hughbiquitous

Did you ever feel like you were opposing something that you agree with, just because the party making the argument you oppose was being foolish?

No, I’m not talking about Pat Robertson this time.

Take Al Gore and his climate catastrophe business. Let me first say that I don’t subscribe in the slightest to the idea of “Global Warming.” But we are stewards of God’s creation, and I’d like to be responsible about that. The problem is that it is nigh unto impossible to find the right position to take when the argument is being framed as “return to the stone age and pretend humans don’t exist” vs. “pollute the earth at will to succor our greed.”

(Teachable moment, kids: welcome to the fallacy of the excluded middle.)

Here is some of the response to Gore’s claptrap:

“Gore’s circumstantial arguments are so weak that they are pathetic. It is simply incredible that they, and his film, are commanding public attention. …The man is an embarrassment to US science and its many fine practitioners, a lot of whom know (but feel unable to state publicly) that his propaganda crusade is mostly based on junk science.”

Prof. Bob Carter, Marine Geophysical Laboratory at James Cook University

[Computer models of hypothetical futures] have been consistently wrong in all their scenarios… Since modelers concede computer outputs are not “predictions” but are in fact merely scenarios, they are negligent in letting policy-makers and the public think they are actually making forecasts.

Dr. Tim Ball, former University of Winnipeg climatology professor

There is no meaningful correlation between CO₂ levels and Earth’s temperature over this [geologic] time frame. In fact, when CO₂ levels were over ten times higher than they are now, about 450 million years ago, the planet was in the depths of the absolute coldest period in the last half billion years. …On the basis of this evidence, how could anyone still believe that the recent relatively small increase in CO₂ levels would be the major cause of the past century’s modest warming?

Carleton University paleoclimatologist Prof. Tim Patterson

Moreover, the article linked above goes on to note that, according to hundreds of studies, “on all time scales, there is very good correlation between Earth’s temperature and natural celestial phenomena such changes in the brightness of the Sun.”

Dr. Carter also wrote an op-ed piece in the London Telegraph, There IS a Problem With Global Warming… It Stopped in 1998, in which he concludes,

The shrill alarmism of [the British Government's] public advisers, and the often eco-fundamentalist policy initiatives that bubble up from the depths of the Civil Service, have all long since been detached from science reality. Internationally, the IPCC is a deeply flawed organisation, as acknowledged in a recent House of Lords report, and the Kyoto Protocol has proved a costly flop. Clearly, the wrong horses have been backed.

There’s got to be a responsible approach to environmental stewardship, but Mr. Gore’s conduct, along with that of many in his camp, cannot be regarded as a God-exalting example of the way it should be done.

Followers of Christ must do better. The first step is to start asking the right questions about a responsible, God-exalting approach to environmental stewardship. It seems clear to me that matters of climate change are not among them.

Any thoughts about what the right questions might be?