The Bloodwood Tree

Both Anglican Archbishop Peter Jensen and Catholic Cardinal George Pell have this Good Friday returned fire on the growing atheist-Church conflict (http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2010/04/02/2863269.htm), accusing the rise of atheism for many of the great wrongs of last century and challenging it as simply an alternative faith. But isn’t atheism the absence of faith? Isn’t it the rational decision to believe in only those things that can be backed with genuine evidence?

The response often given to this is “I can’t prove there is a God, but you can’t prove there isn’t; ergo, both of us have faith”. Ok, so then is the decision not to believe in fairies, aliens or magical elves that clean our bedrooms for us therefore also a matter of faith? You can’t prove that they don’t exist.

This is where the idea of rational faith comes in. By definition, faith has to do with believing in something you can’t prove, so when a Christian says “I just know this is true”, they are either using a poor choice of words, exaggerating, exercising wishful thinking or they no longer require faith because they now feel they have evidence of some form. That’s not faith. A person with faith knows that they could be wrong but makes a deliberate choice to believe what they do because it appears rationally to be the best choice when the consequences are considered. Irrational faith by contrast considers the evidence to be unimportant and does not consider the consequences of the belief. Irrational faith is not a decision to step from the cliff trusting the one who will catch them, but the belief that there is really no cliff.

The distinction is important. Unlike the fairy scenarios, the decision to believe or not to believe in God or the choice of which God to believe in has immediate consequences.

The people in the Ricky Gervais movie “The invention of lying” are physically incapable of lying and therefore blindly believe everything they are told. So when one day someone discovers how to lie and invents God, Heaven and Hell; the response is overwhelming. The newspapers report “Finally, a reason to do good!” Why? In this case it’s because God will punish them if they do wrong and reward them if they do good.

The “God hypothesis” is the belief that there is an absolute. Without a God to define what is good and evil, it’s not so much that there is no reason to do good, but that there is no such thing as ‘good’. The reason is still there – we see hungry people and can still be motivated to feed them; the issue is that feeding the hungry is no longer ‘good’, it’s just something you do. In the same way, stealing from them is not bad, it’s a rational decision to put self interest ahead of the concern for others. As Nietzsche said “You have your way, I have my way. As for the right way, the correct way, and the only way. It does not exist.” Abolish God and you abolish the distinction between good and evil.

But, I hear you say, altruism is observable amongst animals that don’t have religion or philosophy; concern for others can be the most rational form of self-interest. Quite true; ants spend their lives working for the welfare of the colony and will often give their lives in defence of that colony. But do ants give their lives in defence of a neighbouring colony if they are to get no benefit from the action? A father will defend his family, but he is less likely to defend a stranger’s family. He will go to war and fight for his country, but will he care for the needs of those he is fighting? When a Nazi officer gave my grandfather his Greatcoat to aid his escape from a labour camp, was he acting in self interest or was he being led by some more abstract notion of right and wrong that prickled his conscience? It’s quite possible to convince a population that just, fair rules are in their self interest and even inspire them through nationalism or some other means to give above and beyond what’s expected; but how easy is it to convince them that self interest involves taking in those refugees, forfeiting their trade advantages with a poorer nation or cancelling the debts owed to them? The fact that these things only occur when lobbyists expose the self interest of those nations and the damage it is causing testifies to the fact that people motivated by self interest only stop doing something when it hurts them more to continue doing it.

So will atheism drive the world into an abyss of godless destruction? Are the rise of Nazism, Communism and Pol Pot the precursors of what we should expect? Well, I don’t see why. Zuckerman’s analysis of the atheistic societies of Denmark & Sweden “Society without God” presents a pretty strong case that these nations rank amongst the most developed, wealthiest, most democratic, least corrupt, charitable and environmentally compassionate nations on earth. As stated earlier, ants are basically atheists, but they keep a pretty stable society together.

Does this then answer the argument? Well, yes and no. I disagree that an atheist society has to be violent, uncaring and corrupt because peace, mutual concern and justice are all things that a wise society will aim for - they make that society stable. Buddhism for instance is founded on some very Biblical-sounding concepts of justice and compassion, all without invoking the need for a god. But at the same time the answer falls short. While it is possible that society may naturally drift in these directions without the need for a god, there still remains the fact that this society can no longer call any of these actions ‘good’. This is not a technicality and I’ll explain why.

One of the reasons put forward for the success of Denmark & Sweden is the fact that they are happy, prosperous nations. The saying is that “hurt people hurt people”, i.e., people that are violent, rapists, child molesters etc tend to be people that have suffered in related ways themselves. Countries where people are hungry have social unrest. Cultures that have been persecuted through racism often produce dysfunctional families, violence and alcoholism. If you can remove these things however, society over time will improve. If you’re happy and content, you don’t need to hurt others to exorcise your demons. You do ‘good’ things because you have no need to do ‘bad’.

So what happens then if something goes wrong? An economic crisis? Oil crisis? Natural disaster? Perhaps there’s a degree of resilience in the fact that people have inbuilt ‘good’ habits, but if things really go wrong – if someone declares war on you or you start to go hungry; if the Police become tyrants and the only way you can feed your kids is to steal from someone. To break into their home. To shoot people. If your society crumbles, your cars rust, your plasma screen breaks and you have to live with the reality that the majority world faces from day to day, how far will those ‘good’ habits get you if you never actually believed they were good, only effective under the circumstances?

There is something very different about connecting with a nice person and connecting with someone that genuinely cares deeply about you. You can pay for a listening ear or a comforting embrace, but where do you buy the kind of genuine love and compassion that only comes from a person who is made of the stuff? 1 John 3:16 says:

“This is how we know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down his life for us and we aught also to lay down our lives for our brothers.”

The Biblical idea of love is ‘laying down your life’ for someone else. It is coming to the point where someone else’s life is more important than your own. Connecting with someone that has laid down their life for you and therefore cares for your welfare more than they do for their own life, and someone who is being nice to you because it is a mutually beneficial interaction are two vastly different experiences.

