3. SCIENTIFIC EVIDENCE THAT LEADS US TO DOUBT THE DIRE CLIMATE
CHANGE PREDICTIONS.
There are five areas of evidence we will
examine.Scientific Opinion Is Divided About The Danger Of Global Warming: There Is No Consensus
Though much effort has been put into suggesting there is a scientific consensus on the danger of global warming, there really is no consensus. After all, many scientists reject the dire predictions.
For example, A U.S. Senate panel put together a list of over 700 scientists who have rejected in total or part the global warming hypothesis and have stated this in their publications.[1] Additionally, over 31,000 degreed scientists (9,000 with PhDs) have signed the “Global Warming Petition, which asserts: “There is no convincing scientific evidence that human release of carbon dioxide, methane, or other greenhouse gases is causing or will, in the foreseeable future, cause catastrophic heating of the Earth’s atmosphere and disruption of the Earth’s climate. Moreover, there is substantial scientific evidence that increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide produce many beneficial effects upon the natural plant and animal environment of the Earth.”[2]
Other sources have revealed that many well-known scientists, even Nobel Prize winners, reject the dire predictions of climate change doctrine. The Wall Street Journal reported: “Ivar Giaver, a 1973 physics Nobel Laureate…resigned last week from the American Physical Society in protest over the group’s insistence that evidence of man-made global warming is ‘incontrovertible.’”[3] That same article reveals that Giaver asserts the very small increase in average temperature over the past 150 years shows temperatures have been remarkably stable and beneficial for human health. It also went on to say that Giaver, “Follows in the footsteps of University of California at Santa Barbara Emeritus Professor of Physics Harold Lewis, a former APS fellow who resigned in 2010, calling global warming ‘the greatest and most successful pseudoscientific fraud I have seen in my long life as a physicist.”[4]
Finally, an important resource revealing scientists who disagree about the danger of man-caused global warming is Lawrence Solomon’s book, The Deniers: The World-Renowned Scientists Who Stood Up Against Global Warming Hysteria, Political Persecution, And Fraud (Minneapolis: Richard Vigilante Books, 2008). On pages 207-8 of that work he shows that many of the world’s top experts in their fields reject the dire climate changes predictions that have been made so popular in the media.[5]
The Scientific Literature Is Divided On The Dire Climate Change Predictions
The second area of evidence is closely related to the first. Since there is no true consensus on global warming among scientists and these doubting scientists have published much on the topic, we also must realize there is also a division on the topic in their writings.
Here I will provide three examples.
To begin, many studies conclude there are natural, non-human causes to current changes in global temperatures (e.g. fluctuations in solar output, changes in cloud forcing, and precipitation microphysics). What is more, other studies have found it most likely that rising CO2 is an effect of warming, not a cause. Recently “sixty topic-qualified scientists asserted that ‘global climate changes all the time due to natural causes and the human impact still remains impossible to distinguish from this natural noise,’ and that ‘observational evidence does not support today’s computer climate models, so there is little reason to trust model predictions of the future.’”[6]
There are several instances of scientists expressing to their government leaders skepticism toward current climate change doctrine. For example, on April 6, 2006 sixty well-qualified scientists working in the field of climate change sent an open letter to Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper. It said the following: “Observational evidence does not support today’s computer climate models, so there is little reason to trust model predictions of the future.” The scientists went on to reject the vision of catastrophic human-induced global warming and to oppose the Kyoto Protocol. Soon after this a group of leading New Zealand climatologists and meteorologists (all who were skeptical of catastrophic human-induced global warming) formed The New Zealand Climate Science Coalition to help correct poor science and unfounded conclusions being espoused about global warming. Finally, on April 20, 2006, the British Broadcasting Corporation aired a radio program titled, “Overselling Climate Change.” In it many scientists, including those who believe global warming is a serious problem, decried exaggerated claims about global warming that undermine confidence in science.[7]
My third example provides a sample of a more specific accusation raised by some proponents of current climate change doctrine, namely that global warming is threatening the habitats of some birds. James J. S. Johnson, a scholar with the Institute For Creation Research, deals with the migration of tricolored herons from Louisiana to the Atlantic coast in ICR’s monthly periodical.[8] As is the case with many things happening among animals around the world, climate change attributed to human use of fossil fuels has been named as the culprit.[9] Yet, Johnson convincingly asserts that not only is this bird the second most numerous long-legged wader bird in the United States, but these herons previously found habitat in the very region to which they have moved. So, not only is the bird not in danger, but it is simply moving to a habitat that has been previously good for it. The reason for sharing this is to demonstrate that there is often a “knee-jerk” reaction to any change in the world to animals or plant life, a rush-to-judgment, that it is an illustration of the devastating effects of climate change. Yet, the reality is that there may very well be other explanations.
