Thursday, December 24, 2009

Wednesday, December 9, 2009

Global warming = Alarming Blog

Sorry ! I just cannot help myself.
This carbon credits thing has really got me going. Are we going to see cattle trucks adorned with native trees in planting boxes? Will dairy cows be saddled with bonsai trees?
Have we gone completely and absolutely bonkers. Okay, so our government, along with a few other guilt ridden, politically correct, absolutely bamboozled countries, decided to sign up on the Kyoto protocol and make their presence felt in Carbonhagen. Yes, we should be planning for an environmentally safe future. I am ready to concede that the world is going through a warming cycle (The emphasis on ‘cycle’) an observable fact that is also affecting other planets in our universe. However as always we Kiwis, without venturing to challenge the reasons why, will sit back and take what is dished up. I am not a meteorologist but I, along with a growing number of skeptics, have a feeling in my gut that we are being frightened into accepting huge changes and as always, if we conform, someone somewhere is going to make an obscene amount of money. Remember the carless days fiasco (oil barons made a fortune out of that) and who can forget the Y2K Millennium bug that convinced us the crash of computers would send us back into the stone age. Thankfully, one New Zealander had the knowledge and professional qualifications to stand up and be counted regarding the current fear mongering. I refer to Mr. Augie Auer, a well respected professor of atmospheric science who has sadly passed away. He co-founded the ‘NZ Climate Science Coalition along with a Mr. Owen McShane who made this statement at Augie Auer’s funeral:
“It’s very sad that Augie will not live to see the fulfillment of his conviction that good science will triumph over the false hype and over exaggerated propaganda about carbon dioxide being a pollutant and a cause of catastrophic global warming. When the day comes when science prevails, and there are many who predict that it will happen within the next five years, we will not forget the leadership shown by Augie Auer in the fight against the corruption of true science”.
Augie’s views aside, let us say that this country must do their bit to freshen up the atmosphere, sorry, I just do not get it. Maybe you do. The simplest of researches will show that a whopping thirty percent of this green and pleasant land, New Zealand, consists of carbon (co2) gobbling, forest. We are blessed with ten national parks covering over five million acres, a massive amount of trees in any ones language. Couple the Native forest with approximately a further five million acres of planted forest, not to mention every tree in every garden, every council park, every farm woodlot and the sea (yes, that also takes in carbon) that’s a veritable carbon munching machine. A couple of facts that are worth noting….. A fully grown pine tree is made up of approximately fifty percent water and fifty percent carbon. Apparently two and a half acres of radiata pine sequests twenty five tonnes of co2 per year. This strange word ‘sequests’ in this context basically means gobbles up. Okay so this is getting boring, my point is this, our little country is more than doing its bit, digesting millions of tonnes of carbon and belching out oodles of oxygen. Our carbon footprint is the size of a premature infant compared with ‘Big foot’ international industry. Are we being sucked in, taken for a ride? Would it not have been more sensible to challenge the main industrial polluters, notably China and the United States, to demonstrate a responsibly environmental attitude, prior to NZ capitulating to green pressure. To put it rather crudely, surely a tangible case for New Zealand to say, ‘you show me yours and I’ll show you mine’. I cannot help thinking that the hidden agenda is almost totally political. You scratch my back and I’ll massage your political ego.

Wednesday, December 2, 2009

A reason to celebrate

This fellow died and went to Heaven. St. Peter welcomed him and began to show him around his new home. The fellow was suitably impressed with paradise all except for one confusing item. A huge high wall seemed to stretch for miles across Heaven. He asked St. Peter, what was the meaning of the seemingly impenetrable wall. ‘Shhh ! warned St Peter, ‘The Catholics live behind there, they think they are the only ones here’.
Someone once said, ‘We will be surprised who we see in Heaven’. In England it is not uncommon to receive an envelope with the bold letters O.H.M.S printed. This type of correspondence is usually from a Government department, the letters stand for On Her Majesties Service. Some wag suggested that this is what you are likely to receive when you reach the Pearly gates and you may not get in because up there those letters stand for Only Hindus Muslims and Sikhs.
Of course we do not have all the answers to things spiritual and although a popular saying goes, ‘this life is not a dress rehearsal’, it probably is. We may spend a lifetime trying to keep physically and mentally fit but I am convinced that it is not going to do us any harm to ask a few spiritual questions. I once picked up a hitch hiker and discovered he was a Muslim, we got so engrossed in religious tit for tat that he ended up staying the night at our home. We talked well into the night debating Christianity verses Islam, we eventually agreed to disagree, realizing that it was unlikely either one of us would convert to an opposite’s faith. Actually, the Bible says that true religion is caring for orphans and widows.
So we move on and focus on the second most important date on the Christian calendar,
Christmas.
A close Christian friend of mine, announced that from this year forward, he was giving up on Christmas. I could see his point of view. Lots of pagan rituals make up the trappings of Christmas. Plus as we all know it is a money making commercialized bonanza. One of his arguments was that the shepherds could not have been in the fields watching their flocks at that time of year because it was winter. This and numerous other facts apparently prove that the birth of Christ was not on December the 25th. He may be right although I was told that it was the Temple shepherds who looked after the sacrificial lambs. If this is true they could have been outside in all weathers, all seasons. Putting speculation and theology aside, I see it this way, we are now moving into the year 2010. Not big news until you ask why is it 2010. Definitely amazing when you consider that our date system begins at the birth of Jesus Christ. Not from Alexander the Great, not from Genghis Khan, Margaret Thatcher, Galileo, Aristotle or Winston Churchill. This means that whatever the exact date of Christ’s birth, it really is of little consequence when you consider, His birth changed mankind, gave us all hope and has impacted the globe to such an extent that there are, today, over two billion Christian believers. Now that’s worth celebrating.
So Maureen and I will continue to celebrate Christmas on December 25th. As with other years it’s going to be extra special with all four of our children’s families including eleven grandchildren gathering together. We will probably eat too much, there will be a Christmas tree, presents for the children, definitely a glass of wine or two and there will be a moment when all the laughter and chatter stops, all the plastic glitter of human tradition is put aside, a moment to give thanks for God’s provision, love and most of all for Jesus, the reason for the season.