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Should we be Bothered about Global Warming?
Christ Church Lye - July 2007.

Introduction

Global Warming is an issue that is frequently in the news. It seems to be a big issue but is it? Last week a survey was published that suggested that a large number of people in our country are more concerned about graffiti on walls than global warming. Christian Aid have a big campaign on at the moment about global warming. In the letter page of their latest magazine there were a large number of letters complaining at Christian Aid for campaigning on this issue. It included comments such as "I believe that what you are doing is nothing more than scaremongering dressed up as silence", and "I am saddened to see Christian Aid nailing it's colours so firmly to the cut the carbon mast", and more. It may be that you share some of these views. Should we really be asking this question? Is it our job as Christians to address this issue? Or indeed is there really a problem at all?

I believe it would be wrong to avoid this issue for the following reasons:

1. The issue of the environment is very much part of the society of which we live in. It is in the news every week. We need to be clearly teaching the Bible and so applying it to the world around.
2. The Bible has a great deal to teach about the way we relate to the environment. The very first chapter of the Bible begins with some very positive statements about the world that God has made. We read in Genesis 1: 31 "God saw all that he had made and saw that it was very good".

Given all the uncertainties in all this however I want to begin with three questions, I acknowledge that there are many things that we don't know. I will then conclude with three statements three about things that we know for certain. The three questions are big scientific questions and I will only touch on them

Question 1: Is the planet getting warmer?

There is a lot of evidence that points this way. If you were to go to Antarctica you would find that the ice layers are very deep - up to a mile deep. If you were to drill down through that all the layers of snow laid down over the centuries that have turned into ice and look at the chemical composition of that ice it is record of temperatures over the last 600,000 years. It is clear from that in the last 50 years particularly average temperatures have changed significantly.

We can see this too if we look at more conventional measurements from weather stations. Between 1890 and 1990 the average surface temperature of the Earth increased from between 0.3 and 0.6 degrees centigrade. Half a degree centigrade may not sound like very much but of course that is the average. This t change has not been the same in every place and in some places the change in average temperature will have been much greater. Between 1987 and 1997 we had nine out of ten of the hottest years ever recorded on a global scale. The hottest year in the last 140 years was in 2005. Very very few Scientists would dispute the fact that the earth is getting warmer.

Question 2: Is the Earth getting warmer because of human activity?

This is not an easy question to answer. The World is a big place and even forecasting the weather for the following day can on occasions be extremely inaccurate. In 2005 the leaders of the Worlds eight biggest economies (The G8) met in Gleneagles in Scotland. In preparation for that Summit the leading scientists of the G8 plus those of China, India and Brazil published a joint statement about global warming which expressed their concerns. This was something that had never been done before. Publishing such a statement was completely unprecedented. The opening paragraph of this statement read as follows;

Climate Change is Real

There will always be an uncertainty of understanding a system as complex as the World's climate however there is now strong evidence that significant global warming is occurring, The evidence comes from direct measurements of rising surface air temperatures and sub surface ocean temperatures and from phenomena such as increases in average global sea levels, retreating glaciers, and changes to many physical and biological systems. It is likely that most of the warming in recent decades can be attributed to human activities. The warming has already led to changes in the Earths climate.

Carbon Dioxide can remain in the atmosphere for many years. Even with possible lowered emission rates we will be experiencing the impact of climate change throughout the 21st century and beyond. Failure to implement significant reductions in greenhouse gas emissions now will make the job much harder in the future.

Note the cautious language in that statement. "There is now strong evidence" "and "it is likely that". That is not the sort of language that newspaper headlines like but it is as good as we will get. With a system so vast and complex as a global climate we will always be dealing with probabilities.

Here, in the statement, we have a unique gathering of the World's top scientists who are clear and united. It says in the Proverbs "a wise man listens to advice" (Proverbs 12: 15). I think it is foolish not to listen to them. All decisions in life about the future are based on reasonable certainty rather than absolute certainty. We may not be able to answer the questions as clearly as we want to but it seems fairly likely that on the balance of probabilities global warming is the result of our carbon dioxide production.

So when we hear comments about global warming suggesting it is nonsense we need to treat them with a big pinch of salt. We need to remember that there are powerful forces at work who have vested interests not least in the oil industry in the United States. These groups have vigorously campaigned against the idea of climate change. When people raise questions it is always worth digging a little deeper and asking why.

Channel 4 aired a programme called "The Great Global Warming Swindle" which cast doubts on the whole idea of global warming. I did a little research into this and found out it had been produced by a man who had no scientific training, and a track record of unfairly rubbishing environmentalists. In the past he had also made a programme for Channel 4 comparing environmentalists to Nazis. Human sin can distort anything.

So let me conclude this section with a comment from a man who I do think does know what he is talking about, Sir John Houghton former Head of the Metrological Office and Chair of the Inter Governmental Panel on climate change. He writes "a strong correlation exists between atmospheric temperature and carbon dioxide content. This partly because the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is dependent factors strongly connected to the average temperature. Also the carbon dioxide content in its turn influences a temperature through the greenhouse effect".

