Discussion paper- 'Superstition, Climate Scepticism and Christianity'

Written by Dr John Lockwood for the Climate of Hope conference

'We do not own the Earth; we just borrow it from our grandchildren' 'Behold! I am making all things new'

After all the scientific advances of the 20th century, it was reasonable to expect that the 21st century would be the scientific century where reason triumphed. This is not proving to be so, with an increasing abundance of superstition that projects people back hundreds of years in time, resulting in a lack of security and hope. In parallel with this, in counties like the United Kingdom, there has been a decline in Christian belief. In Britain, and indeed elsewhere, there is a deep mistrust of much of science and medicine. There are various reasons for this ranging from the actives of some energy supply companies, to a massive breakdown in communication between people working in scientific fields and the general public.

Climate change sceptics claim that the recent increase in atmosphere carbon dioxide concentration is a purely natural phenomenon. Yet something happened around 1800 AD which left an imprint in both atmospheric composition and temperature not seen for at least 600, 000 years. This something was the Industrial Revolution, which started in a serious manner in 1698 with Watt’s steam engine. From 1769 to 1800, Britain’s annual coal production doubled. After another 30 years (1830), it had doubled again. The next doubling of production-rate happened within 20 years (1850), and another doubling within 20 years of that (1870). This increase in coal production led to a great increase in prosperity in Britain. British coal production peaked in 1910, but meanwhile world coal production continued to double every 20 years. From 1769 to 2006, world annual coal production increased 800-fold, and is still increasing today. Most of this coal was burnt and produced carbon dioxide, a significant amount of which has remained airborne. Much of western prosperity is fossil fuel based, and is thus responsible for increasing atmospheric carbon dioxide and global warming.

Largely as a result of increasing atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations, global mean temperatures have increased by 0.7°C since around 1900. Over the past 30 years, global temperatures have risen rapidly and continuously at around 0.2°C per decade, bringing the global mean temperature to what is at or near the warmest level reached in the current interglacial period, which began around 12000 years ago. By considering long averaging periods, the effects of year-to-year variability are reduced. It is noteworthy that the decade 2000 to 2009 was the warmest in 160 years, significantly warmer than the 1990s, which were warmer in turn than all earlier decades (Kennedy and Parker, 2010). IPCC (2007a) reported that a global assessment of data since 1970 has shown it is likely that anthropogenic warming has had a discernible influence on many physical and biological systems. Most climate model calculations show that a doubling of pre-industrial levels of greenhouse gases is very likely to commit the Earth to a rise of between 2 and 5°C in global mean temperatures (IPCC, 2007a). This level of greenhouse gases will probably be reached between 2030 and 2060.

Predicted changes in global temperature due to human induced global warming may seem small, but they need to be compared with the change in global average temperature between the present and the depth of the last ice age at around 18,000 years ago. The difference is only 5˚ to 8˚C, making a warming of 2˚ to 4˚C by the end of the 21st century of great significance. A temperature increase of 2˚C is now considered to represent the threshold between dangerous and extremely dangerous climate change. Risks rise rapidly and nonlinearly with temperature increases. Once temperature increase rises above 2°C, up to 4 billion people could be experiencing growing water shortages, particularly in the tropics, and millions more people will be at risk of hunger. Incidence of drought has already increased. Severe drought has increased from 1 to 3% of the globe in the last 50 years. By 2050 it is likely to increase to 30% (if global temperatures rise by 2 °C above pre-industrial values). Associated with global warming is a likely increase in the frequency and intensity of heat waves. Episodes of extreme temperature can affect health significantly, and during heat waves, deaths increase from a range of causes. Elderly people are most at risk because ageing impairs the body’s physiological capacity to regulate its own temperature. Children, people with chronic diseases, and those confined to bed, need particular care during extremely hot weather. Major heat wave events are also associated with other health hazards – such as air pollution, wildfires and failures in water, food or electricity supply. Anomalous hot and dry conditions affected Europe between June and mid-August 2003. Numerical projections using climate models suggest that similarly warm summers may occur at least every second year by 2080, therefore effects on populations and ecosystems observed in 2003 provide an approximate analogue of future impacts. World Health Organization reports that over 70,000 excess deaths were reported from 12 European countries following the heat wave summer 2003. In EU countries, mortality is estimated to increase by 1 – 4 % for each one-degree C rise in temperature.

There are three major processes by which human-induced climate change directly affects sea level. First, like air and other fluids, water expands as itstemperature increases. As climate change increases ocean temperatures, initially at the surface and over centuries at depth, the water will expand, contributingto sea level rise due to thermal expansion. Thermal expansion is likely to have contributed to about 2.5 cm of sea level rise during the second half of the 20th century, with the rate of rise due to this term having increased to about 3 times this rate during the early 21st century. Because this contribution to sea level rise depends mainly on the temperature of the ocean, projecting the increase in ocean temperatures provides an estimate of future growth. Over the 21st century, the IPCC’s Fourth Assessment projected that thermal expansion will lead to sea level rise of about 17-28 cm (plus or minus about 50%). That this estimate is less than would occur from a linear extrapolation of the rate during the first decade of the 21st century when all model projections indicate ongoing ocean warming has led to concerns that the IPCC estimate may be too low.

