The Second Most Obvious Thing About Leggings
“This leggings parade is not (in most instances) a personal and lascivious ‘screw me’ invitation. It is an insolent and culture-wide ‘screw you’ that is aimed at the patriarchy and men in general.” Boom. I love how you can take arguments out of the same old surface back and forth and get to the heart of the matter with truth bombs like this. I came of age in the heyday of feminism (late ’70’s) and to Christ much, much later, so the word “submission” grates to this day. (The fault is mine.) No doubt the root sin IS a lack of submissiveness, but it is also a lack of love. (“Screw you.”) Thinking of it that way helps me. And so does your commentary. Thank you.
Lynn
Lynn, no, thank you.
I wear leggings out in public under a dress. When I go to the gym in leggings, I put a short skirt on. But I’m a more flamboyant type, and if I put it out there, I expect it to be admired. I don’t put out there what I don’t think will be admired, and even in my short skirts I dress up in Fort Knox underwear. I have the confidence and the self-carry that doesn’t earn me harassment. And I don’t mistake admiration for attraction. Everyone enjoys beauty, but all beauty does not cause sexual attraction. I expect men to be in control of their behavior and their thoughts and to also know the difference between admiring beauty and being sexually attracted. I admire beauty in men and women, and I don’t allow lust to grow, though my weakness is more covetousness than lust, and I have to keep careful reign of those thoughts. They aren’t anyone else’s fault—they are my responsibility. I don’t expect my friends to hide their glorious lives because I have a problem with covetousness. Women should not have to hide themselves because men have a problem with lust. That being said, modesty is important to a civilized society, and our society has quite lost its civilization . . . I am sorry that society is crumbling. America is being destroyed from within, and it is unbearably sad. My Father has not yet given me any specific actions to halt the progression towards our demise, so I watch it with mourning for the loss of life and souls it will cost. I continue to pray and put my hope in the Lord, but Jesus did not come to save nations, after all.
Caron
Caron, I am sorry but it is not possible to go in two different directions at the same time.
The Outrage of Leggings as Tip of the Iceberg: This is where the madness begins/began (see Eve in the Garden). Great article. Does anyone wonder where we are on the proverbial Iceberg today? There’s Keith Raniere, claiming that his crimes are merely part of his “lifestyle,” and while socially distasteful, not criminal.
While many women would condemn Keith Raniere, they don’t recognize Raniere’s sin in themselves, a failure to recognize and submit to proper authority. So some will cheer on feminism and the slaying of the patriarchy, providing Raniere a defense for his heinous abominations.
Side note on modesty: What does this one-piece swimsuit say?
Who should/would wear this? Doesn’t it testify to how glorious creation is?
Ron
Ron, thanks. And anybody who thinks they’ve seen everything should take a gander at that swimsuit.
First off, spot on for the leggings article—amen and amen. However, I am confused about your comment: “. . . and if the woman is attractive, then godly men really don’t want to see that.” Did you mean this as sarcasm? I ask because I remember a piece you did (can’t recall exactly the source) that gave a scenario (not sure if hypothetical or real) in which you are walking in the mall with your wife and there is an attractive woman with maybe less than modest apparel that makes her physique very obvious (think: bear cubs). As I recall, in the scenario you say something to your wife like, “Wow, God really blessed her.” Again, I believe that the point was that God was the one that “blessed” her with her attractiveness, though she was not necessarily in obedience as to her modesty, and notwithstanding the poor choice it would not be sinful for the attractiveness to be noted ( though maybe not necessarily wise to make the comment to your wife), indeed, if I recall correctly, the point of the article was a call to spiritual maturity and being able to correctly enjoy God’s blessings in creation vs. always over-reacting and running scared from every potential temptation. If I have this close, then this seems to contradict your statement quoted above from the leggings article, and in fact the statement in the article would seem to contradict the point of the article. Thanks.
BJ
BJ, no, the statement in this article was not sarcastic, or a joke. The statement you referenced from the previous article was the joke. I think it was in my article on Nuisance Lust, and the scenario was this. You see someone who is being both attractive and out of line, and the whole thing is stinking obvious. I suggested making a joke of it to your wife—“Is this a great country or what?” So the point was not to enjoy, but to disapprove with a joke. To take it seriously in one way, but not in another.
In the post “The outrage of leggings . . .” you wrote, “When a husband wimps out, one side of her triumphs and gloats over it while the other side detests it (and him). Over time the detesting side grows emotionally stronger and ethically weaker. She is in the process of becoming enslaved to what she hates.”
My question is, what is a wife supposed to do when she wants to be submissive but her husband is constantly “wimping out” preemptively, so to speak? In the hypothetical case that it doesn’t have anything to do with overt conflicts between the two of them, and its more issues of ambition and energy and professional and familial initiative? When she is genuinely trying to honor God and her husband and be respectful and courteous and kind and loving, but there are emotions of detesting and contempt that keep popping up? Just confess them, give them to God, and try to hang in there miserably? Thanks for your thoughts. Please leave my name out of this if you choose to publish.
K
K, I would suggest two things. The first is to seek out a conversation with your husband, at a time when there is no current conflict between you. Ask him—and be prepared not to answer him in the moment—if you are telegraphing any kind of unsubmissive spirit to him You think he is surrendering preemptively before there is any resistance from you at all. Ask him if that is his perspective, or if he has examples of times when he clearly picked up on the fact that you already had your heels dug in. I said not to answer him in the moment—if there is a clear and obvious answer, then come back with it the following day. But commit yourself to prayerfully consider whatever he might have say. Actually consider it as a possibility. The second thing I would suggest, if the first suggestion makes no progress, is that you ask him if the two of you could seek out pastoral marriage counseling.
