Scot linked to an article earlier this year: Obama moves to separate politics and science. When Scot brought this up (see here) he emphasized and directed conversation toward the issue of stem cell research - clearly an important issue and one well worth discussion. The CNN article, and the changes introduced by the Obama administration, encompass more than just this however. Obama has also moved to strengthen funding for basic science research, to encourage energy and green research, and to support efforts aimed at environmental reform. This is a topic that is also worth discussion - although perhaps it will not be quite so heated. It also ties in nicely with the post on Romans 8, Scot's posts on eschatology, Wright's view of our hope - and perhaps even Scot's view of the Kingdom Gospel.
Environmental issues provide an example where the Christian track record is not stellar - in fact, I would say abysmal. Two factors (greed and faith) have led to a callous disregard for the environment and the care of the earth at times (note added: this is not a Christian problem as much as a human problem, however there are specific "Christian" rationalizations for this disregard). Certainly many Christians have claimed that, if we are, after all, living in the end times, if Armageddon is coming and the world will end in a firestorm, why worry about pollution, renewable energy, global warming, or acid rain? But if the new creation is not a destruction of the world and the space-time universe - but a healing and a restoration - everything is changed.
What should be the Christian response to the challenges of pollution, global warming, and renewable energy?
And more contentiously - what should the Obama administration be doing about it? Laws and regulations to promote green practice? Funding for basic research? Incentives for private research and development?
If you wish to contact me directly you may do so at rjs4mail [at] att.net.
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Thank you Ron #33. This to me is faith seeking understanding. The best approach is to continue to present the peer-reviewed science as well as possible to everyone as the basis for broader political and personal positions. At some point maybe a proportion of people will accept good science in other areas to the extent they do in medicine.
Ron @ #33 at #48. To me this is Faith seeking understanding. Our goal should be to present the best peer-reviewed information as the basis for political and personal decisions. Maybe we could get to the place where people accept the conclusions of other kinds of scientists and practitioners that they do for medical science.
Thanks Ron. Can you comment on this portion of the Christy interview?
Q: "During your House Ways and Means testimony, you showed a chart juxtaposing predictions made by NASA's Jim Hansen in 1988 for future temperature increases against the actual recorded temperature increases over the past 20 years. Not only were the actual increases much lower, but they were lower than what Hansen expected if there were drastic cuts in CO2 emissions - which of course there haven't been. [Hansen is a noted scientist who was featured prominently in Al Gore's global warming documentary, "An Inconvenient Truth."] Hansen was at that hearing. Did he say anything to you afterwards?"
A: "We really don't communicate. We serve on a committee for NASA together, but it only deals with specific satellite issues. At the Ways and Means hearing, he was sitting two people down from me, but he did not want to engage any of the evidence I presented. And that seems to be the preferred tactic of many in the alarmist camp. Rather than bring up these issues, they simply ignore them."
(Contacted by Fortune, Hansen acknowledges that his 1988 projections were based on a model that "slightly" overstated the warming created by a doubling in CO2 levels. His new model posits a rise of 3 degrees Celsius in global temperatures by 2100, vs. 4.2 degrees in the old one. Says Hansen, "The projections that the public has been hearing about are based on a climate sensitivity that is consistent with the global warming rate of the past few decades." Christy's response: "Hansen at least admits his 1988 forecasts were wrong, but doesn't say they were way wrong, not 'slightly,' as he states." Christy also claims that even Hansen's revised models grossly overestimated the amount of warming that has actually occurred.)
Karl,
OK, I’ll comment. Unfortunately, it’s a little long.
I am not familiar with the specific chart or with the specific encounter between Hansen & Christy the article refers to. However, since 1988 and even now the estimates of climate sensitivity have ranged between 2 and 6 degrees for a doubling of atmospheric CO2. Because of the complexity of the climate system the real value of the sensitivity is uncertain, and this range of values for it is a matter of serious debate within the climate change community. If Hansen is using a different number today than he was 20 years ago, that in itself says nothing about his competence or his integrity.
To comment on the comparisons of predictions of temperature rise (whatever they were) for the 20 years from 1988 to the present -- global temperature data is very “noisy”, as can be seen by looking at a chart of annual values of global average temperature over the last century (http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/2008/Fig1.gif). If the only driver of global temperature were the increasing greenhouse gas content of the atmosphere, a slow but steady increase would be observed. In fact there factors that drive the global temperature both up and down from one year to the next (most notably the el Nino/la Nina oscillations in the Pacific), and magnitude of these effect are larger than the annual increase due to greenhouse gases. While the trend over the last 100 years is definitely up (see the chart), the “noise” is such that during the last 100 years there are 20 year periods during which the temperature trend is constant or even slightly negative. In other words twenty years is really too brief an interval for making an accurate determination of the temperature increase due to greenhouse gases.
The quibbling within the third paragraph (the one in parenthesis) strikes me as a bit unseemly. As I mentioned, there is no reason to berate Hansen for using a value of three rather than 4.2 for climate sensitivity (the impression I have is that generally people are more confident that it has a value of around 3 than they were twenty years ago). Furthermore, what the temperature will be in 2100 depends on at least two other factors: first, the amount of CO2 we put into the atmosphere between now and then, and second on the rate at which the climate responds to the increase. Both of these are unknown – the first because it depends on how humans get their energy in the future, and this – duh -- has yet to be determined.
The second is problematic because while adding CO2 to the atmosphere changes the energy balance of the earth, it takes time for the planet to come back into balance, which it does by adjusting its temperature. The oceans are the primary actors in this process –covering 70% of the earth, they have a huge capacity to absorb and store heat energy. They are warm (sort of) on top, and cold on bottom, they move around, and sort of flip over every 800 years or so. Until the oceans warm up, the new balance will not be achieved, and no one knows exactly what that time is, but reasonable guesses are on the order of several decades to a century or more. Thus if the temperature has not gone up as much as Hansen originally predicted, it may not be because the sensitivity he used was wrong, but because the earth is taking longer than anticipated to respond.
What is often lost in such discussions about using high or low sensitivities, is that even if we use the “low” number of 3 degrees, such an increase is very, very likely to produce significant climate disruptions, mostly bad, with serious consequences for huge swathes of humanity. Continuing on our current fossil fuel consumption trajectory we will easily double the pre-industrial levels of CO2 in the atmosphere well before 2100. This would make avoiding such an increase in temperature impossible.
ronspross@gmail.com
I've been traveling and am late following some of these discussions, but wanted to mention a good Christian resource for some of these things. As in some other issues, it seems like the UK Christian community (perhaps due to different politics?) contributes quite constructively. There is something there called the John Ray Initiative.
The website is:
http://www.jri.org.uk
If you click on "Briefings" you will see many useful summaries at an accessible level, some primarily scientific and some more theological. The Sir John Houghton you see there on some of the briefings is one of the leading climate scientists in the world.
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