians.

Apologetics has its place, but I find it a fairly small place. It is the
Holy Spirit that does a work within us, and no one can reason themselves
into heaven without the promptings of the Spirit, and no one can resist the
Spirit’s call, even though they may have questions still.

This, I believe, is the normal way of these things. God calls us, we
respond, and the answers of apologetics are of some use in dealing with
doubts, but rarely of much use to those who are unsaved, unless they are
earnestly seeking people who are so constrained by doubt that they cannot
progress into a relationship with the invisible God, nor his image, his Son,
Jesus Christ our Lord.

I suppose that apologetics can be useful in convincing someone that Christians are not believing something without evidence – that we have a reason for our belief, and it is not mere superstition. But maybe that is all.

*

I think we so often get our emphasis wrong. We spend so much time
reading “apologetics” when all around us people are dieing unsaved. We
should instead be *praying*. If it is the Holy Spirit that moves our hearts,
and not a book by an apologist then reading the books is something of a
distraction – if only Christians would spend as long on their knees as they
do reading books (and don’t think I am talking to others and not myself here!)

I know why we so often avoid this spiritual imperative – it appears
unproductive to pray, when we could be acquiring so much knowledge – but
don’t you see that in so doing we deny the very power of God we seek to
profess. If God is the creator of the universe, the all powerful, almighty,
merciful and loving God of Scripture then how can we possibly spend so
little time in communion with him when he is so near to us?

I love books and reading and might easily spend several hours reading a book
on apologetics or some other Christian subject, but I find it much more
difficult to spend an hour in prayer, and I will admit that I cannot think
of a time I spent more than two hours in private prayer. John Wesley said he would
not give a fig for the spirituality of a man who spent less then three hours
in prayer each morning – how far we have sunk from such ideals.

Whilst we might rail against the words of Wesley as unrealistic, I believe
his *emphasis* was right. He knew the power of prayer. Even though he never
agreed with Calvinisms claims of irresistable grace, he knew that it was
only through the Spirit of God that we would see the stirring of men’s
hearts.

I long to see people saved, but I want more than this – I want to see
revival, and we have been waiting a long time for it. It is only through our
prayers that this will come about. No revival ever followed “apologetic
debates”, and none ever will. Likewise there was never a revival that was
not preceded by the earnest prayers of the elect.

*

This point goes further still. Evangelism through our relationships only
works if we live the lives we profess. No one ever sold a product they did
not believe in, and we will never convince our friends and family of the
urgent need for salvation if we do not live a life comensurate with that
belief. Prayer is at the heart of this, because it is only through prayer
that we have communion with God, be it prayer in public worship or private
devotion. It is a matter of shame on the Church that Christians pray so
little – what does this tell the outside world? Does it tell then we believe
that the God of the Universe listens to us and cares for us?

A quote often (incorrectly) attributed to St Francis goes: “Preach
the gospel at all times, use words if necessary”. The emphasis is right.
Our words are a tiny part of our preaching of the gospel compared to our
actions, and the praying Christian is an example worth many thousand
apologists if they do not pray.

*

Another point that comes to mind is that we can only preach the gospel to
non Christians if we know non Christians. Willow Creek Community Church talk
of “being intentional about your relationships”. Whether we agree with the
systematic methods of that Church or not, they make a very important point:
We must be careful to build friendships outside the Church as well as
within, and we must realise that whenever we are with our non Christian
friends that we are witnessing to them in all we do.

Most Christians, according to surveys carried out by Willow Creek and others, have virtually no non Christian friends, but make
non Christian acquaintances throughout their life. I am fond of Chinese
food, and usually frequent the same resteraunt. I now find myself on talking
terms with the staff there and recently had the opportunity to invite one of
the staff to Church. I must admit I was stunned when he agreed – moreso when
he made it plain that he wanted to come regularly. I wonder how many similar
opportunities such as this I have missed.

Someone asked me:
>If, and I repeat, IF, one is saved by acknowledging Jesus is Lord, what
>does it matter what else we do?

The question is a good one, and one which is all too easily passed over
or muddied by a poor understanding of what the doctrine of Justification
by Faith alone truly implies.