So how does someone get to the point that their core motivation is to lay down their life for others when that is the exact opposite of self interest? You can’t motivate it with threats of hell or promises of heaven; the best that will achieve is conformity to an outward appearance. 1 John4:7-8 says:

“Everyone that loves has been born of God and knows God. Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love.”

According to John, the only way to know God is to love. God is love, so you cannot relate to him if your motivation is only self interest. Followers of Jesus love because they want to know God. When they are faced with a need that can only be met by putting aside self interest, they are also faced with the reality that their pathway to God lies through love for that person. God loves that person, their need is palpable to him. The Christian then can only relate to God if their heartbeat is changed to the same rhythm as that of God’s.

The difference between the two motivations is fundamental. The motivation to care for someone without God only occurs when circumstances permit self interest to align with concern for the other. The motivation for the Christian is independent of circumstances. The Christian that longs to know God, who has accepted Jesus’ call to ‘take up his cross’ understanding that the cross is the failures, the suffering and the disgrace of the world around them – the Christian will give whatever it takes because their one deepest longing lies in the direction of the need. Until they can identify with the broken person, “weep with those who weep”, carry their burdens and care about them more than they care about themselves they cannot relate to the God they long to know. Getting to heaven is no part of the consideration for a Christian because the crux of Christianity is the cross.

And this is where we get to Easter. The historical fact that Jesus of Nazareth claimed to be God, allowed himself to be tortured and crucified then looked out on the people that had nailed him to the beams and said “Father, forgive them, for they don’t know what they are doing”; this fact removes all compulsion from Christianity. Any use of guilt to motivate is opposite to Christianity because of the cross. We are forgiven before we even fall; all that is asked is acceptance.

So what decisions does this give us if we want our faith to be rational? Either decision is a faith decision, but it is only rational if it is undertaken with the understanding of its implications. The implications of each are far reaching – rejection of God is an assertion that there is no higher purpose than self interest. Self interest can create order and peace when there is no competition for resources, but where competition exists, self interest equates to natural selection and the poor and disadvantaged will always lose. In contrast, the decision to accept Jesus’ claim of Godhood is an assertion that the ultimate purpose of life is to reconnect with this person, to learn to lay down our lives for others. There is no compulsion in that; only the hope that we may see a hint of our God. There is so often no blinding revelation; only a whisper that the wind is moving and a change is coming. It does not promise deliverance from the pain of the world but urges us to enter it more deeply – all with the promise that we will see the face of the one we love. It is a harsh world, but in the words of CS Lewis:

“All the pages of the New Testament are rustling with the rumour that it will not always be so.”

Irrational faith on the other hand is far more common. It is far more common that Christians do not embrace the central purpose of their lives as being the need to reconnect with the God of Love. History is a dark list of failures on that count, with the occasional light breaking through. William Wilberforce and the abolition of slavery, Reverend Martin Luther King and the heroic battle for social justice in America. We forget that Jesus did say that the road was narrow and few are walking on it. As a result, it’s not hard to understand how Ghandi was able to say:

“I like your Christ, I do not like your Christians. Your Christians are so unlike your Christ.”

Irrational faith amongst atheists is equally common. Does the average atheist recognise that qualities like honesty, compassion and justice are not good, just useful under certain circumstances? Have they examined their contributions to charity in light of the fact that the world’s population is growing exponentially but its resources are not? Are they aware that if those other nations take their fair share of resources then no one will be affluent? Are they aware that the selfish policies of our governments in regard to energy, trade, environment and other global concerns are ‘necessary evils’ if we want to maintain self interest? The new atheist utopia is new because it is a luxury of the rich. Self interest does not produce peace without affluence.

Having said that, I suggest that blaming atheism for the fall of love in the world is too easy. Much too easy when so much of the ‘church’ does not exhibit a rational faith and therefore occupies a place where some can far too easily slip into the great wrongs of the past. Atheism combined with wise leadership can produce happy, caring communities amongst the wealthy, and either overt or insidiously cruel dealings amongst those who want to be wealthy. Christianity by Christians that don’t want to ‘carry the cross’ of other’s burdens however produces the same violence, greed and cruelty; only in this case it is justified as ‘the will of God’. The first pathway is human nature; the second pathway is evil.

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“If might is right then love has no place in this world. It may be so, it may be so; but I do not have the strength to live in a world like that.”

Father Gabriel, The Mission

It’s so difficult to choose a newspaper. I have all but given up on The Australian due to its refusal to print any of the story on Australia’s corrupt dealings with Indonesia’s military and its blatant campaign of spin regarding climate change. But unfortunately the SMH has Miranda Devine. Dear Miranda. If people think we should look after others that have been tortured, falsely imprisoned or otherwise dehumanised, Miranda wants to put a stop to it. If people think we should pay attention to the science and apply a moral and informed approach to caring for our world’s climate or managing our bushfires, Miranda will confound you with more spin and malevolent manufactured misinformation than you can take in.

It’s not just my fond memories of this time last year when she literally tried to get a lynch mob going to hang anyone that cared about the environment; she’s back at it on the fire front having another go. Saturday’s article (http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/society-and-culture/fire-prevention-a-burning-issue-20100219-olqw.html) at least doesn’t call for any more hangings, but it does continue the tireless campaign of projecting your issues onto the other side so that they look silly if they point that out.

Now I’m sure Athol Hodgeson is a great bloke. His picture certainly makes you want to just accept what she says about him and get away from all those pen-pushing, latte-sipping, unwashed, italian suit sporting, dreadlock-wearing greenie/bureaucrats out to see us all burnt to death to save some barrel-chested beard thumper in a patch of swamp somewhere. But does the fact that he was Victoria’s Chief Fire Officer really make him beyond question? Why is it that if you’re in charge of fire and you disagree with Miranda that you’re a soulless bureaucrat, but if you’re saying what she likes, you’re the most knowledeable person in the state on the subject? How did she get to the position of being able to say that? Sure, it appeals to me that he slept on the verandah as a kid, but that’s not going to put the fires out really is it? I slept on the verandah too, overlooking my grandad’s blacksmith shop. I don’t know if I’ll be awarded the Master of Devinity though.

