I really appreciate your response and views. Taking it one paragraph at a time. On your second paragraph…
We are told that 98 or 99% of scientists agree on this global warming/sustained development agenda. Then I read that that statement was based on a biased and flawed research project which largely ignored dissenters. But the president, media, and others jump all over it. Now, the fierce proponents of more government control, using global warming as an excuse, attack anyone who wants to question the actual facts and data, labeling them as deniers. This is very insulting and downright mean.
As I wrote earlier, and supported by the article which I posted, most (if not all) of the climate prediction models have proven to be incorrect in past predictions. The wold ecology is too huge and complex for anyone to claim that they completely understand all human and natural effects, to a level that would justify that government destroy businesses, and possibly the whole U.S. economy (even more than has already been done). Do you know that the EPA has become so powerful that it is regulating people’s ponds on private land, sometimes disrupting or even destroying their lives? What happened to the land of the free? Freedoms are being systematically taken away from citizens on a daily basis.
That said, I do agree that we should all have an individual awareness of the need to keep this beautiful planet clean and to be conservative in our use of its limited resources.I just don’t like being lied to in order for them to scare us into accepting more government intrusion in our lives. Let’s have a discussion about the subject without one side shutting down the other side in order to advance their agenda.
Why All Christians Should Heed Pope Francis’ Call to “Care for Our Common Home” | The BioLogos Forum
I do agree with your last two paragraphs. I also think that our democratic capitalist system is the best experiment yet. Unfortunately it has been hijacked by corrupt politicians and greedy big business. Though it still beats communism (in my opinion).
I was searching for a quote that I read where someone, I think from the UN, stated that a communist government would be the best way to stop global warming. I didn’t find that exact quote, but here is a good one.
Quote from the UN’s Own “Agenda 21”: “Effective execution of Agenda 21 will require a profound reorientation of all human society, unlike anything the world has ever experienced a major shift in the priorities of both governments and individuals and an unprecedented redeployment of human and financial resources. This shift will demand that a concern for the environmental consequences of every human action be integrated into individual and collective decision-making at every level.”
That’s pretty close to calling for a one-world communist-style government.
More good quotes, exposing the agenda, may be found here:
Enjoy!
It is an interesting assortment of quotes … from a wide variety of personages. I do agree with some of the sentiments expressed —alarmism in the media is indeed annoying, and does sell news. We’ve already seen what alarmism, emotions, and fear can do … we are willing to start wars over it.
Something I saw repeatedly among all the quotes: “we’re running out of time!” …which was usually given without any context. Running out of time for what? It’s pretty hard to disagree with the sentiment because it certainly is true and always has been, but it isn’t news. I will die; you will die —we are certainly running out of time individually. And it has always been assumed by most sober thinkers that the earth (much less the civilizations on it) don’t and won’t last forever. So “we” collectively are running out of time too. We’ll have one fewer minutes to the end of civilization when I’m finished typing this than we did when I started. Thinkers knew this thousands of years ago, and still know it today. It isn’t news.
So here’s me. Typing away. I don’t think I’m being hysterical; no promoted panic to be seen here. Maybe I should be. If I was intimately aware of all heinous evils taking place this very moment it would probably be impossible not to be hysterical (the press sure does try … and then when we are all deadened to it they have to try even harder; it’s quite the arms race). But it is a fact that we can’t live like that, pretending to carry the world on our backs every moment. Our backs just aren’t that big.
But my back is big enough to respond in small ways --I rode bike in this morning instead of driving. I want to promote prudent choices to help the big push (not panic) towards sane, future-looking policy by who I vote for. I vote once every few years with my ballot box, but my more important votes happen nearly every day with my money and time; sometimes for good, too often for ill. I’m willing to hear criticisms about the many habits of affluence I still indulge in that push in wrong directions --and maybe I can be cajoled into changing those. But it does seem to always take cajoling.
And the government is one of those “cajolers” that can be (is) even used by God. “For rulers are not a cause of fear for good behavior, but for evil.”, (Romans 13:3 — you should be impressed that an Anabaptist is quoting from that chapter!) And that was written during a hated totalitarian Roman regime. Do you obey speed limits? Fasten seat belts? If you are always looking out for those dreaded patrols, then what Paul wrote applies directly to you. But those who cultivate safer driving habits never worry about such things because they don’t have to. It is big government intruding directly in our lives and telling us what we can and cannot do. As a results we have fewer fatalities per passenger-mile now than ever before. As a cyclist trying to share paved roads, I thank God every day for big government. Yes, it does bad and nasty things too that should be resisted (and certainly not supported) --Paul’s blind spot in that particular Romans passage. But his general message still stands.
