Bible Prophecy


Distress and Perplexity

Commentary on the News

Wednesday, March 21, 2007

Jack Kinsella - Omega Letter Editor

 

Al Gore's "An Inconvenient Truth," directed by Davis Guggenheim, was released in May and took in more than $46 million, making it one of the top-grossing documentaries.

 

The companion book by Al Gore quickly became a bestseller, reaching No. 1 on the New York Times' list.

 

 

Gore depicted a future in which temperatures soar, ice sheets melt, seas rise, hurricanes batter the coasts and people die en masse. "Unless we act boldly," he wrote, "our world will undergo a string of terrible catastrophes."

 

 

The film' success, together with the adulation, if not outright worship he received at the hands of the Beautiful People in Hollywood, have some speculating that Al Gore may throw his hat into the 2008 presidential ring.

 

 

Al Gore is scheduled to make an appearance before Representative John Dingell's (D-Mi) Energy and Commerce Committee this week.

 

 

After that, its over to the Senate where Gore will address Senator Barbara Boxer's (D-Ca) Environment and Public Works Committee.

 

 

But Gore won't get the rock star treatment over his film "An Inconvenient Truth" that he got from Hollywood at the Oscars. It seems that the Congress has actually looked at the science, instead of all the pretty charts and graphs.

 

 

They've consulted with genuine scientists, climatologists and astronomers, and evidently, now they'd like to know what is really going on.

 

 

Even James Hansen, an environmental scientist, director of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies (and a top adviser to Gore), is beginning to question some of Gore's scientific conclusions, admitting the former VP's work may have a few 'technical flaws'.

 

 

Gore's global warming argument won over many converts in the scientific community in the wake of the 2004-2005 hurricane seasons, which he predicted was just the beginning of what Gore maintained was a permanent cycle of increasing hurricane activity.

 

 

Until last season, when the Atlantic hurricane season produced only half as many storms as forecasters predicted, none of which made landfall in the United States.

 

 

This past January, while America was enjoying what seemed to be one of the warmest winters on record, Gore's stock was riding high; everywhere you turned, Somebody Famous was quoting Al Gore and noting darkly,

 

 

"The cherry blossoms are blooming in Washington. People are jogging in Central Park in shorts and T-shirts. Surely this is PROOF of global warming."

 

 

The House scheduled emergency hearings to discuss global warming. (They had to be subsequently canceled due to an ice storm)

 

 

The whole country suddenly plunged into a deep freeze that saw snowstorms in Malibu, California, hard freezes in Florida, and caused an estimated $1 billion in damage to the nation's citrus crops.

 

 

Last week, a group of activists, intending to highlight the global warming threat by walking to the North Pole, had to cancel their journey due to the cold.

 

 

The explorers, Ann Bancroft and Liv Arnesen, on Saturday called off what was intended to be a 530-mile trek across the Arctic Ocean after Arnesen suffered frostbite in three of her toes, and extreme cold temperatures drained the batteries in some of their electronic equipment.

 

 

"Ann said losing toes and going forward at all costs was never part of the journey," said Ann Atwood, who helped organize the expedition.

 

 

In Northhampton, Mass last Friday, a group of global warming activists planned to walk across the state to draw attention to global warming. They made it eight miles through snow so deep that one demonstrator said she felt like she was 'breaking a trail' before they called a halt to the walk until the weather cleared.

 

 

And now, even the New York Times is beginning to question Gore's conclusions, (an event roughly analogous to the Pope publishing a paper questioning the existence of God.)

 

 

Noted the NY Times; "a report last June by the National Academies seemed to contradict Mr. Gore’s portrayal of recent temperatures as the highest in the past millennium. Instead, the report said, current highs appeared unrivaled since only 1600, the tail end of a temperature rise known as the medieval warm period."

 

 

The Times' continued: "Geologists have documented age upon age of climate swings, and some charge Mr. Gore with ignoring such rhythms."

 

 

“Nowhere does Mr. Gore tell his audience that all of the phenomena that he describes fall within the natural range of environmental change on our planet,” Robert M. Carter, a marine geologist at James Cook University in Australia, said in a September blog."

 

 

“Nor does he present any evidence that climate during the 20th century departed discernibly from its historical pattern of constant change.”

 

 

I am eagerly awaiting answers from Gore to some of the questions that are expected to be put to him by House investigators on both panels.