The writer is right, that if you are indeed saved through your faith
in Jesus Christ, our LORD, then it will in no way affect your salvation
if you stay or leave your church. Nor will it affect your salvation if
you manage to dot the “I”s and cross the “T”s in your doctrine, nor will
it affect your salvation if you slip into error. If you have faith in
Jesus Christ for your salvation, and him alone, then all of these things
can never affect your salvation.

But what then is the place for right doctrine and right worship? The
question begs another, much neglected question – one which is nevertheless
found in most catechisms. What is the chief end of man? Why are we here?
What is our purpose? The answer, as given by the catechisms, and indeed
the Bible, is that we are here to glorify God and to enjoy his presence
forever.

So the question of doctrine, teaching, worship and whatever else is
one that is simply answered – none of these things affect our salvation,
but they are far more important then that – they affect the glory given
to God.

If I teach error about God then people will misunderstand him, and he
will not be glorified. If I fail to worship God, or worship him
incorrectly then I fail to ascribe to him the Glory which is his. If
I preach error regarding the doctrine of justification by faith alone
then I place a stumbling block in the paths of those who might be saved,
and as salvation glorifies God more then anything else, then
again I fail to glorify him.

If I do not care about the glory of God, then what did my salvation
mean anyway? This is where the modern day “profession of faith” can
become shallow and unreliable. If all we ask from people is that they
profess that Jesus Christ died for them and they want to be saved, then
surely our emphasis is all wrong. If we emphasise only what we can get
out of salvation then we have misunderstood what it is to call Jesus
our Lord, and we have failed to see the magnitude of Christ’s work on
the cross.

When we are concerned about the glory of God then the doctrine of
Justification by Faith alone becomes a great comforting doctrine, as
well as a great enabling doctrine (because it is only when we see that
our works really gain us nothing with respect to salvation that we can
do works from truly pure motives without self interest). Nevertheless
it is not our main goal to be saved, but rather to bring glory to
God the father, and Jesus Christ, his son, our LORD.

This is why it is important to read and understand all that God has
told us in the Bible. David said “I have written your word within my
heart that I might not sin against you”. He knew that when he sinned
God is faithful and just to forgive those sins, but forgiveness was
not enough – he wrote God’s word within his heart that he might *not*
sin. He was concerned about God’s glory, that the name of God would
be honoured and revered, not ridiculed.

Leonard Ravenhill wrote, regarding those bumper stickers: “Christians
are not perfect, just forgiven” that “some backslider must have written
that”. Quite right! It is not that Christians are perfect, but it
is through the grace of God that we have power *not to sin*.

Glorify God. Don’t make excuses, but (in the words of Mary at Cana):
“Whatever he says to you to do, do it.”

A website documenting the history of the Welsh settlers in the Argentine region of Patagonia has been launched.

In 1865 the first settlers travelled from Wales over 8,000 miles to South America looking for a brighter future.

The trilingual website Glaniad – which means the landing in Welsh – features more than 2,000 digital images.

The governor of the Patagonian province of Chubut, Mario Das Neves, will join Welsh First Minister Rhodri Morgan at the launch in Cardiff City Hall today.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/wales/6465771.stm

You can see the Glaniad website here.

Two years ago Wales won the Six Nations Grand Slam. But thoughts of a return to the unbeatable glory years up to a couple of decades ago that led Wales to win more five nations tournaments than any other side, were driven away by changes in coaching staff and a fairly dismal tournament this year.

But there has always been a saying in Wales – nothing else matters, just so long as we beat the English.

So this year was actually a stunning success with a resurgent English side simply out powered and out played on Saturday. My five year old daughter stayed up to watch the end, and there were no late collapses to leave her disappointed.

This is the classic video of John Redwood, the English MP that John Major put in charge of the Welsh Office in the 1990s, not realising that Redwood would use the post to launch his bid to become the next prime minister.

Redwood can be widely credited for creating the discontent that led to devolution in Wales. As he handed back millions of pounds to England, wrecked the health service and destroyed public services with a political vision diametrically opposed to that of the Welsh people, he proved once and for all that Wales would be better off handling its own affairs.

And not just because we *do* know the words to the national anthem.