Cornwall Alliance - Does their Faith Destroy their ability to pronounce on AGW.

Some surprisingly well know signatories signed up to the Cornwall Alliance:


E. Calvin Beisner (founder and national spokesman for the Cornwall Alliance for the Stewardship of Creation)

Dr. Roy W. Spencer (Principal Research Scientist in Climatology, University of Alabama, Huntsville,
Dr. Joseph D’Aleo (Executive Director and Certified Meteorologist, Icecap
Dr. David Legates (Associate Professor of Climatology, University of Delaware
Dr. Ross McKitrick (Associate Professor of Economics, University of Guelph, Ontario, Canada,
Dr. Cornelis van Kooten (Professor of Economics and Research Chair in Environmental Studies and Climate, University of Victoria, British Columbia, Canada, Expert Reviewer, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change)
Dr. Kenneth W. Chilton (Founder and Emeritus Director, Institute for the Study of Economics and the Environment, Lindenwood College); 
Contibuting Writers.
:Rev. Richard S. Courtney, Expert Reviewer, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, and Methodist Preacher, Cornwall, UK
G. Cornelis van Kooten, Ph.D., Professor of Economics and Research Chari in Environmental Studies and Climate, University of Victoria, BC, Canada
Advisory board
James A. Wanliss, Ph.D., Associate Professor of Physics, Presbyterian College, Clinton, SC

What they signed up to has some telling beliefs in particular the believe that Man can do no wrong with the environment especially CO2.

Can these signatories ever criticise mans environmental behaviour if they signed up to this?

WHAT WE BELIEVE

1. We believe Earth and its ecosystems—created by God’s intelligent design and infinite power and sustained by His faithful providence —are robust, resilient, self-regulating, and self-correcting, admirably suited for human flourishing, and displaying His glory.  Earth’s climate system is no exception. Recent global warming is one of many natural cycles of warming and cooling in geologic history.

etc

WHAT WE DENY

1. We deny that Earth and its ecosystems are the fragile and unstable products of chance, and particularly that Earth’s climate system is vulnerable to dangerous alteration because of minuscule changes in atmospheric chemistry. Recent warming was neither abnormally large nor abnormally rapid. There is no convincing scientific evidence that human contribution to greenhouse gases is causing dangerous global warming.

etc

TheBiblical Perspective of Environmental Stewardship: Subduing and Ruling theEarth to the Glory of God and the Benefit of Our Neighbors