So, our three examples show, at the very least there is no consensus among scientists when it comes to current climate change doctrine. There should be adequate motivation at the very least for us to reevaluate all the evidence again.
Glaciers Are Not Melting And Sea Levels Rising As Usually Argued
This is the third area of evidence. We are fed a steady diet of messages that human-caused global warming is leading to melting glaciers, endangered polar bears, and rising sea levels. How should we view these claims? “If we did see glaciers melting and sea levels rising, these might well be due to other factors, such as variations in sun activity, variations in ocean currents, and ordinary long-term weather cycles, and not due to changes in carbon dioxide levels…. However, none of the claimed disasters is well supported by evidence.”[10]
Regarding glaciers and ice caps, consider the following:
- “Glaciers have been shrinking slowly since the end of the last ice age…[a period of time] during more than 99 percent of which time people did not emit enough greenhouse gas to have any effect on the global average temperature. So the mere fact of their shrinking is nothing new and is not evidence of human-induced warming. During [this time period] ‘glaciers around the world have fluctuated broadly in concert with changing climate, at times shrinking to positions and volumes smaller than today,’ and ‘mountain glaciers…show a wide variety of responses to local climate variation, and do not respond to global temperature change in a simple, uniform way. Tropical mountain glaciers in both South America and Africa have retreated in the past 100 years because of reduced precipitation and increased solar radiation…[and] the data on global glacial history and ice mass balance do not support the claims made by the IPCC that CO2 emissions are causing most glaciers today to retreat and melt.’”[11]
- “As for ice caps in the Arctic and Antarctic, short-term observations do not prove much of anything. Ice melts in warmer seasons and freezes in cooler seasons every year, and there are warmer years and colder years, so a video of a polar bear jumping off melting Arctic ice does not prove a long-term trend. Polar bears have jumped off the ice and caught fish for centuries. In addition, it is now clear that, far from dwindling, polar bear populations have grown during the period of alleged man-made global warming and shrinking Arctic sea ice.”[12]
- “Global sea-ice cover remains similar in area to that at the start of satellite observations in 1979, with ice shrinkage in the Arctic Ocean since then being offset by growth around Antarctica. Arctic sea ice has decreased, while Antarctic sea ice has expanded.”[13]
- There may be evidence that glaciers expand and diminish for reasons unrelated to human-caused global warming. “Greenland’s Jakobshavn Glacier, formerly one of the fastest shrinking glaciers on earth, is suddenly growing again—and many climate scientists are stunned. ‘At first we didn’t believe it,’ Ala Khazendar, a NASA researcher who co-authored a new study on the glacier, said in a statement. … skeptics of man-made climate change say the glacial surprise is further evidence that the dire predictions of global warming alarmists aren’t reliable. …John Christy, director of the Earth System Science Center of the University of Alabama…[said] that glacial regions are very complex and thus predictions are often unreliable. Glaciers come and go: ‘It’s the natural variability of the system.’”[14]
- Though Al Gore, in his book Earth In The Balance has claimed that sea levels are rising—so much so that people in a low-lying Pacific island nation of Tuvalu had to abandon their homes, “tide gauge records show that sea levels at Tuvalu fell during the latter half of the 20th century. Altimetry data from the Topex-Poseidon satellite shows that Tuvalu sea levels fell even during the 1990’s.”[15]
- Although Al Gore, in the film “An Inconvenient Truth,” claimed that melting ice from West Antarctica and Greenland would cause a 20-foot increase in sea levels worldwide (he didn’t specify when this would happen, but implied immediate changes to prevent this need to take place), “the IPCC, even with its questionable assumption of high warming from rising greenhouse gases, estimated instead that melt from those two locations would add only about 2.5 inches…to sea levels over the next 100 years.” “In fact, sea levels…rose only about 6.3 inches in the entire 20th century—and the rate of increase declined in the latter half of the century.”[16]
Climate
