The Heat Over Climate Change
Posted by: vinothifes on: September 3, 2010
The Inter-Governmental Panel on Climate Change, a body of climate scientists representing almost all of the world’s nations, was set up by the United Nations in 1988 to study the changing planetary climate and to advise the UN and its member nations on how to prevent human-induced, life-threatening changes to the climate system. The IPCC has observed that the rate of temperature rise of the earth’s surface witnessed in the past 50 years is unprecedented in the last 650,000 years of planetary history.
The IPCC’s Fourth Assessment Report, published in Bangkok in May 2007, argued that once the temperature increase rises above 2°C, up to 4 billion people could be experiencing severe water shortages, agriculture will become non-viable in many parts of the tropics, and millions will be at risk from hunger. If the earth system is not to be driven into an irreversible warming trend, radical action must be taken now so that by 2050 the level of greenhouse gas emissions will be reduced to 70% of the levels at 2000. Keeping temperature rises below 2°C requires “developed” countries to reduce their present emission levels by 80%.
Climate-change sceptics- those who deny either that climate change is happening or that human use of fossil fuels is the main driver of climate change- have challenged the credibility of the IPCC Reports. Their strident charges of a “climate conspiracy” by the UN body were given a fillip in November last year when e-mails hacked from the Climatic Research Unit of the University of East Anglia, UK, were posted on the Internet. Critics said the e-mail exchanges between CRU scientists and their colleagues around the world showed that data unfavourable to the IPCC assessments was being suppressed. On top of that, the IPCC admitted it made a mistake in its 2007 report in asserting that the Himalayan glaciers could disappear by 2035.
In February, the UN set up an independent review of the IPCC overseen by the Inter-Academy Council (IAC), an international umbrella body for science academies. Its terms of reference included analysing the IPCC’s links with other UN agencies, its use of controversial data and handling of the full range of scientific opinion, and how the body communicates with the general public and the media.
Last Monday the IAC announced the results of its review of the IPCC’s workings at a news conference in New York. It identified several shortcomings in the governance of the IPCC, criticised it slowness to respond to revelation of errors, and recommended far-reaching changes in the way it issues reports and communicates with the general public. The “glacier error” was due to reliance on so-called “gray literature” – that which has not been peer-reviewed or published in scientific journals.
However, while the IAC urged IPCC authors to make future projections only when there is sufficient support for them, it praised the “remarkable international conversation” among scientists and policymakers that the IPCC has initiated and represents. It stressed-along with other independent reviews- that the mistakes made should not be used to question the overall climate science assessments of IPCC Reports.
Why does Climate Change generate so much heat (forgive the pun)? Climate Change (upper case) has become a global metanarrative, more significant than the underlying physical phenomena associated with climate change (lower case). It thus raises questions about human life and destiny, about our relationship to the planet and to each other, about how we do economics, about our personal lifestyles and the common good, about the dangers of a technological mind-set in our attitude to the world, about our values, hopes and goals, and about our obligations for the present and the future. These are mostly moral and philosophical/religious questions. The science is only one part of the story; and how we regard the science is itself shaped by our world-views.
Interestingly, many atheists seem to care more about global warming than many so-called “Biblical Christians”. I suggest that the latter need to re-read their Bibles and the former need to re-think their worldview. If Nature is all that is, and human beings are as significant as slime moulds where nature is concerned, why care about what happens to future human beings? If Homo Sapiens ends up destroying itself, the earth will simply throw up new life forms that will survive at higher temperatures. In other words, the question I am posing is whether either “deep ecology” or the militant atheism that insists on telling us that humans are nothing more than accidental products of an evolutionary process – can these worldviews coherently sustain our fundamental moral intuitions in the face of global warming and climate change?
7 Responses to "The Heat Over Climate Change"
My book, The Message of Mission, co-authored with Howard Peskett (IVP, 2003) expounds a number of biblical texts exhorting us to care for the non-human creation. It deals with some of the bogus theologies that you seem to be surrounded by. There are several other books (e.g. Chris Wright, The Mission of God, IVP, 2009) which also patiently argue the Biblical case for those who are serious about reading the Bible as a whole and not as a collection of proof-texts.
In any case, I am perplexed by those who argue that since Christ is coming soon, we shouldn’t bother about the state of the world. Do these people give up their jobs? Pull their children out of school? Refuse to have babies? If their bodies are perishing anyway, why do they bother spending so much money caring for them? Leave aside the Bible. There is obviously something illogical and hypocritical about this kind of church teaching!
The book looks really good. Thanks for mentioning it.
The thing about not taking care of the world because Christ is coming – they don’t generally say that’s what they believe. I rarely hear it actually being taught. But I know it’s in the back of their minds when faced with the difficult changes and expenses it takes to be enviromentally sensitive, and sometimes they’ll admit when pressed. I agree it’s illogical, but they don’t really think it through since they are barely admitting it to themselves. In general, physical world is considered less important than the spiritual to the point of being unimportant.
What’s more, there is a popular theological belief that we are “going up to heaven” and not so much that Christ will return to earth. This view is reflected in common hymns and songs, hence the notion that so the physical earth is irrelevant since it will be destroyed.
These Christians you mention, Lillian, are very “spiritual” when it comes to caring for other people’s bodies, but aren’t they very materialistic when it comes to their own bodies? If they were to practise what they say they believe about the physical world, why aren’t they ascetics and hermits? You need to expose boldly the hypocrisy of these folk no less than the unbiblical nature of their theology.
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1 | Lillian H
September 8, 2010 at 7:57 pm
I hope you will write follow-up posts expanding on your last two paragraphs.
I am surrounded by “Bibical Christians” who don’t believe in global warming. In fact, when I bring up the subject of treating the planet better, often the first responce is, “there is no proof of global warming”, as if that is the only reason to try to live more lightly on the earth.
I think that the “Left Behind” Second Coming of Christ scenarios that are taught in most conservative churches here in my southeast corner of the USA is one of the reasons “Bibical Christians” don’t approve of enviromental efforts. They figure the world is going to be destroyed soon anyway. Futhermore, they think they have the future all figured out and global warming doesn’t fit with their interpretation of the End Times. What is in their interpretation is a One World Government and a One World Church, so any cooperation between religions and governments is scares them.
Also, the political right-wing press here belittles global warming. Add in people’s natural desire not to change their lifestyles from more stuff to less, and it’s amazing that I find anyone here who wants to act to stop global warming.