Reading your posts about this issue always feels like a splash of refreshing cold water in a fog of confusion. For some time I have watched this mentality creep into my fellow sisters in the church and have been on the receiving end of the laughter you described when I have appealed to them to stop and consider the direction we’re heading. But the twist in all of this is the mixture of feminism with a hyper (?) sensitivity to legalism. In the church, the response to requests to even small measures of moderation in dress is met with “we can’t make rules.” And that is not just from the women—that is from the male leadership. I would be very grateful if you could offer some insight into this as it is a very confusing redirection. I mean, obviously, what sincere Christian wants to play the Pharisee? And the suggestion, to use your example, that leggings may be inappropriate is immediately met with “we cannot address that, because legalism!” I have encountered this in real life discussions and it mirrors the tone online. It seems as if modern church leadership is more afraid of legalism than the drift towards the values of the world. I would greatly appreciate some help on this issue as I am truly confused over how to navigate it for myself, my daughters, and my sisters in the church.
Concerned Christian Woman Johnson
CCWJ, yes, this needs to be addressed further, and I should develop this more in a follow up article. Behind the reaction to the threat of legalism is the assumption that the Bible has not spoken directly on the subject. “In like manner also, that women adorn themselves in modest apparel” (1 Tim. 2:9). It is not legalism to say that men shouldn’t get drunk because Scripture says not to. The same goes for this.
Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Pastor Wilson, for this article and for so many of the insights you’ve given me through your writings. Even my local “tribe” (evangelical, reformed, etc…) has drunk the Kool-Aid that a godly, loving husband “leads” by agreeing with whatever the wife decides—that’s the essence of the counsel I receive typically. In fact, husbands who do not help their wives follow the command to submit are harming their wives—as you put it, enslaving the wives to their fallen nature. This also encourages husbands to not lay down our lives for our wives in taking on the hard, anti-culture task of leading our families (my life gets really easy if I do only whatever my wife agrees to and not do what she does not want to do—no need to invest my time and resources to think hard, assess, analyze, persuade; no having to deal with blow back; just kick back, turn on the TV, and remember to say “yes, honey, whatever you think”). In other words, this also leads husbands to become enslaved to our fallen nature (wimpiness, laziness, chest-less-ness, etc…).
Paul
Paul, yes. Real leadership is real work.
Quick comment about leggings from a college professor who sees many students wearing leggings—I don’t think most of them are actually in conscious rebellion, or trying to send a “screw you” to the patriarchy. Rather they simply look around them, see what other students are wearing, and see what advertisements and social media tells them they should be wearing, and want to be trendy and fashionable. That’s it. As seems to often happen in America, what perhaps begins as rebellion then becomes the trendy mainstream, and then a bunch of people who do not have personalities eager to join the public rebellion do jump in, because they absolutely do want to be part of the trendy mainstream.
David
David, good point, and I agree. There is more than a little bit of monkey see, monkey do in this. Many have not really thought about it—but they ought to.
In many an evangelical church, the feminist corps has moved well past leggings and on into hot pants, midriffs, and shirts where they forgot to install a back. Everything you said applies, and a hearty amen to all of it, but I’m afraid it risks appearing anachronistic in its restrained description of the true state of our distress. But I will give you the excuse that it is not November.
Steve
Steve, fair point. It is not November.
Years ago, when I was teaching at a public high school, I had a “Me Share” (bring 5 things that tell about you) activity with my Band Flag Team for the purpose of building camaraderie. Some of the girls were new Christians who attended a local church. One lovely girl shared her Bible and how she was reading every day to become more Christ-like. The next thing she shared was her black leggings “because I like to be sexy (giggle, giggle).” I’ve learned the hard way to be careful about uncontrolled group sharing with kids in today’s world.
Melody
Melody, yes. Sharing times may be thought of as the enemy of all true propriety.
Leave Me Alone
“The Constitution was ratified in the ‘Year of our Lord, 1789’ This was, according to the common reckoning, 1789 years after Jesus appeared to Mary Magdalene in the garden.” Erm . . . don’t you mean something closer to “1789 years after Gabriel appeared to Mary Galilean?”
Kyriosity
Kyriosity, no, I didn’t mean that. But I am willing to grant that I should have meant that.
Bible Reading Challenge Question
Hey why do are certain books and passages repeated? I see Ephesians June 15, June 18) repeated, and other passages . . . These are just two examples. Intentional or an error?
James
James, that was intentional. On the catch-up days, those who want to can read a little bit extra.
My App Is No More
I always read your blog on my iPad, but today the app would not refresh and remained blank. I finally deleted it with the intention of reinstalling it from the app store. But when I searched for “dougwils,” nothing showed up. Did the Apple app store “deplatform” you.
Steve
Steve, the good news is that I have not been deplatformed yet. The reason this happened is that the app was simply too buggy to be function for many users, and was an ongoing exasperation. So we pulled the plug on it.
