Predictions, Global Warming, Global Cooling, Climate Change – Just How Wrong Environmentalists Are: Today, we talk with Walter Williams on the very inaccurate scare tactics the Environmentalists use and how they are using them to their political advantages. Environmentalists have been way off. It started out during the 70’s, the warning was about global cooling. Then they changed it to global warming. Now they don”€™t call it global warming anymore because they realized how wrong they”€™ve been, now they just call it climate change.

Air Date: 08/28/2017

Guests: Walter Williams, David Barton, Rick Green, and Tim Barton

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Transcription note:  As a courtesy for our listeners’ enjoyment, we are providing a transcription of this podcast.  However, as this is transcribed from a live talk show, words and sentence structure were not altered to fit grammatical, written norms in order to preserve the integrity of the actual dialogue between the speakers.  Additionally, names may be misspelled or we might use an asterisk to indicate a missing word because of the difficulty in understanding the speaker at times.  We apologize in advance.

Faith And The Culture

Rick:

Welcome to the intersection of faith and the culture, this is WallBuilders Live! Where we”€™re talking about today”€™s hottest topics on policy, faith, and the culture, all of it from a Biblical, historical, and constitutional perspective.

Find out more at our websites WallBuildersLive.com and WallBuilders.com. Our conversation today is with David Barton, America’s premier historian, and our founder here at WallBuilders. Also, Tim Barton national speaker, and pastor, and the president of WallBuilders. And my name is Rick Green.  I’m a former Texas state rep and national speaker and author.

Later in the program, we”€™ve  got Walter Williams with us one of my economic professor heroes so I’m excited about the opportunity to interview him later in the program. David, Tim, we’re talking about the idea of how wrong the environmentalists scare tactics have been over the years. Yet, they still make them and we still spend government money based on those scare tactics even though they’ve got such a deplorable record of being wrong.

Worship The Creator Not The Creation

David:

Well, they have a bad record. As the Bible points out, human memory tends to be short. Hebrews 2:1 talks about the fact that we have to keep going over the fundamental things of Christianity time and again.

Otherwise, they kind of run out like a leaky vessel. It’s like a spare tire in the back of your car, when you need it usually the air has leaked out and it’s not there when you need it.

You really have to pay attention to things and go over it.  People tend not to do that. And so you hear the melodramatic and the hyperbole out there about how the world’s coming to an end if we don’t do this with whatever.

People 15 years later forget what their hyperbole was and how wrong that record was because there’s a new crisis created by then. One of the things that we don’t see in our worldview anymore, something that we all learned from Rabbi Daniel Lapin and that was about the ascending order of creation. We often today get things exactly backward from what they’re supposed to be.

Rick:

So, what do you mean by ascending order of creation? Do you mean the priority of different things?

Tim:

Rabbi Lapin, I don’t know if he talked about it on the program or just to us personally.

David:

He talked to me personally when I was going to that testimony in front of the U.S. Senate.

Tim:

But I know since then we’ve had conversations with him about this. Maybe even at our Legislators conference. So, if our listeners have heard this then you”€™ll just have to bear with us as we talk through this.

But what he explains is that in Genesis, everything God creates starts in ascending order. So you see six days of creation and rest on the seventh day. But in the first day, what he creates is the inanimate. Every day he works up toward the animate.

Everyday Creation is more design, more function, more purpose, more detail.  So when you finally finish out, it”€™s the most detailed structure, right? This animate creation design it’s humanity.

He even points out that it wasn’t man that God made last, it was woman that God made last. We joked that God looked at man and said, “€œI can do better. Woman, there she is.”€ Of course, the men are like, “€œYes, thank you, Lord, for making women. We are grateful, we appreciate that.”€

But in the midst of it, one of the things that Rabbi Lapin points out is that we so often skew this. It”€™s one of the things that even Paul writes in Romans. Instead of worshipping the creator they worship the creation instead.

What we’ve done in modern era society is we said, “€œNo, the animate, that’s the least significant.”€ What God made last, and arguably is the most significant, we say, “€œNo, that’s the least, man is the least.”€

You can abort an unborn child, you can murder this fetus, you can dismember and sell the baby parts, but you cannot hurt an endangered species. You cannot hurt the environment. You cannot hurt the forest, we”€™ve got to protect the trees. All these things. Well, what we’ve done is we’ve inverted that created order.

