Convenient Myths

CONVENIENT MYTHS explores perceptions, politics, and facts on a wide range of subjects, including greenhouse gases, carbon dioxide (CO2), climate, weather, polar bears, seals, wind & solar power, ocean & nuclear power, fossil fuels, biofuels, electric cars, and related current concerns and green ideas. CONVENIENT MYTHS is written for anyone wishing to get to the bottom of the matter, without being over-burdened by details. Here are the crucial facts, unadulterated, and easy to understand. CONVENIENT MYTHS is what you should read if you have any doubts about the dire predictions of a pending global climate catastrophe, or the glowing promises about green technology, that you find in newspapers, on radio and television, on the Internet, and in many reports or documents destined for public consumption. Table of Contents – Brief Version Preamble 11 Introduction 13 Myth 17 Earth 33 Climate 45 Oceans 103 Freshwater 119 Chemistry 135 Air 143 Physics 159 Energy 163 Engines 203 Food 235 Sun 253 Weather 261 Diseases 267 Progress 273 Bibliography 275

The contemporary world has been shaped by two important and potent myths. Karl Jaspers' construct of the "axial age" envisions the common past (800-200 BC), the time when Western society was born and world religions spontaneously and independently appeared out of a seemingly shared value set. Conversely, the myth of the "dark green golden age," as narrated by David Suzuki and others, asserts that the axial age and the otherworldliness that accompanied the emergence of organized religion ripped society from a previously deep communion with nature. Both myths contend that to maintain balance we must return to the idealized past. In Convenient Myths, Iain Provan illuminates the influence of these two deeply entrenched and questionable myths, warns of their potential dangers, and forebodingly maps the implications of a world founded on such myths.

A world rooted in undisturbed myths.

'The Myths of Reality' reveals how reality is culturally constructed in an ever-continuing process from mythic fragments transmitted by the mass media and adapted through face-to-face and Internet conversations.

"Seven Myths of Native American History will provide undergraduates and general readers with a very useful introduction to Native America past and present. Jentz identifies the origins and remarkable staying power of these myths at the same time he exposes and dismantles them." —Colin G. Calloway, Dartmouth College

The 19th century was a pioneering age for vernacular texts in India. Vernacular writings became popular for making the 'first' interventions of their kind, written by Indians for Indians, and establishing new genres such as the biographical novel. The Subhedar's Son, an award-winning Marathi novel, was written in 1895 and published by the Bombay Tract and Book Society, and comprised overlapping personal and political trajectories. The author, Rev. Dinkar Shankar Sawarkar, inscribed multiple viewpoints into his narrative, including that of his own father, Rev. Shankar Nana (1819-1884), a Brahmin who was one of the early converts of the Church Missionary Society in Western India and served the CMS and the Anglican Church in various capacities for many years. Apart from Shankar Nana's conversion-story, Sawarkar provides readers with a blueprint of what a Brahminical journey towards Christian conversion encompassed, while describing his personal background of having lived a Christian life as a product of both Brahminism and Christianity. Attempting to deconstruct Brahmanism through Christianity he claimed Brahmin roots as a Christian with an aim of combatting the stigma of conversion. Contextualized within the early history of Maharashtra's missions and the specificities of individual conversions, the novel allows modern researchers to appreciate the particularity of regional and vernacular Indian Christianity. This culturally-specific Christianity spurred the production of Christian vernacular print culture, associating 'being Marathi' with broader and more universal frameworks of Christianity. But this new genre also produced nativist forms of Christian devotion and piety. Deepra Dandekar introduces this annotated translation of The Subhedar's Son, with an examination of the Church Missionary Society's socio- political context; a biography of Shankar Nana gleaned from archival sources; a brief summary of Sawarkar's biography; and an analysis of the multiple political opinions framing the book.

Throughout the history of the Christian church there have been moments of significant theological crisis, and we are currently in the midst of another. But our pressing question is not "Who is Jesus?" (as it was in the fourth century) nor "How can we be saved?" (as it was in the sixteenth). Now it is, "What is a human being?" In many communities that claim the name "Christian," even people who can provide correct answers to the first two questions are currently confused when it comes to the third. This book is intended to help all such readers understand how they should, as faithful Christians, respond to this crucially important question, and how they should live as a result. At the same time, it seeks to equip these serious Christians to recognize the non-Christian roots of the powerful, competing ideas of "the human" that they encounter every day, both in contemporary society and in contemporary churches, and to have the courage to reject them. For these unbiblical ideas, when embedded in a church, do damage to Christian faith and life. They are destructive cuckoos in the Christian nest.