And a Quick One on Climate Change
I’m wondering how you have come to disagree with the overwhelming majority of climate scientists from around the world on this issue. I understand having distain for Al Gore, but to omit that thousands of specialized climate scientists from every part of the world have a made a consensus is questionable. And disagreeing with their consensus seems to me to be remarkably audacious. As someone who grew up in the Calvinist Christian reform tradition I find it hard to comprehend why the evangelical Christian community is so decided on political issues, and almost always without a clear biblical mandate. On what grounds do you dismiss them all? And what is your motivation in doing so? Looking for answers,
Ben
Ben, four quick reasons. Structurally, we have not been measuring temperatures around the globe for anywhere near long enough to have anywhere near enough data to begin making serious hypotheses as anything so complicated as the climate of an entire planet. Second, I am old enough to remember all the other false alarms that have been raised in the name of eco-science. There have been many. Third, the scientists who affirm climate change treat those who dissent as heretics (“deniers,” evil ones) instead of colleagues worth answering. They don’t answer dissenters, they punish them. And last, all the proposed solutions thus far consist of granting plenipotentiary powers to the state, which is a far greater threat to us than our summers being a bit warmer. God gave us the sun to rule our day, not the state to rule our day.
” Structurally, we have not been measuring temperatures around the globe for anywhere near long enough to have anywhere near enough data to begin making serious hypotheses as anything so complicated as the climate of an entire planet.” This is a bit like saying you are unsure whether a forest exists because you haven’t accounted for every single tree. “Second, I am old enough to remember all the other false alarms that have been raised in the name of eco-science. There have been many.” This, whether true or not, has no bearing on whether the climate is changing. “Third, the… Read more »
“This is a bit like saying you are unsure whether a forest exists because you haven’t accounted for every single tree.” This is absurd and weakens everything else you might have to say on the matter. “This, whether true or not, has no bearing on whether the climate is changing.” But it DOES have bearing on whether or not climate “scientists” are trustworthy. When they have been lying for years and years, why would they not be lying now? I would offer a fifth reason to Doug’s four – which is my predominant reason. The Bible doesnt say the world… Read more »
I don’t consider it reasonable to hold climate scientists today responsible for media sensationalism of decades ago.
When they say what you want they are “climate scientists.” But when they end up being way off base, it is “media sensationalism.” Why can’t they just tell me what to think and then stick to it?
Who is “they”? Obviously the media and the scientists are very different entities, so why conflate them? People talk about the scientific community engaging in fear-mongering. Then when asked for evidence of this, they often post a popular-level article that will at most quote 1-2 scientists who say what the author wants them to say, which often has more to do with grabbing eyes than with disseminating truth. As there are hundreds of thousands (millions?) of scientists in the world, cherry-picking a few voices who parrot a scary narrative isn’t particularly difficult or meaningful. As any one scientists among those… Read more »
“Every single tree” I can see individual trees anywhere I care to look. I cannot see the average global temperature 500 years ago anywhere I look.
A simple explanation for you from the Guardian, Pastor Wilson: Indirect ways of assessing past temperatures, using so-called temperature proxies, take measurements of responses to past temperature change that are preserved in natural archives such as ice, rocks and fossils. For example, ice sheets form as snow builds up, with each year’s snowfall preserved as a single, visible layer. There are measurable chemical differences in snow formed at different temperatures, so ice cores provide a record of polar temperature going back around 250,000 years for Greenland and 800,000 years for Antarctica. Yearly banding is also found in fossilized corals and… Read more »
Jonathan,
Simple perhaps, but far longer than I’m going to bother to read.
Conservatives love to think they know what’s going on, but won’t even take the time to read a short explanation. If you don’t read or investigate, why should we give you any authority on anything scientific.
“A lot of your proclamations on science come off as “if I don’t understand it and don’t like it, I won’t accept it”. ” Jonathan Jonathan, the Guardian isn’t the best resource for anything except British gossip. So far, not a single emergency that the climate scammers have pushed has occurred. We were running out of oil in the 60s, the 70s, the 90s and now disaster is pushed back to 2025 or so. We were to have famines and become cannibals with the earth’s population destroyed. Freon was the evil gas destroying the atmosphere, then ozone itself and now… Read more »
Dave, that’s an odd list. None of those have anything to do with climate change, and most are either untrue or were just fringe claims that didn’t have any scientific consensus at all. The one claims you made that is closest to correct and relevant, that Freon had a negative impact on the ozone layer…turned out to be exactly right and regulating it was a great success. Naming it as a science failure suggests you’re not at all informed. Ozone depletion and the ozone hole have generated worldwide concern over increased cancer risks and other negative effects. The ozone layer… Read more »
Here’s an undoubted science failure:
https://www.ucsusa.org/global-warming/solutions/reduce-emissions/world-scientists-call-for.html
Back in 1997, the Union of Concerned Scientists issued a letter, signed by “more than 1,500 scientists”. The letter predicted a number of imminent disasters caused by climate change. None have come to pass.
Most alarmingly, they predicted that “Widespread undernutrition will persist unless extraordinary measures are taken”. They even gave dates: “Projections indicate that demand for food in Asia will exceed the supply by 2010”.
No extraordinary measures have been taken and food supply per capita has steadily increased worldwide since then.
https://ourworldindata.org/food-per-person
John, that’s a long statement and so far as I can tell that one unreferenced line about 2010 is the only thing wrong about it. You quote that line and ignore the other things in the statement that have come true, like the extraordinary water crisis in South Asia right now. So far as that line, doomsday predictions about food supply have been especially bad (Paul Ehrlich has been notably foolish in that regard) but they’re only a “science failure” if the predictions were actually based in science. Do you know what the claim was referring to? Was it based… Read more »
Ethiopia suffered through a massive, terrible, and widely publicized famine back in the 1980’s. All the early (pre-2000’s) Climate Change alarms included warnings of famine.
https://ourworldindata.org/famine
As the risk of famine (and memories of watching one from afar) have receded, it’s been removed from the standard list of Global Warming horribles.