I think it was C.S. Lewis who somewhere wrote about how we should (but rarely do) devote as much effort under the motivation of love as we would under the motivation of a whip. It may be a lasting commentary on the frail state of our loves that more results are extracted from us under the threat of the lash.
Meanwhile, since we’ve already enjoyed your site with a lot of great anecdotal quotes, how bout a site that just shows and discusses the data? http://climate.nasa.gov/evidence/
Of course … it is a government site, so you probably have reasons for writing that off. But you should pay attention there too. I checked, and I didn’t see any panic or hysteria there. Just information, and yes … interpretation. No escaping that last one. But if you do read up, then it may help you avoid harboring Maxwell’s demon (the little guy that opens the trapdoor of your brain whenever you have “friendly” data/interpretations coming your way, and then slams it tight and battens down the hatches whenever contrary information is loitering in your vicinity.)
And being aware of my own susceptibility to the same, I do try to welcome opportunities to read similar (non-raging) informational sites that endeavor to show why AGW data is wrong, misinterpreted, or given unwarranted confidence.
Oh — and if I may get away with adding in one more web site reference, here is a good one with explanation on why there can be confidence that current CO2 rises comes, more or less, with our human signature on it; I.e. the ‘A’ in AGW.
I wasn’t going to read this article. Maybe I shouldn’t have. When a pope declares something about caring for our common home, it is a warning to me to ignore it. Especially a pope who in one of his first press statements as the new pope, declared he would pray to Mary about some issue. Really? And we should trust the words of this non-scientist who also has such a distorted view of our relationship to God… we should trust his words about 'our common home"? My neighbor’s beliefs have more significance to me.
But I read some of the comments as well, and would like to opine on a couple. First our addiction to oil. This is an oversimplistic statement. We are not addicted to oil, but to what it will do for us. We are addicted to daily travel at high speeds. We are addicted to heating our homes, and being able to have light at the touch of a switch. At a reasonable affordable cost. If a nuclear vehicle could do this for us, or a solar powered car, or geothermal heat, we would be good with that as consumers, as long as costs were comparable. We switch from gasoline to propane or to natural gas. We have switched from coal to gas and diesel and hydroelectric. We are no more addicted to oil than we are to eating chicken. We may like some things better than other, but will switch quite easily if costs, convenience, dependability are ensured. It is lifestyle, not oil, that we are addicted to.
In my own work, I have investigated some climate data over the last nine years in Alberta. I have compared GDD (growing degree days) across the province and compared it to the thirty year normal. The ACIS site will allow anyone to do that. I have discovered that across the province, the last nine years have been similar to the thirty year normal, with small changes either up or down being relatively insignificant. Except for two locations in the far north end of the province, where the average GDD in the last nine years has increased by 25%. This is significant. It will be more significant if this new average sustains itself over the next ten years. This is causing a huge deficit in growing potential for an area only 200km south of the North West Territory border, due to an already existing average moisture deficit. It means that climate here is approaching similarity to some towns in irrigation districts that are about 1000 km farther south. Crops have been grown here for more than 100 years, but the potential for more crops and higher yields is increasing… but some irrigation could be beneficial. One of the largest rivers in Canada flows through this area, and even using a very small part of the water in this river could provide huge benefits in conjunction with the general warming in this location.
Just like evolution is not the sum total of science, and in some cases debatable whether it is science, so climate change is not the sum total of environment. There are many other issues besides, such as use of groundwater, air pollution, water pollution, soil pollution, destruction of habitat, pesticides, replanting trees, repairing fishways, overfishing, over hunting, destruction of farmland, loss of farmland, which are all important environmental issues, and would continue to be serious environmental issues even if climate change was not a factor. Conflating caring for creation with only one major issue such as climate change is harmful to our thought processes, and can lead to unintended consequences which actually become harmful to the environment.
JohnZ and Eddie mention local areas with little warming, or even with exceptional cooling. But the global averages are very clearly warming, and many biological indicators around the world confirm this (and falsify one of the climate skeptic’s favorite tropes of past years, that the increase in global mean temp is an artifact of growing “heat islands” around cities).
However, I want to highlight a different aspect of the Pope’s encyclical, which illustrates the danger of trying to set policy based on theology instead of reason. Because of Catholic theology, the pope rejects out of hand any attempt to control population growth by birth control. Yet there is no way that we can take care of the earth and its human and non-human inhabitants if population continues to grow without bounds. Easy access to birth control is one of the most important elements of any solution to the earth’s problems.