A second, and less certain, contributor to sea level rise is the melting of glaciers and ice caps. IPCC’s Fourth Assessment estimated that, during the second half of the 20th century, melting of mountain glaciers and ice caps led to about a 2.5 cm rise in sea level. This is a higher amount than was caused by the loss of ice from the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets, which added about 1 cm to the sea level. For the 21st century, IPCC’s Fourth Assessment projected that melting of glaciers and ice caps will contribute roughly 10-12 cm to sea level rise, with an uncertainty of roughly a third. This would represent a melting of roughly a quarter of the total amount of ice tied up in mountain glaciers and small ice caps.

The third process that can cause sea level to rise is the loss of ice mass from Greenland and Antarctica. Were all the ice on Greenland to melt, a process that would likely take many centuries to millennia, sea level would go up by roughly 7 meters. The West Antarctic ice sheet holds about 5 m of sea level equivalent and is particularly vulnerable as much of it is grounded below sea level; the East Antarctic ice sheet, which is less vulnerable, holds about 55 m of sea level equivalent. In summarizing the results of model simulations for the 21st century, IPCC reported that the central estimates projected that Greenland would induce about a 2 cm rise in sea level whereas Antarctica would, because of increased snow accumulation, induce about a 2 cm fall in sea level.

Deltas and megadeltas are widely recognized as being highly vulnerable to the impacts of climate change, particularly sea-level rise and changes in runoff and also possibly more extreme tropical storms. It is estimated that nearly 300 million people inhabit a sample of 40 deltas globally, including all the large megadeltas. Average population density is 500 people/km2, with the largest population in the Ganges-Brahmaputra, and the highest density in the Nile delta. Much of the population of these 40 deltas is at risk from land loss as a result of decreased sediment delivery by rivers and accentuated rates of sea-level rise together with storm surges from major tropical storms. More than 1 million people will be directly affected by 2050 in three megadeltas: the Granges-Brahmaputra delta in Bangladesh, the Mekong delta in Vietnam and the Nile in Egypt. In particular megadeltas are almost certainly to be major generators of environmental refugees, with the prospect by mid century of hundreds of millions of such refugees looking for new areas to live in an overcrowded world. A 2°C temperature rise above pre-industrial levels is a clear limit that should not be exceeded. Current energy use and CO2 emission trends run directly counter to the repeated warnings sent by the United Nations. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC 2007), concludes that reductions of at least 50% in global CO2 emissions compared to 2000 levels will need to be achieved by 2050 to limit the long-term global average temperature rise to between 2.0˚C and 2.4˚C. Recent studies suggest that climate change is occurring even faster than previously expected and that global greenhouse gas emissions need to peak and start to fall rapidly by 2016, reaching an 80% by 2050.

Why are Some People Sceptical?

Why are some people so sceptical about climate change and associated environmental changes? Among the reasons that have been suggested include:

Psychological: The consequences of climate change are too awful to contemplate; therefore it is best to deny the issue.
Economic: The costs of a large-scale effort to fight global warming would be extremely large, therefore best to ignore the issue.
Political: Climate change is a political issue not a scientific one, being associated closely with political parties. Thus in the USA the Democrats largely accept climate change as a fact, Republicans are largely deniers.
Epistemological: Where is the evidence, scientists are not always right.
Metaphysical: God is not going to let millions of people die in floods or droughts.

It is relatively easy to answer each of these points, but this often has little effect because people have unfortunately made up their minds. The Christian approach begins with our belief in a Creator God who ordered a coherent creation that is really meaningful and capable of generating coherent frameworks of meaning through, for example, mathematics. Exploring the nature of creation is the field of science, exploring the meaning of creation is the field of religion and Christians believe that is found in the Bible. Christians also believe that the Bible clearly charges them with the care of creation. Given this, Christians do need to seriously examine the evidence for the truth about climate change,

To quote Eugene Peterson "A parable is not usually to tell us something new, but to get us to notice something that has been right there before us for years. Or it is used to get us to take seriously something we have dismissed as unimportant because we have never seen the point of it." The "new" scientific stories now being told about the natural environment are, in a strange way, to re-focus our attention on being the people of God and most to do with bringing the kingdom of God to bear on others.

