As you may have noticed, my brother linked a web site in my comments section of a speech by Senator James Inhofe, Chairman of the Senate Environment and Public Words Committee.

Drudge also posted a similar link to a blog report on the Senate hearing yesterday regarding global warming.

I strongly suggest you read both in their entirety, but if you don't wish to or don't have the time, I wanted to post a few of my favorite comments pasted from Inhofe's speech. He's sure not a fan favorite of the incoming Dem. regime:

Recently, advocates of alarmism have grown increasingly desperate to try to convince the public that global warming is the greatest moral issue of our generation...

And it's worked!

The National Academy of Sciences report reaffirmed the existence of the Medieval Warm Period from about 900 AD to 1300 AD and the Little Ice Age from about 1500 to 1850. Both of these periods occurred long before the invention of the SUV or humanindustrial activity could have possibly impacted the Earth’s climate. In fact, scientists believe the Earth was warmer than today during the Medieval Warm Period, when the Vikings grew crops in Greenland...

In addition, something that the media almost never addresses are the holes in the theory that C02 has been the driving force in global warming. Alarmists fail to adequately explain why temperatures began warming at the end of the Little Ice Age in about1850, long before man-made CO2 emissions could have impacted the climate. Then about 1940, just as man-made CO2 emissions rose sharply, the temperatures began a decline that lasted until the 1970’s, prompting the media and many scientists to fear acoming ice age...

My answer is blunt. The history of the modern environmental movement is chock full of predictions of doom that never came true. We have all heard the dire predictions about the threat of overpopulation, resource scarcity, mass starvation, and theprojected death of our oceans. None of these predictions came true, yet it never stopped the doomsayers from continuing to predict a dire environmental future. The more the eco-doomsayers’ predictions fail, the more the eco-doomsayers predict...

Sounds a lot like the government, the more their big projects fail, the more money they ask for (or just take), or humanitarian aid projects like the Millenium Goals, once this fails in 25 years we'll be right back to the phase one in demanding more money for their projects that don't work.

But more importantly, it is the global warming alarmists who should be asked the question -- “What if they are correct about man-made catastrophic global warming?” -- because they have come up with no meaningful solution to their supposed climate crisisin the two decades that they have been hyping this issue. If the alarmists truly believe that man-made greenhouse gas emissions are dooming the planet, then they must face up to the fact that symbolism does not solve a supposed climate crisis...

But this symbolism may be hiding a dark side. While greenhouse gas limiting proposals may cost the industrialized West trillions of dollars, it is the effect on the developing world’s poor that is being lost in this debate...

The Kyoto Protocol’s post 2012 agenda which mandates that the developing world be subjected to restrictions on greenhouse gases could have the potential to severely restrict development in regions of the world like Africa, Asia and South America -- wheresome of the Earth’s most energy-deprived people currently reside. Expanding basic necessities like running water and electricity in the developing world are seen by many in the green movement as a threat to the planet’s health that must be avoided. Energy poverty equals a life of back-breaking poverty and premature death...

I could go on forever, but the point is that as stated in the WSJ editorial I mentioned a few days ago, balanced criticism is required in this and all issues. One side can't have a monopoly on the issues, and as Sheffield noted in his reporting on the Senate hearings from yesterday and the WSJ emphasized, that is exactly what the left is looking for.

To end, I've asked myself why I am so interested in this, and I believe it comes down to a religious issue. With the rise of the religious left (which I have to give the Dems credit, they learned from the 2004 election that they had to "get religious" to get seats, and they did it) has come the rise of the religious voice on these issues. I have somewhat of a problem with that, not because Christians shouldn't be involved or add a voice to social issues, but because of their linkage with the government (we know that whenever Christians partner with the gov, the Christian voice is drown out and watered down, it happened in the 80's and 90's with the religious right and now it is happened with the liberal left).

Furthermore, I see these issues being used to promote a social gospel akin to what I've been told happened in the 50's, 60's, and70's when missionaries went out and built schools, hospitals, orphanages in the name of Jesus but never actually taught people about Christ (ironically my understanding of recent mission history is that we then went to the other extreme, just preaching to people but not helping their present situation, where is the balance?). They lived in their own little enclaves away from the native people, never immersing themselves into the culture, never teaching, always maintaining control and keeping the native people in check, in slavery, so to speak. Of course, this is a vast overgeneralization, but seems to be a solid summary. Go into many a foreign country today and you'll see mission outposts everywhere, but in many regards very little remnant of the work that they did apart from hospitals and schools. (Jeffrey Tayler mentions this briefly in his book "Facing the Congo," a great story of his real-life journey down the Congo River from the origin to the Atlantic.)

My opinion, if I may, and since this is my blog I guess I may, but I am of the thinking that spreading the Gospel of Jesus Christ must be central to our mission. We can address social issues that the Bible addresses (of which global warming and national health care don't seem to fit) under the umbrella of bringing people under the lordship of Christ. I've heard and read again and again and taken the mantra, if all we are doing if feeding or clothing the people or protecting them from diesease, we are not bettering them one bit. Everything we do must be with the purpose of bringing people to a living relationship with Christ where they are transformed into His likeness. I just don't see that from the new religious left and the issues they've placed front and center on their agenda.