What’s Wrong with the World

Welcome aboard, John. It's nice to relinquish my newbie title so quickly. :)

I don't think the secular-liberal response to climate change makes sense even if you allow them their assumptions.

They say there's no design, and we know that climate has changed a lot over the past 50,000 years during the time that man evolved, but this is the only temperature that's good for us. Wouldn't it be reasonable to let man evolve through natural selection to adapt to the changing climate?

They say that no matter what we do, we're going to see a rise of several degrees over the next hundred years -- a catastrophic amount -- yet we need to do things that would be massively damaging to our economies even though they can't really save us from the catastrophe. Wouldn't we be better off doing something besides crippling our economies if warming is irreversibly coming our way?

The world would be better off without man on it (I hear this all the time in climate change discussions, most recently on Monday), but we have to do everything we can to prevent the destruction of man that will come if the climate changes by four degrees. Wouldn't we be better off letting man die off in the cataclysm of global warming, knowing that nature will adjust and some flora and fauna will live in new niches?

I like the take on eschatology, but I think the irrationality of the secular-liberal position on global climate change runs deeper than any single explanation.

Prager's essay pretty much sums it up for me....

http://townhall.com/columnists/dennisprager/2015/01/06/pope-francis-the-climate-and-leftism-n1938994?utm_source=thdaily&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=nl&newsletterad=#!

Here's a typically nuanced take from Robbie George at "First Things".....http://www.firstthings.com/blogs/firstthoughts/2015/01/four-things-to-remember-about-the-popes-environment-letter

I like Dr. George a lot, but I think Prager shows the greater moral clarity here.

It's this sort of leftist 'social justice' teaching that rubs me so far the wrong way about the Catholic church. I can get to the brink of saying that orthodox Catholicism has so much right, in ways that are so much more mature than almost any Protestant denomination, but...

....then one must consider submission to such leaders as Francis, who are, to me, so grossly misdirected. Perhaps it's based on my misunderstanding, but these considerations would make crossing the Tiber diffcult if not impossible.
That said, I attended an Anglican-Catholic church when I lived in Richmond,VA; there seems to be a good balance there.

Jake, I never thought about that point about evolution! That's brilliant! I should try that out sometime.

John, great first post! Thanks!

So here's a thought on the eschatology issue: I'm setting aside for a moment the probable etiology of all of this in some kind of revolutionary theology with an earthly eschatology and talking pure, abstract, theological theory. In terms of pure theology, would it be theologically impossible for there to be an orthodox Christian Superhero who really does save the planet from physical destruction? If the answer is "yes," then I suppose there is nothing *in principle* theologically wrong with saying that we ourselves should be trying to save the planet from massive physical damage. If I'm right about that, then the empirical issues and the empirical silliness of actually believing that this is the situation we're in become more central than the issue of eschatology.

But I could be wrong about that.

Jake,

Thanks for the welcome! No doubt this issue is susceptible to critique from many different angles, including the ones you have mentioned. I prefer the theological angle mainly because I'm more comfortable in that arena and also because I once had to endure a year of sojourning among theological progressives in the missions school of a conservative evangelical seminary and still haven't quite gotten over it. I had a lot of time to think about just why they were wrong. :)

wm,

Thanks for sharing those links, those are both worth the read. As a non-Catholic myself I don't really know what to make of Francis yet, but a lot of my former seminary profs probably really like him.

Welcome aboard John!

I want to echo what Lydia said and bring her example down to Earth a bit (pun intended). Think of the recent Ebola scare: as good, orthodox Christians there is nothing wrong with being worried about Ebola, wanting to get rid of Ebola, praying for those suffering from Ebola, helping those with Ebola (as long as you don't bring the disease back to the West!), etc. In other words, when thinking about a terrible plague that can kill us, it is right and proper for Christians to want to stop the plague and help people who suffer from the plague. I think we can all agree this is because we aren't Buddhists and are simply resigned to a world of suffering -- while we await Christ's return we also are commanded to perform corporal works of mercy and act in ways that Christ acted -- by healing the sick, for example.

Assume for a minute (a big assumption!) that Global Warming/Climate Change will bring terrible suffering to millions, but it won't totally destroy the planet, then I think you can build a solid theological case that it makes sense to "do something" about the problem.

Of course, I don't assume for a minute that Global Warming/Climate Change is a big problem, or as you say, anything we do to try and stop CO2 emissions won't cause more problems than they intend to solve. So I'm not onboard with the progressive/secular crusade -- but I do think that if the science was as clear-cut as something like a global plague (maybe a zombie plague!?) then we would have a Christian case for action.

Lydia,

I think to me the theological issue behind "us" collectively saving the planet has to do with presuming a level of competence which is beyond human attainment. It is the sin of Babel, that together we can become like God if we just make use of our wisdom and technology under good government. There is also the problem of thinking that if we don't do something drastic, the whole earth will be ruined. Even a minimal view of divine sovereignty seems to me to require that God can handle the earth.

But I agree with your assessment of the "empirical silliness." The problem is that I can't seem to find a good camp for myself eschatologically speaking since I can't stomach the dispensationalist Tim LaHaye view.

Rule of thumb: If the media says something about Pope Francis, assume they're lying: http://malcolmthecynic.wordpress.com/2015/01/01/q-what-do-you-do-if-the-media-tells-you-something-about-pope-francis/

The gist: We have nothing from the Pope himself, nothing the Pope has written on the environment thus far has been particularly unique, and literally the only direct quote we have from Sarondo is ridiculously vague and taken from an indirect source.

My guess is that we'll see the Pope write a fairly boring encyclical about how we need to take care of the environment, and the media will go nuts and talk about how this is revolutionary and the Pope is the greatest thing since sliced bread.

Jeffery,

You make a good point with regards to a specific and measurable threat like Ebola. Something still makes me think that the difference between that and Global Warming/Climate Change is more than a quantitative one even if the latter were empirically demonstrated to be a genuine catastrophic threat. But at least we can agree that it isn't!

MarcAnthony,

You might be right about that, and I actually hope you are.

Interesting points about hubris and divine sovereignty, John.