The Catholic church’s official attitude towards birth control (which I do not think is shared by Protestants) is a prime example of the damage that irrational, non-negotiable theological beliefs of certain sects can have on the world at large.
Lou, your comment indicated that you commented on my comment without reading it very well. I said nothing about cooling, and the main point I made was that two locations in the far north were “significantly” higher in temperature over the last nine years. I did not dwell on the rest of the province, except as a contrast. I did not do a statistical analysis of the rest of the province, which might have shown a small increase (statistically significant, but not biologically significant perhaps). Global averages might be interesting, but it is always at the local level that the rubber meets the road. These two northern locations of increase might be all it takes to increase Alberta’s global average, since they represent possibly 20% of the province… if so, a 25% increase here would represent an overall five % increase for the province. But this is speculation at this point since these numbers at the Alberta level have not been mathematically examined to my knowledge.
It is interesting how in the last 200 years as population grows in spite of Malthusian predictions, food production has grown faster. This doesn’t mean that it has no end, but the reliability of pessimistic predictions is so far proven to be nil. So far there has been no damage (NO damage) from any RC policy on birth control. Let me reiterate: no damage so far. And I am not a rom Catholic.
@loujost
Protestants may not share the Catholic view on contraception (though some do, and I have noticed anti-contraception rhetoric becoming more popular in certain segments of Evangelicalism), but a certain segment of Protestants has labeled all hormonal contraceptives (the Pill, DepoProvera, patches, etc) and IUDs as “abortifacients,” based on outdated and misunderstood studies and unfortunately misinformed FDA drug labeling.
In majority world countries where women are asking for access to female managed birth control (i.e. not condoms, which require cooperation from men who are not always so willing to cooperate in male dominated hierarchical societies), and where poor women’s main access to health care is at charity run clinics, this can be a problem. Christian charities find that providing birth control (especially hormonal birth control) is unacceptable to a segment of their Western donor base who see it as either the equivalent of providing abortions (even though it’s just contraception) or as promoting promiscuity. Never mind that in some of these cultures women may pay for promiscuity with their lives. Never mind that these women are married, often at very young ages, and delaying or spacing pregnancies is a critical matter of women’s and infant health.
It is yet another area where a disheartening number of Christians give no voice to science or reason. I mean, if I read that the Pill causes abortions on Facebook, it must be so, right? That’s where I learned that vaccinations cause autism and essential oils cure mental illness…
If you want to see some of the craziness, check out this CT blog post and the vitriol it generated: Contraception Saves Lives | Thin Places | A blog by Amy Julia Becker on Faith, Family, and Disability.
And the clarification post that generated even more vitriol:
Questioning Margaret Sanger | Thin Places | A blog by Amy Julia Becker on Faith, Family, and Disability.
If we can’t even convince Christians that access to birth control is a good idea based on compassion for majority world child brides who are dying because of pregnancy related complications, my bet is there is no way we are going to convince them its a good idea because of overpopulation and environmental concerns.
JohnZ, if you read my comment more carefully, you will see that I was responding to both you and Eddie. You said your local area had not warmed, and Eddie said his area was exceptionally cool in recent years. I never said you claimed your area had cooled.
Global averages are based on local data of course, and almost all places on earth are now significantly warmer than they were in the seventies. In that sense, the global averages tell local stories. A few exceptional areas do not falsify global warming. I think you would agree with that.
You claim that the birth control policy of the RCC causes no harm. I suspect that you have never spent significant time in rural Latin America or Africa, where high birth rates lead to increased poverty and massive unsustainable destruction of the environment. Yes, people are still managing (mostly) to grow enough food to prevent famine, but this comes at the cost of rapid deforestation and nearly complete replacement of nature by crop monocultures. If we care about the planet, we must employ birth control. Indeed, we should have arrested population growth decades ago.
However, in practice, most of the developed world is educated enough to know when to ignore the RCC. I think something like 90% of US Catholics ignore the church’s prohibition of birth control. I expect that education will also defeat RCC theology eventually in the Third World.
Christy, thanks very much for highlighting the human cost of antiquated, irrational theological positions on birth control. I am disappointed to hear that even some generic (non-RCC) Christian charities are withholding birth control in Third World countries. This is practically criminal.
These debates are often restricted initially to CO2 concentrations, and occasionally widen to include impact of western affluence and waste on AGW. Yet the overall problem has been, and will continue to be, the way we use our finite resources and the harm this brings to our environment and nowadays, this can be seen on a global scale. The politicising of AGW distorts this further, until a ‘bogeyman’ (fossil fuels and especially coal) become the ‘source of all evil’ leading us to disaster.