The current Indian drought is well within historical norms.
https://www.tropmet.res.in/~lip/Publication/RR-pdf/RR-138.pdf
The water worries that it has caused are entirely due to poor infrastructure planning (not enough dams and reservoirs) and land use changes that increase runoff in the rainy season (which aggravates flooding) and inhibit natural water retention.
Moreover, there really was a fairly strong global cooling consensus, as much as climate alarmists try to deny it.
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2018/11/19/the-1970s-global-cooling-consensus-was-not-a-myth/
It’s funny how those who worship at the altar of alleged objective peer-reviewed science miss how emotional and biased the climate alarmists are. Between ClimateGates 1.0/ 2.0 and being perfectly willing to ruin careers, this crowd has done plenty to cause us to question them.
http://www.independentscientist.com/
You really can’t expect unreviewed blog posts by people with no background in the field to trump peer-reviewed studies, especially when the poster has an explicit motivation to count in a particular direction and relied upon a specific climate denier database to mine the papers, which kills any possibility of them being a representative sample.
Even with those caveats, it states, “. Of the 190 papers in the database, the respective number of papers are 86 cooling, 58 neutral and 46 warming.”
Even if those numbers were trustworthy or reviewed (they’re not), that’s some “consensus”.
I agree that climate change scientists have not always well understood the geopolitical mechanisms that lead to famine. I am of the position that famine is primarily a social failure – we don’t distribute food well, it’s not that there isn’t enough food available. I think climate change could exacerbate the issue as equatorial (primarily poor) regions become harder to grow food in while temperate (primarily rich) regions become more productive. But better distribution of resources could mitigate those risks. I’d dispute whether this talk of famines is a “science failure” in any way though. Climate scientists use the scientific… Read more »
Jonathan,
The New York Times produced a short video on Ehrlich’s prediction and its historical aftermath. I think you will find it interesting:
https://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/01/us/the-unrealized-horrors-of-population-explosion.html
That article was appropriately savage (I can’t watch the video right now). Ehrlich was not just wrong then but looks more and more foolish as he continues to refuse to admit it.
Pearce’s concerns are much more valid. As another author once pointed out, Ehrlich is part of a dedicated group White British men well past their reproductive years who seem insistent on blaming the world’s problems on that which has the least to do with them while ignoring their own greater culpability.
Stop the intersectionality crap. I’m no fan of Ehrlich, but he’s not part of any secret white group. Only a self-loathing race hustler would claim this based on Ehrlich citing things like Delhi as an overpopulation example in a 1960s book. And you have the nerve to call others conspiracy theorists? Wow.
Ehrlich isn’t part of any “secret” White group. He’s part a very open explicit anti-population growth groups, primarily composed of older White people from relatively wealthy backgrounds, which fear-monger about the population growth and immigration of other people while ignoring that the Western world has produced a vastly disproportionate share of environmental destruction. There’s no conspiracy there, I haven’t accused Ehrlich of doing anything that he hasn’t been publicly doing. Read Mann’s “The Book That Incited a Worldwide Fear of of Overpopulation”, or especially Monbiot’s “Stop blaming the poor” to see the exact quote I was referring to. The anti-population… Read more »
The video is quite well made and is kinder to the entirely-unrepentant Ehrlich than the text.
Another thing to consider is that money can be thought of as a means of energy storage: dollars buy you food (stored sunlight), manufactured goods (price determined by the amount of mechanical and human energy used in their creation) and transportation (price largely determined by fuel costs).
Therefore, poverty (lack of money) is equivalent to an inadequate provision of energy. Anything that makes energy cheaper, easier to access and more abundant will reduce poverty. Climate Change mitigation policies promise to do the opposite.
I’d say further that poverty results from an inadequate distribution of energy, as far more than enough has already been provided but it is not distributed to those who need it most. Note that the USA has more money, more energy production, more food production, more manufacturing, and cheaper fuel costs than most other (in some of those sectors more than ANY other) developed nations, yet we also have more poverty than most of them do. Because our distribution is handled so terribly. Oil in particular seems to be almost a natural distributor of inequality, perhaps because it can be… Read more »
John,
That video was terrifying. The combination of elitism and authoritarianism was simply astonishing.
What went unsaid, but was made quite clear, was that the solution to the food problem was solved by the spread of capitalism. The modern Left in America and Europe hasn’t changed their tune much even if they are willing to admit this complete and total swing and miss.