So, sci-fi scenario: Telescopes reveal a massive extraterrestrial body headed for earth on a collision course which will smash earth. Brave scientists develop technology that allows the earthlings to direct a deflecting ray at the oncoming terrestrial body. Dramatic CGI effects. Planet is saved. Crowds cheering in the streets. Roll credits.

Obviously very far-fetched. Would you say that there is a *theological* reason as opposed to an empirical reason to think that this would never really happen?

Mind you, I'm just bringing that up because philosophers (and theologians, for that matter) like to discuss weird hypothetical questions.

In fact, I'm a climate change denier and proud of it. :-)

If humanity manages to develop technology to populate other worlds and solar systems before that our future descendants will have to keep planet-hopping to avoid a similar fate on those other worlds until it all comes crashing down with the ultimate end of the universe, whether by heat-death, Big Crunch, or some other similarly sad fate.

Inception quote: "You mustn't be afraid to dream a little bigger." I watched an interview with Raymond Kurzweil where he proposed the idea that universal constants could be modified creating a stable yet still dynamic pocket within this universe. Of course I haven't the slightest clue how such a feat could be arranged, but the fact someone could imagine that far outside the box was amazing.

That someone could "imagine that far outside the box" is just a sign that people read lots of sci fi and that saying geeky-sounding, sci-fi stuff costs nothing. Then there's the fact that "modifying universal constants," if meaningful at all, doesn't sound like the kind of thing that would in itself give you an earth-like ecosphere. People have vivid imaginations, which is not news. Why call it amazing?

John, a very thought-provoking first foray. Thank you.

It isn't theologically nonsensical to suppose man coming up with some means, methods, or tools that will BY INTENTION modify the climate. Here's a simple one: micro-thin shade sails - in space - spread over thousands of square miles of desert to reduce sun heating. Would it work? I don't know - and neither do you.

Nor is it theologically nonsensical for men to learn to work together in such large (international) masses as to successfully plan and execute an improvement project. Superfund sites have achieved results that, in 1850, people would have said are beyond man's reach. Reduction of chemicals in LA's air was a major long-term effort that largely worked - and it DIDN'T require the whole world to agree. Now if only Mexico City and Beijing would follow suit.

What I think is much more significant is John's point about hubris involved in thinking now, today, that we understand BOTH the climate AND the economy enough to be able to tell what kinds of world-wide programs of change in behavior would have the effects of improving the climate (!) and not so wrecking economies as to completely devastate poorer populations. The track record on helping out the environment is darn spotty, with plenty of failures of things we thought were going to be great, and the liberals' track record on programs that will help the poor is so incredibly dismal as to invite despair. And you want to try BOTH? Are you mad? Have you never heard of "unforeseen consequences"? And how it grows exponentially with complexity?

Lydia,

I can't think of a theological reason why the scenario you've presented is a problem. I'm trying to figure out where the difference is with regard to the proposed solution or if there is one. Your scenario and Jeffrey's Ebola one are similar. Part of the difference I think is that in your scenarios the threat is immediate and short-term and susceptible to localized solutions even though the scope or potential scope of the disaster is global. With the Climate Change issue the threat is in the relatively distant future (100 years or more) and the proposed solutions go are not localized but involve the restructuring of society in many nations. As I said to Jeffrey, I think the difference is more than just quantitative but I have a hard time pinning it down more precisely than that. If I wanted to go deeper I would talk about the difference between premillennial and postmillennial eschatologies and why the latter involves in my mind an unbiblical overemphasis on human agency in bringing about the kingdom of God, but that would get quite involved. The Climate Change crowd tends to mix in a lot of other issues along with just the climate as I'm sure you've noticed, and maybe that's part of the problem.

Step2,

Your comment reminds me of Frank Tipler's Omega Point, which I thought of while I was writing that first paragraph. I decided to resist the temptation to say anything about it!

Tony,

I think you're helping make the point that I was after, thanks!

The empirical evidence is that the planet is, indeed, warming. The Berkeley dataset is quite clear about that. The reasons why it is warming may be unclear - whether CO2, or solar variation, or something else.

But there is no technical or physical reason why the increase in CO2 should not be responsible for the rise in temperature. The relationship between CO2 and temperature is not linear and feedbacks can modify the theoretical rise, so that the fact that surface temperatures are not rising linearly with rising CO2 in the past 18 years is irrelevant. Whether rising CO2 will actually raise temperatures to catastrophic levels, or not, is a matter for empirical observation; we will know in due course as CO2 emissions are not going to slow down in the short to medium term. No nation is going to sacrifice the present progress that comes from using fossil fuels for future benefit - especially not nations such as China and India from where most of the CO2 emissions of the future will come.

The Pope should not intervene in this debate. It has nothing to do with Christian doctrine which is, or should be, focused on the salvation of our souls when we die - whatever the cause. We know that catastrophes have been visited upon the Earth by God through the ages. God Himself destroyed most of His own Creation in the Flood.

Dan,

Surely you know that the Berkeley dataset is not the only one out there. For example there is the RSS satellite dataset:

http://wattsupwiththat.com/2015/01/03/the-great-pause-lengthens-again/

Berkeley's data has been criticized by Watts and gang for a variety of reasons:

http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/11/03/a-considered-critique-of-berkley-temperature-series/

But as John and Tony have said already, the real problem with issues related to climate change is the incredible quantitative complexity and the hubris involved in thinking we humans can easily figure out such a complex system. Professor Briggs, the "Statistician to the Stars", is very good at poking holes in such thinking (which occurs on both sides of the debate) when he reminds us that the model is not reality:

http://wmbriggs.com/blog/?p=15168

His article is long but worth careful reading.

"You mustn't be afraid to dream a little bigger."

Step2, I have seen secular humanists (science fiction writers) pose "imaginative" so-called solutions to the "end of everything" worries, including one as idiotically silly as a super-duper computer learning to say "Let there be light". That they can imagine words that are not, on their face, oxymoronic, doesn't mean that they are imagining something sensible. It is just as plausible - and foolish - to say "come up with an anti-entropy device." Or "find a different universe." Or any other silly thing. For example, it might be that the necessary pre-requisite to modifying the basic physical constants of a large bubble is using enough energy to bring about the immediate heat death of the universe. Kind of like exploitative resource-burning global warming taken to the nth degree - sure, you can do it, but it doesn't help.