Change Is Not Impacting The Frequency And Number Of Weather-Related
Catastrophes
When it comes to this fourth area of
evidence, we are well-served by discovering there is no evidence that
human-caused global warming is leading to weather-related catastrophes—including
their number or intensity. In fact, we may see just the opposite. Many claim that hurricane frequency and strength have risen with recent global warming. For example, in a recent interview Rotary International president, Barry Rassin, mentions this theory as proof of climate change and the need to take radical steps: “I don’t make judgments. I just say the facts, that things are changing: 2017 was a devastating year for hurricanes. These changes are happening. Call it what you want, but we need to look at the environment and we need to talk about it.”[17] Yet, this claim, that hurricane frequency and strength have risen with global warming, “Not only has been refuted empirically but also abandoned by the scientist who most strongly promoted it.”[18]
Jamie Dean highlights that many accused climate change (and by implication climate change deniers who haven’t gotten on board) for the destruction and deaths of August 2017 Hurricane Harvey that hit Houston and surrounding areas so hard. Some even called for prosecuting such deniers.[19] Dean then writes:
Indeed, even as
Harvey made landfall in August, officials at the National Oceanic and
Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) wrote, “It is premature to conclude that
human activities—and particularly greenhouse gas emissions that cause global
warming—have already had a detectable impact on Atlantic hurricane or global
tropical cyclone activity.” NOAA wasn’t denying the earth is warming: It was
simply reporting that scientific data don’t support the notion that global
warming caused the severe storms we’ve seen this hurricane season. It’s an
important distinction in a contentious debate: It’s possible to acknowledge the
climate is changing without being convinced the results would be catastrophic
or that our response should be apocalyptic.[20]
Dean then continued:
Neil Frank knows the
history of storms. He’s watched them professionally for more than half a century.
The retired meteorologist worked at the National Hurricane Center in Florida
for 25 years and served as director of the center from 1974 to 1987. After
moving to Texas, he worked as a meteorologist in Houston until his retirement
in 2008. These days, he’s a fellow for the Cornwall Alliance—a network of
Christian scholars and scientists—and he still gets calls from news stations
when big hurricanes roll in. Frank watched Harvey’s deluge safely from his
perch at home about 40 miles outside of Houston.
When Frank, 86,
compares Harvey and Irma to past hurricanes, he rattles off storms and corresponding
years with ease. He likes to start with 1886: That’s the most active hurricane
season on record in the United States, according to NOAA, with seven hurricanes
making landfall, including one that wiped out Indianola, Texas. In 1893,
another hurricane hit Louisiana, killing as many as 2,000 people. In 1900, an infamous
Category 4 hurricane swamped Galveston, Texas, and killed at least 6,000 people
in the booming coastal town. The year 1935 brought a Category 5 hurricane to
the Florida Keys, knocking a train of departing workers off a set of railroad
tracks. During the same year, another storm caused massive flooding in Houston,
submerging swaths of downtown and closing the city’s port for eight months.
Frank, who doesn’t think data shows global warming is making hurricanes more
frequent or fierce, notes that all these storms struck before the major
emissions of carbon dioxide that some modern scientists say contribute to similar
storms today: “There were no SUVs in 1935.”[21]
Dean adds:
Roger Pielke, a
professor at the University of Colorado at Boulder, notes that since 1970, the
United States has seen only four hurricanes ranked Category 4 or 5 make landfall.
In the 47 years before that, he says, the country endured 14 such storms. Given
the history, he warns against using Harvey and Irma as a form of “single-issue myopia”
to make the case for drastic measures toward combating climate change.[22]
Finally, we should briefly state that droughts and floods are not increasing in frequency or intensity, but even if they were, this would not by itself prove the cause is due to increases in carbon dioxide (and so it would not prove it is human-caused).[23]
There Are Benefits That Come From Increased Carbon Dioxide In The Atmosphere.
