Global Warming??

People of intelligence around the world today have recognised
quite clearly that it is absolutely useless to speak of global warming in New
Zealand during the month of July and in particular in places like Mongolia,
where the temperature has been going down to -–50 degrees.

A very intelligent article was displayed in the NZ Herald,
23-24 June 2001, entitled:

"Recovering Earth -– It hardly needed explanation. 'Everyone
knows the planet is in bad shape,' thundered a Time magazine article
last year. The seas are being polluted, the forests devastated, species are
being driven to extinction at record rates, the rain is acid, the ozone layer
vaporising, and the rivers are so poisonous that fish are floating on the
surface, dead....

But there's a growing belief that what everyone takes
for granted is wrong: that things are actually getting better. A new book is
about to overturn our most basic assumptions about the world's environment....

Rivers, seas, rain and the atmosphere are all getting
cleaner. The total amount of forest in the world is not declining, few species
are being made extinct, and many that were endangered are thriving again.

The Skeptical Environmentalist by Bjorn Lomborg,
professor of statistics at the University of Aarhus in Denmark, contains a
scathing attack on the misleading claims of environmental groups, and the 'bad
news' culture that makes people believe everything is getting worse, when, by
almost all indicators, things are getting better....

The accusation is that, although the environment is
improving, green groups -– with revenues of hundreds of millions of dollars a
year are using increasingly desperate scaremongering to sustain their donations....

'Kyoto makes us feel good, but if we really want to do
good, we would do better to give the money Kyoto would cost to the Third World,'
he says....

Temperate forests in developing countries such as the United
States, Britain and Canada have actually been expanding over the past 40 years.
Britain has more forest now than 200 years ago, and the growth is all broadleaf
natural woodlands, not pine plantations....

Lomborg concludes: 'Basically, our forests are not under
threat.'....

Conservation efforts have been spectacularly successful.
Whales are no longer threatened with extinction, elephants are being culled
because their numbers are so high, and the bald eagle is off the endangered
list.

Never has so much of the habitat of the developed world been
protected -– the number of officially protected areas in Europe has risen from
a handful 20 years ago to more than 2000 now.

But the most dramatic improvements are in the elimination of
most of the main forms of pollution. Cleaner fuels and clampdowns on emissions
mean the last time sulphur dioxide emissions in London were so low was in the 16^th
century.

Getting rid of lead from petrol means that lead
concentrations in the air have dropped 97 per cent in the US. The same is true
of almost all other main forms of pollution, including soot, ozone, nitrous
oxide and carbon monoxide.

'Air pollution is... but an old phenomenon that has been
getting better, leaving London cleaner than it has since the Middle Ages,'
says Lomborg.

The oceans have also been getting cleaner. According to the
European Environment Agency, the amount of cadmium, mercury and lindane in seas
around Europe has fallen by around 80 per cent in the past 10 years.

Many environmental scares have simply failed to happen.

Despite repeated fears about a looming energy gap, the world
now has more energy than ever. In 1980, it was predicted we only had 30 years of
oil left but, 20 years on, we have at least 40 years left. Improvements in
exploration techniques mean known oil reserves are at record levels.

In the 80s, there was alarm that acid rain would destroy
Europe's forests. Ten years later the fears had evaporated: studies showed
acid rain rarely affected trees....

...'Mankin's lot has improved in terms of practically
every measurable indicator.'....

Stephen Tindale, executive director of Greenpeace UK, says:...

'The ozone layer is beginning to recover because ozone
depleters are being rapidly phased out. It's a triumph of the environmental
movement.'....

Patrick Moore, one of the co-founders of Greenpeace, who fell
out with the organisation over its radical tactics, says...

'At the beginning, the environmental movement had reason to
say that the end of world is nigh, but most of the really serious problems have
been dealt with... Now it's almost as though the environmental movement has
to invent doom and gloom.'....

Critics such as Moore claim that environmental groups have a
vested interest in exaggerating problems, because alarming people helps to raise
funds." (emphases added).

Dear Christian, we look back at the Word of the Lord when He
created everything and said: "It is good".

However, what will it be like when Jesus comes back and makes
all things new? (Revelation 21:5)