I definitely agree that there is a kind obvious hubris in the thinking of the climate change fanatics. That is closely related to the specifics of the situation. As several have emphasized, the implausibility of thinking that our conjectures about something of this scope and distance in time with this many unpredictable variables are sufficiently well-founded as to justify the certain present costs of their proposals.

That is why I actually believe that a great deal of this is motivated by something else--a desire to minimize human flourishing as an end in itself. Indeed, sometimes this actually comes out, though not in those words, of course, when we hear, "Well, even aside from climate change, we should be doing all these things anyway." Really? Actually, given the harm involved, probably not. But there's a lot of deception--the faux concern for human well-being when that is expedient combined with an actual desire for there to be far fewer humans, for example. I was reading a few weeks ago about an attempt to link "climate change" with predicted increased deaths by heat stroke of the elderly. The shouting irony there, of course, is that limiting the use of air conditioning, which is a direct goal of those pushing this agenda, will certainly cause increased deaths by heat stroke among the elderly.

So, quite frankly, I think there's a lot of lying going on. Which almost makes one wonder how many people in the know really have the hubris to believe that we know what is going to happen and how many, instead, have the hubris to believe that they have a right to deceive enough people to achieve the ends they desire regardless of the truth of the matter re. climate change.

The Berkeley dataset has been created by scientists who were originally climate skeptics, so their data is much more likely to be not corrupted by warmist biases.

Whether a particular dataset shows warming or not simply depends on the original starting point. If we were to follow NOAA, and follow a 30-year anomaly trend starting at any point before 1975, warming would show on every dataset. If we were to follow Lord Monckton and choose 1997 as the starting point no dataset would show warming. The point is that all the standard temperature records since the 1880s show that the Earth's surface temperatures are warming. There are reasonable-sounding explanations given by the scientists for the pause - be it reduced El Nino activity, reduced solar insolation or oceanic heat uptake. Whether these complex explanations are right or wrong I suspect nobody is quite sure - there is no definite answer yet as far as I can see.

As for hubris, there is hubris everywhere wherever modern technology is involved. Who could have imagined, in the last half of the 19th century, how much there was to be learned about the biology of human reproduction in the next 150 years? And yet this knowledge makes no difference to the ethics of human behaviour where sexuality and reproduction are concerned - the concept of one man and one woman and one flesh remains as valid today as it was when laid down in the Gospel.

The IPCC's views about global warming may be true, or not. As I said above, it is not outside the realm of physical possibility, and it is quite possible that climate scientists may be right about the cause being the accumulation of CO2 and they may even be right about future events. There may be untoward natural events, floods, drought, coastal inundations in the future. So what? Either way, it leaves Christian doctrine and its exposition untouched - why does the Holy Father need to get involved? We know that God Himself instituted a Flood to wipe out all the world's land animals simultaneously - global warming can hardly be more final than that.

I don't think the reproduction analogy is a very close analogy, though, scientifically. These things can be directly observed and experiments can be made in mice. Also (unethical) experiments in humans. I see a fair bit of caution (not counting the transhumanist nutballs) even in stating what can be projected from mice to humans and what can be done. And outright fraud is pretty mercilessly exposed (think of that Japanese scientist who faked her data lately) despite the hype concerning stem cells. Even though reproduction is a very politicized field of science, and even though I condemn the unethical nature of much of the research, from a scientific perspective it doesn't surprise me that they both are able to learn a lot and that they do learn a lot. Projecting what vast weather and climate patterns will be on the entire planet earth decades and more from now is a whole different ballgame.

I think Dan's comments are pretty much on point. We shouldn't be too quick to say that climate *won't* change dramatically -- that would be the same sort of hubris that the climate doomsayers engage in.

I've laid out my opinion on "climate denial" before, so I'll just link to it. I'll add, though, that the solution always looks like what leftists want anyway, and the tactics involved in shutting down "deniers" (name-calling, boycotting, threatening careers) are the same as those used by leftists, that I tend to think the whole thing is heavily and successfully driven by leftists. NOT in a conspiracy-theory sort of way -- there's no need for that -- but in the same way that the fight for gay "marriage" is driven by leftists.

Dan,

You say, "If we were to follow Lord Monckton and choose 1997 as the starting point no dataset would show warming. The point is that all the standard temperature records since the 1880s show that the Earth's surface temperatures are warming." Quite right. And the Earth has warmed in the past before the Industrial Revolution and has cooled in the past. What are we to make of this is the question?

I actually tend to agree with you -- it is not outside the realm of possibility that the IPCC is correct. Of course, the next question to ask is what does that mean -- correct with respect to what prediction and what are the consequences? Assuming their own prediction of an average warming of 2 degrees Celsius, then we don't have much to worry about:

http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/379923/be-not-afraid-jim-manzi

As Lydia suggests, the real goal of the Climate Change crowd seems to be something else -- the idea that we need to put the breaks on capitalism and whatever works to convince the public to do so will be used to beat us over the head to convince us to turn down the heat (or air conditioning when the summer rolls around).

No one is required to use either heroic or futile means to alleviate suffering, but it is far from obvious that attempting to affect the climate, even if we don't know what we are doing is either heroic or futile. The same could have been said for blood-letting in the Plague Era. Sometimes, one has to proceed with the best lights available and trust the rest to God. Unlike any era in previous human history, we know that a global change in climate is coming, sometime in the near (ish) future. The question is, are we, as a species, supposed to fold our hands and grimace as in the past or are we permitted or even required to intervene, even if we are wrong? That is a prudential judgment, but, in my opinion, if our science has progressed to the point where we can observe and quantify a phenomenon, such as in the Plague days, then we are advanced enough to get involved, even if badly, at first. Yes, suffering can occur. Some treatments of the Plague actually worked, but killed the patient. We learned. The big fear, really, is that we only get one chance at whatever we do to this planet. That is just silly, barring a global nuclear catastrophe. At some point, it is not a sin to consider changing the weather. If I developed a weather device that could create exactly the right climate anywhere on the planet, should I, from a theological point of view, just let the device sit, because, hey, the Eschalon is coming, anyways?