Here is the fifth and final kind of scientific evidence we will consider.
Wayne Grudem writes: “Carbon dioxide’s effect on the global average temperature is most likely insignificant and benign…. But its effect on plant life—and therefore on all other life, which depends on plant life—is large and overwhelmingly beneficial.”[24]
Grudem then adds:
Hundreds…of peer-reviewed
scientific studies have demonstrated that increased atmospheric carbon dioxide
leads to enhanced plant growth. Indeed, on average, doubled carbon dioxide
increases plant growth efficiency by about 35%. With enhanced carbon dioxide,
plants grow better, whether they are subjected to high or lower temperatures,
or to drier or wetter soil. Consequently, their geographical range expands, and
so does the that of the various animals that depend on them. The plants also
become more resistant to diseases and pests.[25]
Conclusion To Biblical And Scientific Evidence
Having covered our first three major topics in this blog series (two of which dealt with scientific evidence and one of which dealt with biblical evidence) we can now conclude that the carrying out of God’s commission to humans, created in his image, to bring order to this world and to work with its resources God has gifted to us (including carbon fuels)—all for his glory and the benefit of each other—is not an evil. God gifting humans with carbon fuels and the ingenuity to develop them resulting in all the good outcomes we experience in our world is a very good thing, something for which we should praise and thank God.
At the same time, these gifts, like God’s gift of sex, for example, can also be used in sinful, destructive ways and with sinful, destructive outcomes. As such, the Christian should be on guard against his own tendency to misuse these gifts and should always be ready to guard against the human tendency to misuse the environment and man’s ingenuity. But it still remains, like with sex, we do not want to conclude the gift itself is necessarily evil.
As such, we should reject the current climate change doctrine we have outlined in these blog posts.
We are now ready to turn to our fourth major topic in this blog series. We need to discover why the issue of climate change is so important for Christians to consider. We will look at that tomorrow.
[1] See: “U.
S. Senate Committee on Environment And Public Works,” US Senate Minority Report
Update: Over 700 International Scientists Dissent Over Man-Made Global Warming
Claims,” Dec. 11, 2008. www.epw.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/press-releases-all?.
This is cited in Grudem, Christian
Ethics, 1145.
[2] See
“‘Global Warming Petition Project,’ Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine,
www.petitionproject.org/. This is cited in Grudem, Christian Ethics, 1145.
[4] Wayne
Grudem, Christian
Ethics, 1146-47, lists several other leading scientists who disagree
with radical climate change doctrine. He also mentions the tendency for those
who hold to climate change doctrine to bully and ostracize those who don’t
believe. In a March 29, 2017 statement to the Committee On Science, Space, And
Technology Of The U.S. House Of Representatives, climatologist Judith A. Curry
said: “Scientists with a perspective that is not consistent with the consensus
are at best marginalized (difficult to obtain funding and get papers published
by ‘gatekeeping’ journal editors) or at worst ostracized by labels of ‘denier’
or ‘heretic….’”
[9] M.
Burke, “Tricolored Herons Here Today And Gone Tomorrow,” Chesapeake Bay Journal,
29, 1: 39. Cited in the article by Johnson.
[14] Julie
Borg, “Retreat And Advance: A Greenland Glacier’s Growth Shocks Climate
Scientists,” in Notebook/Science, World (April 27, 2019): 62.
[16] Ibid,
1158-59. Grudem goes on to write about Gore’s movie (page 1159): “Gore’s movie
was judged by a British court to have so many and such serious errors that it
could no longer be shown in British government schools without an accompanying
list and refutation of its errors. Otherwise, said the judge, it would violate
an act of Parliament prohibiting political indoctrination of children.”
[17] Diana
Schoberg, “Let’s Start The Conversation” (an interview with Rassin), The Rotarian,
197, 10 (April 2019): 34.
[25] Ibid,
1160. Grudem (1160-61) goes on to cite studies that show both that higher rates
of carbon in past periods of history did not raise temperatures inordinately
and that there was more prolific plant growth in those times.
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