She starts the story with a tale of Black Friday in 1939. I remember sharing numerous cuppas with the old blokes who could remember those fires. They’d tell me their stories of unbelievable fire intensity, stories of independent crown fires that aren’t supposed to happen in Australia; stories of how the fire travelled across the mountains at a rate we have not seen since in that country. Then at the end of the story they’d finish with the immortal words “yeah, but there was nothing there to burn in those days.” Which threw me, because it sounded like quite a bit had burnt. What they meant was that the mountains were burnt so regularly and grazed so heavily that there was no fuel. And they were - the old photos from the time show them burnt to oblivion at every possible moment. A lot of graziers (not all mind you) had people employed all across the mountains to do nothing else but light fires anywhere and at any time they were able, with no thought for containment. In Victoria, Judge Stretton heard numerous average salt-of-the-earth kind of blokes tell him that it was a moral wrong not to light a fire in the bush if it was dry and hot enough to burn. Athol Hodgeson wants to burn 365,000Ha of Victoria every year, well a lot more than that used to get burnt back in the 30’s. After the 2003 fires people said “it was the biggest fire since 1939″. Well, 1952 was about the same size. 1939 was twice the size, 1926 was roughly the same; then there was another one earlier on in the 1900’s. In fact, if you look at that 100 years, there were four fires of the 1939/2003 scale in the first 50 years when “there was nothing to burn”, and only one in the next 50 years after all the prescribed burning was massively cut back. There have been other fierce fires, but not ones that burnt such a massive area. Not, at least until now when coincidentally the climate has warmed markedly, the rainfall is that much less and we’ve all headed back to the hills with our matches.

So if there was no fuel back then, why did it all burn so much more? Well, you’ll have to pardon my ignorance (I did go to uni after all). What I’m told is that fuel is the dead stuff on the ground, which we measure in tons per hectare. If you burn it, it isn’t there any more; ergo - no fires. But why aren’t the other things that burn called fuel as well? The old graziers of the time like Rogers from the Wulgulmerang plateau recorded that they used to burn everywhere they could as often as possible (every 3-5 years), but what they got was a whole lot of dense, regenerating scrub. Now it seems to me as a fire scientist that a lot of dense scrub is also fuel. As a firefighter, I’d be happier any day fighting a fire burning only the dead stuff on the ground rather than the dense scrub you get after frequent fire in some areas.

In fact it seems to me that the entire argument that burning the bush a lot gets rid of the fuel across the board has it’s only logical basis in the fact that “fuel” has been redefined to mean the stuff that you get rid of with prescribed burning rather than the stuff you create. How was it redefined? A bloke called McArthur wrote a leaflet in the 60’s that said it. He didn’t give any evidence to support it and it didn’t get peer-review like all science is supposed to, so he was free to say what he liked. Since then however his claim has been seriously investigated by thorough, peer-reviewed science and found to have no basis whatsoever. In 2006, a fire got going in Kosciuszko National Park through country that had burnt three years before. There was barely a leaf on the ground, but there was a lot of regrowth as you would expect in that country. McArthur’s fire model said “don’t worry, the fire can’t even burn”. Just in case, they got fire crews working way back beyond the fire to get a back-up plan going in case anything went wrong. It did. The fire got into the regrowth and in one hour covered the country that McArthur told us it wouldn’t cover in a month. This is the fire “science” that Miranda wants us to swallow.

Miranda is right about one thing - the proposed 130,000Ha a year to be be burnt in Victoria is in no way based on science. There is no evidence at all that this massive increase in burning will provide help rather than increase the danger. No consideration at all has been given to regrowth; the number arose because the Mirandas of the world whipped up lynch mobs and the government said that unless they do it, they’ll be out of a job. The evidence is not incontrovertible as Miranda tells us, in fact the evidence for Miranda’s case is not there at all. The evidence we do have has mostly been investigated by outside sources. Why? My observation at fire conferences is that if you question the status quo on this one you will be yelled out of the room. The studies we do have tell us consistently the same thing - prescribed burning works in some places but doesn’t work in others.

Miranda claims that the submission by the Wilderness Society et al claiming that prescribed burning does little or nothing to slow fires during extreme conditions is “disinformation and devious obstruction”. Based on what? They’re not saying it’s no use, that it should be stopped; theyre just repeating what McArthur himself said and there is nothing whatsoever to show differently. Miranda points out that there was no prescribed burning around Kinglake where 42 people died. Maybe, but why does she not mention that there had been a lot around Marysville, and that the burning that had happened across the area made no practical difference to stopping the fire? Why does making that information public make the Wilderness Society devious? Why were the people of Marysville deciding to stay and defend their homes not allowed to know that the burns conducted the autumn before wouldn’t help them under those conditions? Bravo Wilderness Society, National Parks Association and Australian Conservation Foundation, I hope you can get the truth out before someone lynches you.

It’s time for Australia to grow up when it comes to fire. Contrary to what we’d like to think, all Australian men are not born experts on fire and you don’t actually know more about it if you can spit further or swear more. Fire is a complex scientific phenomenon. Managing fire is in no way simple or just needing “common sense” (a way of saying “the way I think”). Whether prescribed burning will help or not is completely dependent on the ecology of the bush being burnt. It works some places, not others. Why is saying that a lynchable offence?

The article below comes from an American campaign. The US stopped training the Kopassus (Indonesia’s Special Forces) because they have a law that stops them from giving support to human rights abusers, but Bush started talks about restarting the training. Notice however that Australia never stopped training them despite strong public opinion. Indonesia does not deserve to have this force for cruelty and corruption running wild. The West Papuans do not deserve the beatings, kidnappings, rapes and torture rained on them by the Kopassus. As long as Australia trains them, we equip them for cruelty and make them appear legitimate in the world’s eyes. Time for us to get a spine - there’s more to life than a strong economy. Write to Kevin Rudd or your local member (address at http://www.aph.gov.au/house/members/memlist.pdf) and help Australia get a conscience.

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Please join me in signing this important petition. I’ve signed it and hope you will too.

Indonesia’s Special Forces (Kopassus), more than any other in the Indonesian military, stands accused by of some of the most worst human rights violations.