If I have understood John's point (hello and welcome), then I think it is badly miscast. God gave man dominion over the planet. That is not a secular view, it is a theological one. Man is not supposed to sit and wait for the Second Coming. That would be the sin of despair, which afflicted some first-century Christians, who assumed the Second Coming was right around the corner. If the Apostles and Evangelists had not planned centuries ahead in leaving a Church and a written Bible, things would have been very different, today. Of all of the creatures on this planet, man is the only one with the gift of foresight. That gives us an enormous potential, but an equally potentially deadly responsibility. We can foresee badly or well, but we must act on the lights we have.

In fact, the secular Eschalon is not the belief that everything goes to pot, eventually. That, is actually, the Christian belief. Even St. Paul points out that the world is passing away. No, the true secular Eschalon is that there is no Eschalon - that things will just keep getting better and better, world without end. Who needs to worry about an afterlife? Eventually, we will live as long as we want. That is the lie of the secularist.

As far as climate change, however, it is not an eschatological issue, but one of simple human prudence. If it exists and we can do something, we should. In the past, our knowledge prevented us, but as we acquire more knowledge, we also acquire more responsibility. Granted, we are not at the analogous stage of knowing that bacteria causes the Plague in climate science - we are much closer to blood-letting, but does that mean we are to have no regard for the future? That would be the sin of presumption, which is defined as:

"Presumption is here considered as a vice opposed to the theological virtue of hope. It may also be regarded as a product of pride. It may be defined as the condition of a soul which, because of a badly regulated reliance on God's mercy and power, hopes for salvation without doing anything to deserve it, or for pardon of his sins without repenting of them."

Now, even if the salvation mentioned is theological, above, there is an analogy in the material realm. It is despair to simply ignore a phenomenon or a danger if there is reasonable and proper hope of being saved from it (there are exceptions for a higher good, the Crucifixion bring the best example where we may reasonably not escape suffering). We may not be at the point of reasonably knowing how to influence climate, but we are a heck of a lot closer than when Twain made his quip about everybody talking about the weather, but no one doing anything about it. So, no. Perhaps I'm grumpy, today, but I don't think climate change falls into any different category than any other prudential act and those have moral consequences and can directly or indirectly affect one's status at the Last Judgment. The moral consequences in affecting climate change would involve vincibly knowing that a course of action would be wrong, say, for instance, bombing 2/3 of the world out of existence to reduce energy consumption, but reasonably and morally planning for the future is exactly the opposite of believing that everything decays. In fact, I put it to you that marriages will still be happening when Christ returns and that is anything but a statement of decay.

Even if man is not causing the current climate change, as he learns more and more he is less and less absolved from taking prudent actions. I am not a believer in anthropogenic climate change, but my remarks apply to any external phenomena, whether they be medical, technological, etc. to ignore the here and now because there is a better there and then is a sin.

The Chicken

In this particular case, Chicken, I believe that it is positively contrary to prudence to take the actions recommended to us by the climate change advocates. The policies in question would cause known and measurable harm to human beings and human flourishing, all over, in both developed and developing countries. Therefore, these actions are imprudent. They are defended as "prudent" or "something we have to do" only on the assumption that they are averting some worse harm down the line. But, since the science on which that is based is highly shaky, from the point of view _precisely_ of prudence, these recommendations are to be deplored.

John Fraser said......
"Thanks for sharing those links, those are both worth the read. As a non-Catholic myself I don't really know what to make of Francis yet, but a lot of my former seminary profs probably really like him."

Looks like this thread has taken a different direction, but just to reply to John Fraser:

This pope seems clearly to be coming from a worldview removed from Orthodox Christianity. I'm going to let Maureen Mullarky who blogs at "First Things" (a Catholic website) say it better than I could.....

http://www.firstthings.com/blogs/mullarkey/2015/01/francis-political-illusion

Sure, the leftists are celebrating Francis. There's a huge divide over this Pope between conservatives and traditional Christians on one side and modern liberal progressives and Marxists on the other. He's had time now to make it eminently clear what he believes. I held out for a long time, giving him maximal benefit of the doubt. I really wanted Francis to be a serious and mature man who espoused moral clarity, rooted in a deep theological understanding of history, doctrine, and scripture.

Dear Lydia,

You wrote:

"They are defended as "prudent" or "something we have to do" only on the assumption that they are averting some worse harm down the line. But, since the science on which that is based is highly shaky, from the point of view _precisely_ of prudence, these recommendations are to be deplored."

That's fine by me. Recognizing that an action is imprudence is prudence in action. It is very possible that the currently proposed actions are imprudent. In a perfect society, that should be a matter for strenuous debate. Sadly, it isn't because of money and agendas.

My point was that it is becoming less and less morally proper to simply do nothing at all. If a baptized baby is in distress, should medical doctors stand around because, well, everybody dies, anyways? No. They have a moral necessity to act as best they can to do what they can. If one has a board of directors only interested in the bottom line or some specific agenda, the baby might not get the proper care. In this case, the problem is not that reason has been tried and failed, it is that it hasn't been tried at all. EEEk! Original Sin.

The crux of what I disagree with John about is his statement:

"But what happens when Christians embrace all or part of secular eschatology? You end up with “progressive” Christians who believe that it is part of working for the kingdom of God to cut carbon emissions and save the earth from the shorter-term catastrophe of the secular view. In this view God has given us a mandate to save the earth, so it is still up to us to do so through technology and wise government. This is a striking reversion to the Old Testament model of salvation through law. It doesn’t work and can’t work because it doesn’t deal with the central problem that is the root of all others, the condition of the human heart."

The command to be fruitful and multiply and subdue the Earth was not rescinded by Christ. The Catechism of the Catholic Church has this to say:

"307 To human beings God even gives the power of freely sharing in his providence by entrusting them with the responsibility of "subduing" the earth and having dominion over it.168 God thus enables men to be intelligent and free causes in order to complete the work of creation, to perfect its harmony for their own good and that of their neighbours. Though often unconscious collaborators with God's will, they can also enter deliberately into the divine plan by their actions, their prayers and their sufferings.169 They then fully become "God's fellow workers" and co-workers for his kingdom.170

So, it is not right to say that:

"Christians who believe that it is part of working for the kingdom of God to cut carbon emissions and save the earth from the shorter-term catastrophe"

is either a exclusively progressive or secularist response. Within the limits of our abilities, we are called to do what we can, if we need to. There are two parts to that: we must agree that there is a need (many do not) and that we can do something (many disagree on what). There are no particularly eschatological dimensions to this. It is a matter of the proper human response to what God has commanded us to do - exercise dominion over the planet. This is not a call for passivity. It is a call for prudence. That prudence has not been exercised is not an argument for the proposition that the issue cannot be prudentially approached. I suppose the general down-turn in prudence in society as a whole plays into this, but still, this is not a liberal/conservative, secular/Christian dichotomy.

