Is a disbelief in global warming extremist?

God’s instruction to Adam in Genesis 2:15 (before The Fall) was to cultivate (nurture, develop and improve) the earth.  As Adam’s descendants, we are to cultivate the earth and take care of it because God created it.

The major issue affecting planet Earth today, we are told, is global warming.  The issue is never far from news headlines.  Last weekend, for example, we were told that even more stringent measures need to be put in place to combat the problem, if we’re to avoid a crisis in the mid 21^st century.

However, since 1880, data taken all over the earth shows that the temperature has increased only about 0.7%.  This is far less than the media hype would have us believe.  If you take into account the warm biases (for example, when a city grows, adding more concrete that absorbs more sunshine, the temperature rises) the actual percentage is probably nearer 0.6%.

Global warming advocates, such as Prince Charles and Al Gore (former US vice-President) claim that man is causing the global warming and that we need to act now.  It would be easy to assume that all meteorologists, climatologist and other scientists agree with them, but that is not the case.  Dr Arthur Robinson’s petition project website (www.petitionproject.org) has about 31,500 signatures including about 9000 individuals with PhD’s, who say:

The proposed limits on greenhouse gases would harm the environment, hinder the advance of science and technology, and damage the health and welfare of mankind . . . There is no convincing scientific evidence that human release of carbon dioxide, methane, or other greenhouse gases is causing, or will, in the foreseeable future, cause catastrophic heating of the Earth’s atmosphere and disruption of the Earth’s climate.  Moreover, there is substantial scientific evidence that increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide produce many beneficial effects upon the natural plant and animal environments of the Earth

The truth is that CO2 has increased since about 1880 along with other greenhouse gases.  Experiments prove that CO2 hardly affects the temperature of the Earth, so we have little to be concerned with, and there’s no urgency for further research on climate. 

In addition, global warming is a peculiarly modern phenomenon!  From 1945 to the 1970s there was a period of global cooling, causing scientists and the media to claim that the next ice age was soon coming upon us!  In reality, climate change goes in cycles.  Natural processes can affect them, such as large volcanic eruptions, ocean currents and the number of sunspots at any time (these affect the amount of radiation reaching the Earth).  In reality, the sun is causing more than 50% of the small amount of global warming we experience.

If, in fact, global warming (at a very low rate) is happening, we don’t ever hear media scientists  emphasising the positive effects.  For example, we can increase Arctic shipping with less Arctic sea ice, saving a large amount of money from fuel and also reducing CO2.  It is well-known that plants grow better with higher CO2 in the atmosphere, so agriculture would be improved.  Also, global warming would enable us to grow food farther north in the Northern Hemisphere.

Most significantly, warming will cause more people to suffer less and live longer.  Statistics show that more people die of the cold than die of the heat each year.  Professor Bjorn Lomborg, once a radical environmentalist who changed his mind upon actually examining the observations, has calculated that seven times more people die of the cold than the heat in Europe.  So a warmer winter would save lives.

Why is the popular slant on the global warming issue important for us to take note of?  It’s because the issue of global warming is similar in nature to the creation/evolution issue.  To express the opinion, even backed up by scientific evidence, that global warming may not be the catastrophe it’s made out to be, will soon be considered ‘extremist’.  Already, eminent scientists who differ from the accepted party line are being marginalised, having their funding removed, and on many occasions, losing their jobs.

It’s happened with creation/evolution.  Thousands of very eminent scientists dispute evolution theory, yet our teachers are not allowed to teach our children creationism, nor are we to tell our children that we should consider ourselves stewards of a world created and sustained by God.  Soon, to speak against global warming will be a crime, because it doesn’t fit with the world view we are required to believe.  Meanwhile, man becomes master of his own destiny by deciding what needs stewarding and in what way.

Do we glibly and blindly follow the crowd and risk losing our own integrity in a sea of mass propaganda?  Or do we apply 1 Thessalonians 5:21, where Paul says:

But examine everything carefully; hold fast to that which is good

So, unashamedly, as God-appointed stewards of his creation, we can dispense with the myths around global warming and seek to see things as they really are.  While man, having wrested the reins from God at The Fall, attempts to change the future and ‘tame’ a world which because of his folly would be fast running out of control were it not for God's mercy, God’s people need to discern where the truth lies in the myriad of information we are fed, and seek a godly response.

(With thanks to Michael J Oard’s article: ‘Is man the cause of global warming?’ in Jubilee, an official publication of the Ezra Institute for Contemporary Christianity)

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