Instead of man being the pinnacle of God’s creation, now the earth, or the climate, or the vegetation, or the animals, endangered species, or pets, whatever it is we’ve prioritized those things over man. Which is the exact wrong way, backward of God’s intent, and created order.

God Prioritized Us Over Animals

David:

And I noticed something even this past weekend. I was just going through the Scriptures and noticed something that- do you remember what happened when Adam and Eve sinned, what God did for Adam and Eve when they sinned?

Tim:

What he did for them? He said by the sweat of your brow you will produce. Production, but that wasn”€™t just a curse because God said, “€œYou will still produce.

Rick:

He gave them clothes but he had to kill an animal to do that.

David:

That’s right. The Bible says that he killed an animal to clothe man. So even God put man above animals because he’s willing to kill an animal in order to clothe man. So even there at that point in creation God at that point demonstrated that man is worth more than animals, worth more than the environment, worth more than everything else. Because God himself killed an animal in order to clothe a man.

Tim:

That”€™s a great point.

David:

So that order is there. But Walter Williams, great guy, we love his articles, his commentary, he’s one of those guys that just doesn’t pull punches. He doesn’t know what it means to be politically correct. As a matter of fact, I think he looks for political correctness and goes the opposite direction. Great guy, great columnist, so he’s got this great column we’re going to look at on some of the environmental predictions and the history of them and how flawed that that philosophy has been across time.

Rick:

Walter Williams, special guest, stay with us, you’re listening to WallBuilders Live.

Patriot Academy

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Just How Wrong These Predictions Are

Rick:

Welcome back, thanks for staying with us here on Wall Bulmers live. Professor Walter Williams is with us. Longtime professor at George Mason, I’m a big fan, so I’m excited to have him on the program today. Dr. Williams, thanks for joining us.

Dr. Williams:

Well, thank you for inviting me.

Rick:

A great article on the how wrong we’ve been about these past environmental predictions. It’s amazing we take any of these things seriously anymore. Help remind us just how bad they’ve been over the last 40-50 years.

Dr. Williams:

They’ve been way off. It started out during the 70s. The warning was about global cooling. Now they”€™ve changed it to global warming. Matter of fact, they don”€™t call it global warming anymore because they realized how wrong they”€™ve been. They call it climate change but the climate has been changing since Earth began.

Rick:

Now they’ve set themselves up to be right whichever way they go because it”€™s changing.

Dr. Williams:

I pointed out in the column, in 1970 there were predictions that civilization will end in 15 or 30 years. Paul Ehrlich, a Stanford University biologist, he’s won a lot of prizes. In fact, in face of the fact that he said things like, “€œWell 100 or 200 million people are gone per year are going to be starving to death.”€ He said about Great Britain he would bet money that Great Britain would not exist in the year 2000.

What About Climate Change

Rick:

He’s just a little off, right? You know, it’s not that far off. So how do we even take these kinds of scare tactic seriously anymore? Because we do, we spend money as governments, billions of dollars based on these scare tactics even though they’ve been this wrong.

Dr. Williams:

Oh yeah, matter of fact, billions is an understatement, it”€™s trillions of dollars now. And if you go around the world trillions and trillions of dollars have been spent in the name of fighting what they call climate change.

Remember, after Hurricane Katrina the predictions were, “€œWell, because of global warming and George Bush that strong hurricanes are going to become more common.”€ It turns out that since Katrina the number of hurricanes have been relatively low.

Rick:

It wasn”€™t just 50 years ago they were wrong, it’s even in the last 20 years.

Dr. Williams:

Oh, that’s absolutely right. What these people are doing, the climate change people on dealing with Co2  and stuff like this, they want to control our lives. One of the most effective ways of controlling our lives is through environmental regulation.

In places like California, they’re setting up thermostats where the California authorities can just turn down your thermostat or turn up your thermostat if they think that it needs to be changed.

Environmentalists Or Socialists

I had a friend who called these people, “€œwatermelons.”€ What he meant by that is that these people are green on the outside and pink on the inside. Communism has lost all credibility around the world. And so instead of calling themselves communists or socialists they call themselves environmentalists. But their agenda is the same.