Now, if John had said that Global Climate Change advocates have all the zeal of an early convert to a new religion, then I could see that, but dealing with the climate is not opposed to the Christian moral view or its ontology.

I didn't mean to come out of the gate swinging on this issue. Its just that I had to spend two hours and some equations on another blog this morning to argue with someone who claimed that it was the sun and only the sun that affected the Earth's climate. I was a bit worked up when I got here, so John, if I have given offense, I apologize. I realize that there is a valid difference between the Christian and the secular humanist in the correct moral apporaches to the problems of the human condition, but the actual problems, themselves, are not exclusive to either one of the two camps and, sometimes, humanists, get the correct solution, because it happens to coincide with the correct moral solution, whether they realize it or not. I am not claiming that for Global Climate Change, since we haven't even convincingly defined the problem variables, yet, but in the abstract, secularists and Christian solutions to certain human problems overlap. A classic example is the need for sanitation. Both Christians and secularists can agree that rats are a potential source of Plague and should be dealt with by decreasing the garbage load in human populations.

The Chicken

My point was that it is becoming less and less morally proper to simply do nothing at all.

I'm sorry, but I don't think I understand this. If alleged AGW is a phony crisis based on incorrect scientific extrapolation, then it is *entirely* morally appropriate to do nothing at all about what is, in reality, nothing. Unless count vigorously arguing that man is not causing the environment to warm up and that the policies proposed are disastrous ideas as "doing something." But actually, it's only meta-doing something. Doing something to convince governments not to do something that it would be a really bad idea to do.

Chicken,

No offense taken by anything you have said. Just to clarify a bit, you along with some others have pointed out that there are certain specific and measurable situations in which we can alleviate specific instances of suffering and should do so. I have no quarrel with that. I thought about making my o.p. a bit more nuanced and perhaps should have, but I see that as qualitatively different than the Climate Change issue for various reasons that I have tried to explain. I am curious about your scenario about creating "exactly the right climate" because I'm not sure what that is and I suspect you might get a different answer depending on whether you're talking to an eskimo, an aborigine from Central America, or a resident of Beverly Hills (which actually I think plays into Jake's first comment about humans adapting to climate change).

But to me it is because the issues involved in Global Warming/Climate Change involve a presumption of knowledge which is beyond human ability (certainly now and possibly in the future as well) and because the kind of Global governance required to pull it all off is beyond human competence AND natural human benevolence most definitely now and in the future that I think this moves into the realm of a theological problem. A lot of the theological literature on this topic from the environmentalist side tends to use eschatological language also, and actually ties in the idea of global governance and wise use of technology with the coming of the kingdom of God. Perhaps if I had spent more time on research for this post I could have brought more of that into play. I have been studying and thinking about this particular angle on this issue for over a decade. I say that only to say that there is a lot more behind my thinking than I could fit into a blog post.

So on the one hand I agree that within certain well-defined parameters dealing with environmental issues per se is not unbiblical. On the other hand I also am of the opinion that this issue is not one of those and the kind of theological thinking that I see behind those who jump into it is troubling to say the least.

There are a few theoretical possibilities:

1. The world is warming up, and man's input is negligible.
2. The world is warming up and man's input is significant.
3. The world is warming up and man's input is the critical difference.
4. The world is not heating up significantly.

The state of world knowledge on these 4 is that we cannot definitively say any one of them is right, nor that any one of them is wrong. That's a pretty limited basis for decisive action. The state of the preponderance of the scholarly opinion is that the world is probably heating up, that if it is heating up the amount has a good chance of being significant, and if so that man's input has at least a significant impact.

There are only a few possible outflows from 1, 2, and 3 that we must think of as potentially something akin to an emergency:

a. The warm-up will cause devastating results to much of mankind.
b. The warm-up will cause devastating results to a small portion of mankind and severe results to most of mankind.

The next two are less of an emergency and more of a pandemic-level ill:

c. The warm-up will cause severe results to a small portion of mankind and moderately unpleasant results to much of mankind.
d. The warm-up will cause moderately unpleasant to severe results to a portion of mankind and benign results to another portion of mankind, with most people sort of getting some pluses and some minuses.
e. The warm-up will mostly bring in benign results, except to those who make money off others in distress and emergencies.

The state of world knowledge on these 5 possibilities is much less developed than on the first 4. However, (if general reports can be trusted) the state of the preponderance of _opinion_ of those who have legitimately endeavored to study the question is that IF the warm-up exceeds 4 degrees, the effects will be devastating on many or most, and if the warm-up is between 2 and 4 degrees, the effects will be severe on many, but benign on some.

Of the actions we might dream up to take in response to the warm-up (to shut it off, minimize it, or mitigate its effects), there are some possibilities:

I. Our efforts are generally effective, with some failures but most successes.
II. Our efforts are generally effective in the short term and close to the field of action, but have vast unintended effects that are uncertain or ill in the long term.
III. Our efforts are sometimes effective but mostly ineffective in achieving the elements of change we target.
IV. Our efforts are usually ineffective.

Judging by world-wide efforts managed at international treaty level politics and economics, there is hardly any plausible likelihood of I. Look at the treaty of Versailles, the formation of the Allies in WWII (with suppression of Nazism and carving up the world for Communism at Potsdam), the formation of the UN, the Geneva Conventions on treatment of prisoners, the UN conventions on the rights of women, on children, on the disabled, the International Criminal Court. Look at (former) Yugoslavia, Czechoslovakia, Soviet Union, Rwanda, Oil-for-Food, Syria. Look at OPEC, the EU, the Euro, international maritime law, the international space station, Bretton Woods finance, and Keynsian economics in action.