Mark Sprinkle comments, "the Bible does not just contain parables, the Bible is, itself, a parable". Firstly, it "throws down" different incongruous images, stories, literary types, and characters (including contradictory portrayals of God) next to each other, not least to confound the wisdom of the wise. But going further, scriptural revelation is also part of the ongoing acts of the Lord, being thrown down beside the "object" of the natural world as studied and described by science. The object in this case is the impact of humanity on the climate.

Possible Responses

The following suggestions for responses to climate sceptism are based on comments by Jennifer Wiseman (AAAS Science and Policy Programs, Washington DC).

Model a healthy and informative tone when using Internet blogs, Facebook, and chat rooms. Be present as a voice on these forums where many turn for discussion; it is here where we can be salt and light! When others lash out with name-calling or simplistic dismissal of unpopular views, be the one to offer a viewpoint with clarity and respect, never denigrating another person.
Always affirm that what binds Christians together is our united allegiance to Jesus Christ as our one and only Savior. Affirm that many Christians who share a complete devotion to Christ hold differing views on modern science and related Scripture.
Courageously offer differing opinions and clearly promote them if they serve to uplift the church and the world. Discipleship sometimes means taking courageous stances that go against the world’s grain or even church tradition.
Outside the church, discussions on “science and religion” can be opportunities to “provide a reason for the hope that is within you, with gentleness and respect” (1 Peter 3:15). It is not “religion” that saves people; it is a Person, Christ the Lord. Keep an eye toward whether our discourse helps or hinders people from seeing the Lord.
Affirm the intrinsic value of people to God. We believe that each person, though fallen, is made in God’s image. Treat them that way in our discourse.
St. Paul offers a helpful model. Before speaking to others on Mars Hill, he first took time to learn the beliefs of his audience and to find common ground.

Technically focused debates on climate are worthwhile if by the very strangeness and beauty of climate they prod us out of our age-worn confidence that we know the world as it is and as it has always been, and towards a Saviour whose promise continues to be, "behold! I am making all things new".

Further reading for interested people.

Anderson, K. and Bows, A. 2008. Reframing the climate change challenge in light of post-2000 emission trends. Phil. Trans. R. Soc. A 366, 3863-3882.

Archer, D. 2005 Fate of fossil fuel CO2 in geologic time. Journal Geophysical Research 110, C09S05, doi:10.1029/2004JC0022625

Climate Change 2007 – The Physical Science Basis. Contribution of Working Group 1 to the Fourth Assessment Report of the IPCC.

Climate Change 2007 – Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability. Contribution of Working Group 2 to the Fourth Assessment Report of IPCC.

Climate Change 2007 – Mitigation of Climate Change. Contribution of Working Group 3 to the Fourth Assessment Report of the IPCC.

Committee on Climate Change. 2008 First Report, December 1st 2008.

DeConti, R. M. and Pollard, D. 2003 Rapid Cenozoic glaciation of Antarctica induced by declining atmospheric CO2 Nature 421, 245-249.

Hansen, J et al. 2005 Earth’s Energy Imbalance: Confirmation and Implications. Science 308, 1431-1435.

Hansen, J et al 2008 Target Atmospheric CO2: Where should Humanity Aim? The Open Atmospheric Science Journal 2, 217-231.

Houghton, J 2009 (4th Edition) Global Warming: the Complete Briefing. Cambridge University Press.

Kennedy, J and Parker, D. 2010 Global and regional climate in 2009. Weather, 65, 244 - 250.

Lockwood, J. G. 2009 The Climate of the Earth. In C. N. Hewitt and A. V. Jackson (Eds) Atmospheric Science for Environmental Scientists. Wiley-Blackwell, Chichester.

MacKay, D. J. C. 2009 Sustainable Energy — without the hot air. UIT Cambridge.

Matthews, H. D. and Caldeira, K. 2008 Stabilizing climate requires near-zero emissions. Geophysical Research Letters, 35, L04705, doi: 10.1029/2007GL032388

Meinshausen, M et al. 2006 Multi-gas emissions pathways to meet climate targets. Climate Change, 75, 151- 194.

Meyer, A 2004 Briefing: Contraction and Convergence. Engineering Sustainability, 157, 189-192.

Pacala, S and Socolow, R 2004 Science, 305, 968-972.

Parry, M 2008 Key impacts: those inevitable and those avoidable. Paper presented at Conference on “Climate Change Impacts and Adaptation: Dangerous Rates of Change”. University of Exeter, September 2008.

Parry, M., et al. 2008. Climate policy: Squaring up to reality. Nat. Rep. Clim. Change, 2, 68-71.

Qiang Fu, Johanson, C. M., Wallace, J. M. and Reicher, T. 2006. Enhanced mid-latitude tropospheric warming in Satellite measurements. Science, 312, 1179.

Stern, N. 2006 The Economics of Climate Change: The Stern Review. Cambridge University Press.

Taylor, P. 2008 Energy technology perspectives 2008. Scenarios and strategies to 2050. International Energy Agency.