The issue has been, for the best part of the last century, and well into this one, that of environmentally harmful industrial activities and technology, combined with consumerism and huge waste. Technologies that rely on fossil fuels can be improved to use less fuel and thus lower emissions of ALL pollutants (this includes CO2, S, N, particulates, Hg, Pb, and a host of other harmful emissions). Ultimately emissions may be eliminated by separating and using these as raw materials for useful products. Initially higher efficiency brings economic and environmental benefits; e.g. coal fuelled power stations can operate with 45% power generation and up to 90% overall thermal efficiency when low grade heat is used for heating. Extraction of materials can be done with zero-discharge technology (it is ironic that current production of solar panels is energy intensive and the extraction process emits harmful substances). Plastic can be recycled into useful products, water can be conserved, and we in the West need not throw away about 40% of the food we produce. The list goes on.
The environmental and consumer problem is obviously a product of Western industrialisation – the ability to clean up our nations and planets is also within the west’s capabilities. The biggest impediment is the enormous capital sunk into Western industrialisation. The overall solution(s) can be implemented when developed nations work with developing countries to make the profound changes required for an environmentally benign industrial and technological base. The planet can sustain the present population and its current growth (it is odd that family size choices are advocated by Westerners for the poorer nations - I sense hypocrisy in this matter). We need the will and faith to make the required changes – which, ironically, could improve every nation’s economic and environmental health. A good start can be made by advocating a paradigm shift in the use of fossil fuels and power.
I work in Latin America, in a rural indigenous area. Large families are very common. But I’m pretty sure an indigenous family of ten where I live, who lives on beans and tortillas and veggies from their own land, travels by burro, farms on 70 degree inclines using no machinery other than digging sticks, and gets up and goes to bed with the sun has way less of a carbon footprint than the average American family of four.
Not saying overpopulation in poor areas isn’t a global issue with some environmental ramifications. But hyper-consumerism in developed countries seems more damaging to me.
I also live and work in a rural area of Latin America. Yes, the carbon footprints of my friends and I are much smaller than those of North Americans. But those ten kids you mention will eventually need ten more farms the size of their parents’ farms, and their ten x ten kids will need the same, leading to exponentially increasing direct destruction of non-human nature, and forcing them to farm even steeper hills, even farther away from their home, in an ever-more-difficult struggle just to stay alive. As I am sure you agree, this is a human and ecological tragedy whose only obvious solution is easily accessible birth control, ideally in the hands of women rather than men.
More likely six of the ten kids will go to the U.S. illegally and work in the fruit farms of Portland until they are set up well enough to become American consumers. 
Lou, okay. I did say most of the province did not appear to have changed significantly. Yes, I said that. But I also said that two locations had changed drastically. I would agree that exceptions do not determine anything with regard to global climate. On the other hand, a small number of large changes could change the global average. You would probably also agree with that. Anyway, I was just relating the difference in changes between different local locations.
I think the birth control policy likely has not created harm, since it is not likely that RCC policy has created large families in Africa, nor in the middle east, and probably not for most of South America. After all, it has not done so in north america or europe, so it is likely that something else is causing the large families. Perhaps like in India, the desire to have large families is simply that: a desire to have large families. And RCC policy is a convenient corroboration for that desire.
However, yes there is deforestation and replacement of nature by annual crops, or by perennial crops. On the one hand, this is natural - to grow food. On the other hand, the destruction, erosion, drought, is caused by poverty and ignorance more than by population increase. In north america at one time 70% of the population was involved in agriculture/farming. Today, less than 2% of the population is involved, and about 0.2% produces 80% of the food. Whether the population doubles or not, this does not equal destruction of the land, especially since crop yields have increased by 50% to 100% in the last 50 years. In the 1920s, almost 100 years ago, dust and drought and erosion was constant. Today, under similar drought conditions, or even worse, we rarely see this type of dust and erosion, even though the population is vastly greater. Why? because we have discovered techniques and practices that work better with nature, conserve soil moisture, protect the soil, seed land quicker, and add fertility.
In my opinion, blaming problems on population growth is very simplistic, and does not deal with the real causes, but rather attempts to find a scapegoat. I do not have a problem with some forms of birth control, but I certainly have a problem with abortion. Those who try to achieve the second under cover of the first do not deserve support. I’m glad you are arresting your population growth, and glad that others have the freedom to make their own decisions.