One thing only can be fully and confidently predicted if we attempt world-wide, treaty-based measures to forestall global warming, under current political forms: the liberals will increase government mandates and government control of business, the disgusting marriage of large business and large government will grow apace, and transparency / restraint of government corruption will decline. (We might even, at first, make significant headway on the environmental problems as intended.) So far as I see it, none, literally NONE of the extra-national movements of power are as transparent as even the US government (as poor as that is), nor as susceptible to correction when corruption is recognized. Think of what little happened with the UN when Kofi Anan's little games were uncovered. Hence, without revising the international forms of power, the likelihood that initial improvements would be stretched into long-term success seems very implausible.

Unless the Pope were to out-and-out decry left-liberal theories of government and call for an entirely new order of international power, along with his (presumed) call for international works for the environment, any call for specific changes would most likely just end up pitting the morally AND practically failed liberal theories against the morally failing but pragmatically not yet fully failing capital-favoring theories. Good luck with that.

Chicken, that is nicely put.

As Christians we need to start a real conversation about prudence - the need to consume less, personal thrift and frugality - virtues from which many Christians have been disconnected for some time now. In certain ages, consumption may have been a virtue as a driver of the economy. In this age, the opposite is true.

And the results would work themselves out in the physical as well as the moral sphere. That is how chastity and continence deliver the same outcomes as "family planning".

Dan,

As Christians we need to start a real conversation about prudence - the need to consume less, personal thrift and frugality - virtues from which many Christians have been disconnected for some time now.

I agree with your statement about consuming less, thrift, and frugality (although in my cursory reading of Chicken's comments I didn't see him say anything about that). In fact these are virtues that are precisely those promoted by personal holiness. This goes back to my comment about reverting to the OT and law - you can't legislate virtue. If in fact the environment really is suffering the kind of harm that the Climate Change camp says it is (of which I am quite skeptical), it is being driven by the conspicuous levels of consumption of the Western world and the movement towards that level of consumption by the developing world. So a revival of personal virtues, simplicity and so forth would in fact address the root of the problem in a way that, say, carbon taxes would not. Moreover a revival of these kinds of virtues would be of benefit to people regardless of what is happening with the environment. This kind of stands on its head the current thinking that development of green technologies will benefit humanity even if the "science" about Climate Change is as wrong as the skeptics say it is. I'm not sure if that's really true, but I am sure about a revival of personal holiness being beneficial on both a personal and a societal level. However, I don't think we need to be motivated by concern for the environment, but rather by a desire for Christlikeness.

Incidentally I wrote a paper in seminary precisely along those lines - and my progressive seminary professor who had totally bought into Global Warming (before it morphed into the more nebulous Climate Change in Orwellian fashion) absolutely hated it.

williamfrancisbrown,

I can see the thread is not going in this direction, so I promise I won't pursue this line of conversation any further.

That said, you said this:

I really wanted Francis to be a serious and mature man who espoused moral clarity, rooted in a deep theological understanding of history, doctrine, and scripture.

It looks to me like the Pope really should never have been elected. He's in over his head theologically. It doesn't mean he's a moral moron, only that he is simply not educated enough theologically to be the head of the largest Christian sect in the world. You can see the evidence of this in the Pope's closing remarks at the Synod of the Family. Evidently he does not feel qualified enough to take a strong stance on either side of the liberal/conservative divide in the Church right now.

Ideally, the Pope falls in line immediately with traditional Christian teaching. But for a Pope with clear liberal sympathies, coming from a country with Marxist tendencies, I imagine that for him it takes great restraint to remain neutral, and I think he's tried. I don't like it, but I also think we could be doing a heck of a lot worse.

Which is, I suppose, damning with faint praise. But it's still something.

So, John thinks, there can be no secular moral imperative

to do something to help ensure that earth goes to pot in 10,000,000 generations instead of 10

Jake asks a "brilliant" (Lydia) question:

Wouldn't it be reasonable to let man evolve through natural selection to adapt to the changing climate?

No it wouldn't, and no believer in natural selection is forced to say otherwise. If Jake really believes, a secular ethicist is rationally forced to say so, it is he who commits a naturalistic fallacy. The fact that natural selection in the past adapted biological species to temperature changes does neither entail that the immense suffering and going extinct of many species involved in such processes is a good thing, nor that we should forgo cultural, governmental or technological means to slow down global temperature increase.

As Christians we need to start a real conversation about prudence - the need to consume less, personal thrift and frugality - virtues from which many Christians have been disconnected for some time now. In certain ages, consumption may have been a virtue as a driver of the economy. In this age, the opposite is true.

A good starting point would be how you intend to teach people to simultaneously avoid the finer things in life and continue to produce wealth as though they were hoping to one day obtain them. That's not snark, but a serious concern that Christians frequently write off as "righteous men would just sacrifice for the greater good." The wealth driving positions in modern society typically require a lot of sacrifice just to get in the door. That's true of everything from skilled blue collar jobs to white collar professional positions. Then going from so-so wages which correspond to moderate productivity to very high pay which tends to correspond to high productivity tends to require enormous sacrifice on the part of the individual and their family. Concurrent with thrift and frugality is a mindset of valuing other things beside wealth and you're going to find a lot of cognitive dissonance trying to work all of that together.

Personal thrift is never going to accomplish anything like what the global warmists are looking for. Not even close. Moreover, there are all kinds of prudential decisions to which there is no single right answer and to which a prudent, thrifty, virtuous person might give the "wrong" answer from the perspective of the climate change advocates. For example, it could be entirely consonant with thrift and personal virtue to take a job for which one had to commute and use a lot of gasoline. It could be consonant with thrift and personal virtue to use styrofoam containers for one's food. Etc. It can be completely consonant with thrift and personal virtue to use air conditioning.