The history of Kopassus human rights violations, its criminality and its unaccountability before Indonesian courts extends back decades and includes human rights and other crimes in Timor-Leste (East Timor), Aceh, West Papua, the streets of Jakarta, and elsewhere in Indonesia. The crimes of Kopassus are not only in the past. A recently published Human Rights Watch report details ongoing Kopassus human right violations in West Papua.

The Obama administration is actively considering resuming U.S. training for Kopassus. In 2008, the Bush administration proposed to restart U.S. training of Kopassus. the State Department legal counsel reportedly ruled that the ban on training of military units with a history of involvement in human rights violations, known as the Leahy law, applies to Kopassus as a whole.

For background about the crimes of Kopassus go here: http://www.etan.org/news/2008/04brikop.htm. And please join me in signing the petition - http://www.gopetition.com/online/29600.html

If ever you doubted it, the Copenhagen meeting has given a pretty clear picture of what human nature is really about.

The G77 body represents the world’s developing nations - the majority world that don’t have the option of turning on air conditioners, buying new cars when they don’t like the style of the one they have or, to be honest, eating enough food or buying cheap medicines to save their own lives. These nations have very effectively made their voices heard in Copenhagen - they want the priveleged few of us that represent the western latte crowd to waste less and to use our technology to stop messing up the weather they rely on to get that one meal a day so many survive on.

It’s not an unfair or unsupportable claim - more science has gone into investigating this than just about anything else you rely on from day to day and no one has yet raised any serious objection. We know it’s true - we know that the climate is warming and that it’s happening because people in the west waste too much stuff and have stuck with the “dark satanic mills” of the 19th century instead of putting our minds to better ideas. We know that if we don’t act drastically we will cause suffering in the majority world on a scale we cannot imagine from our loungerooms. Our leaders keep recognising the importance of serious action and telling each other to act; so why does it look as if Copenhagen will deliver nothing of any value?

The answer is both simple and, to us here, too terrifying for our leaders to give us an honest explanation. The short, simple answer is the fact that we think economic power is the ultimate good for us. A strong economy means cheaper groceries, more comfort, more jobs. If a politician convinces us that he’ll give us these things we vote him in and kick out the other bloke.

The problem is that the first thing a strong economy needs is for us to spend a lot of money. If we were all to decide that we were content with what we’ve got and didn’t want to be wasteful, we would cause a recession. A recession is just when people spend less money. That’s why Kevin Rudd gave us all money a year ago, he wanted us to go out and spend on anything at all - don’t worry what it is for Pete’s sake just spend it! If we do what the science or our Bibles tell us we need to do and be less wasteful, our economies will suffer.

The next problem is just as big. To be able to make the crap that we all buy as quickly as possible and make the new stuff once this year’s stuff has broken, we need a lot of energy to run the factories. If you want to eat mangos in winter or buy hamburgers made from 100% Australian beef (shipped to the US where it is turned into mince then shipped back to Oz), you need energy to ship it. We could get the energy from any number of sources, but the fastest way is via fossil fuels. If we decide as a nation to move to renewable energy that won’t kill the world’s poor, it will mean building a whole lot of equipment to replace the existing infrastructure and that means time. Time is a problem because prosperity is a race to get the resources before someone else can - survival of the fittest.

This is where the “emerging economies” like China, India and Brazil come in. Emerging economies are ones that haven’t had the chance to race to economic dominance with fossil fuels as we have and therefore haven’t caused the problem we’re living with at the moment; but now they’d like to. The US says it won’t sign a deal unless China does as well. Why? Because signing it wouldn’t help reduce emissions? Not at all - if the US got on board it would make a massive difference. No, the reason they’re holding back is that if China doesn’t sign, then China gets to do the stuff America has done for decades to stay at the top of the heap and that means there is a very good chance China may take their place. This is why Copenhagen will fail.

In a nutshell, western nations will not take responsibility for causing the problem and act on it because doing so will give economic advantage to emerging economies unless they agree to act as well. The bottom line is that there is a risk things will cost us more. It doesn’t have to be bad; good planning can go a long way but one way or another we will pay more if we do what we should have been doing all along. So we won’t do it. Instead we’ll give air time to predators telling us that the science is in dispute or that it’s all a plot to establish a one-world government.

Western governments will make elegant excuses and propose actions and sums of money that impress us all if we don’t do the maths, but in the end nothing will happen unless we (not our governments) make it clear that we care more about the plight of the world’s poor than about our own pockets; unless we are prepared to carry the burdens of those who will suffer when our economies suffer. This should be bread and butter for Christians; what will it take for us to get our act together?

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change is a body made up of representatives from 166 different nations to rule out political bias. The 152 lead authors and 650 reviewers include experts with all sorts of personal opinions for and against climate change but all bound by the one rule - they can only say what the evidence tells them. And what the evidence told them in 2007 was that Global Warming was caused by people predominantly in the rich west, and the impacts were going to be devestating for the world’s poor and the environment we’ve been put on the earth to care for.

It seems that the media is full of people who know better than all of them though, and they all seem to know that these claims are nothing but “alarmism”, that the right thing to do really is to continue making money as fast as possible and assume that the science is wrong. Just recently, Alan Jones from 2GB interviewed another self-proclaimed expert on the matter (http://www.2gb.com/index2.php?option=com_newsmanager&task=view&id=4998), Lord Cristopher Monckton from the UK. Monckton - an economist who invented some jigsaw puzzles, pretends to be a member of the British Upper House of Parliament, awarded himself a fake Nobel Prize and used to be editor of a couple of British tabloids (no training in science whatsoever) knew for sure that it was all just alarmism. Dangerous alarmism too - he explained to Jones that the meeting in Copenhagen was all a secret plot to set up a one world government.

