A dangerous climate
April 12, 2007
Thanks to blogger Michael Kruse for this find. Whether you are alarmed or skeptical about global warming, you can benefit from reading this article by a respected (as far as I know) environmentalist.
A dangerous climate | Uk News | News | Telegraph
A dangerous climate
By Bob Carter, Sunday Telegraph
Last Updated: 1:12am BST 11/04/2007
Page 1 of 3The latest IPCC report, published on Friday, is the most alarming yet: not for its claims of human-caused global warming, writes the leading environmental scientist Bob Carter, but for its lack of scientific rigour
At 4C, it is cold in the storage refrigerator. One needs to rug up well to work here. I am at the US headquarters of the Ocean Drilling Programme at Texas A&M University, studying seabed cores from the southwest Pacific Ocean.
…For more than 90 per cent of recent geological time, the cores show that the earth has been colder than today. We modern humans are lucky to live towards the end of the most recent of the intermittent, and welcome, warm interludes. It is a 10,000 year-long period called the Holo-cene, during which our civilisations have evolved and flourished.
Backwards for hundreds of thousands of years, the core alternations march. Some, metronomic in their occurrence, are ruled by changes in the earth’s orbit at periods of about 20,000, 41,000 and 100,000 years; others are paced by fluctuations in solar output on a scale of centuries or millennia; and others display irregular yet rapid oceanographic and climate shifts that are caused by\u2026 we know not what. Climate, it seems, changes ceaselessly in either direction: sometimes cooling, sometimes warming, often for reasons that we do not yet fully understand.
Similar cores through polar ice reveal, contrary to received wisdom, that past temperature changes were followed - not preceded, but followed - by changes in the atmospheric content of carbon dioxide. Yet the public now believes strongly that increasing human carbon dioxide emissions will cause runaway warming; it is surely a strange cause of climate change that naturally postdates its supposed effect?
…n the present state of knowledge, no scientist can justify the statement: “Most of the observed increase in globally averaged temperature since the mid-20th century is very likely due [90 per cent probable] to the observed increase in anthropogenic greenhouse gas concentrations,” as stated in the 2007 SPM.
The environmental catchphrase of the moment is “sustainability”. It is therefore a good question to ask how much longer politicians, responding to pressure from the IPCC and other lobby groups, can sustain the fiction that dangerous human-caused climate change is upon us.
That climate change is part of our planet’s normal, dynamic behaviour is not in doubt. Nor should there be any doubt about the need for governments to prepare sensible response plans for future climate change, both warmings and coolings. But reflection on recent climatic episodes like the “little Ice Ages” makes it plain that future climatic coolings will cause much greater damage to our societies than will mild warmings similar to that of the 20th century.
advertisementThat 20th-century warming, the most recent of many previous warm phases of similar or greater magnitude, was dangerous or human-caused, or even that the warming has continued after 1998, both yet remain to be demonstrated.
I commend this long-ish article to your reading, if for no other reason than to point out that not all environmental scientists have jumped onto the global warming train.
Dave, who ‘rugs up well’ in the wintertime.
Climate change
April 7, 2007
The Economist is convinced by the recent IPCC report on climate change that global warming is a) a reality, and b) the world must do something about it. That something, this article concludes, is to both adapt to the climate change and try to reverse it.
Climate change | All washed up | Economist.com
WE WERE right, all along. That is the thrust of the latest report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), a United Nations body set up to pronounce authoritatively on the science of global warming. In 2001 it predicted that global warming would lead to many ills, including greater numbers of extinctions, growing shortages of water, higher incidence of tropical diseases, and lower yields from agriculture, fishing and forestry in some places. Now the scientists who write the reports say they have much stronger evidence that such calamities are indeed occurring—faster, in many cases, than they originally thought.
That there have been changes in climate I readily concede. My skepticism comes from lack of confidence in the conclusions being drawn from the studies. I look askance at the IPCC report partly because of the politics of it (can any global agency be objective?) and partly because that conclusions about climate change depend a lot on one’s worldview.
A secular worldview that assumes separate spheres for religion and science tends to place its trust in science and ignore the possibility that a sovereign God may have something to say about his handiwork. A Christian worldview, on the other hand is apt to ignore the real contributions of science to our understanding of how things work. Like climate change science. Like cosmology.
What’s needed on both sides of the debate is a good dose of humility and a better sense of the limitations of human thought.
Dave, which he is not so humble himself.
Lenten study 2007 - Day forty
April 7, 2007
I undertook this verse-by-verse exercise of meditation on a passage in Paul’s letter to a 1st Century church to help me slow down and let the inspired words of Scripture sink deep within me. Publishing such a personal meditation is no doubt off-putting to some readers, but my prayer is that God may use my unschooled ramblings in some way, nevertheless.
Soli Deo Gloria.