 

 

I found a few sample questions on the Drudge Report that I would really love to hear Gore tackle in public.

 

 

For example, Gore has linked global warming to human activity and overpopulation. He is expected to be asked what, in his opinion, would be a sustainable global population?

 

 

Since it would, by definition, have to be less than the current global population, I'm more than curious about Gore's plans to reduce the surplus population to sustainable levels.

 

 

Senator James Inhofe, (R-Ok) is expected to question Gore on his science. Recent interplanetary observations indicate that Mars, Jupiter and Pluto are also showing signs of increasing surface temperatures. Earth is the only inhabited planet.

 

 

Researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research in Germany note that the sun has seemed to be burning more brightly for the last 60 years, which may account for the increase of 1 degree.

 

 

The only thing all three planets have in common is they are all heated by the same sun.

 

 

So how does human activity account for that?

 

 

In his movie, "An Inconvenient Truth" Gore warns of a 20-foot rise in sea levels. The UN's IPCC panel, whose latest report sparked global outrage against the United States for refusing to sign the Kyoto Treaty, concluded "that the world's seas in this century would rise a maximum of 23 inches - down from earlier estimates."

 

 

(That's a difference of eighteen feet, one inch. Does is being off by 90% fall within the range of scientific certainty? Enquiring minds want to know.)

 

 

Marlo Lewis, senior fellow at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, prepared a Congressional working paper on global warming in advance of Gore's House testimony.

 

 

(You can read the entire Lewis report at this link: http://www.cei.org/pdf/5820.pdf)

 

 

Lewis' paper concludes that Gore "vastly overstates carbon dioxide's importance" in climate change, noting that the 1930s were warmer than current temperatures. (Remember the Depression-era Oklahoma "Dust Bowl"?)

 

 

According to Lewis' research, "Nearly every significant statement that Vice President Gore makes regarding climate science and climate policy is either one-sided, misleading, exaggerated, speculative or wrong."

 

 

"Gore calls global warming a 'moral issue,' but for him, it is a moralizing issue -- a license to castigate political adversaries and blame America first for everything from hurricanes to floods to wildfires to tick-borne disease," Lewis said."

 

 

"Somehow, he sees nothing immoral in the attempt to make fossil energy scarcer and more costly in a world where 1.6 billion people have never flipped a light switch and billions more are too poor to own an automobile," he said."

 

 

Pretty scathing stuff, given it was published by the New York Times!

 

 

Gore intends to bring to Congress some 300,000 electronic 'signatures' on a petition demanding Congress "do something" about global warming.

 

 

Gore said the signatures demonstrate "that hundreds of thousands of people share my sense of urgency" on climate change.

 

 

(According to my calculations, 300,000 works out to a fraction of one percent of the US population of 360,000,000. In contrast, according to a 1981 Roper Poll, 2.9 million Americans --1.4% -- of the US population believe they've been abducted by aliens)

 

 

According to Gore, members of Congress have "failed to act, because they have not yet faced a sufficient expression of political will on the part of the American people demanding they confront our climate crisis head on." (Translation: Not enough people have been "scared green" yet.)

 

 

In the 1970's "Newsweek" published an article under the title, "The Cooling World" in which it pointed to "ominous signs that the Earth's weather patterns have begun to change" and pointed to "a drop of half a degree Fahrenheit in average ground temperatures in the Northern Hemisphere between 1945 and 1968."

 

 

The article claimed that "the evidence in support of these predictions of global cooling has now begun to accumulate so massively that meteorologists are hard-pressed to keep up with it."

 

 

Not to be outdone, TIME Magazine issued its own report on the coming Ice Age in it's June, 1974 issue:

 

 

"However widely the weather varies from place to place and time to time, when meteorologists take an average of temperatures around the globe they find that the atmosphere has been growing gradually cooler for the past three decades. The trend shows no indication of reversing. Climatological Cassandras are becoming increasingly apprehensive, for the weather aberrations they are studying may be the harbinger of another ice age."

 

 

"Telltale signs are everywhere —from the unexpected persistence and thickness of pack ice in the waters around Iceland to the southward migration of a warmth-loving creature like the armadillo from the Midwest.Since the 1940s the mean global temperature has dropped about 2.7° F. Although that figure is at best an estimate, it is supported by other convincing data."