I’d think you need a lot more nuance to that claim for it to be correct. The Green Revolution, for example, was the work of government initiatives working together with nonprofit fellowships, it’s pretty difficult to credit “capitalism” with any of it. Of course, totalitarian governments have often been terrible to poor people, and many totalitarian governments were not capitalist, so you can at least find a correlation there. I’d encourage you to read “Enough: Why the World’s Poorest Starve in an Age of Plenty”. https://www.amazon.com/Enough-Worlds-Poorest-Starve-Plenty/dp/158648818X It’s all very mainstream and non-controversial, everything the authors document is public knowledge. Yet… Read more »
“The one claims you made that is closest to correct and relevant, that Freon had a negative impact on the ozone layer…turned out to be exactly right and regulating it was a great success.” “You chose a lot of bad e samples but that may have been the worst.” Jonathan Jonathan, please research when Freon’s patent ran out and compare it with when the chicken littles called Freon out on the carpet. It is an amazing match, just like the solar cycles match long term minor changes in our climate. “Dave, that’s an odd list. None of those have anything… Read more »
Dave, your freon conspiracy theory is rather remarkable…so is your argument that Dupont singlehandedly manipulated scientists around the globe? Or what exactly? The heavy presence of CFCs in the air was discovered in 1973, the connection to damage to the ozone layer in 1974, states began regulating in 1975, the USA began regulating in 1978, the R-12 patent ran out in 1979, and the Vienna Convention signifying the first international agreement to ban CFCs was signed in 1985. Through all that time Dupont and other companies explicitly fought against these regulations. It wasn’t until 1986, when Dupont got a new… Read more »
Other than freon, the only “doomsday” predictions you listed were peak oil, humans becoming cannibals, something unclear about cow farts, the elimination of snow, and the loss of both ice caps. Peak oil predictions have been literally all over the place (it’s difficult to predict as oil fields remain completely undiscovered, there’s no science that can tell you how much oil is actually left under the ground). Other than that, no, you’re wrong. The appropriate scientists hyped them with piles of peer reviewed studies. I read a huge portion of those articles, reports, and studies. I’d love for you to… Read more »
“Climate science isn’t my scientific specialty,” Jonathan Jonathan, it is good to know that you do have limits. “It really sounds like you’ve embedded some media sensationalism mixed with right-wing talking points and somehow transferred that to imaginary scientific papers. ” Jonathan Jonathan, there are no right wing talking points. There is no sensationalism other than the continual end of the world farces that were foisted upon us through the last 50 years. You are not the only one who has studied physics, chemistry and other hard core STEM areas, so you really should be more careful dismissing other’s statements.… Read more »
You accusations of my false worship and claims that I deny Christ are false witness and completely inappropriate for a Christian. If you have been taught that accepting climate change indicates that you’ve denied Christ, then it becomes clear why you and some others here hold the positions that you do and makes it unlikely that you’ll ever look at the evidence objectively. Are you blaming Google for your inability to produce the papers you claim to have read? You are seriously suggesting that Google eliminates peer-reviewed scientific papers from its search engine? Or even if it did, that Google… Read more »
While I don’t defend dishonesty coming from anyone, whatever Project Veritas has done is a tiny speck compared to the deplatforming, censorship, double-standards and outright lies of FB, Twitter, Google, etc. Or the peer-reviewed academic world, which Jonathan appears to think operates in some imaginary objective, rarefied space…where worldviews, tenure and groupthink don’t exist.
FB, Twitter, and Google are doing terrible things to make the world worse, though I’d argue their personal impact on individuals is far worse than any supposed broader agenda. I’ve specifically written about that before and that’s why I closed my own personal facebook account (and have never touched Twitter).
But what does that have anything to do with Project Veritas and their extreme untrustworthiness?
And adding peer-reviewed academic papers to the mix is…odd. Don’t really see where that helps the argument.
“Supposed broader agenda”? There you go again. Here’s one example. There are thousands more. (NSFW alert)
http://freetheanimal.com/2019/06/facebook-hates-that-arab-children-growing-up-to-yearn-to-kill-americans-is-on-the-wane.html
Jonathan, there is no man made climate change. Those of us who stayed awake in class and actually studied hard science understand that there is no man made climate change. It is easy to see that the climate change scheme exists for dollars and power over the little people. You claim that this topic is not your strong subject yet, you arrogantly attempt to shoot down every other opinion or source that is presented. But you missed. I lived through a multitude of the world is ending because of climate change threats and learned to do my own research from… Read more »
I actually have a degree in hard science, and like the vast majority of people with said degrees I do see the obvious support for climate change. Your attempted argument from authority is instantly invalidated on those grounds. The “dollars” argument makes little sense as the petrochemical industry obviously has far more money to spend on its agenda. But in fact, Demo has informed you before that even within the petrochemical industry the fact of climate change is generally accepted, which instantly invalidates your “it’s just the money” argument as well. Whether or not Project Veritas is liars depends on… Read more »
“I actually have a degree in hard science, and like the vast majority of people with said degrees I do see the obvious support for climate change. Your attempted argument from authority is instantly invalidated on those grounds.” Jonathan Jonathan, your arrogance is showing again. Just because you see the support for climate change doesn’t mean that my points or those presented by others are automatically invalidated. That only shows that you want to force your opinion on others rather than examining the facts. Just the fact’s ma’am. Just the facts. Now, as a hard science degree holder, you should… Read more »
Dave, you are the one who said arrogantly, “Those of us who stayed awake in class and actually studied hard science understand that there is no man made climate change.” I simply proved that wasn’t a true statement, and you call me arrogant for it? You claim, “We may not approve of Veritas’ methods of exposing criminal activity.” What criminal activity? In all the stings they’ve run, has there even once been a single criminal activity exposed by them? Which one? Your claims about Project Veritas seem to suggest that you simply don’t understand 1st Amendment law in the USA.… Read more »
The 1989 prediction was for the year 2000:
https://www.apnews.com/bd45c372caf118ec99964ea547880cd0
The “year 2000” mention in that article is a guess of how long governments had to respond before the problem would get out of control, it is NOT the point at which the sea level would have already risen to that level. This is the only direct quote that mentions 10 years: ″the question is will we be able to reverse the process in time? We say that within the next 10 years, given the present loads that the atmosphere has to bear, we have an opportunity to start the stabilizing process.″ So he’s discussing when governments need to start… Read more »
Usually left out of sea level discussions is the rate of rise before any appreciable CO2 increases. For example, tide gauge data in NYC starts before the Civil War. Sea level has been rising there since Lincoln’s assassination – and there’s been no discernible change in the rate of rise.
https://tidesandcurrents.noaa.gov/sltrends/sltrends_station.shtml?id=8518750
So that 10 cm of rise could be attributed to other factors almost entirely: it’s simply a linear extension of a pre-existing trend.