1. We affirm that the Earth is the LORD’s, and the fullness thereof (Psalm 24:1).
We deny that the Earth or anything else is the result of impersonal, blind chance over time.
2. We affirm that the Bible—the 66 books of the Old and New Testaments—is the sole, absolute, inerrant epistemological basis for mankind for all knowledge of all things, seen and unseen, and that all claims of truth and moral duty that contradict it are false and harmful.
We deny that the physical universe and human observations of it justify truth claims contrary to those of the Bible, and that liberty, justice, and human dignity can be sustained while rejecting Biblical truth and law.
3. We affirm that the only true God—a spirit infinite, eternal, and immutable—revealed Himself in creation (which He made out of nothing and includes both physical and spiritual things), the Bible, and His one and only Son, Jesus Christ, and that though God reveals His wisdom and power in the creation, He is, always has been, and always will be absolutely distinct from and transcendent over creation, which He rules at all times and places.
We deny atheism (there is no God), pantheism (everything is God), panentheism (God is to the universe as the human soul is to the human body), animism (there are many gods, and they indwell and animate physical objects as human souls indwell and animate human bodies), and any other view that denies the Creator/creature distinction, because those who hold them exchange the truth about God for a lie and worship and serve the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever (Romans 1:25).
4. We affirm that human dignity, freedom, and justice can be sustained only insofar as a society affirms the Creator/ creature distinction and embraces the truth of Scripture, and that those who deny it become futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts are darkened (Romans 1:21).
We deny that societies built on atheism, pantheism, panentheism, animism (also called spiritism), or any other rejection of the Creator/creature distinction can flourish intellectually, morally, aesthetically, and materially.
5. We affirm that the creation includes persons— conscious spirits capable of reason, moral judgment, and affection, and therefore morally accountable for their actions—and that some of these persons are bodiless (immaterial, e.g. angels and demons) and some embodied (combinations of spirit and body, e.g., humans).
We deny that the material cosmos—“nature” and its parts, the created world of time and space, matter and energy, planets and stars, energy and material elements—is personal, either in its whole or in its parts; hence we deny that forests and trees, mountains and rocks, oceans and lakes and streams, and animals are persons.
6. We affirm that God made man, male and female, in His own image (Genesis 1:26–27).
We deny that any other terrestrial life form bears the image of God or is of equal value or priority with human beings (Matthew 10:29–31).
7. We affirm that though the Earth is the LORD’s, He has also given it to men (Psalm 115:16) and mandated that they be fruitful, multiply, fill the Earth, subdue it, and have dominion over everything that lives in it (Genesis 1:28).
We deny that human dominion over the Earth is, in principle, sinful, and that the possibility of its abuse negates the righteousness of its proper use.
8. We affirm that the Earth and all its physical and biological systems are the effects of God’s omniscient design, omnipotent creation and faithful sustaining, and that when God completed His creative work it was “very good” (Genesis 1:31).
We deny that an infinitely wise Designer, infinitely powerful Creator, and perfectly faithful Sustainer of the Earth would have made it susceptible to catastrophic degradation from proportionally small causes, and consequently we deny that wise environmental stewardship readily embraces claims of catastrophe stemming from such causes.
9. We affirm that by God’s design Earth and its physical and biological systems are robust, resilient, and self-correcting.
We deny that they are fragile.
10. We affirm that godly human dominion over the Earth means men and women, created in the image of God, laboring freely and lovingly together to enhance Earth’s safety, fruitfulness, and beauty, to the glory of God and the benefit of our neighbors.
We deny that godly human dominion entails humans’ being servants rather than masters of the Earth.
11. We affirm that when God had created Adam, He placed him in the Garden of Eden to cultivate and guard it (Genesis 2:15).
We deny that the Garden of Eden represents the whole Earth and that the instruction to “cultivate and guard” the Garden ought to be reinterpreted to mean either that man is to “serve and protect” the Garden or the Earth, or that man is to “worship and protect” the Garden or the Earth, or that man is to “worship and hear” God either directly or through the Earth or its parts.
12. We affirm that a comprehensive understanding of the relationship between God’s placing Adam in the Garden to cultivate and guard it (Genesis 2:15) and God’s commanding Adam and Eve to be fruitful and multiply and fill the Earth and subdue and rule everything in it (Genesis 1:28) entails a growing population that spreads out from the Garden to till the whole Earth and transform it from wilderness to garden and ultimately to garden city (Revelation 21:2; 22:1–3).
We deny that Biblical Earth stewardship, or godly dominion, is limited to keeping Earth in the condition in which man finds it, i.e., we deny that, as many environmentalists put it, “Nature knows best” and its transformation by humans is in principle wrong or harmful.
13. We affirm that the Bible normally associates wilderness or wildness with divine judgment and curse (Exodus 23:29; Leviticus 26:22; Deuteronomy 7:22; 1 Samuel 17:46; Isaiah 5:2–4; 13:19–22; 34:1–17; Jeremiah 50:39; Leviticus 16:21–22).
We deny that wilderness is the best state of the Earth.
14. We affirm that God placed minerals, plants, and animals in and on the Earth for His pleasure, to reveal His glory and elicit man’s praise, and to serve human needs through godly use (Genesis 2:5–16; 4:22; Numbers 31:21–23; Job 38–41; Psalm 19:1–6; Psalm 104).
We deny that recognizing instrumental value in the Earth and its various physical and biological components dishonors God or is idolatrous.
15. We affirm that one way of exercising godly dominion is by transforming raw materials into resources and using them to meet human needs.
