“The smartest thing the liberals did was try to divide and conquer by dividing and conquering the evangelical community.” Such is the belief of Senator James Inhofe (R-OK) about how liberals built support for anthropogenic global warming, which he called “the greatest hoax perpetrated on the American people.”
Inhofe continued, “What they did is they came forth, this guy Richard Cizik…he was with the National Association of Evangelicals, and he tried to [argue] that this was really their issue; when in fact it’s important for all of us to know who really started this thing, what philosophy was behind it.” The Senator went on to recount the history of global warming alarmism and the significant role unaccountable organizations, like the United Nations, have played. Cizik is the NAE’s former long-time Washington representative, who became renowned for his Global Warming activism and lost his job with NAE last year after endorsing same-sex unions. Cizik now works for the “New Evangelicals” project of George Soros’s Open Society Institute.
Senator Inhofe’s remarks, delivered at the Heritage Foundation on Thursday, were part of an event entitled “Leading Evangelical Scholars Warn that Global Warming Alarmism Will Hurt the Poor.” Several evangelical experts questioned global warming alarmism, its political agenda, and its influence among Christians. Participating in the panel discussion were Dr. Craig T. Mitchell, Associate Professor of Systematic Theology at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary; Dr. Roy Spencer, a climatologist and research scientist at the University of Alabama, Huntsville; Dr. Charles van Eaton, an economist and former professor; and Dr. E. Calvin Beisner, National Spokesman for the Cornwall Alliance for the Stewardship of Creation.
The discussion followed the format of the newly-released document it promoted, the Cornwall Alliance’s “A Renewed Call to Truth, Prudence, and Protection of the Poor” The paper addresses “global warming alarmism” (defined as the idea “that burning fossil fuels to provide affordable, abundant energy is causing global warming that will be so dangerous that we must stop it by reducing our use of fossil fuels, no matter the cost”) from three points of view: the theological, scientific, and economic.
Mitchell presented the theological case against global warming alarmism with a presentation called “Call to Truth: Ethics & Worldview.” He argued that the debate over global warming is rooted in worldview: “A lot of people have all the wrong worldviews, so they jump to all the wrong conclusions.” According to Mitchell, a non-Christian worldview can lead to one of two beliefs about man’s relationship with the environment. The first is that the earth is something to be worshiped, instead of its Creator, and that no expense should be spared to protect it. The second flawed belief is that “plants and animals are more important than human beings, and that man is just a mere parasite or disease on this earth.”
Erroneous views of creation have very real implications for policy. “With these kinds of wrong ideas, one of the natural results is cap and trade legislation,” he said. “Cap and trade legislation is based on all the wrong ideas about creation.”
Segueing from theology to science, Spencer addressed the “widespread misunderstanding” about science’s capacity. “There are sort of two parts to science. One is measurement; the other is trying to understand the measurements,” he contended. After explaining that religious beliefs have no bearing on the design of instruments or collection of information, Spencer said, “The non-secular part of science comes in when you try to figure out what those measurements mean in terms of cause and effect. And, believe it or not, most scientists – and in fact probably all of the scientists that I know who work in climate change – do have religious views about the earth, about how fragile it is. And that colors their research and how they interpret data.“
Spencer cited a report about the heating and cooling effect of clouds in the tropics nearly balancing each other, which read “this illustrates how delicately balanced the climate system is.” Such a conclusion, Spencer argued, follows from certain assumptions about the fragility of the climate that are not rooted in or proven by science. “A balance doesn’t say anything about whether that balance is delicate or robust,” Spencer explained.
Commenting on the recent Climategate scandal, Spencer explained, “Three of the things that have come out in these emails are strong indications of manipulation of surface data to get the results someone wants, hiding of data to avoid freedom of information requests, and manipulation of the peer review process in science.” While scientists who had dissented from the prevailing “consensus” of anthropogenic global warming were aware of the peer-review manipulation, the other revelations were evidence of professional misconduct.
Speaking on the economic dimensions of global warming alarmism, van Eaton discussed the implications of cap and trade legislation. Of particular concern was the plight of the poor. “The people that have the most at stake in a dynamic free economy,” van Eaton explained, “are not the rich – the rich always manage to survive. It’s the poor.” Addressing the likely outcome of legislation that substantially interferes in the economy, he said, “Anything that purports for the sake of the climate to essentially shut down the market economy will not hurt the rich. It will drastically hurt the poor, not just in the United States but worldwide.”
The last panel speaker was Beisner, National Spokesman for the Cornwall Allaince. A question of great import for Dr. Beisner was how to deal with differences within the Christian community on climate change and global warming. Echoing Mitchell’s presentation, Beisner asserted, “I believe it is very possible for people to be very sincere Christians and yet never have thoroughly constructed a Christian worldview or even, at a less basic level than that, never have seriously considered what the Bible might say – if it says anything – about a particular field.”
The focus for Christians with respect to environmental legislation should be the world’s poorest people, Beisner admonished. One of the objectives of liberal environmental legislation is to drive down the consumption of fossil fuels by increasing the price. Because fossil fuels are the first source of electricity for the world’s poorest, Beisner argued that increasing the price would effectively prevent them from enjoying greater productivity and an increased standard of living. For this reason, Beisner declared, “The drive to suppress the use of fossil fuels in order to reduce CO2 emissions is, I believe, morally unconscionable.”
Concerning the prospects of cap and trade legislation, which waits behind health care reform in the legislative queue, Senator Inhofe said, “They will fail at that.” He warned, though, that legislation is but one means to implement the liberal environmental agenda. The other is through regulation, namely the Endangerment Finding provision of the Clean Air Act. Combating this, Inhofe counseled, will require “keeping the heat” on congressmen and women who, though opposed to legislative action, would be amenable to regulatory action.
“A Call to Truth, Prudence, and Protection of the Poor: An Evangelical Examination of the Theology, Science, and Economics of Global Warming” can be found on the Cornwall Alliance’s website. Audio and video of the Heritage event can be found here.
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