There’s a “Motte and Bailey” quality to climate discussions. In the bailey are alarmist media stories, while the motte is built from scientific reports.
https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/07/07/social-justice-and-words-words-words/
Can you even acknowledge that your claim was completely false, instead of just jumping to move the goalposts?
CO2 levels began rising meaningfully around 1850.
I’m sure you’ve seen ads like this:
“You can get our fantastic product for FREE!”
“Yes! You heard me: FREE!”
“That 100% FREE!”
Then in small print:
“(terms and conditions may apply)”
When you finally receive the underwhelming product, along with a hefty bill, and complain, “But wasn’t it supposed to be free?” you are told, “Surely you read the fine print? No? Didn’t you note the fees, taxes, charges and commissions?”
A sharp lawyer could defend both the FREE! ad and the AP article as accurate. An English teacher might take a more jaundiced view of the matter.
To clarify the main point – the commenter claimed to have read a great deal of scientific literature directly (not just media) and then proposed that article as proof of a scientific error: compiled by oodles of hard degree scientists working long hours and declared that the ocean levels would rise by 3 feet completely covering the Maldives, other level islands and inundating coastal areas around the world. It was to cause crop failures and give us famines and cause millions of eco-refugees to be displaced. That was made by loads of very, very hard degree scientists That was absolutely,… Read more »
And the graph you posted is not a linear fit which is why it comes under the data on both ends. The straight line drawn through everything obscures the fact that there’s no meaningful rise in sea level at that station until at least 1880 and possibly not until around 1900 (it’s difficult to tell with that 14-year gap in data what is a rise and what is mere fluctuation). The actual clear trend line in rise doesn’t occur until 1930. And that, of course, is just one of many stations, each of which have their own local variations. Look… Read more »
The acceleration on that graph is barely discernible, and essentially indistinguishable from noise. None of the tide gauges with the longest history have any appreciable change in their rate of rise. Cuxhaven below is a representative example. San Francisco’s tide gauge shows a marked pre-1880 rise.
Sea level rise also follows our long-term recovery from the 14th-19th century “Little Ice Age”. How much rise is due to CO2 or non-CO2 factors is effectively impossible to determine. One interesting clue is that local factors overwhelm global factors: e.g., compare Alaska (-9 mm/year drop) to Louisiana (+9 mm/year rise).
I am perplexed why you would post some random tide gauge when I’ve already posted the global averages. An anecdote is not relevant, posting one city’s information that fits your narrative is pointless when we have the collated data already. I don’t know how to argue your claim that the acceleration is “barely discernible” or “essentially indistinguishable from noise”. Anyone used to fitting equations to data sees that is obviously untrue, that it is undoubtably fitted by a 2nd-order equation and not a 1st-order one. If you need help seeing this, look at the Global Sea Average graph and draw… Read more »
Jonathan, the use of proxies might be sufficient if the claims being made regarding Anthropogenic Global Warming were that the present global temperature is unprecedented. But that’s not the claim. The earth has been significantly warmer than it is right now.
The claim is that global temperatures normally change very slowly and gradually, and that the current rate of change is unprecedented. But proxies are good at measuring large changes and long trends, not precise short-term rates of change.
Climate science isn’t my scientific specialty, but I believe you’re right to a degree. My uniformed guess is that our proxies only give us strong information about short-term rates of change for the last few thousand years (though certainly longer than the 500 years that Pastor Wilson threw out there). We might be able to make inferences for periods further back then that but I don’t know how confident such inferences are. While the claim that the current rate of change is totally unprecedented is made and definitely a way of making the phenomenon sound like a big deal, it’s… Read more »
Is the climate changing? Yes, of course. We have no reason to believe it’s ever been static. Is it changing due to our actions? Well, if by this you just mean a minimal “our actions have some effect no matter how trivial,” then yes, but that reduces the question to meaninglessness. But if you mean “our actions are a primary driver of the current changes,” then we’re right back to not having enough information. We know that the climate has been much hotter than it is right now, and we know that the climate has been much colder than it… Read more »
As we agree on the 1st question and obviously agree to disagree on the 2nd, I skipped to the 3rd and 4th. Is it changing in a way that’s negative to human thriving, especially for the most vulnerable people? Maybe, maybe not. Will the warming trend of the past century or two continue? How long and how much? We don’t have enough information to say. We do know that warmer climate is better for world agriculture, which is on the whole a boon for the most vulnerable people. Having spent significant periods of time in equatorial regions among vulnerable people,… Read more »
Here’s another explanation with a good bit more detail about the last 1,300 years in particular and the controversies involved in interpretation:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Temperature_record_of_the_past_1000_years
Jonathan, it’s really a waste of time. Plain and simple, Mr. Wilson doesn’t see what he doesn’t want to see. He should stick to pre-marital counseling of sexual predators, and cutting and pasting wiki articles into his homeschool textbooks. That’s where the money is!
