A few questions about climate change and global warming

Faith & Science Conversation
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Global warming and climate change is one of those topics that often comes with more controversy and confusion than any other. I used to be in the camp that climate change was this big conspiracy to control the population, citing “they used to call it global warming now it’s climate change!” and “the people that push it fly around in private jets so it must be fake!” However, I vaguely remember reading a small fact-check news article about one year ago that pushed me over the edge. Some politician had claimed that we need not worry about carbon dioxide because it is only a small fraction of the atmosphere. However, the article pointed out that the fact that carbon dioxide occurs in such a small amount that we should be worried about increases in its volume. The final nail in the coffin was reading an article from Biologos that said that we should, indeed, care about climate change. I had people of common interests telling me that it was, indeed, not a big sin to “believe” that climate change was an issue.

However, despite my change in views, I have yet to push aside the constant speculation and debate that often surrounds these topics, be it someone ridiculing my stance or a small argument popping up online every now and then. So, I was hoping to try and clear up some of this confusion.

I know how the mechanism works (certain molecules trap heat in the atmosphere and provide life on Earth; more carbon dioxide traps more heat and thus issues) but often hear people ridicule the numbers. “How do cow farts contribute so much to emissions when there were 10 million buffalo on Earth at one point?” I’ve heard things about “if they cared so much about water usage (because these arguments often get tied into nature degradation as well) why do they keep making AI data centers? If they cared so much about resource depletion, why do they allow immigration?” The hypocrisy of leaders or even more weather conspiracies (they are just making the bad storms to scare us!) often come up too.

I kinda find it sad that I need to ask people for what evidence I need to defend the idea that global warming is real, but alas, I guess I’m asking what the strongest proofs of climate change are. How did we calculate the numbers we have? How can we differentiate the evidence from how people interpret it?

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Recently we haven’t needed to calculate them, we can simply measure them.

More later perhaps.

P.S. 10 million buffalo is negligible compared to 1,500 million cattle.

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Holy cow I

Holy cow I hadn’t realized that the cow count was that high

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Never apologize for wanting to be reminded of evidence! We should be all about that here!

Somebody you should look up and listen to / follow about all this is Katharine Hayhoe. She’s got articles and interviews with Biologos. And she not only is a climate scientist, but a Christian too. Her lessons on “Global Weirding” are very accessible and designed to bring solid science into the normal person’s comprehension. Worth checking out! I’m sure she’s got videos addressing evidence too, though I haven’t rounded up which specific ones. You may easily see and zero in on stuff that interests you.

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If you are really interested, you can watch Katharine Hayhoe’s global weirding series on Nova, it’s very accessible.

I like how she always replies to people who say they “don’t believe” in climate change, that it isn’t a faith claim you believe or disbelieve, it’s a scientific claim and you either understand or don’t understand the science.

Tangentially related, but my husband and kids are big Half Alive fans, and they just released a climate change themed video/song called The Wolf. In it there is a reference to the doomsday clock (“Eighty-five seconds 'til the other shoe is gonna drop.”) which has been used since 1947 to metaphorically represent how close we are to a human-created disaster that ends the world for humanity. As usual, they deliver pretty cool choreography and deep lyrics. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uRHIqSRb7YQ

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Confusion may be true but controversy seems to only be real in the heads of the right wing populists (around the world) and Americans (that weird nation called USA). This is a bit exaggerated (sorry about the polemic approach) but not much.

The apparent controversy is trying to be flamed by those who have interests in fossil fuel-based economy. They can give money to politicians and people who speak against the scientific consensus, a bit like tobacco industry before.

The conservative believers that have bought the denial appear to be - truly sorry to say this - ‘useful fools’ in the attempts to delay the inevitable. The inevitable seems to be that the worsening catastrophes drive voters and the politicians depending on their votes to demand action against climate change. Also the business spheres that are not tied to fossil fuels have started to demand actions against climate change because the consequences of the climate change are becoming too expensive - profits drop.

Speaking straight is not popular and is likely to provoke angry comments from those who do not like what is said. I hope you are more skilful in what you tell. Anyhow, it is a fact that

  • climate has changed within a century and the change appears to be continuing faster than before;
  • the vast majority (probably >>99%) of climate researchers agree that human actions are a major reason for the current climate change, especially through the emissions of greenhouse gases;
  • the increasing average temperatures are correlated with the increasing amount of greenhouse gases, in a manner that was first predicted more than a century ago;
  • the costs of extreme weather events, including unprecented heat waves, droughts, more extreme floodings and strong hurricanes, have increased to at least tens, probably hundreds of billions per year. That is the economical cost, human suffering comes on that.

