The Real Goals of the Climate Alarmists
A relative plans to come down to Miami in January to run the marathon. He called me recently and asked, "Hey, Jerry, am I going to be able to run in the streets of Miami? I hear from Obama that because of climate issues, the streets there are flooded, even with fish!"
He won't need big boots to wade through it all, since the president's characterization of South Florida was ridiculous. But the rest of us need big boots to wade through all the apparent malarkey of climate alarmism.
To hear some of our politicians talk about the subject, climate change is even responsible for terrorism. They claim ISIS is a product of global warming.
Now, some climate alarmists are even calling for punishment for climate change "deniers." If you don't like the message, kill the messenger.
The Bible says we are to take care of the earth. But we should not worship the earth. It also says we shall not bear false witness.
Dr. Cal Beisner with the Cornwall Alliance for the Stewardship of Creation, a network of theologians, scientists, and economists, points out that God made the world in a very stable way. And the earth goes through cycles of cooling and warming. In fact, two scientists use the phrase, "unstoppable global warming every 1500 years."
Some Christians have bought the global warming myth, thinking they can help the world's poor. Beisner says they may be well intentioned, but this is actually "oppressing the poor in the name of fighting global warming."
I am a layman and not a scientist (though neither are Al Gore nor President Obama), but I can't help but feel the "sky is falling" mentality related to global warming is a myth.
From what I understand:
1. The earth has not warmed significantly since 1997, according to the satellite data (the most reliable source). Thank you, Ted Cruz, for masterfully pointing that out at a hearing on the subject.
2. The "climategate" scandal in 2009 and 2011, never fully recognized by the left, proved that climate alarmists fudged raw data on global warming, in order to increase perceived warming.
3. The computer models of predicted global warming, so prominent in Al Gore's movie, have proven unreliable. Beisner told me, "On average, they predict twice the observed warming over the relevant period. Over 95% predict more warming than observed."
4. The famous hockey stick graph of Gore's movie, showing a sudden rise in global temperatures, has been refuted.
5. The supposed consensus of scientists alarmed about global warming is exaggerated. Beisner says, "The claim of 97% consensus that global warming is real and manmade ... is both misleading and simply false ... The real consensus is more likely around 53 to 60 percent."
The big divide on global warming is between those with a biblical worldview and those with a pagan one.
Consider this quote from climate alarmists: "There are ominous signs that the earth's weather patterns have begun to change dramatically, and that these changes may portend a drastic decline in food production, with serious political implications for just about every nation on earth. The evidence in support of these predictions has now begun to accumulate so massively, that meteorologists are hard-pressed to keep up with it. Climatologists are pessimistic that political leaders will take any positive action to compensate for the climate change or even to allay its effects. The longer the planners delay, the more difficult will they find it to cope with climate change once the results become grim reality."
That quote is from Newsweek magazine, April 28, 1975, and they were talking about global cooling. Common sense should give us pause here. 40 years ago the earth was supposedly cooling so fast, global cooling was going to kill us. Now the earth is warming so fast that global warming is going to kill us?
And what is the implied problem — both times? Too many people using too much energy. The battle over climate change is a battle over worldviews. A biblical worldview says children are a blessing from God, and human beings are made in His image. To the climate alarmists, people are the problem. One environmentalist-extremist even called humans "the AIDS of the earth."
My wife told me that when she studied in college in her native Norway in the 1970s, the environmentalists were all concerned about global cooling. She said they had three main goals to solve the problem: population control (too many humans), global governance, and redistribution of the wealth. Those are the same basic three goals essentially being espoused today to fight global warming.
In short, it would seem to me that the real goals of the climate alarmist elites are this: Power and control. Indeed, we need very tall boots to wade through all the malarkey.