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Responding to "Green Politics," Part Three

  • Michael Craven Center for Christ & Culture
  • Updated Jul 25, 2007
Responding to "Green Politics," Part Three

If you'd like to catch up on the discussion to date, you can read Part One of this series here, and Part Two here.

As we have previously examined, the idea that human population growth and presence is an affront to the earth and nature is grossly overstated and frankly, a myth.

In a sad bit of irony, this myth and its resulting environmental extremism have their roots in the writings of an 18th-century Anglican preacher named, Thomas Malthus. Malthus was the first to suggest that environmental catastrophe would be brought on by the unchecked growth of the human population.

A London talk by Benjamin Franklin sparked Malthus’ imagination. Franklin had proudly proclaimed to his English audience that the population of their former colonies was growing at a rate of 3 percent per year. Malthus, who fancied himself something of a mathematician, knew that this meant that America’s population was doubling every 23 years or so. He pondered this geometric progression, becoming increasingly concerned about the staggering numbers that would soon result. He imagined the boroughs filling up with people, until every available nook and cranny was choked with human misery.

Malthus wrote in his widely published tract, An Essay on the Principle of Population (1798):

All children born, beyond what would be required to keep up the population to a desired level, must necessarily perish, unless room be made for them by the deaths of grown persons. … Therefore … we should facilitate, instead of foolishly and vainly endeavoring to impede, the operations of nature in producing this mortality; and if we dread the too frequent visitation of the horrid form of famine, we should sedulously [i.e., to work with great zeal] encourage the other forms of destruction, which we compel nature to use. Instead of recommending cleanliness to the poor, we should encourage contrary habits. In our towns we should make the streets narrower, crowd more people into the houses, and court the return of the plague. In the country, we should build our villages near stagnant pools, and particularly encourage settlements in all marshy and unwholesome situations. But above all, we should reprobate [i.e., reject] specific remedies for ravaging diseases; and restrain those benevolent, but much mistaken men, who have thought they were doing a service to mankind by projecting schemes for the total extirpation [i.e., to completely get rid] of particular disorders.

This perspective, especially shocking owing to the fact that Malthus was a member of the Christian clergy served to persuade the British upper class to take up his cause against humanity. This horrific premise was made palatable by being presented as the “most humane” action given the pending “crisis.” How could the self-perceived bearers of civilization allow such human suffering to result by being indifferent to the unchecked reproduction of the lower classes? These Malthusians, as they came to be called, received coincidental reinforcement for their views from the rise of Darwinism and in particular the ideas of Darwin’s cousin, Francis Galton. In Inquiries into Human Faculty and Its Development, Galton gave a pseudo-scientific gloss to what he saw as the declining genetic stock of the British nation. To counter this trend, he proposed an active policy of “eugenics,” a word he coined meaning “good births.” Eugenics would encourage more children from the “fit,” and fewer--or no--children from the “unfit,” with the ultimate goal of engineering the evolutionary ascent of man. You can see how this notion would have appealed to the British upper classes and it still holds strong appeal among secular humanist elites today.

Malthus’ idea identified a plausible “problem,” runaway population growth, which aroused a primal fear among the wealthy, who felt threatened by the poor and their rising numbers.  For Malthusians, Darwinism offered a substitute morality which could justify the campaign against humanity. (Meaning: the less desirable elements of humanity in the mind of the cultural elites.) I contend this same basic premise remains at the root of modern “population control” (cf. Planned Parenthood) and to some extent, today’s environmental extremism.

Another major influence within environmental extremism is socialist Marxism. Patrick Moore, a co-founder of Greenpeace speculates that the latter 20th century collapse of communism left neo-Marxist activists floundering and without purpose. Hijacking the environmental movement would offer these a new, and even more effective medium in which to oppose capitalist growth and with it the expansion of capitalism. With the failure of political Marxism, the environmental movement and its “green language” offered a clever guise for the advancement of Marxist ideals. Moore, who now advocates a “common sense” approach to the environment, became disillusioned with the movement and said in a British documentary:

By the mid-1980s, the environmental movement had abandoned science and logic in favor of emotion and sensationalism. … I think one of the most pernicious aspects of the modern environmental movement is the romanticization of peasant life. And the idea that industrial societies are the destroyers of the world. The environmental movement has evolved into the strongest force there is for preventing development in the developing countries. I think it’s legitimate for me to call them anti-human.

Up to this point we have examined the foundations of environmental extremism that are driving the argument of climate change as a consequence of human activity. As you can see, this is about much more than environmentalism—at the heart of this issue there exist two competing views of reality, humanity, and moral truth. One is true and the other is not and so we seek to expose the truth as all truth edifies Christ who is the Truth. This is the basis of our examination.

Next, we will begin to dissect the global warming debate, look at what is really happening relative to climate, and evaluate its alleged causes.

 

The conflict between those who view humanity as an enemy of nature and those who view man as nature's steward culminates in the dispute over global warming. At odds in this debate is not the question of whether or not we are experiencing a period of warmer temperatures, we are. Rather, it is the competing theories relative to the causes of the present temperature increase and the implications thereof.

Humans have only been trying to measure the temperature on a consistent basis since about 1850, during which time we think the world may have warmed by about 0.6 degrees centigrade, within a margin or error of 0.2 degrees plus or minus. Most of the climate community has agreed since 1988 that global mean temperatures have increased about one degree Fahrenheit, or roughly one half degree centigrade, over the past century. The majority of this increase occurred from 1919 to 1940, then decreased between 1940 and the early '70s, increased again until the '90s, and has remained essentially flat since 1998.

