By James Wilson
Climate change alarmists got a bit of a shock the other day. NASA issued a report on the Antarctic ice mass. The purveyors of global warming – now re-named climate change to account for not knowing if the globe is warming or cooling – have depended on NASA data for years to keep saying the ice pack is shrinking. This imputed shrinkage is thought to be a prime bellwhether – like the alleged reduction of the polar bear population – by which to substantiate this canon of the religion of scientism.
The catch is that the previous studies were largely based on guesswork because the continent is too large and too inhospitable to permit data gathering over a significant portion of its surface. This is a bit like postulating the size and shape of a brontosaurus from a small collection of bones from one leg. It gets really embarrassing when you find out – after more than a century of calling it brontosaurus – that you actually had portions of two different animals and must now concede bronto never existed as such. Just so, the newest NASA study uses satellite altimeters to measure changes in the height of surface ice. Using more precise tools to cover a much larger area NASA scientists must now concede the ice sheet showed an annual gain of 112 billion tons of ice each year between 1992 and 2001. That gain has slowed to a mere 82 billion tons annually from 2003 to 2008. On top of everything else the ice pack – thought to be contributing to the general rising of sea levels around the world – is actually found to be lowering them by 0.23 millimeters each year. Worldwide.
The priests of scientism do not abandon their faith easily. Lead author of the latest NASA study, Jay Zwally, is one such. He says, “I know…climate change deniers will jump on this (but)…it should not take away from the concern about climate warming.” He adds that as global temperatures rise Antarctica will make its contribution to sea level rise; when that might happen is unclear to him.
Zwally’s conviction – of course – depends on the faith tenet that global temperatures will trend on the rise in the face of scientific evidence the planet is headed into a cooling trend. And the big question that has implications for all of us in terms of government intervention in our lives remains whether global warming – should it prove a trend – results from human activity. If yes changes in human behavior – forced changes – can perhaps be expected to moderate the phenomenon. If no there is nothing we can do and a lot of environmentalists will find themselves unemployed.
The scientific odds do not favor the answer they need. One thousand years ago Greenland really was green; that warming period pre-dated even the primitive industrial revolution of the 18th Century by seven centuries or so. Our world has endured dozens of ice ages that left glaciers in the tropics and dozens of warm epochs that made the Great Plains tropical and there was no Rocky Mountain winter. It is the height of arrogance to imagine human beings can marshal the power to re-set a planet four billion years old. Yet it takes another faith-based point of view – a Christian viewpoint inasmuch as the Judeo-Christian tradition is the only one that understands humility – to recognize the colossal arrogance of environmentalism.
Hindus, Buddhists, and Muslims think of themselves as being in humble acceptance of the will of their gods. But Hindus and Buddhists confuse humility with humiliation, hope if they humiliate themselves in recurrent lifetimes they will escape this life – and be out of reach of their gods. (Humble acceptance?) Muslims imagine Allah needs their protection from insult; that is why they slaughter infidels. This is hardly humble.
What of those of us claiming humble submission to God who created this world, sent His Son to die for each of its inhabitants, and now calls His followers to stand for Him until He returns to claim His own? Are we as committed to the truth our God reveals in His Word and in the very substance of His world as is environmentalist Jay Zwally in his? Have we the simple courage to do our homework and speak what is true and what is reasonable? Have we as much faith as those who worship false gods from Krishna to Global Warming? If yes we have a lifetime of sanity for ourselves and our country to gain. And abundant life.
By the way, the polar bears – that other bellwhether of climate change – grow more numerous each year. It’s documented.
James A. Wilson is the author of Living As Ambassadors of Relationships, The Holy Spirit and the End Times, and Kingdom in Pursuit – available at local bookstores or by e-mailing him at praynorthstate@charter.net