Edit:

It seems that I underestimated the economical costs of climate change. Based on two articles I read, the costs seem to be approaching a trillion dollars per year and, if the climate change continues as predicted, will rise to 2-3 trillions per year by the year 2050. If temperatures rise to +3 degrees, the global GDP is estimated to drop by 10%.

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Honestly? A fair description at this point :cry:.

Maybe trying a Jesus approach of love and understanding could work? I would never try to storm the beaches of the internet with this information. The only time I would ever bring this up would be to friends or family who want to talk.

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While AI power usage may create enough waste heat to boil the oceans, at least we’ll get human-like daily affirmations by an artificial personna that claims to like us and lets us know that everything we say is fascinating.

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All nations have their weird features. USA has a large and diverse population with more individual freedom than most countries in the world. The backgrounds and growing conditions of the people vary a lot. That has lead to diverse attitudes and opinions, from very balanced to extreme conspiracy tales. Unfortunately, as in most ‘free’ countries, the loudest voices are not the most balanced ones.
My grandpa was born in USA and I have a basically positive attitude towards USA. Despite - or maybe because - of it, I can see both the strenghts and weaknesses of the nation.

What I think is sad is that the primary god of the nation often seems to be mammon. It seems to be woven in the national ethos of everybody having the right, even an expectation, to strive towards greater wealth, from rags to riches. Self-made millionaires and billionaires are valued because they are succesful examples and models of the national ethos.

That may become a problem when we are dealing with fossil fuels and climate change. The transition from fossil fuel-based to carbon neutral economy is not easy and will temporarily reduce economical profits during the transition. Those benefitting from the transition are often different persons than those who get the big money from fossil fuel-based economy. Giving up the priviledges and wealth, or even changing the life style for ensuring the wellbeing of the future generations is not a popular idea.

Currently, the world is still dependent on the fossil fuels. The transit to carbon neutral economy takes necessarily decades, even if all players would invest fully to it. From that viewpoint, there is no possibility for abandoning the fossil fuels rapidly. We will continue using these and adding greenhouse gases to the atmosphere in the near future, for decades.

One owner of an energy company that gets the main income from selling fossil fuels through a network of gasoline stations told that they have invested a hundred million euros to testing various alternative energy sources, from deep geothermal, wind, solar, biofuels to synthetic fuels. I guess they have been a partner in nuclear energy plans also. So far, very few of the pioneering enterprises have been economically profitable. They may look promising on paper but turning the theory to industrial scale plants has not worked well enough. Although the owner strives towards slowing the climate change and transiting to carbon neutral energy sources, his advice was that switching from oil and coal to natural gas may be a temporary tactics to reducing CO2 emissions, until the various alternative energy sources become available.

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Someone threw that at me once. I was already tired of the ignorance on display and responded that the change was dumbing things down for people not smart enough to understand basic science.

I’ve encountered that one, too. I asked if the guy thought we could ignore arsenic in food because it was only a small fraction of the meal.

That’s actually a decent question. But the same could be asked of water use by cities: why not have each city build a set of giant cisterns and recycle their own water?

I had no problem telling people that a climate/warming model built by my professors at OSU in the early 1990s continued to match what I observe in my conservation work (though now it no longer applies, having been a quarter-century forecast).

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But what gets me with this question is that they assume that the only people who say climate change is a thing are the people who make the data centers. Meaning, its like they think that ONLY Bill Gates and company are actually pushing climate change (and ignore the dozens of smaller scientists on the ground, alongside dozens of other leaders too), so when the “ONLY” people that are pushing climate change are being hypocritical by destroying nature, obviously “all” the people that talk about it aren’t serious about it, and thus it’s a scam.

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An irony here is that the Gates Foundation is promoting (and funding) local-level renewable energy methods, and has urged cities to build those giant cisterns I mentioned and start re-processing their water to get free of drought issues.

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Down in the replies is it STATED that more than 99.99% of climate scientists believe that climate change is accelerating and caused by human activities. What nonsense. Richard Feynmann once states that “Religion is about faith, science is about doubt”!!! There are very few scientific conclusion with that high agreement. More than a few people went to their graves who did not believe Einstein’s theory of relativity. Climate change is natural and has been going on since the world was created. Ask a serious advocate of human caused climate change as a consequence of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere to explain what caused the Younger Dryas climate oscillations 15,000 or so years ago. Up, down, and up again while both the sea level and the carbon dioxide concentrations stayed the same. Go to John Christy’s web site and find his slides on “what he tells congress and his grandchildren”. He is from Fresno, earned a BS degree in Fresno State. Prior to his scientific career, Christy taught physics and chemistry as a missionary teacher in Nyeri, Kenya from 1973 to 1975. After earning a Master of Divinity degree from Golden Gate Baptist Seminary in 1978 he served four years as a bivocational mission-pastor in Vermillion, South Dakota, where he also taught college math. Then pursued a Ph. D. at the University of Illinois and has been at the University of Alabama at Huntsville since. John Christy: Climate Change is Not a Crisis | Tom Nelson …

YouTube · Tom Nelson

More later.

