THERE IS NO CLIMATE EMERGENCY

[Charles Austin]

Pastor Fienen, this is a place where your mugrumpery  is really dangerous.
Yes, there are people who will miss use anything, even the suggestion that going to church is a good idea. We are obligated to sort things out and sometimes - rather than pointing out errors of various sides - take a stand.
What is going on today is not a Marxist conspiracy, it’s not the “normal” progress of weather. It is us, And we could be bringing an end to the world quicker than God intended.

[Dan Fienen]

Pastor Fienen, this is a place where your mugrumpery  is really dangerous.
Yes, there are people who will miss use anything, even the suggestion that going to church is a good idea. We are obligated to sort things out and sometimes - rather than pointing out errors of various sides - take a stand.
What is going on today is not a Marxist conspiracy, it’s not the “normal” progress of weather. It is us, And we could be bringing an end to the world quicker than God intended.

But is this a time when Something must be done so Anything that is proposed as a solution, no matter how short sighted or ultimately counterproductive, should, nay must be done?

[peter_speckhard]

Global warming is a lot like Covid. The only real certainty is that we don’t have all the variables. The Left, in both cases, benefits from alarmism because most of the solutions are things the Left wants to do anyway regardless of whether the globe is warming. This is why Biden has declared Covid over but also won’t accept an end to the declared state of emergency. Emergency powers are handy. People who would fight tooth and nail for more power to the UN, global equity, blaming the West for the problems of the world, etc. can only get their way as long as people think they’re solving an emergency situation.

[Fletch1]

To me it is a matter of priorities, probable risk, and probable benefit.

Case 1 - the earth is warming, mankind is responsible, mankind can possibly prevent it with expenditure of trillions of dollars by first world countries.

Case 2 - the earth goes through warming and cooling cycles, mankind might have a small contribution to those cycles, expenditures that could be spent on perhaps fractionally modifying the warming and cooling cycles are better spent on real short term and long term needs, e.g. feeding the hungry, disaster relief, developing energy sources for when fossil fuels become prohibitively expensive, and educating non-believers about the Gospel.

Case 3 - do nothing, wring hands, and watch the news 24/7/365 to keep blood pressure up. 

My scientific view is Case 2 is clearly the highest priority, has acceptable risk, and is extremely likely the most benefit to humans, and the best stewardship of God's gifts. 

[Donald_Kirchner]

And we could be bringing an end to the world quicker than God intended.

 

[Charles Austin]

Peter writes:
The Left, in both cases, benefits from alarmism because most of the solutions are things the Left wants to do anyway regardless of whether the globe is warming.

I comment:
And the right benefits from your quietism because it does what do you want to do.  It Minimizes government regulation and activity. You can only get that if there is no real feeling of threat to the environment.

[peter_speckhard]

Peter writes:
The Left, in both cases, benefits from alarmism because most of the solutions are things the Left wants to do anyway regardless of whether the globe is warming.

I comment:
And the right benefits from your quietism because it does what do you want to do.  It Minimizes government regulation and activity. You can only get that if there is no real feeling of threat to the environment.

True. That is my point. Quite apart from any emergency of pandemic of climate, what you want is more regulation and government control. What I want is less of those things. Massive exceptions to the normal and sky-is-falling emergencies justify your preferences. The normal, manageable problems of human existence justify my preferences.

[Charles Austin]

Perhaps, Peter et al., this time the sky is falling. But you won’t believe it because the diagnosis comes from people you don’t like.

[peter_speckhard]

Perhaps, Peter et al., this time the sky is falling. But you won’t believe it because the diagnosis comes from people you don’t like.

Not true. I just don’t think you put enough energy into your important word “perhaps.” And your proposed solutions do not hold up the sky even if it were falling.

[RDPreus]

I suppose it is theoretically true that this time the sky really is falling.  And it's theoretically true that the next time Charlie Brown tries the kick the football Lucy won't pull it away at the last moment.

[Tom Eckstein]

When I was getting my master's degree in history of science at Oregon State, I took a class from an atmospheric scientist who was one of the authors of the then most recent IPCC report on climate change. One day, he griped about the conservative media pundits who accused him of having an agenda. He paused as he finished his gripe to say that his only agenda was wanting to get home on friday afternoons so that he could drink a beer and spend the weekend playing with his kids.

I've interacted with atmospheric scientists throughout my graduate work and I've generally found them decent and reasonably. Not agents of some great marxist conspiracy.

With all due humility, I'm not sure the same can be said for the authors of the report that Pastor Boland shared in the first post. Berkhout and du Berger have degrees in acoustics, a branch of physics unrelated to climate science. Berkhout worked for Royal Dutch/Shell as an exploration geophysicist. Dunleavy appears to have been wine grower with no scientific degree at all. Forbes is a geologist who runs a political coalition whose funding source I couldn't dig up. Foss was a philosopher.