Still in an ECUSA “church,” Clay? Have you had an LGBTQ+ priest yet? Too bad Nadia Bolz Weber is Lutheran…
Thank you for asking. Yes, I am. Possibly, but I’m not sure. And yes, it is. Here are couple of things I haven’t experienced in my “church”: the the marriage of a serial pedophile to a young woman and the shaming of another young girl who was seduced and raped by one of Mr. Wilson’s former disciples. How about you?
Nah, I stay away from sects that celebrate what God called an abomination and condemned in both the OT and NT. Continuing Anglicans are cool, though.
Be careful dear, your latency is showing.
I love that someone downvoted the link.
It’s hard to believe a grown man is triggered enough by downgrades and “insults” to constantly whine about them. It’s also a sure sign someone has way too much time to play on the internet all day….
JP, how do you parse between my observation and yours?
1) I’m observing a clear pattern. We know nothing about the anonymous person who downvoted you. It may be the first time on this site.
2) As for my second point, a simple word count will do.
I’ve noted a downvote maybe 3-4 times ever. You’ve insulted and complained about my posting far more than that. Interesting pattern.
Oh, you’ve whined about downvotes, “insults” and the like much more than 3-4 times. But I’m going to hunt them all down. I don’t do this for a living or spend a fraction of the time you do debating anonymous people. I recall you hid your activity on other blogs when this site used Disqus. Pretty telling and another “interesting pattern.”
You’re an odd bird JP. There’s literally 1 other message board (and zero blogs other than my own) that I comment on even monthly. I don’t watch TV, go to movies, or post on social media, perhaps that gives me a bit more time than you. I’m interested that you care so much about my internet activity to remember that my disqus was set to private 4 years ago, but you don’t seem to know what “pattern” means nor have anywhere to go with that.
A near Luddite outside of one blog in a tiny niche of Reformed Christendom…where you serial post, sometimes adding almost half the comments. Sounds legit. Oh well, it’s the internet, where anyone can claim anything.
A 10-second search shows your claim isn’t true FWIW.
“And my facebook feed has had numerous people saying general things like, “It’s MSNBC and CNN and the New York Times that push fake news.”
https://dougwils.com/books-and-culture/s7-engaging-the-culture/what-shouldnt-oughter.html#comment-179408
There are multiple other posters here, who have seen my blog, who can confirm that I deleted my Facebook account months ago and posted exactly why on the blog. They might even be willing to confirm my “near-Luddite” status if you like. So you need to take back your claim of false witness. Sometimes I contribute a lot of comments here. Other times I don’t post here for months at a time. That’s my pattern – I either discuss things comprehensively or not at all. Just know that God is the witness and judge of the truth of all claims,… Read more »
“Just know that God is the witness and judge of the truth of all claims, and He knows and will judge the heart condition displayed behind them as well.” Subject to a respected, peer-reviewed journal, of course. And stop already with these bouts of sanctimony….as well as your “false witness” claims when backed in a corner. You accuse Christians here of being racist, anti-science, misogynist, etc. based on 21st Century “woke” standards, then go into hissy fits when your beliefs are challenged. I take your grandstanding no more seriously than I would a Pharisee…because that’s pretty much what you act… Read more »
How was I “backed into a corner”? You made a false claim about me and I showed that I could prove your claim wrong. I’m not the one lashing out at other commenters in an attempt to discredit unrelated views, I’ve defended myself and done so adequately. And the sins of the Pharisees, as described in Scripture, were that they were hypocrites (especially in their use of money but also in the powers they allied with), that they trusted in their own rules rather than in mercy and justice, that they cast judgement on the lower-status people that Jesus associated… Read more »
Jonathan,
Like JP, I’m not going to bother to try to prove it, but it certainly seems to me like you’ve complained about downvotes far more times than “3-4 times ever”.
Why make an unsupported accusation which you have no evidence for or willingness to defend? It seems to me that your statements against me would naturally be colored and biased, so…?
To a certain degree, you can look at long term temperature variables. In the Middle Ages, England had a wine Industry. During the Maunder Minimum, approximately 1650-1740, give or take, The Earth had a mini ice age. The Earth cooled. England hasn’t had a wine industry since. Not warm enough. The Maunder Minimum referred to a several decade period where the Sun had almost no Solar flares. Normally, the sun works on an 11 year cycle of solar flare activity.
This is a red herring. We’ve been measuring temperature for years now, and it’s rising. We’ve been measuring CO2 for years now, and it’s rising. We’ve been measuring polar ice for years now and it’s dropping. None of these measurements rely on what happened 500 years ago or any other arbitrary time period you come up with. Further, you don’t apply this extreme skepticism to anything else. After all, we can’t know the true life expectancy 500 years ago, so I guess we can’t say it has risen, huh?
I’ve never been a fan of “poetry” that does not rhyme, but on a particularly snowy day in the middle of April this came from my keyboard without much prompting: MORE PROOF OF GLOBAL WARMING When I was young, we had a few really cold winters They said it was global cooling, the beginning of a new Ice Age The end of the world as we know it When the weather got really hot, they chastised us, “weather is not climate!” When I was older, we had a few really hot summers They said it was global warming, the beginning… Read more »
Doug didn’t say the problem is that we don’t have every possible data point for all possible time. He said we didn’t have *enough* data to make the conclusions being made. I would think explaining why the amount of data we have is sufficient to draw conclusions would be a more effective refutation than attacking a claim he didn’t make.