We deny that leaving everything in the Earth in its natural state is proper Biblical stewardship (Matthew 25:14–30).
16. We affirm that because of man’s fall into sin, sinful human hearts often fall prey to materialism, the covetous love of money, and the selfish accumulation of possessions (Luke 12:16–21; 1 Timothy 6:10; Colossians 3:5).
We deny that the temptation to materialist idolatry entails that the production of wealth, whether material from the Earth or immaterial from the human mind, is sinful in and of itself.
17. We affirm that man is accountable to God’s judgment in all he does with the Earth.
We deny that man’s accountability to God justifies abolishing private property (Exodus 20:15, 17), adopting collectivist economic institutions, or delegating to civil governments—whether local, national, or global—ownership or control of land, natural resources, or private property.
18. We affirm that man’s fall into sin (Genesis 3) entails the possibility and indeed the historical reality of human abuse of the Earth and of fellow humans.
We deny that man’s fall into sin completely destroys the possibility of godly dominion.
19. We affirm that in response to man’s sin God cursed the ground so that it would not, as before sin, yield easily even to godly dominion/cultivation, let alone to ungodly, abusive domination (Genesis 3:17–19), and indeed subjected the whole cosmos to decay and corruption until He restores  it partially in history by obedience to the dominion mandate (Genesis 1:28), whether by the unregenerate through common grace (Matthew 7:11) or by the regenerate through special grace (Romans 8:18–24) , and fully in the New Heavens and New Earth of the eschaton (Revelation 21:1–3, 22–27; 22:1–5), all secured by the redeeming work of Christ (Colossians 1:14–20).
We deny, due to God’s faithfulness to His covenant, in which He proclaimed, after the Flood, that He would sustain the cycles on which terrestrial life depends for as long as the Earth endures (Genesis 8:22), that God’s curse on the Earth negates either the dominion mandate (Genesis 1:28) or the robustness and self-correcting resilience of the God-sustained Earth.
20. We affirm that human multiplication and filling of the Earth are intrinsically good (Genesis 1:28) and that, in principle, children, lots of them, are a blessing from God to their faithful parents and the rest of the Earth (Psalm 127; 128).
We deny that the Earth is overpopulated; that “overpopulation” is even a meaningful term, since it cannot be defined by demographic quantities such as population density, population growth rate, or age distribution; and that godly dominion over the Earth requires population control or “family planning” to limit fertility.
21. We affirm that when the Bible speaks of God’s judgment on human societies because they have “polluted the land,” the “pollution” in mind is consistently not chemical or biological but moral—the pollution of idolatry, adultery, murder, oppression of the weak, and other violations of the moral law of God expressed in the Ten Commandments (Psalm 106:38; Jeremiah 3:1–10; 16:18).
We deny that Biblical prophets’ concerns about the pollution of any land focus significantly on chemical emissions from agriculture or industry, although prudent study of the risks those pose to human and ecosystem health is a worthy task and can lead to proper efforts to balance risks and benefits.
22. We affirm that cost/benefit analysis (Luke 14:28) is a proper and critically important aspect of godly dominion over the Earth (Proverbs 14:4).
We deny that cost/benefit analysis is unprincipled pragmatism or indicates a lack of faith in God.
23. We affirm that, pursuant to sin and the curse, risk is inherent in every human activity (Hebrews 9:27) and therefore that it is lawful in principle to balance risk against risk.
We deny that the mere existence of risk in an activity makes it immoral in principle.
24. We affirm that proper environmental prioritization will address greater risks before lesser risks and take into account the opportunity costs of fighting various risks—i.e., that it will recognize that since resources spent to reduce one risk cannot be used to reduce another, it is wise to allocate resources where they will achieve the greatest risk reduction.
We deny that spending vast resources to reduce small risks, when those resources could be spent to reduce greater risks instead, is good environmental stewardship.
25. We affirm that environmental policies that address relatively minor risks while harming the poor—such as opposition to the use of abundant, affordable, reliable energy sources like fossil fuels in the name of fighting global warming; the suppression of the use of safe, affordable, and effective insecticides like DDT to reduce malaria in the name of protecting biodiversity; and the conversion of vast amounts of corn and other agricultural products into engine fuel in the name of ecological protection—constitutes oppression of the world’s poor.
We deny that the policies named, and many others like them, are morally justified.
26. We affirm that, because a clean, safe, healthful, beautiful environment is a costly good, wealthy societies can better afford environmental protection and restoration than poor societies.
We deny that economic development is, per se, a threat to environmental quality.
27. We affirm that private ownership of land and other resources, because it harnesses God-given human incentives to overcome the “tragedy of the commons,” is the best institutional economic system for environmental protection.
We deny that collective economic systems are equally good at protecting or improving natural environments.
28. We affirm that local, constitutionally limited, responsive governments by the consent of the governed are better suited to environmental stewardship than central, unlimited governments without regard to the consent of the governed.
We deny that socialism, fascism, communism, and other forms of collectivist, expansionist government offer better solutions to environmental risks than limited, free, constitutional governments with market economies.
29. We affirm that truth-telling is a moral obligation and that sound environmental stewardship depends on it.
We deny that intentional exaggeration, as practiced by many environmental advocacy organizations, or minimization, as practiced by many industries, of environmental risks or of the effectiveness of various means of addressing them is righteous.
30. We affirm that godly dominion is a responsibility for everyone at all times.