 

 

In His outline of the signs of the times that would signal His imminent return, Jesus told His followers:

 

 

"And there shall be signs in the sun, and in the moon, and in the stars; and upon the earth DISTRESS of nations, with PERPLEXITY; the sea and the waves roaring; Men's hearts failing them for fear, and for looking after those things which are coming on the earth: for the powers of heaven shall be shaken." (Luke 21:25-26)

 

 

I set off two words in all-caps because those words are very specific in their meaning.

 

 

"Perplexity" according to one dictionary, means: "to puzzle or confuse somebody, especially causing doubt." Another defines it as "to make confusedly intricate; complicate."

 

 

A third defined it by posting a picture of Al Gore. (Ok, I made that one up)

 

 

"Distress" is defined as "to cause strain, anxiety or suffering", or, "great danger or difficulty, with a need for immediate assistance."

 

 

It is significant to note that even the most vocal Congressional critic, Senator James Inhofe, does not deny the current warming trend. He just doesn't believe it is being caused by human activity.

 

 

Inhofe (and others) have been paying attention instead to recent solar activity -- signs in the sun -- that indicate the sun is warming up -- hence the warming patterns detected in Mars, Jupiter, etc.

 

 

During the Tribulation Period, the Bible says that the world will definitely see some catastrophic climactic shifts.

 

 

"And the fourth angel poured out his vial upon the sun; and power was given unto him to scorch men with fire. And men were scorched with great heat. . ." (Revelation 16:8-9)

 

 

"And the seventh angel poured out his vial into the air; and there came a great voice out of the temple of heaven, from the throne, saying, It is done. And there were voices, and thunders, and lightnings; and there was a great earthquake, such as was not since men were upon the earth, so mighty an earthquake, and so great." (Revelation 16:18-19)

 

 

But Jesus is addressing the signs of His Return, not the Tribulation judgments.

 

 

He warned of 'signs' that would perplex and distress NATIONS, with men's hearts failing them for FEAR at the PERCEPTION of what is COMING on the earth (future, not present) from some celestial threat ("powers of heaven shall be shaken"), a perception not yet realized.

 

 

Al Gore is bringing to Congress some 300,000 electronic 'signatures' from those so distressed by his "Inconvenient Truth" that has so perplexed the world's scientific community that they are demanding that 'something must be done' to prevent the predicted sea level rises that will flood the world's coastlines and put most of Florida underwater. (the sea and the waves roaring).

 

 

If it seems is as if Al Gore, the global scientific community and the US Congress are following a preordained script, it is because that is exactly what is happening.

 

 

Jesus explained the purpose for Bible prophecy for the last days, saying, "And now I have to you before it come to pass, that, when it is come to pass, ye might believe." (John 14:29)

 

 

Because, Jesus said, "When these things BEGIN to come to pass" we are to, "look up, and lift up our heads," because our redemption draweth nigh." (Luke 21:29)

 

 

There is no evidence that global warming is either a permanent trend nor is there evidence to support Gore's contention that fifty years from now, Arizona will be beachfront property.

 

 

Thirty years ago, the same evidence predicted we were about to enter a new ice age.

 

 

At best, there is evidence that there has been a brief period of unusual sun spot activity, accompanied by a slight warming of the solar system, similar to the warming period responsible for the Dust Bowl phenomenon in the 1930's.

 

 

I am not saying that the planet isn't warming. Neither I am I a trained scientist qualified to say that the IPCC is categorically wrong. (Other trained scientists are, however.)

 

 

What I am saying that they say the best evidence so far proves only that the last decade or so has been warmer than the preceding two decades.

 

 

But the ENTIRE world is perplexed and distressed to the degree that there is a global concensus that 'something must be done' despite the fact nobody knows either what is wrong or how to fix it.

 

 

"So likewise ye, when ye see these things come to pass, know ye that the kingdom of God is nigh at hand. Verily I say unto you, This generation shall not pass away, till all be fulfilled." (Luke 21:31-32)

 

 

Al Gore wasn't the first to predict the warning signs of impending climactic catastrophe. Jesus Christ was.

 

 

But the signs don't indicate catastrophic global warming that demand immediate human intervention.

 

 

They indicate that the King is coming! And He is coming soon.

 

 

"Behold, I have told you before." (Matthew 24:25)

 

 

From the Omega Letter Daily Intelligence Digest, Volume 66, Issue 19

 

 

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