Something that the American people do not know about, while they’re looking at Trump and all these scandals with Russia, the alleged scandals between the Trump people and Russia, is the scandal that’s already happened between Russia and the environmentalist movement.

See, Russia is a major exporter of natural gas and oil to Europe. And what Russia has been doing, it has been making contributions to environmental organizations in the United States who are coming out against fracking and drilling. Because if the Russians can force us to keep our oil and natural gas in the ground, rather than trading with Europe, they can charge Europe higher prices and they can maintain greater control over the countries in Europe.

So the environmentalist movements have been working with the Russians under cover and receiving all kinds of financial support. This is known, I don’t know how commonly known, but there’s nothing being done about it.

Rick:

And it has worked incredibly well because environmentalists have gained tremendous political power because of that kind of support. They’ve got- these are smart people in office, we”€™re talking about U.S. senators, congressmen, that kowtow to this agenda. Actually, the economics are right there in front of their face and they ignore it and they still do these things that hurt us tremendously. Some of them are going to take decades to recover from.

We Are An Energy Rich Country

Dr. Williams:

You’re absolutely right. The United States, we probably have more oil underground than the Middle East has all together. We have huge resources of natural gas. There are estimates that our coal will last at this current usage for 400 years. So we are an energy rich country. But, the environmentalists movements have made us energy poor, in the name of “€œclean air”€ and stuff like that. They’ve made us very dependent. They’ve made the world very dependent on our enemies both in the Middle East and in Russia.

Rick:

How different is President Trump approaching these deception and lies, as you put it in the article, you make it clear in the article, “€œHoodwinking Americans is part of the environmentalist agenda.”€ He doesn’t seem to be playing along with the political correctness. Is he also saying, “€œI’m not going to play along with the environmentalists’ lies.”€

Dr. Williams:

That is absolutely right. That’s why there’s so much hate against the president because he’s not playing the typical Washington games that other politicians have played, whether there are Republicans, or Democrats, that is President Trump he doesn’t owe anything to the K-Street lobbyists because he financed his own campaign.He doesn’t owe anything to Wall Street because again, he financed his own campaign. He’s done things like open up the pipelines in the United States.

Rick:

Oh yeah, from Canada and others.

Dr. Williams:

Yes. And he’s gotten rid of a very costly EPA regulations, particularly in the case of coal. He’s still doing some other things that just really fly in the face of the establishment whether they be Democrats or Republicans.

Rick:

I thought there were a lot of opportunities for the left to come unglued. But when Scott Pruitt’s name first came up as a potential appointee, the environmentalist just went crazy, and I can understand why. Because he’s never fallen for their stuff either and now here he’s in a position to actually stop some of their crazy agenda.

Trump Is Making Good Appointments

Dr. Williams:

That’s right. Another reason why I thought the election of Donald Trump was very important over Hillary Clinton was the potential Supreme Court appointments. I think that with Gorsuch, Gorsuch is a classy person and he respects the United States Constitution.

It’s possible that Trump can have two more appointees to the Supreme Court. And then and the good thing about what Trump is doing is he’s paying attention to the Federalist Society. The Federalist Society is a constitutional free market group of legal scholars. They’re making recommendations and the recommendations that they would make to the High Court and Lower Courts are Americans or legal scholars that have respect for the United States Constitution.

Rick:

I couldn’t agree with you more. The Gorsuch appointment, the most concrete examples I think of President Trump following through on the things he promised. Even just a few decisions that Gorsuch has taken part of, written some, and some of the concurring opinions, and even one dissent, I’m already just shouting from the mountaintops. It’s really encouraging.

Dr. Williams:

That’s right. And if he makes a couple more appointments that will be very important for the future of our country. I’m talking about 30, 40, and 50 years from now. That is to have people in the court that respect and will live up to their oath of office to uphold and defend the United States Constitution.

Rick:

No doubt about it. Professor, so great to have you on the program! We’ll have links to all your many good books on our Website today. We appreciate you coming on, I would love to get you back again soon.

Dr. Williams:

Ok, thank you very much.

Rick:

That”€™s Dr. Walter Williams. Stay with us folks, be right back with David and Tim Barton.