We deny that the expectation of divine judgment, in whatever eschatological framework, negates the need for Biblical Earth stewardship.

Cornwall Alliance Statement of Faith

WE BELIEVE in one sovereign God, eternally existing in three persons: the everlasting Father, His only begotten Son, Jesus Christ our Lord, and the Holy Spirit, the giver of life; and we believe that God created the Heavens and the earth out of nothing by His spoken word, and for His own glory.

WE BELIEVE that God has revealed Himself and His truth in the created order, in the Scriptures, and supremely in Jesus Christ; and that the Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments are verbally inspired by God and inerrant in the original writing, so that they are fully trustworthy and of supreme and final authority in all they say.

WE BELIEVE that Jesus Christ was conceived by the Holy Spirit, born of the Virgin Mary, was true God and true man, existing in one person and without sin; and we believe in the resurrection of the crucified body of our Lord, in His ascension into heaven, and in His present life there for us as Lord of all, High Priest, and Advocate.

WE BELIEVE that God directly created Adam and Eve, the historical parents of the entire human race; that they were created equally in His own image, distinct from all other living creatures, and in a state of original righteousness; that God created them as male and female; that male and female are the only two sexes, or genders, of all human beings; that marriage is the union of one man and one woman covenanting to live together for the rest of their lives; and that no other sexual union, whether between a man and woman, a man and a man, or a woman and a woman, or among more than two persons, constitutes marriage.

WE BELIEVE that our first parents sinned by rebelling against God’s revealed will and thereby incurred both physical and spiritual death, and that as a result all human beings are born with a sinful nature that leads them to sin in thought, word, and deed.

WE BELIEVE in the existence of Satan, sin, and evil powers, and that all these have been defeated by God in the cross of Christ.

WE BELIEVE that the Lord Jesus Christ died for our sins, according to the Scriptures, as a representative and substitutionary sacrifice, triumphing over all evil; that all who believe in Him are justified by His shed blood and forgiven of all their sins; and that justification is by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone, not by any good works we may do or sacraments the church may apply.

WE BELIEVE that all who receive the Lord Jesus Christ by faith have been born again of the Holy Spirit and thereby become children of God and are enabled to offer spiritual worship acceptable to God.

WE BELIEVE that the Holy Spirit indwells and gives life to believers, enables them to understand the Scriptures, empowers them for godly living, and equips them for service and witness.

WE BELIEVE that the one, holy, universal Church is the body of Christ and is composed of the communities of Christ’s people. The task of Christ’s people in this world is to be God’s redeemed community, embodying His love by worshiping God with confession, prayer, and praise; by proclaiming the gospel of God’s redemptive love through our Lord Jesus Christ to the ends of the earth by word and deed; by caring for all of God’s Earth and actively seeking the good of everyone, especially the poor and needy.

WE BELIEVE in the blessed hope that Jesus Christ will return to this earth, personally, visibly, and unexpectedly, in power and great glory, to gather His elect, to raise the dead, to judge the nations, and to bring His Kingdom to fulfillment.

WE BELIEVE in the bodily resurrection of the just and unjust, the everlasting punishment of the lost, and the everlasting blessedness of the saved.