The Alan Jones interview relies on 4 points:
1) There is a secret treaty to be signed in Copenhagen; it’s been carefully kept from us
2) It will be impossible to break out of the treaty
3) The treaty will usher in a one world government
4) Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW) has been categorically disproven

1) I’m not sure about the secrecy claim; I seem to have heard of it often enough without trying (eg http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/environment/article6905356.ece)
2) The treaty (http://unfccc.int/resource/docs/2009/awglca7/eng/inf02.pdf)is the same as any other treaty. Australia didn’t have a clause to break out of its treaty with Indonesia but when mass demonstrations occurred in Melbourne, John Howard broke it against his own politics to send troops to East Timor. Treaties are broken all the time; they’re only as strong as the will of other signatories to invoke trade sanctions etc as punishment. There is nothing undemocratic about a Government entering into treaties without a referendum; this is how it has always been done (http://www.dfat.gov.au/treaties/making/making2.html). Since 1990 Australia has signed 115 multilateral treaties and 458 bilateral treaties. There is nothing different about this one.
3) I searched the treaty for the word “Government”, and aside from the mention of other governments there is a mention (p18) of government outside of the individual national governments. The use of the term is in the sense used in say a university; ie “governing body” and is no more sinister than calling it a committee. The option of a governing body is one of 4 options given in the treaty, and the treaty does not ascribe any powers to the government other than organisation and monitoring of emissions.
4) The claim that AGW has been categorically disproven is based on a June paper by Lindzen and Choi “On the determination of climate feedbacks from ERBE data” (http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2009/2009GL039628.shtml). The paper claims that satellites show too much long-wave radiation leaving the atmosphere; ie that it’s not being caught by greenhouse gases. The earth’s climate is affected by 3 things - the amount of energy reaching the atmosphere, the amount of energy reaching the earth’s surface and the amount of energy leaving the atmosphere. The amount reaching the atmosphere is quite predictable and doesn’t change on a human timescale but over many thousands of years (aside from very small changes due to sunspots). The amount coming in is affected by reflectance from clouds which possibly change with the 11-year sunspot cycle. The amount going out is affected by how much gets in and how much is caught by greenhouse gases. No one disputes any of that; what it means is that if more radiation is leaving when temperatures are higher (as the paper suggests), then more must be coming in. The fact is though, we’ve been measuring how much is coming in for longer than we’ve had satellites and it has been going down since about 1970. It is physically impossible for his findings to be right and even vocal AGW skeptics like Roy Spencer have disregarded his findings because they can only be either instrumental or mathematical error. It comes down to basic physics - energy can’t be created or destroyed.

The idea that it’s all a communist plot is not based on anything in the treaty at all. There is no communist wording or suggestion, no hints of communist policies to be implemented. The basis of his claim is on the fact that one of the aims of the treaty is a committment for rich western countries that caused the warming to give aid to the third world nations we are killing with it. Most of the Christian aid organisations are asking for the same thing - is that communism or justice?

Monckton is a rich English Lord that objects to slowing our climb into filthy richness by giving to the poor. He’s an economist that doesn’t want to come out and say that it’s just about money because that would be bad form, so he pretends to be a scientist concerned by all of the other evil scientists getting rich off their grant money (we are going to be set for lab coats for decades if we can pull this one off!). Richard Lindzen who wrote the paper is famous for being paid $2500 a day by oil companies to make a lot of his arguments. Conservative libertarians claim that a centralised government pressure on the economy such as through cap and trade is an infringement of our freedoms; just as they object to any rules being imposed on free trade agreements. Now when the US makes an agreement with a developing nation they no longer put in a clause that says the country doesn’t have to export their food to them if they are in famine. Now countries that suffer famine and stop exporting to keep their people alive will be subject to trade sanctions by the US because having a rule that protects them is an infringement of American freedom and their way of life. It’s just about money, the arguments are weak and most were shot down years ago.

There is no substance whatsoever to Monckton’s claims about one-world government. Christians often prick up their ears at this because of a warning in the book of Revelation that says some day the Antichrist or “the beast” will come.

“He was given power to make war against the saints and to conquer them. And he was given authority over every tribe, people, language and nation.” (Revelation 13:7)

“He also forced everyone, small and great, rich and poor, free and slave, to receive a mark on his right hand or on his forehead, so that no one could buy or sell unless he had the mark, which is the name of the beast or the number of his name. This calls for wisdom. If anyone has insight, let him calculate the number of the beast, for it is man’s number. His number is 666.” (Revelation 13:16-18)

Revelation was written by the Apostle John while in exile on the island of Patmos. The book was written to contemporary Christians in code; for instance it refers to the Roman Empire as “Babylon” rather than saying Rome so that the letter wouldn’t be intercepted and edited or destroyed. The number 7 stood for God’s perfection; repeating it three times means everything satisfied and made good. Man’s number is 666 - nearly 7 three times over but missing the last vital ingredient because our human nature can’t allow it. I believe that many Christians have been too preocupied looking for a Hitler or evil nation to be an antichrist that we don’t recognise that 666 is man’s number. The one-world government is here and growing. No one could buy or sell unless they have the mark of the beast - you try getting a load of groceries that doesn’t include stuff made at the expense of the poor. You want food in the west, you have to pay the Piper. For every dollar in aid given by western nations we take back $14 dollars in unfair trade. It’s globally organised - not by a formal government but by tacit agreement that putting ourselves first is more important than the things Jesus listed as the most important matters - justice, mercy and faithfulness. Because of this, even though we face overwhelming evidence that the climate is warming, that we’re doing it and that the cost to the world’s poor is already estimated by the WHO at 150,000 lives per annum as the most intense cyclones double in frequency, glaciers melt, more extreme heatwaves cause drought and fires of record intensity etc; even though it has never been effectively refuted, “man’s number” will kick in at Copenhagen and the response to AGW will look impressive but will not be enough to do the job. We will be more concerned about looking like we care while making sure our hip pockets don’t suffer. It’s what John Howard called a “practical and balanced approach”.

A recent article in the Creation Ministries International ‘Prayer News’ referred to a claim by Sir David Attenborough that he had received hate mail from creationists. CMI have responded saying that this is a diversionary tactic used to “deflect scrutiny from the real issues” which is fair enough; I’ve certainly seen it used a lot that way.

That’s not the whole picture though. If people accuse Christians of sending hate mail it’s not the same as anyone else doing the same thing; we’re the ones that are supposed to have given up everything to know the God of Love, we’re supposed to be the Love Worshippers.

