Perspectives on the Warming of the Globe

By Ian Clarey @ http://ruminationsbythelake.blogspot.com/

I'm amazed at how often global warming comes up in conversation. Some examples: I was entering the elevator in my apartment building and there was a twenty-something university student in there staring at me oddly, not moving his cart full of laundry. As the door closed behind me, in an eastern European accented voice he commented on the weather. In all his days in Toronto, so says he, there had never been a December without snow. "It's global warming." I replied that the weather comes in cycles and that we are in a period of warmth and should enjoy it. "No, this is man-made, and the earth is slowly warming." The elevator opened and we parted ways. Friends of mine have watched the recent Al Gore documentary, An Inconvenient Truth, to which the issue of global warming is a central theme. Again, we are told that man made emissions have been released into the atmosphere causing excessive warmth. Polar bears are dying, the ice in the Arctic isn't freezing, and we should prepare for a global flood of Noahic proportions. This morning a good family friend of my in-laws (and myself I might add), sent an email based on her having watched Gore, et al. She expressed concern and dismay for not having realised the consequences of global warming earlier. Finally, I thought, I should post my thoughts on this issue. What I thought I would do is provide some links to articles that I have found helpful on dispelling the hysteria over global warming. I'll annotate them giving a summary and thoughts on each link. I'll be interested to read what you guys think out there in the blogosphere. So, without further adieu: A Global Warming Primer - Robert Blackstock Blackstock was, at the time of writing, a PhD student at Auburn University and taught environmental economics. Although this was written in 2001, it is a helpful introduction to the issue of global warming, giving a definition, an excursus into recent environmental concerns such as the "global cooling" paranoia of a previous generation, the inefficiency of computer modelling (helpful for those who watched Al Gore), the inaccuracy of collected data on global temperature, and the monetary gain for organisations such as WWF who rely on this kind of uproar about the environment. The final paragraph of this article provides helpful advice: focus on the important issues, not the periphery: "So, the question that Americans must ask is this: 'Do environmental problems exist?' The answer is yes, they do—but anthropogenic global warming is not one of them. Unfortunately, as long as people are distracted by the myths, their attention will not be centered on the facts." The Global Warming Scam - Nima Sanandaji and Fred Goldberg This article is much more recent than the previous, having been written in 2006. Sanandaji is a Cambridge graduate and runs a Swedish think-tank called Captus and is the editor of their journal. Goldberg, having written his parts of the article from a polar trip, teaches at the Royal School of Stockholm. The authors show that the research involved on the issue of global warming is relatively inconclusive and that there are many views regarding it. As some journals have reported, ice in the north is actually constant and in some instances thicker than others are saying. They also point to the variety of polar bear populations and that though some are depleting others are constant and even others are growing. Their concluding paragraph refers to "doomsday" theories and there is no reason to scare the populace into thinking that the world is warming to deadly degrees. Unprecedented Global Warming? - Michael Heberling This article comes from one of my favourite journals, The Freeman. The author is president of Baker College Center for Graduate Studies in Flint, Michigan. The article details the nature of Kyoto and shows how its two assumptions, that global warming is man-made and that there are unprecedented levels of global warmth are not tenable. Heberling pays particular attention to the latter showing the levels of global temperature change in history, from medieval warmth (which was warmer than today's climate) to the warmth of the 1940s that wasn't man-made. The final sentence of the articles is telling: "Enjoy the warm weather, while it lasts!" Meaning, obviously, that we'll go through another cycle of cooling. An Inconvenient Truth - Ronald Bailey This is a review of Al Gore's movie written by someone sympathetic to the notion that the earth is warming because of man-made pollutants in the atmostphere, yet disagrees seriously with Gore's slide-show. He provides a lot of counter-evidence to Gore's and outlines the emotionally driven rhetoric shown throughout the documentary. For the last year or so I have been thinking on how, as an evangelical Christian, I can have better stewardship over God's creation. It is sin to abuse the earth, of that there is no doubt. We are called by God to take care of our environment, and because of that mandate, all Christians should shame non-Christians in our care for the earth. Sadly, this is not always the case. I would love to know what organizations that are worth supporting. Sadly, eco-theology is often left-wing and liberal, advocating theologies that I could not attach my name to. What should we do, as Christians, to provide for the environment without falling to earth-worship?