Climate change: settled-science or purposeful propaganda?
Talk about a “can of worms”! It’s hard to ignore “climate change” because we’re reminded of it almost on a daily basis. (Actually, I’d rather talk about a can of worms!)
What do you know about “climate change”? Probably mostly what you’ve heard from the media and public educational system. They control the narrative. It is pretty much the same with the topic of evolution. When was the last time you saw a news story on a major network or an article in Science, Smithsonian or National Geographic that indicated some discovery casts significant doubt on Darwinian evolution? Oh, they will often share some discovery that reveals they were wrong about “how” a certain aspect of molecules-to-man evolution occurred, but never “that” molecules-to-man evolution actually occurred. You could get the impression that evolution must be a fact because the scientists keep finding more and more evidence for it and if it weren’t true, they would tell us! |
It’s much the same with climate change. Here’s an example of what we hear. Last November, over 11,000 scientists officially endorsed a published report titled, “World Scientists’ Warning of a Climate Emergency.” What the public didn’t (doesn’t) know is that only 2% of those who signed would be considered experts in climate-related areas!
This issue has certainly been the cause of some extreme alarmism. We could do multiple articles just on that aspect. Examples include one university of Texas-Austin professor stating the Earth would be better off if 90% of humans were wiped off the face of the planet-perhaps by an airborne Ebola virus! (He got a standing ovation for this statement!) Another professor, from New York University, thinks in order to fight climate change we should bio-engineer humans to make us shorter, take our desire for meat away, and give us more cat-like eyes, so we could work in less light, using less energy and reducing our carbon footprint! In this brief article, my goal is to touch on the “big picture” and help you gain a reasonable response to this very interesting, often heated topic. Let’s answer one question right off the bat. Has the climate changed? Yes. No one questions that. No one. There are two ancillary questions: Is the change bad? Is mankind the main cause of the change? Those are more meaningful questions. Some of our readers are old enough to remember back in the 70s we were warned about the coming “ice age”! That didn’t really work out when they noticed temperatures were actually rising. So, then they moved to “global warming”. However, over the past 20 years warming has ceased and has actually decreased since 2016. So, the “global warming” scare is not working very well. What do they do? Ah, switch to “climate change”! That way, no matter what happens, they can declare it’s “climate change,” claim it’s bad and tell us humans are to blame. How convenient! I guarantee you, if the climate wasn’t changing right now, they would say, “That’s awful! The climate has always changed and now it stopped! The results will be catastrophic, and we are the cause!” Here’s a quick history of some of the historical changes I referenced:
There’s been a fair amount of junk science behind all the hype as well. You may remember the famous “hockey stick” diagram, produced by Michael Mann back in 1998. This highly impressionable graphic was used to show what has happened to the Earth’s temperature. It was fairly consistent, but then, all of a sudden, shot way up (like the end of a hockey stick)! However, when the model he used to draw this conclusion was independently analyzed, it was determined that no matter what data was fed into the system, the output was the same! The system was rigged to a predetermined desired result! And then there was the “Climategate” scandal (2009). This was another case of the purposeful and deceptive rigging of data and manipulated outcome. If your government (England, in this case) believes in man-made climate change and gives you $47 million in grants to research it, what do you think you will conclude from your efforts? (That’s a rhetorical question.) Follow the money! So, what’s the proper and biblically consistent response? Here’s one pertinent passage of Scripture: “While the earth remaineth, seedtime and harvest, and cold and heat, and summer and winter, and day and night shall not cease.” (Genesis 8:22). God is pretty sharp when it comes to climate issues. (Well, I guess infinitely sharp… in every area!) He has built into His creation numerous factors working together to stabilize our planet and life on it. Here’s just one of many examples. When temperatures increase, ice sheets melt, which brings more iron into the ocean. The increased iron in turn increases the amount of algae. Algae use and trap CO2, removing it from the atmosphere, taking it to the bottom of the ocean floor once they die. It’s a great cycle to help balance the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere. In reality, calculations show that a gradual doubling of CO2 in the atmosphere would only cause a very modest warming, perhaps about 1°C! In addition, warmer climates allow crops to be grown in higher latitudes and feed more people! In conclusion, the over-hyped alarmism connected with climate change is not something to take seriously. Change is real and inevitable. Whether it is good or bad, depends largely on your “starting point” (i.e. your worldview). The conclusion that this change is largely driven by mankind is not supported by the actual data. We also, however, need to be careful not to go too far the other way and not make reasonable efforts to be good stewards of the environment that God has entrusted us to. A resource that was helpful to me was, The Climate Change Conflict: Keeping Cool over Global Warming, by a friend of mine from the Institute for Creation Research, Dr. Jake Hebert. (downloadable or printed) |
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