Friday 12 February 2010

Global warming and Sola panels

I can't believe it! The subject of Global Warming has invaded even one of my favourite blogs, the Sola Panel!


In the comments, one reader wanted to link up the Christian attitude to global warming with the Christian attitude to apartheid:

I hope this following comparison isn’t too emotive. I do think we need to heed the warning of the experience of CESA - our evangelical friends in South Africa. They chose a path of political quietism during the apartheid years.



Read the rest somewhere here.

Left a comment as well, which I'll try to rescue from blog comment oblivion, with typos removed, by posting here:

...[T]he comparison with apartheid may or may not be emotive, but it's hard to see how it's relevant.

Discrimination on the basis of skin colour is a sin, the only exception being the positive discrimination associated with the attractive and slightly olive coloured skin of me and my daughters.

By contrast, refusal to be persuaded about whether we've heated the world, and are continuing to do so, is not a 'sin' under almost any meaning of that word. Sure, it may well be silly to fail to be so persuaded. But being silly remains allowable even in these enlightened times, and not being at the top of the class is never singled out as being problematic—not by the Bible, and not even by the Roman Catholic church.

So average people like me still haven't been completely convinced that the world is being heated to perdition, not unlike the biro I stuck on the bunsen burner back in Year 9, and remains fused (AFAIK) to the tripod Mr Boddy took away from me and into the Science staffroom for closer inspection.

And if the right wingers are to be believed, (and even the left wingers, according to this right winger), the climate-change consensus is collapsing anyway.

Whatever the case, those who kept on with their rather foolish and simplistic gospel message will keep doing so whatever the barometer outside the building is telling them.

But those who wanted Christians to switch to the gospel of global warming are in trouble, if the promised warming fails to materialize. They will need to find another clever thing to scare us with.

And let's not even begin to ask how many lives could have been saved if the 'let's stop global warming' money had actually been spent on something that is currently killing people, like malnutrition.

In the meantime, I'm not worried about any of this temperature nonsense. I'm worried about gospel preaching. And what's more, I'm worried about Peak Lithium, really I am. When the supplies of this important metal run out, where am I going to buy my rechargeable batteries?


And so on.

5 comments:

Alexb said...

Are you saying that the case for anthropological global warming is not strong enough to warrant us doing anything about it?

If so, will you say why you think the case for anthropological global warming is weak?

I ask because disseminating science to the general public is a serious responsibility, and it helps to listen to somebody who is not in the field.

Gordon Cheng said...

Hi Alexb,

There's plenty of information out there and I don't really want to go through the process of listing relatively easy to find websites on the subject.

Here's just one of the blogs that occasionally has interesting information on the subject of how the data on global warming has been put together, or in some cases twisted:

http://wattsupwiththat.com/

But I don't deny the possibility of anthropogenic (not anthropological, I think?) global warming. My comment was more about how Christians have chosen to respond to its claimed existence.

Alexb said...

Thanks for the clarification and the link, I will take a look at that website.

Unknown said...

Hi Gordon,

'Twas good to see you the other week. I would like to meet a Christian global warming alarmist who is also a judgment of God alarmist. I don't think they are mutually exclusive, just rare beasts. Most global warming alarmists are actually softies when it comes to God's final judgment.

Alexb said...

I wonder if the converse is also true? Why is it that the Standford Solar Center website chose to devote an entire FAQ page to this:

http://solar-center.stanford.edu/sun-on-earth/FAQ3.html