I'm not a climate change denier...

From ice ages to record droughts the climate has been changing since the beginning. No one in his right mind could deny that. What I deny is the pro-big government types insisting that human activity is causing what they can't even agree on for any length of time.

In the seventies we were going into an ice age and needed to stop using fossil fuels. In the eighties it was the ozone hole. In the 90's it was global warming. Now it's global climate change.

A 1971 article in the Washington Post claimed that the average temperature might drop by six degrees by 2021 which could trigger an ice age in another 5 or 10 years. Our fossil fuel use has increased and when faced with increased temperatures the climate scientists invented the term "global warming" and used warm winters and hot summers as their proof. Then a record cold winter came along and "warming" magically turned into "climate change" which basically covers everything. Blizzards, droughts, even normal weather patterns all prove climate change and once they prove climate change then any government control of the economy is justified.

To believe that humans can affect something as huge as climate is the height of arrogance. We needed to stop using fossil fuels to prevent cooling. We didn't stop and the temperatures went up. We needed to ban CFCs immediately because their effects would stay in the atmosphere for years. Well, the ozone hole is closing faster than anyone expected. Would it still have come back if we had kept using CFCs? It hasn't lived up to the models so who can say for sure. Incidentally, a recent National Geographic article brought up the possibility that the closing of the ozone hole may be causing further warming, at least in the Antarctic region.

As far as being skeptical, when the symptoms keep changing and the doctor still diagnoses the same disease I'm going to insist on a second opinion. But the second opinion doctors end up discredited, with their credentials threatened just for the crime of disagreeing with the elites controlling the argument. Debate offers are either rebuffed or totally ignored. You can't have a consensus with so many people not falling in line with you. Your credibility goes in the toilet when you insult your opponents.

Who was Jesus?

The Oklahoman Editorial

NO man ever spoke like him.

He came from out of nowhere, or so it seemed. He had no national name recognition, no family connections, no rich uncle. Yet he built a coalition that remains today.

He was enormously popular at times, but scorned and criticized at others. He was plain spoken, spoke from the heart, hardly took time for his own needs, needed little and provided much.

He pulled unspeakable joy out of the bellies of the downcast yet stuffed self-righteousness down the throats of the sanctimonious.

He turned the tables on convention. He cast out false assumptions, sickened the establishment and established hope for the sick.

Were he with us today, in the flesh, liberals would love his compassion but hate his pragmatism. Conservatives would love his pragmatism but squirm at his tolerance. Moderates would hate his exclusivism but love his universality.

He could be all things to all people, if only the people would let him. He offered drunks, dopers and sex addicts two steps not 12 to recovery. He told people they were responsible for their own actions and to stop wearing their piety on their sleeves. He ran a lost and found service. His door was always open.

He was never politically correct. His monologues comforted and offended at the same time. His oblique stories left a lasting impression. No man had ever spoken the way this man did. No one has since.

He healed. He wept. His fire burned bright on a midnight clear. It is even brighter now, in a darker world than the one he left.

He was a conjunction of time and eternity, of God and man. To quote an authority, he united the vertical of divine revelation with the horizontal of history's meaning. In so doing, he made great claims about himself that some believed religiously.

Yet his best buddies disclaimed him when they feared being on an enemies list. While they slept, he stayed up all night talking to his dad. When they couldn't sleep because of a storm, he slept like a baby.

Some say this is his birthday. Scholars have debated that for years. Nobody really knows when he was born, just that he was and in a most unusual way.

And he left the same way he came, following a short career that flourished, floundered, revived, died and then lived for a little while longer. He named as his successor an Advocate, who is still on the job.

Birthday greetings to you, kind Sir.

And, a happy return.

This editorial by J.E. McReynolds first ran in The Oklahoman on Christmas Day 1994.

A manger?

The coming of Christ by way of a Bethlehem manger seems strange and stunning. But when we take Him out of the manger and invite Him into our hearts, then the meaning unfolds and the strangeness vanishes. - C. Neil Strait

Christmas illegal?

I'm not offended by Hannukah, Ramadan, Kwaanza, or even World Humanist Day. This may sound rude, but I don't care if you are offended by Christmas.  Nobody has a right to not be offended, so just tough it out.  

The way things are going, in a few years it will be illegal to display anything religious on private property if it's in view of the public.