Background:
· Almost every government in the world accepts the problem of rapid global warming as a fact. The result is the 1997 Kyoto Accord which specifies how countries commit to reduce their emission of greenhouse gases. However, there are also thousands of prominent scientists who refute the disastrous scenarios predicted by the environmentalists.
o Such view believes that the earth exists to serve human needs so economic growth always has priority.
o However, Christians cannot justify irresponsible destruction of nature such as permanent pollution.
o Such view believes that humans, like all other species, are only part of the biosphere.
o However, this can evolve into radical responses which put the environment above man.
o Humans are empowered as stewards on behalf of God. We are also dependent on earth and must try our best to maintain it. The emphasis in economic development should be on sustainable growth.
· Recycling has been lauded as the best way to reduce garbage. Yet there are persistent questions about recycling. Before any definitive conclusion, recycling still appears a worthwhile cause.
· Example: The meaning of the term “pollution” has been extended to include industrial emission of carbon dioxide, which is beneficial to plant growth and harmless to human beings in ordinary concentrations. This is the result of the acceptance of the global warming hypothesis.
o large-scale melting of the polar caps,rising of the sea level, coastal cities will be flooded
o expansion of deserts, more violent weather patterns, such as hurricanes and tornadoes
o decrease in agricultural production, massive extinction of species on earth
o Past research was questionable.
o Two scientists from Harvard reconstructed the temperature estimate for the last millennium.
~ Temperature around AD1000 was about 1°C higher than today.
~ They reviewed 102 studies on climate change. The majority concluded that the 20th century was not the warmest or contained the most extreme anomaly.
o When CO2 increased rapidly after 1940, there was actually a drop in temperature between 1940 and 1975.
o In 1990, U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) predicted an increase of 3.3°C between 1990 and 2100; this was revised to 2.8°C in 1992, and to 1 to 2°C in 1995.
o In the US, complying with the Kyoto Accord will reduce the GDP by $200 billion per year, with 500,000 jobs lost. If the money is used to provide clean water and sanitation, 2 million lives could be saved.
· The media do not report any large-scale refutation of the global warming theory.
o Petition Project signed by 19,000 working scientists from all over the world states that “the large temperature increase predicted by the IPCC has not happened” and “contrary to the conventional wisdom, there does not exist today a general scientific consensus about the importance of greenhouse warming from rising levels of carbon dioxide.”
· When a prominent Danish scientist (their head of environmental research) presented an opposite point of view in a UN-sponsored conference in South Africa in 2002, he was shouted down.
· Past predictions of long-term impact have all proved to be wrong in the past.
· Question: Why are global warming proponents act irrationally, not allowing objective discussions? Because the hypothesis cannot stand up to scrunity and the defeat of the hypothesis will spell great defeat of the whole environmentalist movement. Their objective is to uphold the importance of the environment (above man), not objective scientific facts.
· “Global warming” is not proven fact as there is no irrefutable evidence one way or another.
· We should remain open-minded and accept results of objective scientific research.
· We can provide qualified support for actions to reduce pollution.
· But we cannot support drastic actions such as those specified in the Kyoto Accord as the Canadian government openly admitted that the impact has not been fully studied. Some estimates put the job loss at 100,000 (some estimate even much higher) if Kyoto is fully implemented in Canada.