The Religion Of Global Warming
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RELIGION IN THE NEWS
Now, Religion in the News, a report and comment on religious trends and events being covered by the media. This week’s item is from, cnsnews.com, December 2, 2004, with a headline: Fear of Global Warming Linked To Religious Belief. An MIT meteorologist Wednesday dismissed alarmist’s fears about human induced global warming as nothing more than religious beliefs. Do you believe in global warming? That is a religious question. So is the second part, are you a skeptic or a believer? said Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor Richard Linzen, in a speech to about 100 people at the National Press Club in Washington D.C. Linzen is a professor at MIT’s Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences. Essentially, if whatever you are told is alleged to be supported by all scientists, you don’t have to understand the issue anymore, you simply go back to treating it as a matter of religious belief, Linzen said. Once a person becomes a believer of global warming you never have to defend this belief except to claim that you are supported by all scientists except for a handful of corrupted heretics, Linzen added. According to Linzen, climate alarmist’s have been trying to push the idea that there was a scientific consensus on dire climate change. Alarmist’s predictions of more hurricanes, the catastrophic rise in sea levels, the melting of the global poles, and even the plunge into another ice age are not scientifically supported, Linzen said. Recent reports of a melting polar ice cap were dismissed by Linzen as an example of the media taking advantage of the public’s scientific illiteracy. The thing you have to remember about the Arctic is that it is an extremely variable part of the world, Linzen said. Although there is melting going on now, there has been a lot of melting that went on in the 1930’s, and then there was freezing. So, by isolating this section they are essentially taking people’s ignorance of the past, he added.
Tom:
Dave, this is not right up to date news, and I selected it for that reason. Going back looking over some article on global warming, I went over many of them, and this address by Dr. Linzen, I thought was really appropriate. It goes back to 2004, or actually the end of the year, so it’s a couple of years old, but what he’s saying here is so important. We jump on things, or people promote or push an idea without the facts, yet it’s something, either it’s an agenda that agrees with them or fits into their own agenda, and all of a sudden we have the sheep running to and fro.
Dave:
Yeah, Tom, unfortunately, it seems we give an opportunity for certain people within the church to jump on this, and then become the experts and now we’re going to warn everyone and the church is going to be in the forefront of rescuing the world from global warming and we’re going to take on another cause, and we’ve talked about that, dealt with it a bit in The Berean Call. This thing goes in cycles, I mean you have global warming back in the Middle Ages for more than a century, and then it cooled off, it goes up and down. There are people with certain special interests, they want to take advantage of this sort of thing. But anyway, Tom, you’ve been doing some research on this.
Tom:
Well, first of all, who is this man that we’ve given time here to present his view? He’s MIT, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the Department of Earth, Atmosphere and Planetary Sciences. Now you would think this guy would be objective about it, right? That he would have some information that would be absolutely solid. But then he says, we didn’t go over all of the article, but he says the most healthy attitude that you can have with regard to things of science, the scientists themselves, they need to be somewhat skeptical about things that come along.
Dave:
Right, particularly this sort of thing. I won’t go back and mention Y2K, but anyway—
Tom:
Well, that’s worth mentioning.
Dave:
Yeah, the people really jumped on that. The church—here we are in Bend, and I well remember when the Bend Ministerial Association was going to lead Christians in rescuing Bend. We’ve got a huge river running through Bend, and they are going to rescue them from the water shortage and from food shortages, and so forth and so on. And Tom, it was a joke but they had experts, Christian experts that came through Bend started this along. Here we have another case very much like it, because we’ve got now Christians have jumped on this and there are groups of Christians who are really going to lead the charge against global warming, and we’re going to change our way of life, and so forth, and it’s just another fad—I’m sorry!
Tom:
Dave, when I was in graduate school there were a couple of big issues. Talk about protest, talk about getting the word out, one was zero population growth, I mean, that was a big deal.
Dave:
Oh. No.
Tom:
But then that was backed up by the idea, written by a couple of professors, a book written by them---I can’t remember the title of it---but it said that we were going to run out of food. These things got people alarmed, they got them going and so on and so forth, but nothing ever materialized with regard to these issues, and we spent a lot of time, a lot of energy, for what?
Dave:
Tom, I don’t want to be too hard on anybody, or even hard at all on anyone, but we’re talking about attitude here, and let me give Israel an example. You go to Israel and you cross the border into Egypt, or you cross the border into Jordan, or cross the border into Lebanon, which I have done, it’s the same soil, the same climate, and Israel out produces these people ten to one. Now, why is that? And Jesus said: The poor you will always have with you. I have helped poor people and I believe in helping poor people. There are some people that circumstances have just become too great for them, but there are other people, you can help them and help them and help them, and they never help themselves. Part of the problem with famine around the world is, Yeah, there are wells, but why should we go over there and dig wells for these people? Can’t their government, or can’t they dig the wells themselves. And then there is some soil that’s arid and so forth. Israel manages, somehow, to grow crops out of desert sand. So, there is some initiative has to be taken, and sometimes you can undo the situation by giving too much help. Tom, I don’t know what to do, it is a big problem. But anyway, these things are with us, as Jesus said, they go on and on and let’s not get alarmed but let’s try to do what we can.
Tom:
Do what we can but maintain an attitude of healthy skepticism about these things, don’t just run or be alarmed because somebody is running with a flag—this way or that way.