All this is to say that the report is put together by a collection on non-experts. This seems disingenuous. My academic training is in 20th century history of science. If I claimed to be an expert in 16th century reformation history, I would hope that folks on this forum would challenge that claim.

At any rate, I can recommend the book Merchants of Doubt, which shows the origins of the climate denial lie in pretty clear historical terms. I know one of the authors reasonably well and can say that he served this country honorably in the service before taking a job a NASA. There's a punchy documentary based on the book as well.

Here's a link to the book: https://www.amazon.com/Merchants-Doubt-Handful-Scientists-Obscured/dp/1608193942
and to the movie: https://www.sonyclassics.com/merchantsofdoubt/

I don't like reading stuff by non-experts on either side of the issue (and there are plenty of them!).  However, even the climate science experts have been shown to skew the data - you just have to do the research to realize this.  The problem is that such research into how the climate data is skewed is difficult for the non-expert.  That is why I loved reading Unsettled? by Steven Koonin who is a climate science expert (he even worked under the Obama administration!) who shows how the data has, indeed, been skewed by the experts and concludes that there is NO climate emergency.  Read his book.

https://www.amazon.com/Unsettled-Climate-Science-Doesnt-Matters/dp/1950665798/ref=sr_1_1?crid=33KZ0L500CB32&keywords=Unsettled%3F&qid=1669241682&sprefix=unsettled+%2Caps%2C174&sr=8-1

[peter_speckhard]

Talk of trusting experts is fine; everyone has to do that in many areas of life from law to medicine to car repair. That doesn’t make experts authoritative. I know some very smart, reasonable people who distrust the medical establishment and put at least some stock in alternative health care. And we have nine SCOTUS justices because even people at the very pinnacle of expertise often have serious disagreements.

That is why the rage against dissent is so suspicious on Covid and Global Warming (and increasingly, Trans issues). Experts who don’t agree with the established agenda are simply declared quacks on no other grounds than that they come to different conclusions. That’s because the agenda is not pursuit of knowledge but control of mass behavior. Whenever a heretic expert gets deplatformed, the consensus experts are exposed as political hacks.

[JoshuaMc]

Tom,

I've encountered Koonin's book and been tempted to use bits of it in an undergraduate course I teach. The problem with him is again that he's not a climate expert. If you look at his dissertation, he's trained in quantum mechanics. He also had a high-profile position at BP. He's not an atmospheric scientist and his graduate students have called him out on his narrative in Unsettled.

My impression is that if you look at atmospheric scientists and cyrologists and oceanographers, there is a really strong consensus that global warming is real and problematic for our ability to maintain our ways of life as we know them right now.

The dissent tends to come from physicists and geologists who have worked for the oil industry, or parts of the government like DOE that have traditionally been sympathetic to the industry. Again me claiming to be a reformation expert.

This dynamic helps illuminate the "rage" against dissent. There isn't really significant dissent among climate experts. The the dissenters are folks on the fringe of the discipline or not even on the fringe who claim expertise. Maybe the analogy is the pastor down the street with no MDiv but with a congregation twice the size of one of our Lutheran parishes that siphons off members because "they're so spirit filled." You can't have a doctrinal discussion with that pastor because he'll move the goalposts over and over again, all the while claiming to be rooted in biblical truth.

[peter_speckhard]

Tom,

I've encountered Koonin's book and been tempted to use bits of it in an undergraduate course I teach. The problem with him is again that he's not a climate expert. If you look at his dissertation, he's trained in quantum mechanics. He also had a high-profile position at BP. He's not an atmospheric scientist and his graduate students have called him out on his narrative in Unsettled.

My impression is that if you look at atmospheric scientists and cyrologists and oceanographers, there is a really strong consensus that global warming is real and problematic for our ability to maintain our ways of life as we know them right now.

The dissent tends to come from physicists and geologists who have worked for the oil industry, or parts of the government like DOE that have traditionally been sympathetic to the industry. Again me claiming to be a reformation expert.

This dynamic helps illuminate the "rage" against dissent. There isn't really significant dissent among climate experts. The the dissenters are folks on the fringe of the discipline or not even on the fringe who claim expertise. Maybe the analogy is the pastor down the street with no MDiv but with a congregation twice the size of one of our Lutheran parishes that siphons off members because "they're so spirit filled." You can't have a doctrinal discussion with that pastor because he'll move the goalposts over and over again, all the while claiming to be rooted in biblical truth.

What is a non-expert to make of experts who are repeatedly proven wrong? At what point can we call them discredited experts?

[Donald_Kirchner]

Perhaps, Peter et al., this time the sky is falling. But you won’t believe it because the diagnosis comes from people you don’t like.

It must be a frightening world for one who thinks that God is not in control, manifested by:

It is us, And we could be bringing an end to the world quicker than God intended.