Sanity Check

In this episode, Dr. David Legates examines the growing legal battle over “citizen suits” and who has the authority to enforce federal environmental law. The Clean Air Act, Clean Water Act, and Safe Drinking Water Act all gave private citizens and organizations the ability to sue when they believed environmental laws were being violated. For decades, these provisions have allowed environmental groups to challenge companies and government agencies in court. But critics argue that citizen suits have increasingly become a mechanism for influencing federal policy outside the normal democratic and regulatory process.

Now, the Trump Administration is push...

Europe has been warming significantly faster than the global average, and this summer’s heatwaves once again prompted politicians and environmental activists to point to fossil-fuel emissions as the obvious culprit. In this episode, Dr. David Legates examines a new study that suggests there is another important piece of the story: Europe’s remarkable success in reducing air pollution.

Since 1980, Europe has dramatically reduced sulfur dioxide and other aerosol emissions. Those pollutants brought serious health and environmental costs, but some of them also reflected sunlight and increased cloud reflectivity, producing a cooling effect. As Europe cleaned up its...

Episode Description

El Niño has returned, and forecasters around the world are watching closely.

In this episode, Dr. David Legates explains what El Niño is, why the tropical Pacific Ocean is warming, and what scientists expect as the 2026 event continues to develop. He explores how El Niño influences weather patterns around the globe, from rainfall in the southern United States to hurricane activity in the Atlantic and drought risks in Australia.

Drawing on decades of climatological research, Dr. Legates also examines the limits of seasonal forecasting. While El Niñ...

Can humanity turn night into day?

In this episode, Dr. David Legates examines Reflect Orbital's ambitious proposal to place mirrors in space that would redirect sunlight onto Earth after sunset. Marketed as a breakthrough for renewable energy, disaster response, agriculture, and industry, the technology has also sparked concerns about light pollution, environmental impacts, space debris, and the commercialization of the night sky.

Dr. Legates explores the science, economics, and policy questions surrounding this proposal, asking whether its promises outweigh its practical challenges. He also considers what the debate reveals about today's environmental priorities and the...

Episode Description

What can one of the most influential Christian thinkers of the past half-century teach us about the future of America?

In this episode, Dr. E. Calvin Beisner pays tribute to Os Guinness following his receipt of the Wilberforce Award, reflecting on a lifetime of scholarship dedicated to the defense of truth, freedom, and the Christian worldview. Drawing from Guinness's many influential books, Dr. E. Calvin Beisner explores his insights on culture, liberty, leadership, and the spiritual foundations necessary for a flourishing society.

As America approaches its 250th anniversary, this...

When the United States Global Change Research Program (USGCRP) was dissolved, many assumed its role in federal climate policy had come to an end. Now the program has returned under new leadership and with a different direction. In this episode of Sanity Check, David Legates draws on his own experience as a former Executive Director of the USGCRP to explain what the agency does, why it matters, and how its structure has changed. He reflects on the challenges he faced during his brief tenure and outlines three reasons he believes the reconstituted program has a stronger opportunity to reshape...

In this episode of Created to Reign, Vijay Jayaraj discusses the oil, coal, and natural gas comeback in Latin America. Contrary to what some people say, this is not reneging on "creation care," but a Christian attitude toward earth stewardship and care for the poor. 

Visit our podcast resource page: https://cornwallalliance.org/listen%20to%20our%20podcast%20created%20to%20reign/

Our work is entirely supported by donations from people like you. If you benefit from our work and would like to partner with us, please visit www.cornwallalliance.org/donate. 

When CNN declared that the July heat wave would have been "virtually impossible" without fossil fuel emissions, it pointed to a rapid-attribution study as proof. But does the evidence support such a sweeping claim?

In this episode of Sanity Check, Dr. David Legates examines the meteorology behind the heat wave, explains how attribution studies are conducted, and explores the assumptions driving claims that individual weather events can be linked to human-caused climate change. Along the way, he uncovers a curious twist: the original CNN article quietly disappeared and was replaced with a revised version that dramatically downplayed...

Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s recent visit to India highlighted a growing area of agreement between two of the world’s largest democracies: the need for abundant, reliable energy. As India’s economy expands and hundreds of millions continue moving into the middle class, demand for electricity, transportation fuels, and industrial energy is set to rise dramatically in the decades ahead.

In this episode, Vijay Jayaraj, a Research Associate with the Cornwall Alliance, examines the prospects for a deeper U.S.-India energy partnership and argues that both nations are increasingly embracing an energy strategy rooted in rea...

In this episode of Sanity Check, David Legates examines a Guardian article claiming that U.S. immigration enforcement flights carry a "huge climate cost." Looking beyond the headline, he compares the reported emissions with total U.S. greenhouse gas emissions, aviation emissions, and other major sources to ask whether the article's conclusions are supported by meaningful context. Along the way, he discusses media framing, statistical significance, selective comparisons, and how climate narratives are increasingly woven into debates over public policy. The episode argues that informed discussion requires proportion, historical perspective, and careful interpretation of the numbers—not simply dramatic he...

