President-elect Barack Obama has been on the news more or less constantly since the election, announcing the creation of the “Office of the President-Elect” as the springboard to announcing his transition team, staff and finally, his Cabinet.
The problem with being constantly on the news is that eventually all the announcements begin to sound the same. One of his recent appointments, however, tended to leap out from the background noise of being just another Obama press announcements. After meeting with former Vice President Al Gore, Obama tapped Steven Chu to head up the Energy Department. Chu is a long-time proponent of global warming, and the appointment was presented as completing the “Obama environment team.” Chu has warned that cities such as New York, London, Tokyo, Bombay and Buenos Aires need to think about erecting huge walls to protect their populations from the rising oceans.
For Chu, the latest report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which predicted in 2007 that by the end of the century temperatures will have risen between 1.8 and 4 degrees, underestimates the problem.
The current level of greenhouse gases “puts us on track for temperature increases of more than 6.1 degrees by the end of the century,” he said in the interview published by the Copenhagen Climate Council.
Obama promised to spend $15 billion a year to find “clean energy,” announcing dramatically, “The science is beyond dispute and the facts are clear. Sea levels are rising. Coastlines are shrinking. We’ve seen record drought, spreading famine and storms that are growing stronger with each passing hurricane season.”
Except that it is getting colder. Other scientists are warning of a coming ice age. Sea levels are falling. Coastlines are expanding. Many of the scientists named in the U.N. IPCC report have signed petitions denying the science is settled.
Astrophysicists point to unusual solar activity ongoing since 1999 that has played a considerable role in global warming on Mars, for example, and to the coming solar maximum. A newly discovered error in existing predictive models was corrected, and the corrected models predict the heaviest bombardment of solar radiation to hit the earth in 60 years. Allowing for the corrected data, the solar bombardment will peak in 2012 at something over 20 times what had been previously expected.
At the same time, NASA’s THEMIS satellite shows a 4,000-mile-thick chink in the earth’s magnetic armor. In a worst-case scenario, high-energy particles are injected into the magnetosphere. Due to solar wind pressure, the sun’s magnetic field lines will fold around the earth, sweeping behind the planet.
The doomsayers on climate change say that greenhouse gases will cause the seas to rise and the roaring waves to wash away our coastlines. We are woefully unprepared, they say, and we must divert most of our resources to combating global warming.
The doomsayers on the coming solar maximum say it could cause massive satellite damage and widespread blackouts. We are woefully unprepared, they say, and we must divert our resources to shielding our electronic equipment from the coming solar storms.
The one thing both sides have in common is that neither knows exactly what the problem is, how to fix it, or whether or not it can be fixed – but it is being addressed at the highest levels of domestic and international government.
Two thousand years ago, Jesus Christ was giving His reply to the question, “What will be the sign of Thy coming?” He told His audience, “And there shall be signs in the sun, and in the moon, and in the stars; and on 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).
Isn’t it interesting that that is exactly what is being discussed at the highest levels of government at this very moment? Coincidence? I wouldn’t bet MY eternity on it. You shouldn’t, either.