"Over the past two hundred years human activities have increased the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere by over 30% - well above the range of it's natural variation during the last million years or more. If the increase continues and if adequate action is not taken to stem it the atmospheric carbon dioxide content will double it's pre industrial value during the 21st century. As a result the average rate of warming of the climate is expected to be great than at any time during the last 10,000 years."

Question 3: How will global warming effect us?

This question takes us on to a greater level of uncertainty.

It is possible that we may have many more occurrences of severe weather conditions. In August 2005 Hurricane Katrina hit the south coast of the United States and we saw the shock of a major first world city, New Orleans being completely flooded and evacuated. It was a shocking event, but it was only one event. By itself it does not mean anything. How do we know it was not just a one off?

In the USA Hurricanes are given names. The first of the season takes the letter A and so on through the season until the season stops in late Autumn. The Hurricane was so severe that year and there were so many Hurricanes that the authorities reached the end of the alphabet. As time that had to choose Greek letters to name their Hurricanes. It carried on with Alpha, Beta, Gamma etc.

Similar things are happening in other places in the World. In Mumbai in July 2005 the city experienced it's heaviest rainfall in 24 hours. 27 inches of rain fell in one day. This is the entire rainfall that we probably have in one year. 2004 for the first time ever a Hurricane was recorded in the South Atlantic affecting Brazil.

While some places are getting wetter, other places in the World are getting dryer. Lake Chad in Central Africa used to be the sixth largest lake in the World. It has now shrunk to one twentieth of its size over a period of 40 years. N'guigmi was a town in Niger that used to sit on the edge of the lake and have a small fishing industry. It is now 60 miles to the water and the boats are stranded on dry land.

Those are examples there are many other ways it which this may effect us, such as rising sea levels, changing patterns of disease, extinction of animals, and a massive refugee problem to name but a few. Overall we don't quite how all this will affect us nor who it will affect or how much or when. Overall it is fairly clear that climate change will affect peoples lives and probably the poorest will be affected the most.

There you have three questions. I would now like to end with the certainties. Three things that we know clearly and that should guide our actions.

We should be bothered - Genesis 1: 26-28

When God created man and woman he gave them a responsibility for his creation. You read in Genesis 1 verse 26 that God says "let them rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the air". The Hebrew word for rule here has sometimes been seen as subdue or dominate and has been taken as an excuse for human kind to selfishly and ruthlessly exploit the Earth. However the Earth is not ours. We are stewards in God's World. In biblical times stewards had a responsible job with a high status. A steward's job was to take care of thing while his master or the king were away. We see here (verse 26) that we were made in God's image. The way we rule is to reflect the way that God will rule. We are his Vice Regents that is, his Deputy Kings and Queens.

And, especially as evangelical Christians we perhaps might think that the most important thing we do is to worship evangelise or pray. However we see here that the first job we were given by God was none of these things. But to carefully look after what he has made. If you like it was to look after the garden and then recruit more gardeners. We should therefore be very bothered about damage to the environment and be concerned to use the resources that God has given us well. God has given us a clear command.

We can't save the Planet but...

Saving the Planet is a slogan but it is not a Christian slogan. God made a good perfect world but sin got in and ruined it. Listen to these words from Hosea 4: 2-3 which make the link "there is only cursing, lying and murder and adultery; they break all bounds and bloodshed follows bloodshed. Because of this the land mourns and all who live in it waste away; the beasts of the fields, the birds in the air, the fish in the sea are dying." Hosea did not have the environmental crisis that we face in mind when he wrote this. However he did see creation as one. Human sin has repercussions. Like ripples in a pond our rebellion against God affects the whole of Creation. At its root the problem behind all environmental problems is selfishness.

Sin is deeply rooted and as a consequence we cannot simply save ourselves from this simply by trying hard to be good. When faced with global warming some have tried to deny its existence. Others have turned round and said it's all very we'll use less energy. But some people in our world don't even have electricity.. In India 300,000 million people live on less then 50p per day. I find the issue of global warming uncomfortable because I am very much the problem. I recognise that my lifestyle at the moment is the one that might be destroying the planet.

It is a tough and painful issue to face. In 1997 governments from around the World reached an agreement at Kyoto in Japan to reduce CO2 emissions. Almost every country that has signed up to this has failed to reach these targets. Can we save the Planet? We know there is a problem but are we ready to address it?

Even when we do sometimes do something our solutions may cause more problems. To address dwindling oil supplies and to decrease CO2, more cars are moving to vegetable oil based fuels or alcohol. In a way this is good, but it takes land to grow these crops. A net result in the major increase in bio fuels means there is less food around especially grains, in consequence food prices will rise and the poor will go hungry. Our thinking is not big enough or kind enough to include all the people who might be affected by our decisions.

But God will save the Planet.

Our World is scared by sin but one day it will be recreated. Paul in the book of Romans writes this in chapter 8 "for all creation was subjected to frustration…in the hope that creation itself will be liberated from its bondaged decay and brought into the glorious freedom of the children of God."

So why and how do we act at the moment? We care for the environment now this is God's command. We do that as a great big signpost pointing to the future. One day Jesus will return and restore Creation to what it once was.

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