Now that doesn’t mean that we’re supposed to tip-toe around everywhere smiling sweetly - representing Love can mean putting across a hard message from time to time and Jesus had no qualms about calling people white-washed tombs and even “sons of hell”! As Christians we’ve signed up to Jesus’ vision of the Kingdom which means that we’re here to find little patches of hell and bring heaven into the darkest areas. We’re here to be the light of the world and that can mean can mean some pretty fierce confrontations with people that bring the dark with them. Consequently, some would describe some of Jesus’ words as ‘hate mail’ in an effort to avoid the very clear point he was making.

Having said that however, there’s a pretty bold line between Jesus calling a spade a spade and people trying to win arguments with insults or unnecessarily hurtful tactics. When Christians stated that hate mail is “a poor witness to these anti-creationists”, CMI responded by stating that the comments by Attenborough had clearly been a successful attempt to “turn Christians against one another”. They also stated that they regularly receive hate mail, but “hopefully you won’t hear us whining about it like some wounded creature”.

It seems to me that they’re missing the point a little. Fair enough if they want to protest their innocence, but they didn’t. Fair enough if they want to argue that they were just being forthright and confronting open deception and that their words had been twisted; but they haven’t done that. Instead, they’ve said “well they do it!” called them whingers and suggested that for the sake of unity other Christians shouldn’t object.

I’m sorry CMI, but I think you’re dead wrong. You either stand with the God of Love or you don’t – people that don’t are allowed to write hate mail; we’re not. The world is allowed to whinge if we don’t practice what we preach. You promote yourselves as a Christian ministry and therefore as the image of God to the earth which means that if you don’t get this right, then the rest of us Christians are duty bound to pull you into line. Don’t forget that Jesus’ description of wolves in sheep’s clothing was directed at Church leaders. Nowhere are we told to denounce false teachers outside of the church – it’s the ones inside that take the heat from the Bible.

Isn’t it timely that now the new Balibo movie is hitting the screens, John Howard and Alexander Downer have suddenly revealed that they were on East Timor’s side the whole time? They ask us to take them at their word, but to do so we need to throw away a few other pieces of the puzzle.

Let’s forget that Australian intelligence was watching the TNI troops move into place to slaughter the East Timorese if they voted for independence, and that Downer’s office overtly suppressed those facts. Let’s forget that Merv Jenkins, Australia’s man responsible for “load sharing” our intelligence on Indonesia with the US was so hounded by Downer’s office when he didn’t comply that he was driven to suicide. Above all, we’d better forget that it was only because someone broke the rules and leaked what was happening to the media that mass protests sparked in Melbourne and the sheer weight of public opinion forced Howard to send in Peace Keepers. The fact that the UN in 2003 listed Australia’s cover-up of atrocities in East Timor as one of the main reasons they were allowed to continue is of course irrelevant.

But it’s no surprise Howard and Downer want to re-write history; a man’s got to live with himself somehow. The real question is whether our present government has the spine to overcome the dirty diplomacy of past generations and do something that could make Australia proud. Australia continues to train the TNI and Kopassus (Special Forces) just as we did when they carried out the Timorese massacres. Reports as recent as June show that these forces also continue to randomly kidnap, beat, rape, torture and murder West Papuans just as they did the East Timorese. Can’t we even say that we don’t want to train the troops until they stop their terrorism? Sure, the solutions may not be simple; but there must be some room for improvement on our black record.

I have been encouraged by a recent interaction with two scientists from “Creation Ministries International”. CMI recently published an article called “God’s Global Warming worked just fine“, where Russ Humphreys attempted to “debunk some myths” about Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW - the idea that the climate is warming and humans have caused it).

It’s a noble idea and in some areas they did ok, but overall it did not give a fair treatment of the science and demonstrated that Mr Humphreys was far more aware of the very small collection of sceptical theories used to argue against AGW than he was of the vast body of evidence that supports it. Most seriously, it concluded by saying: “The lesson we should learn is that higher carbon dioxide in the air and global warming are good things, not bad … unless you live on low-lying coastal land!”, and “Scripture speaks of a future “period of restoration of all things” (Acts 3:21). It is ironic that our technology is pumping carbon buried by the Flood back into the earth’s biosphere, perhaps in preparation for a time when the earth will again be like Eden—at least in terms of the climate.”

I wrote a comment in response to the article, suggesting that for the hundreds of millions or perhaps billions of people that do live on low-lying coastal land, that will lose their land and homes and become refugees, that will starve, that will be at the centre of the wars that will inevitably arise as will the anger and mistrust of many westerners for “Asylum Seekers” - these people may not feel the effects of Climate Change as a return to Eden so much as the much smaller number of rich westerners that can afford to move at a whim. To present this incredible level of suffering as God’s plan to renew the earth seems like a great way to convince the world that God isn’t all that good after all. 

After receiving a reply from Don Batten asking me to support my statement that I believed CMI had frequently showed bias in regards to AGW, I listed a number of articles that either presented contrarian arguments without also presenting the very strong evidence refuting them, or used the power of suggestion to discredit AGW in the eyes of their readers. I personally see this latter approach as a serious form of deceit. CMI are seen by many conservative Christians as the only scientists they can trust, so when they repeatedly associate AGW with evolution (which they present as an example of how deceived secular science can be), refer to AGW as “politically correct” or an “agenda” often associated with issues seen as ridiculous or wrong to conservative Christians (eg “green agenda”, “Global warming might become an alien agenda”, “Climate change and terrorism: a new political agenda?”), they bypass  a reasoned approach to the issue and encourage Christians to simply reject it due to a vague impression that they’re being deceived.

Although AGW has nothing to do with the creation/evolution issue, CMI scientists are entitled to an opinion based upon the evidence. As far as I can see though, none of their articles present an evidence-based opinion. The use of association in its place is trickery and manipulation; it has no place in Christian ministry.

Don Batten replied to my concerns saying “I must say that I am embarrassed, along with Carl [Wieland]. We have a team of six who OK web articles and clearly the level of vetting at this point has not been consistent.” He went on to say that he and Carl were going to look into the issue further and listed a few interim measures that should see the offending articles distributed a little less widely. I found the tone of Don’s letter very encouraging; it demonstrated a sincere desire to fix the problem and remove the bias.