I actually think it's probably dangerously naive to believe anything to the effect that virtuous Christians can achieve anything like the results desired by environmentalists of various types if we're just good, old-fashioned, thrifty, non-greedy people. We shouldn't believe that, for example, the recycling agenda is all about being thrifty and so forth. Not only is that not what it is all about, politically, but such beliefs are likely to give people a false conscience and push them into a kind of new legalism, even a kind of "new kosher," with a religious gloss: I have to serve God by being thrifty, which means I can't buy styrofoam, have to be so hot in the summer and cold in the winter that I find it hard to concentrate and do the work God has given me. It's morally wrong to use disposable diapers, and so forth. Those sorts of decisions are a heck of a lot more complex than the environmentalists would want us to believe, and it's not a good idea to try to identify their demands with the demands of just "being good people" or "not viewing consumption as an end in itself," etc.

Lydia,

You wrote:

"I'm sorry, but I don't think I understand this. If alleged AGW is a phony crisis based on incorrect scientific extrapolation, then it is *entirely* morally appropriate to do nothing at all about what is, in reality, nothing."

What I said was that as knowledge increases, the responsibility for action increases. Sometimes, new knowledge tells us that there is, in fact, no crisis, where once we thought there were. In that case, the correct action is no action. This happens all of the time in astronomy. In 2010, we thought an asteroid would hit the Earth in a 100 years; in 2014, with better resolution, we think it will just miss Earth. Action has turned into in-action. It is not, necessarily, a meta-schema, just the results of the natural evolution of knowledge in an area where things are uncertain.

On a scale of 1 to 100, where 1 is, "What's the question," and 100 is, "Carved in stone," modern climatology is, probably, at about the level of 40. Show we act? Well, as an exercise in Baysian reasoning, probably not. Who knows what the next piece of information will do to the statistics.

There is a very good episode of the old black-and-white Outer Limits, called, "Demon with a Glass Hand," that illustrates the difficulties of acting on partial knowledge, very well. As Trent recovers more and more of his glass computer hand, things come more and more into focus and his actions become more and more prescribed.

The Chicken

For example, it could be entirely consonant with thrift and personal virtue to take a job for which one had to commute and use a lot of gasoline.

In large metropolitan regions this is especially true. Housing in the suburbs is often as much as 25-50% less expensive than taking the more "eco-friendly" route of buying closer to where you'll probably work. From a frugality perspective, the commute makes a lot of sense. A typical smaller "commuter car" like an Elantra, Focus, Civic or Corolla can easy get 30mpg average and as much as 40mpg highway.

There is no reconciling the doctrinaire environmentalist position with that of the Christian trying to be frugal here. You're paying as much as $200k more in mortgage costs to save about 5-7 gallons of gas a week which is insignificant in terms of pollution.

Lydia, people got by without air-conditioning or continuous heating until fairly recently; it can hardly be the position of a conservative to say that the times when these were not available produced either poor thinking or poor productivity. While I was talking about personal frugality, we can certainly also have homes, offices and transportation that are fuel efficient, designed to facilitate insulation, and even have legislation and mandates and other carrots and sticks that further such efforts. Competition and the markets do not automatically bring such efficiencies.

Your point about the perceived need for disposable diapers is interesting. Most of the world's babies, including The Lamb, got by with disposable diapers either - indeed, when large families were the norm, disposable diapers didn't exist. In our (nuclear) family we rarely used disposable diapers, although we have only two kids, and both parents worked; this is not to say we were being particularly environmentally virtuous, it was just considerably cheaper for us to use washables. The use of disposables was limited to travel times. It is true that washables seem less convenient than using disposables - but after the first few weeks we found it simply meant finding the rhythm and discipline of washing; once found, it became a routine chore, not to be particularly though about. I wonder how many more older rhythms of life we have forgotten or fail to find simply because we have lost touch with, or even ridicule what our grandparents did.

Sorry about the spelling errors, I hate typing on a phone.

Also, Lydia, I'm not sure whether your climate change denier statement was meant in irony or not! Why not simply be prudent and agnostic on the issue until it shakes itself out? For my part, I don't pretend to understand the complexities of the physics and mathematics of quantum mechanics or relativity theory, but I'm not going to deny them either, as long as they don't conflict with Christian belief and practice - and they don't. And there's nothing in current climate science that conflicts with Christian belief or practice, either.

Lydia, people got by without air-conditioning or continuous heating until fairly recently; it can hardly be the position of a conservative to say that the times when these were not available produced either poor thinking or poor productivity.

Of course I did not say that. But I will say that individual people may make a prudential decision, now, that they will think and work better with both good heating and more moderate temperatures in the summers. Indeed, the young, the ill, and the elderly die of heat stroke when temperature moderation is not available. There is nothing inherently virtuous about either being uncomfortable or even in danger because of perceived "betterness" to the environment. A variety of prudential factors come into play, and it is absurd and, as I said, a new form of legalism to make doing without either central heating or central air conditioning a particularly virtuous way to live.

Your point about the perceived need for disposable diapers is interesting. Most of the world's babies, including The Lamb, got by with disposable diapers either - indeed, when large families were the norm, disposable diapers didn't exist.

If this is intended as an argument, it is so poor as scarcely to merit a response. Jesus didn't use disposable diapers??? Seriously, you are even bringing that up? And I see precisely zero connection between your historical statement and a reason _not_ to use disposable diapers.

Let me be clear: The blessings of modern life are, as St. Paul says about food and drink, to be received as gifts of God. They are, precisely, blessings. There is nothing inherently virtuous about refusing them or doing without them, nothing greedy or avaricious about receiving them with thanksgiving to the One who has blessed men with the ingenuity, the knowledge, and the means to bring these blessings to the world.

While I was talking about personal frugality, we can certainly also have homes, offices and transportation that are fuel efficient, designed to facilitate insulation, and even have legislation and mandates and other carrots and sticks that further such efforts.

But I doubt that we should do so. In fact, the law of unintended consequences comes in with a vengeance regarding such things. And they are often precisely at odds with personal frugality. Again, again, again, there is nothing inherently good about fuel efficiency. Nothing. It isn't in itself "non-greedy." In fact, it might be more greedy (or proud, or Pharisaical) to buy a "smart" car or an "environmentally efficient" house than to make do with an old clunker.

I wonder how many more older rhythms of life we have forgotten or fail to find simply because we have lost touch with, or even ridicule what our grandparents did.

I ridicule nothing. I am _grateful_ to have blessings my grandparents did not have. There is certainly no particular reason to use technologies "that our grandparents used" simply as such, any more than there is some special virtue in having outhouses instead of indoor plumbing. Another modern blessing.