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Climate has changed in the past, that is true. The mechanisms that have caused the past climate changes are known and their effects on climate can be modelled.

That has been done and those models are what has convinced most researchers that the current climate change cannot be explained with the mechanisms that would be operating without human activity. IIRC, the natural mechanisms should be driving the climate towards a colder phase now.

Measurements show that the greenhouse gas contents in the atmosphere have rised rapidly and the average temperatures have followed the rise as predicted by earlier models.
When the observations have deviated from what has been previously predicted, the observed changes have been more rapid than predicted by the fairly conservative models.
The only exception I remember is that some earlier models did not take into account how much CO2 the oceans have absorbed. Without the CO2 sink in the oceans, the climate would be warmer.
The worrying news in this is that the oceans have already absorbed so much CO2 that they will not buffer the climate change as much as earlier. Surface waters are now warmer and feed humidity and energy to the developing storms. Also the deeper waters have now more CO2, so they do not act as strongly as sinks. Instead, acidity has increased towards levels that threaten the species that need calcareous structures to survive.

Scientists always include those who support alternative explanations, so there is never 100% agreement. Those disagreeing have tried to prove their alternative hypotheses and have not been able to do it. If someone could do it, that would be welcomed and the person would probably win a Nobel or some other prize. So far, the failed attempts have just turned more researchers towards supporting the prevailing theory. Models support the prevailing explanation but have not supported any of the alternative explanations that have been modeled so far.

It should be noted that this is not a matter of faith, just conflicting opinions about a scientific matter. The biblical scriptures do not comment on this matter, which is understandable as this is not something that is influential to our salvation.

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Good to see that you are doing well, William. Rather than rehash the topic and details again, people may follow some of the discussion in an earlier thread here: https://discourse.biologos.org/t/climate-change-hurricanes-and-witches/

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That’s like saying “There have always been bumps in the road” when your car just rammed into a three-foot high boulder.

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Well…try reading some alternate viewpoints…by people who also have a background in things. I read Koonin’s book Settled? a couple years ago…he has the background in science, is no ideologue, and reflects a slightly different interpretation. Interesting, lots of data…and a perspective borne of his own experience, knowledge, reflection. No, he doesn’t “ridicule the numbers” but there are other ways of looking at them.

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When you get what you want, what are you going to do with it?

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Here is some good news. There is a link to the full Wall Street Journal article down in the middle.

As smoke from Canadian wildfires poured into American cities last month, the

headlines poured out equally fast. Most blamed climate change. Canada’s public

broadcaster informed readers the smoky skies had “only one true fix”: Stop burning

fossil fuels. But the headlines seem to have missed the most remarkable fact about the

wildfires: Canada is having a below-average fire year. In fact, the world is on track to a

Despite What You’ve Heard, the World Isn’t on Fire - WSJ 8/12/26, 4:25 PM

https://www.wsj.com/opinion/despite-what-youve-heard-the-world-isnt-on-fire-60abc121?mod=hp_opin_pos_4 Page 2 of 5

record low in area burned.

Ottawa’s own tally released July 9 showed 1.4 million hectares burned—less than a

third of the 4.6 million hectares burned by the same date last year. Tucked into the

“quick facts” of the government’s press release, beneath ministerial quotes about

climate change driving ever more severe disasters, was the quiet admission that

wildfire activity “remains below the five-year average.” That’s understating it:

Satellite data weekly updated by the European Union confirm that Canada’s total

burned area in 2026 by Aug. 5 was below the 2012-25 average the EU uses as a

baseline.

And the statistical good news keeps coming. The U.S. this year has remained below its

2012-25 average, with its most recent measurement 20% below average as of Aug. 5.

North America and South America are at a record-low burn since 2012.

Every continent on the globe is burning less—some much less—than usual. As of Aug.

5, Oceania has burned 14% less than its 2012-25 average and Europe has burned 35%

less. Asia has a near-record low of burned area since 2012, clocking in at 41% below

average. Africa is at a record low, with current burn at 44% below average.

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To be perfectly fair, I think there is a difference between a natural phenomenon that can be seen and felt by people on this planet versus a claim that, at the time, couldn’t be proven and pushed current notions on how reality itself worked.

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