The unfortunate reality is that to the rich and powerful who want voices and votes on their side, Christians are just another demographic to be captured. The fossil fuel industry is implicated at the heart of AGW science, but it will not go down without a fight. Due to their track record in bringing prosperity to the west their voices are strong in right-wing politics where the loyalties of many Christians lie, but Don Batten and Carl Wieland have demonstrated that the first loyalty of a Christian should not be to a political agenda. Let’s pray that Christians will have the courage to lead on such issues, rather than to be led.

Melbourne father Drew Grant and security guard Markus Rattealo were both shot by snipers over the weekend at West Papua’s Freeport Mines. As questions are raised about “separatist” activity, the only piece of evidence to come to light so far is the fact that the bullets that killed the men were Indonesian military issue. Unfortunately, this all sounds too familiar.

These are not the first murders to happen around the Freeport mines; in August 2002 one Indonesian and two American school teachers were ambushed and shot on the roads leading into the mines. The bullets were also military issue, but the blame was quickly directed toward the OPM - a small band of Papuan miltary that have been resisting the Indonesian occupation of their land since the 1960’s. When FBI agents sent to investigate the killings were blocked by retired Army General President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, the enraged US congress blocked funds for military training until cooperation was reached.

Over the following days, an arrangement was made that allowed the FBI into the country, who produced a finding that a Papuan man Antonius Wamang was guilty while downplaying his strong connections with the Indonesian Military. The same day that Wamang was sentenced, Pentagon officials announced a “new era of military cooperation” with Indonesia.

Two weeks ago, classified US documents were released under a Freedom of Information Act Request that revealed some of the details. Many more details remain hidden as 20 of the documents released had been edited whereas 40 more relevant documents were refused. What we can glean so far is:

- Indonesia used the attack to push for the OPM to be classified as a terrorist organisation (1)

- Sources to the Washington Post revealed that General Endriartono Sutarto had discussed an unspecified operation against Freeport before the attacks (2). The article appears to have been taken down since legal action was taken by General Sutarto, but it is reproduced here.

- The killings took place near a military checkpoint (3)

- Papua’s own Police Chief launched an investigation into the killings, which found the Indonesian military had been involved (4)

- Survivors were treated in an Australian hospital, but were kept under the strictest secrecy; even preventing them from speaking with family members (5, 6)

- President Yudhoyono met repeatedly with the low ranking FBI investigators during their inquiries (7)

For a full peer-reviewed analysis of the situation, read Kirksey, S.E. and Harsono A. (2009) Criminal collaborations? Antonius Wamang and the Indonesian military in Timika. South East Asia Research, 16, 2, pp. 165–197 (8)

Family First Senator Steve Fielding has posted the questions he put to Penny Wong on Climate Change recently, I’ve had a look at them and posted my analysis here. I’ve tried to keep it simple but be warned, there’s a bit to it. Unfortunately this is the stuff we have to learn if we want a debate about climate change out in the media rather than something being debated between scientists. It’s not valid to say “I am unconvinced on climate change” if you haven’t examined the science; choosing to do nothing is a choice so we need to either become educated or else take the advice of the experts.

I should make it clear that I am not a climate scientist, my area of expertise is bushfire behaviour. I do however try to keep up to date with the findings and believe that my capabilities as a scientist are up to the job on this material. By all means though, please check what I’m saying against the data and the references.

Mr Fielding opens by saying:

“They [the Rudd Government] were unable to debunk a graph used by the IPCC which shows average global temperatures remaining steady over the last 15 years while carbon dioxide emissions have increased.” 

Mr Fielding does not tell us which graph he is referring to. 

What he is suggesting is that the evidence against global warming that needs to be answered is not coming from industry interests such as the Heartland Institute, but from the highest level of climate science we have, the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change). So lets have a look at their graphs.

The 2 graphs from the  Summary for Policymakers and the Technical Summary are:

In each graph, it is very clear that average global temperatures have not remained steady over the past 15 years. I would be very interested if anyone could produce a graph which supports Mr Fielding’s claim; there certainly is not any such graph in the IPCC documentation.

Mr Fielding then outlined the 3 questions he had put to Penny Wong which he claimed she had been unable to answer adequately. I’ve listed them below and given some of my thoughts about them.

Question 1

“Is it the case that CO2 increased by 5% since 1998 whilst global temperature cooled over the same period (see Fig. 1)? If so, why did the temperature not increase; and how can human emissions be to blame for dangerous levels of warming?”

Mr Fielding refers to “Fig. 1″ to support his statement, but Fig. 1 is not provided at any point so we are left to take his word for it. If however we examine the actual data, here’s what we get:

The line shows the trend, in this case it’s rising. The number R-squared gives us an indication of how much of the temperature variation is explained by the trend. A value of 0.1075 means that the warming trend explains about 11% of the temperature variation in this period, the rest is due to shorter term factors such as the El Nino Southern Oscillation.

So what about Mr Fielding’s statement? The short answer is yes, CO2 did increase, and no, global temperature did not cool over the period. Global temperature rose on average by 0.112 degrees celcius. Not much, but Mr Fielding’s statement is dead wrong. Global temperature rose, it did not cool. What he has done is misinterpreted a statistical analysis of the period that said the level of rising was “not significant”, basically that the R-squared value was not big enough.

Now a question for Mr Fielding. Why did they count a period of 11 years rather than just a decade? Take a closer look at the graph. The year 1998 was an exceptionally warm year, whereas the year 2008 was cooler than average. What if we just counted a decade instead of 11 years? Well, if we started from 1998, the graph would look like this:

Or, if we counted the 10 years 1999 to 2008, we would have:

Notice that the line is much steeper in both cases, and that the R=squared value is nearly three times higher. In both cases, the temperature rise is much more statistically sound and the average rise in temperatures is about twice as fast (0.2 degrees instead of 0.1).

So what has happened is that either Mr Fielding or someone advising him has “cherry picked” data. At some point someone has made a decision to deliberately pick that strange number of years to capitalise on the short term variability and make the trend look weak. On top of that, Mr Fielding has gone further and instead of saying “there has been no statistically significant rise in that period”, has instead quite falsely said that temperatures have cooled.