Also, Lydia, I'm not sure whether your climate change denier statement was meant in irony or not! Why not simply be prudent and agnostic on the issue until it shakes itself out?

The climate change claim is a strong claim with fairly definite content. It is also a lot easier to understand than quantum physics and need not be left to the guild of Experts with a capital E. It always required positive evidence, like any strong, substantive, contentful claim. The very specificity of such claims means that they start with a low probability in any event. But it is even worse when people are strongly motivated to show them to be true and end up being unable to do so. E.g. If I were told that there were a planet beyond Neptune with such-and-such an atmosphere, containing alien life forms, that would not be empirically impossible, but it should be supportable with facts, or it would be a mere fictional posit. If frequent attempts to show evidence of this purported planet failed or were shown to have been based on "cooked" data, if predictions based on the postulation of the planet were falsified and the scientists making the claim were forced to fall back upon ad hoc explanations, I would be _even more_ justified in disbelieving in the existence of that hypothetical planet than the initial, fuzzy disbelief based upon the mere fact of its specificity.

So, mutatis mutandis...

If in fact the environment really is suffering the kind of harm that the Climate Change camp says it is (of which I am quite skeptical), it is being driven by the conspicuous levels of consumption of the Western world and the movement towards that level of consumption by the developing world.

John, there is a sense in which this is probably true, but another sense in which it is not. I take point specifically to your use of "conspicuous" here.

It is of course true that the "standard of living" in the western countries is much higher than past generations have ever seen. The problem is that many, many HUMAN goods are achieved within the same sphere of increased "standard of living" as merely physical and recreational comforts. The number of people hungry, subject to malnutrition, or starving to death has gone down even as the population tripled in the last century. Te be fed is a human good, not just a comfort. The number of people receiving a high school and college education went through the roof compared to a century earlier. To be educated is a human good. The number of people who have REAL options for pursuit of a career (or life mission) increased many-fold (rather than being a farmer or tanner "because your father was"). To be free to be a mathematician, a pilot, or an underwater welder, when your mind and spirit aspire to those things, is a human good. These changes for the better are so completely bound up with the increase in the PHYSICAL standard of living that they can hardly be conceived as separable. So, while it is true that men were just as capable of holiness in the simpler days of yore, it is not necessarily the case that we can reasonably aim for a society that foregoes all of these goods.

A second aspect of the "conspicuous" issue is something that a wise mother of an earlier generation pointed out to my wife and me when we were just starting out: society forces on you that you must live within a great many constraints against living the way our grandparents lived: I cannot simply dig a well in my back yard. I cannot simply go hunting for food nearby. I cannot refuse to give my kids a high school education. I cannot plan to walk everywhere I go. It is, then, natural and appropriate to make use of those opportunities this same society makes available to accomplish in today's world things that were accomplished more simply in an earlier time. Cars for getting to work mean I don't have to spend 3 hours each way walking. Ambulances for getting to the ER mean my kid doesn't bleed out and die. Computers and online classes mean I can educate my kids at home in biology WITHOUT having a biology degree. And, (my favorite) disposable diapers means that when I find, with my 4th kid, that her skin doesn't break into rashes all the time because she is dryer with disposable, her health and comfort are so greatly improved that there is no question of whether to switch out of cloth diapers for her.

It isn't conspicious consumption, for each decision taken by an individual on his own, to weigh the REAL opportunities available and opt for "modern" because in these concrete circumstances that provides more proper and due human good. Even if in another time and place that modern option wouldn't be as necessary or as conducive to the good.

Preach it, Tony.

And, as this week's cold weather showed, some of these blessings are interrelated. Modern plumbing (which is valuable for reasons of health and sanitation) and modern heating are closely related, as anyone who has ever had (or narrowly avoided) frozen, broken indoor pipes can attest.

Air conditioning keeps the books and electronics in good shape that many of us use as tools for our work and service to God. Etc.

Lydia/Tony,

ESR pointed out something quite interesting about a recent NASA discovery about CO2 emissions. Worth reading, as it provides a heat map of CO2 emissions...

Disposable diapers are also a bit of a red herring since most of the materials that got into them are biodegradable.

In secular eschatology salvation comes through the wise use of technology combined with good government.

That alone should cause any rational person to completely discount secular eschatology.

Lydia, there is nothing in the physics of climate change that makes it either impossible or improbable that the planetary climate will not change if atmospheric CO2 is increased, What skeptics, such as Dr Lindzen suggest is that there are mitigating events, such as increased cloud formation, or decrease in solar insulation that may cancel out the increase in temperature. As Judith Curry has pointed out in her blog, the issue is uncertainty, and it's quantification. That does not mean the science, or the empirical observations are "phony". In any case, the empirical observations of warming have been shown to be an accurate representation when looked at in over a century of reliable data recording.

I am not here to condemn modern technology. Of course it is a blessing in many ways. Yet you are looking at consumption too narrowly, and focusing on the USA alone. Warming and it's sequels are could prove to be major problems in other parts of the world. Disposable diapers are used by less than 25% of the world's babies - the increase in the need for pulp and other materials to make them would create significant problems if 80% of the world's babies used them. If all the cars in the world today, or the 30% supposed increased number in China and other countries in 20 years ran on engines using 1960s emission criteria pollution issues would be significantly higher.

Warming and it's sequels are could prove to be major problems in other parts of the world.

Actually, the developing world stands to be hurt greatly by limitations on CO2 emissions. (Side note: Environmentalists are often bleeding heart liberals yet at the same time show little concern, or little wisdom, about what is really best for people in the developing world. Cf the ban on DDT and the rise in malaria.)

I'm not sure what your discussion of whether increasing CO2 could warm the atmosphere has to do with my example and with what I said about burden of proof. My point is an epistemological one and does not require the claim involved to be impossible. Strong, substantive, specific claims (which definitely include the claim that man is causing the planet to warm up by man's use of technology and that great harm will come of this) are _always_ intrinsically improbable and bear the burden of proof, regardless of whether they are physically impossible. Moreover, this claim involves a great deal more than information about what happens in the lab in a restricted and artificial situation.