American History

This is David Barton with another moment from America’s history. The Pennsylvania Supreme Court recently overturned the jury’s sentence of a man convicted of the brutal murder of a 71-year-old woman because the prosecuting attorney had mentioned a Bible verse in the courtroom. Consider what happened in the 1778 case, Respublica versus John Roberts. Thomas McKean a signer of the Declaration of Independence was the chief justice of that court and addressing John Roberts after the jury had sent him to death for treason. 

McCain told him, “€œYou will probably have but a short time to live before you launch into eternity. It behooves you to repent of your evil deeds. To be incessant in prayer to the great and merciful God to forgive your manifold transgressions and sins, to teach you to rely on the merit and passion of a dear Redeemer.

This prominent Founding Father actually delivered a salvation message to the defendant in the courtroom. For more information on God’s hand in American history contact wall builders at 1-800-8-REBUILD.

Looking Back We Can See The Truth

Rick:

Welcome back, thanks for staying with us on WallBuilders Live. Special thanks to Walter Williams from George Mason University, well-known economist. You should read his columns. Good stuff.

Back here with David and Tim Barton. Guys, he makes it very clear, he points out some of the absurdity of the inaccuracies and the costs, just how much we actually hurt our economy by following this very bad advice in theory from the environmentalists.

David:

He went through the fact that we had global cooling, that was the warning in the 1970s, that was the big deal. And then all of a sudden all we remember now is the global warming stuff.

But the most recent stuff is they’re back to global cooling again. The most recent scientific magazines are saying, “€œHey, we’re entering another ice age it looks like.”€ They are just talking about that.

Tim:

Over the last two years, you’ve seen that trend. Let me just back up for a second, because we talked about global cooling in the 1970″€™s, I had no idea that people were talking about hundreds of millions of people dying on a fairly regular basis, recurring basis.

For me, my generation was raised on global warming. Of course, now it’s climate change and I’m really – we”€™re cooling again.

The global warming thought, “€œWe’re all going to drown because the icecaps are going to melt.”€ We’ve heard these catastrophes but I never heard back in the 1970s about this global cooling. Hundreds of millions of people on a recurring basis are going to die. That really is so obnoxious to think about now.

To the question, you asked, “€œHow many of these claims that they’ve made that have turned out to be so ridiculous when you get a few years passed and then back and go, “€˜wow – how dumb were we to think that might have actually happened?'”€ But it seems to be what most of these claims really are.

Historical False Predictions

David:

One of the things we do with our leadership training is we go through and show part of the history of the inaccuracies of this. You can go back, as Professor Williams mentioned, the Paul Ehrlich book. I mean, Paul Ehrlich said very simply that by 1980 economic growth will be destroyed and there’ll be a worldwide unemployment crisis.

Wait a minute, that’s Ronald Reagan’s era. That wasn’t worldwide economic crisis or unemployment. So they were dead wrong on that.

If you remember back in the 1970s they banned the use of DDT which was the pesticide that that controlled mosquitoes. And they said, “€œThat causes cancer.”€ It turned out it did not cause cancer but they banned it. And as a result, about two million lives a year were killed by malaria and other things where they used to be able to control mosquitoes. Third world nations they didn’t. So it turned out that no, DDT is not a carcinogen and they’re back to using it again. But we went for 40 years without that.

The 1970s, folks that are at least boomers may remember this, and maybe even some of the Busters of the GenX, is the aerosol cans were banned. You couldn’t have an aerosol hairspray, you couldn’t have aerosol Lysol, because aerosols were a leading cause of harm to the environment. Well, as it turns out, they now found out that aerosol is one of the things that helps cool the environment, so we need more aerosol not less aerosol.

We had the same thing with fetal tissue research, which turned out to be a complete flop. We also had the thing with Y2K, do you remember Y2K? They said the whole world is going to end at Y2K. And so Congress got involved and we had to stockpile foods, was going to be international of global conflict. None of that happened.

When the IPCC came out in 2000 through the U.N. and said, “€œWell, at this point the polar ice caps are melting and it’s going to cause an increase in the ocean height of about 40 feet and we will be able to launch boats off the steps of the White House.”€

As it turned out, none of that happens, matter of fact, within only three years they had gone down to saying, “€œWell, we think it”€™s only going to be one to two inches rather than the 40 feet. But you know who cares, it”€™s still going to be an increase.”€

Then in 2005 we heard that plastic bags kill 100,000 animals annually turned out that was all wrong none of that happened. Just how many of these do you want in a row to say that environmental science, they don’t have a track record to lean on at all.