But why are we looking at small numbers like 10 years anyway? If we look at a slightly bigger picture, it’s pretty clear that the overall trend is rising. The graph below shows temperatures from 1970 to 2008, where we can see that the last few years are nothing unusual, and that when we step back from the picture the warming trend actually accounts for 77% of the difference in temperature. You can’t get an idea of a big picture trend by measuring a short-term snapshot like a decade.

 Question 2

Is it the case that the rate and magnitude of warming between 1979 and 1998 (the late 20th century phase of global warming) was not unusual in either rate or magnitude as compared with warmings that have occurred earlier in the Earth’s history (Fig. 2a, 2b)?

If the warming was not unusual, why is it perceived to have been caused by human CO2 emissions; and, in any event, why is warming a problem if the Earth has experienced similar warmings in the past?

Again, we are not given the figures that support his case, but the short answer is yes, there have been periods of warming in the earth’s history comparable to the current one. No one has contended that the current period of warming is “the worst ever” or anything like that, the point being made is that the warming is going to cause suffering and environmental destruction, and that it doesn’t have to happen if we change some of our practices.

It’s pretty easy for Mr Fielding to see why warming is a problem if he looks at the IPCC documents he should know back to front to be making such claims. Warming causes sea level rise because water expands when it gets warm and because icecaps on Greenland and Antarctica melt into the sea; this sort of thing has happened many thousands of years ago, but many thousands of years ago Holland wasn’t largely populated on land below sea level protected by dykes that can be over-topped by storm surges with even a very small amount of sea level rise. Many thousands of years ago Bangladesh didn’t have 1093 people per square kilometer, living in places where 50% of the country would be flooded if sea level rose by 1m.

It’s one thing to be philosophical and see it all as part of the circle of life, but if we have the option, do we really want those disasters to happen overseas? Do we really want more droughts and bushfires in Australia? Do we really want the extinction of an estimated 1 million species by 2050? Why does Mr Fielding not see these things as problems?

As to why the warming is seen as being caused by human induced CO2 emissions, the short answer is that even according to the documentation supplied by Mr Fielding to support his case it’s an undisputed fact that CO2 emissions cause warming, and that we’ve been releasing a lot of them over the past century. The other times the earth warmed were natural disasters; this time isn’t. It’s kind of like an arsonist saying “bushfires occur naturally, therefore there’s nothing wrong with me lighting this one.”

Question 3:

Is it the case that all GCM computer models projected a steady increase in temperature for the period 1990-2008, whereas in fact there were only 8 years of warming were followed by 10 years of stasis and cooling. (Fig. 3)?

If so, why is it assumed that long-term climate projections by the same models are suitable as a basis for public policy making?

Yes, the models would have predicted a general warming trend, but as we saw under question 1 there was no period of “stasis and cooling”. The temperatures have continued to rise steadily just as the models predicted. Again Mr Fielding does not provide us with the graph he refers to and leaves us to take his word for it, and again what he wants us to trust him on is completely wrong.

As for the second part of the question; despite the fact that his premise is completely false we need to understand that climate models are different to weather models. A climate model describes temperature over the span of multiple decades not individual years; Mr Fielding’s contention is kind of like saying “this weekend was a lot cooler than last one, where’s this ’summer’ you keep predicting?” 

Summary

I’ve got to say that I am very disappointed by Mr Fielding’s statements on this subject. He has told us that the data was doing exactly the opposite to what it really was, he has told us that the IPCC have said exactly the opposite to what they really did say and he has attempted to downplay the enormous suffering and destruction that will result if things go as expected by comparing it to events many many thousands of years ago. At best it appears that he has been naive and simply accepted the word of industry lobby groups such as the Heartland Institute without reading any of the peer-reviewed material that they are trying to mislead people on.

UPDATE 16th July

I’ve spent some time discussing the issue with a few individuals arguing in defence of Steve Fielding, who have been able to shed a little more light on the issue and provide me with some documents that gave some more relevant information such as the actual document Steve Fielding gave to Penny Wong. Another writer also provided a link to Penny Wong’s answers.

In short, the dataset used by Mr Fielding (HadCRUT3) does show a slight drop in temperature since 1998 or 2002, so Mr Fielding was not deliberately being misleading on that count. This is however the only instrumental dataset that does show cooling, and if all of the evidence is weighed together there is still a clear warming trend. My earlier comments about measuring too short a time period also remain; the climate has four main cycles - some of which span a decade and unless the measurements are taken over at least 2 wavelengths (minimum 20 years), you’re measuring weather not climate. It’s like comparing this July to February last year and saying that this year is cooler. To complicate things, the evidence suggests that when these four cycles synchronise (all do the same thing at the same time) and become temporarily coupled (work together) as they started to do in 2002, they cause a pause in the warming that can last from a few years to a few decades (techo stuff here). It’s only a pause unfortunately, the four times it happened in the 20th century the warming that happened afterward caught up to the existing trend. So no, Steve Fielding did not lie about this; he just didn’t investigate the science properly.

On the down side, it does appear that Mr Fielding was misleading with his claim that the Government “were unable to debunk a graph used by the IPCC which shows average global temperatures remaining steady over the last 15 years while carbon dioxide emissions have increased”. The graph used was not taken from the IPCC, but was a presentation of the data which concentrated on temperatures over a statistically invalid period and thereby misrepresenting the data. Another graph comparing current temperatures to IPCC modelling shows a completely false version of the IPCC model and it’s error margins.

Mr Fielding’s claim that the Government “shifted the goal posts and rephrased my questions to suit their agenda”, coupled with the fact that he provided no link to the government response is also very misleading. The answers were not political dismissals, but quite well worded statements of the facts. The fact that Penny Wong directed Mr Fielding to ocean temperatures is not “changing the goalposts”. Water bodies are heat sinks, they take a long time to change and therefore are a very good indicator of climatic trends rather than seasonal trends. Penny Wong’s response is an attempt to educate Mr Fielding in the science, not a political ploy.

Unfortunately, this move of Mr Fielding’s does appear very much to be a political ploy. Mr Fielding has not attempted to understand both sides of the story as he claims, but has focused his attention on the small minority of dissenting voices that are prepared to twist the statistics.