The fact is, these temperature fluctuations are nothing new. Scientists have long understood that the earth's climate naturally experiences cyclical changes--even sometimes dramatic changes. In addition, when you stop to consider the massive variables involved in trying to pinpoint the earth's mean temperature; it is very difficult to achieve a precise measurement even when exact measurements are available. The land heats and cools differently than the oceans or the atmosphere, temperatures are taken on a very disparate basis in proportion to land and water volume, location, seasonal fluctuations, and so on and so forth. Simply consider your local forecast. Temperatures vary between cities that are only a few miles apart. The bottom line: determining an accurate mean global temperature is a very complex and difficult challenge.

So, how did these long-recognized natural changes in climate and temperature suddenly transform into apocalyptic conditions that threaten to "send our entire planet into a tail-spin of epic destruction," according to Al Gore?

Michael Mann is a well-known climatologist whom you may not have heard of but you are probably familiar with his famous conclusion: that the present temperature increase is "likely to have been the largest of any century during the past 1,000 years" and that the "1990s was the warmest decade and 1998 the warmest year" of the millennium.

How could Mann make such claims when we have only consistently collected temperature readings since the latter 19th century? In the absence of direct temperature measurements, i.e. thermometer readings, Mann reconstructed temperatures in the Northern Hemisphere over the last 1000 years using what are known as "proxy" methods. Essentially, scientists compare proxy data such as recent isotope data from snow and tree rings to local temperatures. This real time comparison then serves as a sort-of scale from which scientists can examine similar proxy sources to infer temperatures in the distant past. These proxy reconstructions are indirect inferences of temperature and obviously have less accuracy than data collected by direct methods such as the thermometer. Remember, the global warming debate centers around temperature variables of less than 1 degree centigrade within a margin of error of 0.2 degrees plus or minus even using the most sophisticated measuring devices.

Mann published his findings in 1998, producing the infamous "hockey stick" graph illustrating cooler temperatures throughout the last 1000 years until the last decade of the 20th century, at which point temperatures seemed to rise "dramatically." If you watched Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth this graphic featured prominently. In simple visual terms, it was very compelling.

Mann's findings were arguably the single most influential study in swaying the public debate, and in 2001 they became the official view of the International Panel for Climate Change (IPCC), the UN body that is organizing the worldwide effort to combat global warming.



However, Dr. Edward Wegman, a professor at the Center for Computational Statistics at George Mason University, chair of the National Academy of Sciences' Committee on Applied and Theoretical Statistics, and board member of the American Statistical Association was asked by the energy and commerce committee of the U.S. House of Representatives to evaluate the statistical validity of Michael Mann's findings.

Wegman conducted his third-party review by assembling an expert panel of statisticians, including outside statisticians and the Board of the American Statistical Association. At its conclusion, the Wegman review repudiated Mann's work saying:

Our committee believes that the assessments that the decade of the 1990s was the hottest decade in a millennium and that 1998 was the hottest year in a millennium cannot be supported. … The paucity of data in the more remote past makes the hottest-in-a-millennium claims essentially unverifiable.

Dr. Wegman is considered the preeminent expert in the world on "computational statistics." (He actually the coined the term). Wegman found that Mann made a basic error that "may be easily overlooked by someone not trained in statistical methodology." When Wegman corrected Mann's statistical mistakes, the "hockey stick" disappeared.

Furthermore, Wegman pointed out "there is no evidence that Dr. Mann or any of the other authors in paleoclimate studies have had significant interactions with mainstream statisticians." In other words, Wegman believes that much of the climate science that has been done should be taken with a grain of salt--despite the fact that the studies may have been peer reviewed, the reviewers were often unqualified in statistics.

What is most telling is the reaction of the climatology community to Wegman's revelation. Many now agree that Mann's "hockey stick" graph may be wrong but they nonetheless say his conclusions are correct. In response, Wegman later testified before the energy and commerce committee saying: "I am baffled by the claim that the incorrect method doesn't matter because the answer is correct anyway. Method Wrong + Answer Correct = Bad Science." Science which begins with and stubbornly clings to its materialistic assumptions about reality is not science; it is false religion.

Lesslie Newbigin, noted theologian and author, makes the point, "For modern Western peoples--nature has taken the place of God as the ultimate reality with which we have to deal." The creation of an epic battle against catastrophic global warming provides these a tangible means of "dealing" with their new god, expressing their "worship," and finding a sense of meaning and purpose. In support of these goals it should not be surprising to see them make the science fit their belief system even when presented with contradicting evidence. This is where the "faith" of these true believers comes into play.

Next week we will explore the question of causation.

Link to Part 4/5 of this series.

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S. Michael Craven is the Founding Director of the Center for Christ & Culture, a ministry of the National Coalition for the Protection of Children & Families. The Center for Christ & Culture is dedicated to renewal within the Church and works to equip Christians with an intelligent and thoroughly Christian approach to matters of culture in order to recapture and demonstrate the relevance of Christianity to all of life. For more information on the Center for Christ & Culture, additional resources and other works by S. Michael Craven visit: www.battlefortruth.org.
Michael lives in the Dallas area with his wife Carol and their three children.

© 2007 S. Michael Craven