I've posted here several times on the issue of climate change and my scepticism is pretty well-known elsewhere. Importantly, ideological (rather than scientific) segments of the green lobby seem to engage in the worship of creation, rather than the Creator, and indeed part of the movement draw on ancient 'geolatrous' paganism such as Druidism. Leaving the purely scientific aspect to one aside, then, it is very much a religion with its own belief system, together with its own heretics (climate change deniers) and thus inevitable witch hunts.
But as I've posted elsewhere, the number of 'heretics' is increasing steadily. And spectacularly (and I must admit somewhat fabulously) there emerged news last week of a server containing many of the University of East Anglia's Climate Research Unit, which counts various well-known scientists promoting man-made climate change, being hacked and various files and emails stolen and published across the Internet. What has caused such a furore is how these documents reveal a deliberate and concerted attempt by some well-known pro-climate change scientists to hide inconvenient facts which call into question their dogma, as well as besmirch serious and highly qualified scientists who deny or even simply question aspects of climate change. Don't worry if you missed the story, it's growing daily and being covered by most of the newspapers, so that even papers on the political left are unable to ignore it and are having to report and comment on it. One post by a leftist columnist of a British newspaper bemoaning the whole incident is quite amusing, even though he continues to bury his head in the sand over the politicised nature of much of the science behind climate change.
Anyway, to my shame (I suppose) I must confess to being somewhat smug about all this because I was questioning the whole concept of man-induced climate change years and years ago. I came into for a great deal of flack, too, from Christians and non-Christians alike. Anyway, now that I've quite ungraciously got the "I told you so" bit out of the way, I thought I'd post details of some of my blog posts going back three or four years on the King's Evangelical Divinity School blog (see entries under DocBlog). If I find any of the stuff I wrote further back than that I will, of course (purely in the name of smugness) post it here.
Seriously, though, as I've said numerous times before, from a Church perspective we've been dancing the world's tune on this issue rather than carving out for ourselves our own biblical theology of stewardship and the environment. There are indeed environemntal and stewardship issues to consider and have theological views about, but unfortunately we've been distracted by this particular red herring for far too long. Not only that, from an ethical perspective this dogma is having a massively detrimental impact on the most deprived people in the world. That's why the whole issue and our response to it is so important.
4 comments:
Dear Dr. Smith, I am not a scientist, and like you I have major reservations concerning the global warming debate. Althoug I believe in global warming, because it can be demonstrated by the extreme melting of the ice in the Arctic region. I don't, however, believe that it is caused by man. Man's contribution may be very minimal with more of it being caused by natural processes of the earth. I believe that the earth's climate changes are cyclic. There have been many periods in history where the earth had a much warmer climate than now. (By the way, Dont be ashamed for being a little smug. )
I think what bugs me is that major new media entities like the BBC and CNN have done little to cover "climategate". It makes one wonder if the media has become judge and jury on matters of scientific interests, and don't deem this worthy of objective and fair coverage. After all, shouldn't reporting be about finding out truth, regardless of our own personal bias or prevailing attitudes in our news organisations?
Thank you both for your comments. Donovan, I agree it seems the media here is being led by the debate rather than leading it. Thus it would appear the issue has become fully entrenched wisdom and to challenge it merely courts derision, which suggests the green lobby has been pretty successful even if the science has not.
Ice expanding in much of Antarctica Eastern coast getting colder Western section remains a concern
ICE is expanding in much of Antarctica, contrary to the widespread public belief that global warming is melting the continental ice cap.
The results of ice-core drilling and sea ice monitoring indicate there is no large-scale melting of ice over most of Antarctica, although experts are concerned at ice losses on the continent's western coast.
Found here:
http://www.news.com.au/antarctic-ice-is-growing-not-melting-away/story-0-1225700043191
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