Amen to your concluding paragraph!
I do think that along with coal, and more threatening than coal is oil – if we were to identify and rank our frightening “bogeymen”.
The problem with appeals to increases in efficiency is that we hardly ever use them to improve things. E.g. higher gas mileage vehicles translates into “Oh goody --now I can buy a bigger one and drive more!” Almost never does it become “Oh goody – now I can consume less gas!” Maybe that sounds a bit pessimistic; there are many who do manage to hold their consumption in check. But overall, our consumption levels aren’t going down with these increases in efficiency.
I know the same criticism can be leveled at solar or wind power --and yes it does take production resources to build those things. But I’ll also wager that the average photovoltaic consumer with panels on his roof probably is a bit more hyper-aware of his electrical consumption in his/her household than the average other consumer. They are probably less likely to make wanton use of A.C. or having incandescent lights left on everywhere (unless a really massive PV array is involved!) I see renewables as one way to make a transition away from non-renewables slightly less painful (and therefore magnitudes closer to political reality) than a simple, (and nearly impossible) cessation (or even just reduction!) of petro-powered lifestyle.
Actually I should temper my “amen” to your last paragraph just a bit …
I’m totally with the Pope that more technology is not the big solution to these big problems stemming from inequity. (Though, again, some technology could help.)
The overall solution(s) can be implemented when developed nations work with developing countries to make the profound changes required for an environmentally benign industrial and technological base.
If that statement implies that all the change needs to be happening in the “developing countries”, assisted by their wealthier and more scientifically knowledgeable neighbors, then I disagree. I think the Pope has nailed this issue dead-on. It is we who need to be searching our hearts and moving towards deep change, and most emphatically NOT exporting our profligate consumeristic habits everywhere else (which is already happening … witness the pious-looking zeal to bring the internet to all ‘developing’ economies --i.e. read that as: “expanding our consumer markets”). The pope is 100% correct to doubt that technology will be used to rectify any of the real problems (social inequity and severe ecological debt), when instead multinational corporations have nothing but profit motive as their driver.
It is difficult for us to make a comprehensive comment in these type of exchanges, and my comments can easily be seen as ‘not covering’ sufficient ground. With this proviso, I will address two points you raised.
(1) efficiency: this deals with production and consumption of power/fuel. We may not always be conscious of our everyday activities, but by and large, we are habitual. For example, if because of efficiency measures, our production increases by 30% and our consumption decreases by 20%, it is clear that overall we will use less power (and fuel) while maintaining our current way of life. Reducing fossil fuels consumption by 50% would be a huge improvement (and it can be done technologically, but it is difficult within the current paradigm of power/fossil fuel usage).
(2) Changes involving developed and developing nations: This is both obvious and difficult - I am not advocating developing nations provide charity or assistance - this often leads to greater corruption and waste from both sides. I am saying that the developed nations use greater efficiencies and once these are shown to work, developing nations can implements them without the need to research all of the stuff from the beginning. This requires great progress from the developing nations re education, skills and economics, but these can be obtained by effort from the developed nations, because developing nations can see the obvious benefits. However, it is often the case that developed nations see opportunities for greater profits and a way to dominate the developing nations, and this leads to resentment and lack of progress. We also must understand the great corruption and avarice displayed by ruling classes in many developing and under-developed nations. Change is thus very difficult.
Yes change must begin with us; this is the greatest obstacle and if we can do that, science and technology will provide the means to solve the environmental problems facing all of us.
And with your added and wise clarification, allow me to reinstate my “hearty amen”!
Indeed science and technology can (or should) provide means, and religions can (or should) provide motivation and means. I’m only into chapter 2 of the 6 chapters of the encyclical, but I’m very impressed so far. It is indeed a clarion call not just to Catholics, and not just to Christians, but to all the peoples of the world.
I’m glad you are arresting your population growth, and glad that others have the freedom to make their own decisions.
The problem, JohnZ, is that the others DON’T have that freedom unless birth control is easily available (and to women, not just men).
Your claim that food production just keeps getting more efficient is mostly right, especially in rich countries, but the area devoted to food production is nevertheless increasing rapidly in most of the world. Even in the US with its highly mechanized farming practices, farming has caused ecological devastation–try to find a functioning prairie in the prairie states, for example.
But no matter how efficient food production gets, there are physical limits to the amount of calories an acre can produce. It is impossible to produce more calories than the amount of energy reaching the acre from the sun. So no matter what we do, we will eventually reach a point at which land will run out. Birth control has to happen some time. Better to do it now before we destroy everything non-human.