‘Global warming’ will be worse than you think
The president’s decision to withdraw America from the Paris Climate Accord has ignited a veritable firestorm of protest.
I have read and listened to the non-stop, dire and ugly commentary by not only news pundits, the United Nations, science writers, and our own liberal politicians, but even more so from a number of entertainment celebrities. Proponents of global warming such as former Democratic Presidential candidate, Al Gore insist that the greatest–not environmental– but rather moral issue of our day is that of “global warming.” In his book published in 2006, “An Inconvenient Truth,” Gore presents global warming as “a moral, ethical, and spiritual challenge.” If Gore is correct, about this being a “moral, ethical, and spiritual challenge” then surely, such matters are the business of Christians and churches and ought to cause every believer to closely consider the competing views.
There is a basic point that I feel should to be made about this matter. It is apparent that many individuals and most of the media (including the Herald-Standard) often interchangeably use the terms “global warming” and “climate change.” I would like to ask a trained meteorologist if these terms are indeed identical. “Climate” seems to mean the average weather conditions present in a certain location at a particular time of the year. A “climate” is measured and determined by data that is recorded over many, or at the least, several decades. “Climate change” then would refer to long-term changes in average weather conditions in a given or defined area. Sometimes the change is marked by warmer weather. Sometimes the change may be toward cooler weather.
“Global warming” on the other hand is the assertion that the entire earth’s surface is warming simultaneously. Notwithstanding, many of us can still remember the somber warnings given by the “experts” and our high-school science teachers in the 1970s that the earth was rapidly cooling and our planet would eventually but surely be entering a new “ice age.”
Contrary to what “global warming” advocates insist, a consensus does not exist on the scope of “global warming” and especially whether it is manmade or caused by nature itself. Renowned physicists such as S. Fred Singer claim that there is a growing number of skeptical qualified scientists who doubt anthropocentric global warming. Singer, in an interview with the National Association of Scholars [NAS] given in 2011, claimed that the actual number of doubters was nearing 40 percent of scientists and meteorologists. Singer has consistently urged that the public look upon global warming as just another scientific controversy and [he] opposes any public policies until the major issues, such as the cause, are settled.
But allowance for honest disagreement and principled reasoning has not been the nature of this debate. Some proponents yet still seem to imply that all knowledge abides with them and any further discussion is a waste of time or downright dangerous. I have to wonder just where we might be without the unabashed “expert” opinions of Hollywood movie celebrities!
The day after America’s withdrawal from the Climate Accord, I happened to view on television a very assertive activist environmentalist as he discussed global warming with a sympathetic interviewer. This particularly irate professor when asked about his thoughts on the president withdrawing from the Paris Accord became nearly hysterical. He fumed something along the line that “The President is a complete moron and is nothing more than a criminal for doing this and anyone who supports him or denies global warming is a total idiot and should be locked up or put away.”
Well now. Since I don’t want to be carted off to a padded cell just yet, I want to assure the good professor that actually the biblical Christians are and have been strong believers in a future “global warming.” So please don’t put us in the “looney bin” just yet for not believing in your version of, or your take on, the consequences of “global warming, which has been an accepted and historic Christian doctrine since an early and unheralded “earth scientist,” the Apostle Peter predicted it in the first century A.D.
A clarification of the nature of this future catastrophe is needed. The cause of this coming calamity will not be related to humanity’s carbon emissions, the harvesting of forests, or the over usage of fossil fuels. Put simply, the blame for this ultimate “global calamity” is not to be found in mankind’s abuse and pollution of God’s earth, oceans, or atmosphere. Rather, it is the ultimate consequence of humanity’s utter disdain of all moral restraint, the universal and unrepentant wickedness of the human race, and especially, the continued and determined rejection of God’s offer of mercy and forgiveness.
2 Peter 3:10-12: “But the day of the Lord will come as a thief in the night; in the which the heavens shall pass away with a great noise, and the elements shall melt with fervent heat, the earth also and the works that are therein shall be burned up.” Seeing then that all these things shall be dissolved, what manner of persons ought ye to be in all holy conversation and godliness. Looking for and hasting unto the coming of the day of God, wherein the heavens being on fire shall be dissolved and the elements shall melt with fervent heat.”
William “Ed” Nicholson is pastor of the Grace Baptist Chapel at Little Summit in Dunbar Township. He can be reached at willien@hughes.net or at www.thegracebaptistchapel.com.