After a string of high-profile climate lawsuits, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals has delivered a ruling that supporters of sound energy policy may have reason to celebrate.

In this episode of Sanity Check, David Legates examines a lawsuit brought by twenty-three young activists challenging President Trump's executive orders aimed at expanding domestic energy production. The plaintiffs argued that policies supporting oil, gas, hydropower, and other energy resources violated their constitutional rights and threatened their future. Both the district court and the Ninth Circuit ultimately disagreed, concluding that the sweeping relief requested was beyond the proper role...

El Niño may begin as a patch of unusually warm water in the Pacific Ocean, but its effects can be felt across the globe. In this episode of Sanity Check, David R. Legates explores one of the most powerful climate phenomena on Earth and explains why forecasters are closely watching the possibility of a particularly strong El Niño developing in the months ahead.

What exactly is El Niño? Why are scientists watching the Pacific Ocean so closely this year? And how can changing ocean temperatures near South America influence rainfall in California, droughts in Aus...

This episode of Sanity Check examines a question that sits at the heart of modern scientific culture: Can science remain ethical when divorced from a moral framework? Drawing from a standout presentation delivered at the recent Cornwall Alliance Spring Conference in Memphis, Daniel O’Malley argues that science can tell us what can be done, but not what should be done—and that without Christianity, science risks becoming untethered from truth, ethics, and human responsibility. 

In this episode, David R. Legates reflects on his own experiences facing skepticism as a Christian scientist, from university audiences to media inter...

For years, the most extreme climate scenarios shaped headlines, policy debates, and public fear—despite growing evidence that many of those projections were increasingly detached from real-world energy and emissions trends. Now, in a major shift ahead of the IPCC’s Seventh Assessment Report, climate modelers are quietly abandoning some of their most dramatic assumptions. 

In this episode of Sanity Check, David R. Legates breaks down the rise and fall of RCP8.5 and SSP5-8.5, the “worst-case” climate pathways that came to dominate public discourse, and explains why CMIP7 is moving in a different direction. From coal projectio...

This episode is a bit different from our usual content. We are bringing you a lecture from our inaugural conference, "Heaven and Earth, the Struggle for Faith and Science in the Public Square." If you missed our conference, you're in luck, because we're bringing you a key lecture from our very own Vijay Jayaraj. He dismantles the "green" movement and demonstrates, with compelling evidence, how these protocols damage the developing world. 

Visit our podcast resource page: https://cornwallalliance.org/listen%20to%20our%20podcast%20created%20to%20reign/

Our work is entirely supported by donations from people l...

In this episode, E. Calvin Beisner takes on three enduring claims about capitalism and the environment: that it depletes resources, imposes unjust costs, and prioritizes the short term at the expense of the future. Drawing on economic theory, historical evidence, and real-world data, he challenges the assumption that growth inevitably leads to scarcity and argues instead that human ingenuity, price signals, and market coordination expand—not exhaust—what we consider “resources.” 

The discussion also tackles the concept of externalities, questioning whether environmental harm is truly a market failure or more often a failure of governance and property rights en...

The concept of “planetary boundaries” has become one of the most influential frameworks in modern environmental science—shaping global policy, corporate behavior, and public perception. But how solid is it, really? 

In this episode of Sanity Check, Dr. David R. Legates examines the origins of the planetary boundaries model and walks through each of its ten proposed limits—from climate change and biodiversity loss to ocean chemistry and chemical pollution. Along the way, he raises critical questions about the scientific ambiguity behind so-called “tipping points,” the arbitrariness of defined thresholds, and the growing tendency to treat uncertain models as set...

What happens when lawsuits quietly shape public policy—without a full trial, public scrutiny, or legislative debate? In this episode of Sanity Check, David R. Legates unpacks the controversial practice known as “sue-and-settle.”

What begins as a seemingly straightforward legal mechanism—citizens holding agencies accountable—can, in practice, become something far more complex. Through negotiated settlements between advocacy groups and federal agencies like the Environmental Protection Agency, binding regulations can emerge behind closed doors, often bypassing the traditional rulemaking process and limiting public input.

This episode walks through how sue-and-settle works, why it’s been used under l...

How reliable are the measurements behind climate claims? In this episode of Sanity Check, David R. Legates examines the data systems used to estimate Earth’s energy imbalance—particularly ocean temperature measurements from Argo floats. While widely treated as authoritative, these measurements rely on sparse sampling, interpolation, and assumptions that introduce significant uncertainty.

The result: the margin of error may exceed the signal itself, raising serious questions about the precision of current climate estimates and the confidence placed in them. 

https://www.aoml.noaa.gov/argo/

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