‘A Call to Truth’

In contrast, the Cornwall Alliance for the Stewardship of Creation produced “A Call to Truth, Prudence, and Protection of the Poor: An Evangelical Response to Global Warming,” co-authored by world-renowned global climate change research scientist Dr. Roy Spencer, environmental economist Dr. Ross McKitrick, energy policy expert Paul Driessen, and myself, a theologian and ethicist with recognized expertise in economic and environmental studies. The “Call to Truth” cited extensive data and sources in its point-by-point refutation of the “Call to Action.”

“Call to Truth” signers, over 170, reflect its credibility. They include mostly scientists and economists able to evaluate data and arguments about climate change and related policy, plus leading evangelical pastors and educators.

Having failed to convert evangelicals as a body to their cause, the global warming activists have resorted instead to simply declaring victory. They have claimed, and mainstream media have eagerly reported, a major shift in opinion about global warming among evangelicals.

But facts don’t support the claims. Polling by the Barna Research Group, which specializes in tracking opinion among evangelicals, showed no major shift. Instead, it found that global warming was the issue on which evangelicals were in starkest disagreement with the American population at large. Another Barna study found that while 90% of evangelicals want Christians to “take a more active role in caring for creation,” 65% percent believe the media have hyped global warming, 62% believe climate change is cyclical and not primarily manmade, and 60% fear that proposed solutions would harm the poor, especially outside the United States. And this summer’s National Survey on Religion and Public Life by Calvin College found that support among evangelical Christians for environmental regulation has declined by almost 10 percentage points in just the past four years.

New Developments in Science

Meanwhile, developments in climate science and economics are going the wrong way for the alarmists.

Among others in science, there was the discovery, reported in August of 2007, that cirrus clouds, rather than enlarging in response to surface warming and thus being a positive feedback, shrink and thus are a negative feedback–precisely the opposite of what was assumed in all the computer climate models. By itself that was thought sufficient to explain 70 percent of all global temperature variability in the twentieth century. That was followed by the discovery, reported in December, that formulae to correct for urban warming were insufficient; when corrected, the result was to reduce apparent warming from 1980 to 2002 by 50 percent, essentially eliminating the apparently anomalously rapid warming on which the case for alarm rested.

Several studies followed concluding that “climate sensitivity” (a misleading name for a complex and highly theoretical concept) is much lower than thought by the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change–probably no more than one-sixth as high (about 0.5̊ C instead of 3.0̊ C). The conclusion was reached in light of both critical analyses of the mathematical models calculating climate sensitivity and empirical studies that found that several factors the IPCC had thought were positive (heat-enhancing) feedbacks were negative (heat-reducing) instead. Such a temperature increase cannot be expected to cause significant harm, particularly to the increasingly wealthy world of the future.

In economics, multiple studies showed that the costs of reducing CO2 emissions to minimize future temperature increases far outweighed benefits to be expected from them. Perhaps most significant were the findings of Bjørn Lomborg and the Copenhagen Consensus. By comparing the benefit/cost ratios of spending on various problems, they concluded that fighting climate change was among the worst possible investments, while such simple things as adding micronutrients to diets in poor countries, increasing free trade, and providing sewage sanitation and water purification yielded great multiples of benefits over costs.

Other Voices, Other Opinions

It should be no surprise, then, that last December a hundred eminent scientists wrote an open letter to UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon saying, in part, “it is not established that it is possible to significantly alter global climate through cuts in human greenhouse gas emissions. On top of which, because attempts to cut emissions will slow development, the current UN approach of CO2 reduction is likely to increase human suffering from future climate change rather than to decrease it.”

Neither should it be surprising that over 31,000 scientists (including 9,021 PhDs) signed the “Petition Project” saying, in part, “There is no convincing scientific evidence that human release of carbon dioxide, methane, or other greenhouse gases is causing or will, in the foreseeable future, cause catastrophic heating of the Earth’s atmosphere and disruption of the Earth’s climate. Moreover, there is substantial scientific evidence that increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide produce many beneficial effects upon the natural plant and animal environments of the Earth.”

In the face of such developments, it is increasingly difficult to view the passionate promotion of alarm over global warming as anything other than pseudo science.

Raising an alternative voice to Ball, Cizik, and other global warming alarmists among evangelicals, six national organizations (the Southern Baptist Convention’s Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, the Family Research Council, Wallbuilders, the Acton Institute for the Study of Religion and Liberty, the Institute on Religion and Democracy, and the Cornwall Alliance for the Stewardship of Creation) in May issued the WeGetIt.org declaration stating, among other things:

• “Stewardship of creation must be based on Biblical principles and factual evidence. We face important environmental challenges, but must be cautious of claims that our planet is in peril from speculative dangers like man-made global warming,” and
• “With billions suffering in poverty, environmental policies must not further oppress the world’s poor by denying them basic needs. Instead, we must help people fulfill their God-given potential as producers and stewards."

The WeGetIt.org campaign aims to gather a million signatures of evangelicals, putting to rest the notion of a major shift among evangelicals toward environmental alarmism. Endorsed by leading evangelicals like Chuck Colson, James Dobson, Richard Land, and evangelical climate scientists like Roy Spencer and David Legates, the declaration has since been signed by thousands of pastors, evangelical leaders, and Christians nationwide, and seems likely to crush climate alarmism among evangelicals once and for all.

E. Calvin Beisner, Ph.D., is national spokesman for the Cornwall Alliance for the Stewardship of Creation, http://www.cornwallalliance.org/ and author of Where Garden Meets Wilderness: Evangelical Entry into the Environmental Debate.