Are you arguing that Wilson has some concrete idea of how much data is necessary over how much time to reach a particular satisfactory confidence level, and that he has actually assessed the amount of data that is actually available and found it falls short of this standard? If so I think you’re putting way too much stock in a regurgitated talking point.
I think you should concern yourself more with addressing claims actually made in constructive and factual manner, than with defending straw men attacks based on assumptions about Wilson’s background knowledge and assumptions. If you want to argue that the data we have is sufficient to draw the conclusion, it shouldn’t be difficult to make that case. Attacking what he didn’t say and then defending the attack because you just know what he meant by what he did say and what does it matter anyway because he doesn’t know what he’s talking about anyway seems at best an exercise in futility… Read more »
Claiming that case wouldn’t be difficult defies reason and experience. A significant number of people on this board (including our host) don’t even accept that the world is over 10,000 years old despite a ridiculous amount of data in support. How can you claim that making that case wouldn’t be difficult here? How would you even go about making the case to this audience that we have enough data to draw conclusions?
I said making the case wouldn’t be difficult. I didn’t say persuading us all would necessarily result. If you have data and reasoning, you can make a case for anything. I literally meant that he could make a case, not that we would all jump to agree with the case. Surely there exist plenty of accessible explanations made by those who believe that it is possible to glean enough information about historical temperature data to draw the kinds of conclusions we’re talking about. I mean, I’ve seen people do it before, so I know for a fact the case can… Read more »
The case has been made, of course, in the numerous scientific papers that place global warming in historical perspective which have passed peer review in respected journals. What do you want Matt to add to that? As Clay points out, there’s no indication that Pastor Wilson has intended this to be more than a talking point or has any interest in actually evaluating the truth of his unsupported claim.
Jane, I guess your short answer to Matt’s question is, “While Mr. Wilson has made claims as to the veracity of global warming data, Mr. Wilson has not indicated that he has a concrete idea how much data is necessary over how much time to reach a particular satisfactory confidence level, nor has he actually assessed the amount of data that is actually available, but that has not stopped him from determining that it falls short of this standard.”
See, that wasn’t so hard.
Yes, I agree it doesn’t seem hard which is why I wonder why he didn’t just say that. That would be engaging in discussion, as opposed to {snark snark too stupid to do obvious reasoning snark snark hyperbolic misrepresentation of his point} which is more like what the monkeys in the zoo like to throw around. But of course what he said can’t be disputed because it’s obviously true even though misleading, but if he said what you said, then perhaps that could be responded to.
To the best of my knowledge, he doesn’t claim to be climate scientist. A better idea would be for Mr. Wilson to do the hard work providing evidence for his four, at this point, subjective claims prior to making them. Isn’t that how it’s supposed to work?
By way of clarification: by “he”, I mean Mr. Wilson.
I would rather like to have a rousing debate about leggings. A quick search showed me that people have very extreme views, that men in general hate them, that a lot of the contention arises from the burning question “Are leggings pants?”, and that even the hallowed Guardian has entered the fray. Although I personally would not be caught dead in leggings unless they were concealed by a tunic reaching almost to my knees (I find the What ho Mercutio! look a little ridiculous), I can probably argue both sides without much caring who wins.
You may be right, but what you think is fairly irrelevant to the discussion here since you have an ample history demonstrating that you really have no interest in actually discussing things here.
But I really don’t see how your last comment is responsive to mine anyway (not that that’s unusual.) Nobody said he claimed to be a climate scientist.
Yet Pastor Wilson makes declarative claims, without any backing or evidence, about things that only climate scientists would know. That’s the issue.
Thank you. When are we going to learn? Logic is not required in the defense of Mr. Wilson. Allegiance, yes. Logic, no. Ethics, optional.
Kudos for dismissing someone who might be right that Mr. Wilson might be wrong regarding climate change. A+ on the use of a double standard.
It’s not a double standard. I dismiss you because you dismiss everybody and only show up every few months to make snide remarks about how Wilson and all his readers deserve be dismissed. I don’t dismiss people who demonstrate that they are here to engage in actual conversation, even when I disagree with them.
That’s very fair Jane. Clay, I have to say that right or wrong, the way you’re coming in is a bit grating and not helpful.
I have a question for everyone but I hope Doug will answer as well. I am looking for a website that gives current event news that’s not full of the banality exhibited on many search news sites like msn and yahoo. I don’t care about celebrities or the plight of the sexually perverse. It doesn’t necessarily have to be from a christian source. I just don’t want it to be a mouthpiece for the left.
The “Christian Daily Reporter” (see links on the right side under “Bookmarks”) is a good. Very stripped-down site (a bit like Drudge Report) with no celebrity gossip or celebration of LGBTQ+ (though some links may cover sexual deviancy from a Christian point of view). It might not be as comprehensive as you’re looking for but it’s a start.
Try whatfinger.com.
Two Things: (1) The BJ in the letters is not me. Just for clarity’s sake. (2) Ben, it is easy for those of us in the religious community to spot other religious communities, even if they deny it or try to hide it behind “science” or “compassion” or “justice” or whatever other pretext they select. Plus, part of a good scientific theory is falsifiability. The list of failed predictions for climate change is growing rapidly and the degree of their failures is stunning at times. What is currently called climate science, much like the theory of evolution, acts less like… Read more »
To the chalkboard, Ben. You are to write the following one hundred times:
Consensus is not science. Science is not consensus.
https://youtu.be/s4BG7jVjXSY