Yet, we’re spending how many billions of dollars every year on this faulty science that is killing the economy.

Rick:

It’s one thing to buy into a philosophy or whatever, even I think, in many many ways, they worship the creation instead of the Creator and it becomes almost like a religion, that’s one thing. But man, to ask everybody to pay for it, and actually hurt the economy, cost jobs, or as you mentioned cost lives, that’s where it gets really serious. Got to take a quick break. We’ll be right back, stay with us, you’re listening to WallBuilders Live.

Moment From American History

This is David Barton with another moment from America’s history. What is the purpose of government? Founding Father Oliver Ellsworth believed he knew. Oliver Ellsworth was a delegate at the convention which formed the Constitution and later he became the chief justice of the US Supreme Court.

Concerning the purpose of government, Oliver Ellsworth declared, “€œThe primary objects of government are the peace, order, and prosperity of society.”€ Yet, how are these goals to be achieved?

Ellsworth explained, “€œTo the promotion of these objects, good morals are essential. Institutions for the promotion of good morals are therefore objects of legislative provision and support. And among these religious institutions are eminently useful and important.”€

Founding Father Oliver Ellsworth believed the government could never reach its goals apart from the help of religious institutions. For more information on God’s hand in American history contact WallBuilders at 1-800-8-REBUILD.

Environmentalism Is All About Control

Rick:

Welcome back, thanks for staying with us here on WallBuilders Live. We’re talking about the absurdity of a lot of the environmental “€œpredictions”€ and science that have been way off, way wrong, and then cost us billions of dollars.

We’re back here with David and Tim Barton. I was asking Walter Williams about- these “€œpoliticians”€ and leaders that make these decisions about spending money based on this bad science, they’re supposed to be smart folks, are they just bowing down to the kind of religion of environmentalism?

David:

I think it’s more fundamental than that. I don’t think it’s about the cost, I don’t think it’s about the accuracy, I think he hit it exactly right. He said they want to control our lives. And one of the most effective ways of controlling our lives is through environmental regulations. He is exactly right.

This is all about control because now we can tell you what you can or can’t do. We’re going to micromanage all the way. As he pointed out, they’re even having thermostats now where they can control your thermostats if they think your temperature is too high or too low. It’s all about control.

Whatever the prediction is, or whatever the means is, they don’t care. It’s about control. And as he pointed, we’re an energy rich country. But the environmentalist movement has made us energy poor. How come? Because we don’t have energy? No, because they control what we do with the energy resources we have, who can develop them, and what happens after they develop them, where they can be sent, it’s all about control.

Tim:

I would also point out that in the midst of that control there’s also a lot of corruption and money involved. He even points that out with Russia that they’re helping fund and advertise things, why? Because it financially benefits them.

When you look at so many political leaders, when they started their political career, are not financially well off. And after x number of years in politics all of a sudden they’re really, really wealthy. Well, how did you get so wealthy as an elected official, as a representative? Because I know if you’re a state rep in Texas, you get a couple hundred bucks a month. You cannot live off it, you can’t even eat McDonald’s off of it. You just can’t afford it. How did you become really wealthy as an elected official?

Well, we’re in the midst of that control you’re talking about. There’s a lot of money perks that is leading people down to make these very corrupt decisions that are counter to what good science and logic says. But it’s because that’s where they gain control and that’s where they get money and so that’s what sometimes they promote even though it’s not real and it’s not true.

Rick:

They found a formula that works, they just change their predictions and then they get more control.

Why Do We Keep Believing These Predictions

David:

Yeah, it works good for them and it doesn’t work good for us. If we had just a better recollection of our own history, even recent history, they just don’t get things right. And why do we keep believing them? It”€™s because we don’t remember they got things wrong.

This is the thing that when you think back to what Rabbi Lapin said about the priority order of creation, the way God did that, if man is not at the top, then it’s always going the wrong direction that means they put the environment first and that’s the wrong direction to ahead.

Rick:

Thanks to Walter Williams for joining us today. Thank you for listening, you’ve been listening to WallBuilders Live.