Today is the Day for Global Warming Salvation

Since the "fixes" for man-made global warming are rather costly and desperate, if there is any question about the reality of man-made global warming, it would seem wise to slow down and have more investigation and debate. But not so in Great Britain, according to Christopher Booker in the Daily Telegraph: (Thanks to David Mills for the link)

We have “less than 50 days” to save the planet, declared Gordon Brown last week, in yet another desperate bid to save the successor to the Kyoto treaty, which is due to be agreed in Copenhagen in six weeks’ time. But no one has put the reality of the situation more succinctly than Prof Richard Lindzen of the Massachusetts Institute of Technolgy, one of the most distinguished climatologists in the world, who has done as much as anyone in the past 20 years to expose the emptiness of the IPCC’s claim that its reports represent a “consensus” of the views of “the world’s top climate scientists”.

In words quoted on the cover of my new book, Prof Lindzen wrote: “Future generations will wonder in bemused amazement that the early 21st century’s developed world went into hysterical panic over a globally averaged temperature increase of a few tenths of a degree and, on the basis of gross exaggerations of highly exaggerated computer predictions combined into implausible chains of inference, proceeded to contemplate a rollback of the industrial age.”

The article linked above goes into more details about why there are (growing) serious questions about alleged global warming.

Why is it that radical legislation is preceded with pleas and warnings that we have to act before it's too late? For example, our American Congress's profligate spending earlier this year to "save" our economy in the nick of time. (We're still waiting for a sign of salvation.) The power-brokers write bills hundreds even more than a thousand pages thick, with fine print and all sorts of additions and caveats and regulatory sleights of hand, bills that legislators do not even read let alone understand before they vote on them. But without delay!--This must be done and there is no time to debate or read the bills--you must "trust us" with this mission or we die!

Well, there are times when there is no time to lose, as when firemen show up in a haze of smoke to show you the way out of a burning building "Now". You have to trust them to get you down or lead you through the house to safety. But we have some level of confidence in them because they, after all, have a track record we know about. (Congress has a track record, too.)

God the Savior doesn't operate in haste. He's been very patient with the human race. God took a long time preparing a people, instilling in them a sense of what the real dangers are, slowly teaching and revealing a pattern of death and life, sin and holiness, then writ large at the right time in the Person of His Son. The legislation of sin overturned in the Cross is not hard for average Joe's to understand--one  of them signed on while Jesus was still on the Cross. He gives us time, sometimes a full lifetime of many years to figure it all out and vote, finally, Yea, on the Fix of the Cross and the Resurrection. To be sure, Today is the Day of Salvation, and it is the acceptable hour. Best to act now. But tomorrow and tomorrow, as long as you are around, the invitation stands. It has no expiration date earlier than your own.

As to the fear of global warming, we should accept it in a way, but not Al Gore's global warming but The Global Warming: "I came to cast fire upon the earth; and would that it were already kindled!" What does that mean? Well, I trust Him on that one, and that's the one to worry about, and Kyoto won't be able to touch it.

Comments

[John V]

"Why is it that radical legislation is preceded with pleas and warnings that we have to act before it's too late?"

Because they know that if people take time to read and think and apply reason rather than act on emotion, the radical legislation would never pass.

[bonobo]

In order to discover what happens when things get Byzantine, one only has to look at the fate of Byzantium. It is salutary to consider who it was that sealed that fate. Plus ca change...

[Bull]

Would that the Children of God were as urgent about the salvation of men as they are the salvation of the planet.

[Michael R]

Yuval Levin and Eric Cohen wrote about how this crisis mentality has been used in the field of biomedical research, particularly concerning the embryonic stem cell research debate (in Fall 2004/Winter 2005 issue of The New Atlantis). Very good reading.

The basic argument put forward by some in the research community is that under 'normal' circumstances, we should not take such drastic steps as destroying embryos for research purposes. But we find ourselves in a situation where people are dying of disease, and we must therefore take drastic action.

The problem is: people will always be dying of disease (until Christ returns)!

Perhaps such researchers are honestly acting out of compassion for the sick and dying, but in 'Begotten or Made' Oliver O'Donovan has insightful analysis of the dangers of allowing compassion to be the driving force/emotion in leading us to action. Compassion, if not balanced by our reason and other emotions, leads us to a dangerous 'leap before we look' approach to life.

[Matt]

Scientists don't need to pontificate about theology any more than theologians need to pontificate about science. If climate scientists are as ignorant of theology as certain theologians obviously are about science, it's better for both sides to stick to their core expertise.