Lenten study 2007 - Day thirty-nine
April 6, 2007
Completing the study of Colossians 3:1-17
As Holy Week draws to a close, I have commented on Colossians 3:1-17,
Exhortations to Seek the Things Above
Colossians 3:1-17 Therefore, if you have been raised with Christ, keep seeking the things above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. Keep thinking about things above, not things on the earth, for you have died and your life is hidden with Christ in God. When Christ (who is your life) appears, then you too will be revealed in glory with him. So put to death whatever in your nature belongs to the earth: sexual immorality, impurity, shameful passion, evil desire, and greed which is idolatry. Because of these things the wrath of God is coming on the sons of disobedience. You also lived your lives in this way at one time, when you used to live among them. But now, put off all such things as anger, rage, malice, slander, abusive language from your mouth. Do not lie to one another since you have put off the old man with its practices and have been clothed with the new man that is being renewed in knowledge according to the image of the one who created it. Here there is neither Greek nor Jew, circumcised or uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave or free, but Christ is all and in all.
Exhortation to Unity and Love
Therefore, as the elect of God, holy and dearly loved, clothe yourselves with a heart of mercy, kindness, humility, gentleness, and patience, bearing with one another and forgiving one another, if someone happens to have a complaint against anyone else. Just as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also forgive others. And to all these virtues add love, which is the perfect bond. Let the peace of Christ be in control in your heart (for you were in fact called as one body to this peace), and be thankful. Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly, teaching and exhorting one another with all wisdom, singing psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs, all with grace in your hearts to God. And whatever you do in word or deed, do it all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him.
Here the Apostle exalts the risen Christ and explains the meaning of a “life hidden with Christ in God.” For years that phrase of Paul’s has challenged me, and I am not sure that I have really ever understood it, or perhaps I should say, lived it.
I still may not understand it completely, but I think I have a better understanding of the marks of living it. At least I feel I have benefited from the exercise of meditating on it.
Lenten study 2007 - Day thirty-eight
April 5, 2007
Continuing with Colossians 3:17 - giving thanks to God the Father through him.
Like, I suspect, many other Christians through the ages, giving thanks in all things sometimes comes pretty hard. If I have learned anything at all from Scripture, this difficulty is the result of sin, properly understood, in a fallen humanity and a fallen world. Dr. Menninger wrote a book years ago entitled Whatever Became of Sin? Why don’t we in this modern age retain a sense of sin and understand what sin does to us?
Romans 7:24-25 Wretched man that I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death? Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord! So then, I myself serve the law of God with my mind, but with my flesh I serve the law of sin.
Paul’s experience above is every Christian’s experience, I believe. “I do believe; help my unbelief.” An honest prayer for most of us.
Last word: Sin explains a lot of things.
Lenten study 2007 - Day thirty-seven
April 4, 2007
Colossians 3:17 - And whatever you do in word and deed, do it all in the name of the Lord Jesus.
Humanly speaking, for me at least, this is an utter impossibility. As I’ve said so many times before, at least I know what the standard is. I can’t plead ignorance as my excuse.
Romans 12:1-2 Therefore I exhort you, brothers and sisters, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a sacrifice – alive, holy, and pleasing to God – which is your reasonable service.
As a sacrifice. Indeed. I’m still clawing my way up God’s learning curve, never looking back (well, almost never), secure in the knowledge of my destination.
Lenten study 2007 - Day thirty-six
April 3, 2007
Concluding Colossians 3:16 - singing psalms, hymns, spiritual songs, all with grace in your hearts to God.
Are we western Christians losing our desire, even our ability, to sing “with grace in our hearts to God? I am afraid that we are now very uncomfortable in being taught and moved to worship through singing. Even the service clubs no longer sing at their meetings. I noticed that the Cabecar Indians, in their worship in the Costa Rica mountains, had no such inhibitions.
Psalm 100: 1-2
A thanksgiving psalm.
Shout out praises to the Lord, all the earth!
Worship2 the Lord with joy!
Enter his presence with joyful singing!
Today’s praise choruses may well fulfill the admonition to sing our praises. I don’t know. But I prefer the “old hymns” with sound biblical content and teaching.
Last word: Worship customs may change, but the object of our worship does not.
Lenten study 2007 - Day thirty-five
April 2, 2007
Colossians 3:16 - Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly, teaching and exhorting one another with all wisdom.
This must be at least partly a matter of will for the Christian, and the Apostle tells us that this is something we do together, not in private. It would be the blind leading the blind were it not for the work of the Holy Spirit, the source of all wisdom, in our midst.
Hebrews 2:1-4 Therefore we must pay closer attention to what we have heard, so that we do not drift away. For if the message spoken through angels proved to be so firm that every violation or disobedience received its just penalty, how will we escape if we neglect such a great salvation? It was first communicated through the Lord and was confirmed to us by those who heard him, while God confirmed their witness with signs and wonders and various miracles and gifts of the Holy Spirit distributed according to his will.
It’s clear to me that I am responsible for the spiritual welfare of my brothers and sisters in Christ, as they are for me. It’s a family thing.
Last word: These Lenten Bible meditations are private; it is better to read the word of God in company with others.
