The following items appear in the
Cornwall Alliance for the Stewardship of Creation Newsletter, June 6, 2007:
1. Cornwall Alliance and Evangelical Environmental Network Debate Global Warming Theology, Science, and Economics
Representatives of the Cornwall Alliance for the Stewardship of Creation and the Evangelical Environmental Network faced off in informal debate Thursday, May 31, at the Family Research Council in Washington. Dr. E. Calvin Beisner and Dr. Kenneth Chilton represented the Alliance on a discussion panel about global warming hosted by the FRC. Opposite them were EEN representatives Dr. Jim Ball and Dr. Rusty Pritchard. To hear the panel discussion,
click here.
Comment:
After listening to the panel online, one person wrote, “I am confused -- is Cal saying we should not do anything about it or is he stating that we need to do our adjusting systematically in due time?” Here’s my answer:
Am I “saying we should not do anything about it”? That depends on what “it” and “anything” denote. There are about five superimposed, overlapping cycles of warming and cooling of the Earth’s atmosphere/ocean systems that have gone on throughout geologic history, and about them we should do absolutely nothing because we can do absolutely nothing. Then there is human impact on global average temperature; since we cause it, we can, at least theoretically, “do something about it.” But it only makes sense to “do something about it” if the marginal benefits of what we do about it exceed the marginal costs of our doing it. Since what we do that impacts global average temperature has its own beneficial effects (providing energy to fuel our economies, which provide us with food, clothing, shelter, medical care, education, transportation, communication, and everything else we consume, making our lives longer, healthier, and generally more enriched materially), we must weigh the benefit/cost ratio of continuing that against the benefit/cost ratio of reducing or eliminating it. Doing that in turn depends, as my colleague Ken Chilton put it, on putting dollar values on all the products of our energy use, on all the effects of whatever temperature increase that energy use might have, on all the effects of reducing our energy use, and on all the lost products from the reduced energy use. All of that is an incredibly, incredibly complex set of calculations with enormous unknown variables scattered all through it.
It helps to start by trying to quantify, relative to natural factors, just how much human activity has influenced or is likely to influence global average temperature. The linked PDF has the handout I gave to those at the panel discussion. It compares the correlation between solar variability and Earth’s atmospheric temperature variability with the correlation between atmospheric CO2 concentration and Earth’s atmospheric temperature variability. You will notice instantly that the correlation with CO2 concentration is very poor, while that with solar variability is very, very good. This is just one of many, many such pieces of data that indicate that the overwhelming majority cause of recent global climate change has been natural, not human (as if humans weren’t part of “nature,” by the way). Some of the reading resources mentioned on the second page of the handout would give you much more information on this.
The upshot is that, like many climate scientists, I (not a climate scientist but a well read layman) think human influence on global average temperature is theoretically real but so small as to be nearly, or completely, impossible to distinguish from natural background variation. Some such estimate is implicit in the fact that even the supporters of the Kyoto Protocol to limit greenhouse gas emissions estimate that full compliance over fifty years would reduce global average temperature by only at most 0.07C (0.126F). Such a tiny temperature increment is not even detectable on any global scale and certainly would have no significant impact on human or non-human ecology or on the general ocean/atmosphere climate system on which life depends. Yet achieving it would, even according to Kyoto’s supporters, cost something in the neighborhood of $200 billion to $1 trillion per year to the global economy. The benefit cost/ratio of that is utterly absurd. That’s why I conclude that we should do nothing about “it”--namely, about how much or how little global average temperature will change (upward or downward) in the future.
But we should do something about another “it”--the impact of climate change (however caused) on people. We can’t do anything about it by trying to reduce the climate change itself, but we can certainly do something by reducing the negative and enhancing the positive effects of the climate change. How? By promoting economic development, i.e., the growth of wealth, which enables people to protect themselves against all kinds of threats--natural and unnatural, climate-related and otherwise. Fifty years of economic growth around the world will lift almost all societies to a level quite close to that of the present U.S. (and thirty more years will put all at or above that level). At that level, they will be able to afford all the protections we enjoy in the U.S. Consider that even Hurricane Katrina caused only 346 direct and 1326 indirect deaths in the U.S., though it hit areas with millions of residents. Had a storm of the same magnitude hit a similarly populated but very poor region, the death toll would have been in the scores of thousands. The difference is in the quantity and quality of infrastructure (roads and power grids) and residential shelter and commercial operations--i.e., in the wealth. Whatever climate and weather the future holds (and because we know Earth’s and the Sun’s cycles will continue, we know it will hold both warmer and colder times), if we want to protect people from its ill effects, we want to promote their economic development.
Abundant, affordable energy is a crucial factor in economic development. Since the attempt to reduce future temperature by CO2 (and other greenhouse gas) emissions reductions will make energy more expensive, it will necessarily reduce its consumption and therefore the rate of economic development. That means that it will also reduce people’s ability to protect themselves from the ill effects of weather and climate. That is another reason not to do anything about future global temperatures, but a great reason to do something about promoting economic development.
Other reports on the event:
Evangelicals Debate Differing Views on Global Warming
Christians Debate Global Warming
Evangelicals Debate How to Approach Global Warming
Related items:
2. Cornwall Alliance Representatives to Speak at Senate and Elsewhere
The U.S. Senate Environment and Public Works Committee will hold a hearing Thursday, June 7, on religious perspectives on global warming (for more details,
click here). Three members of the Cornwall Alliance advisory board will be among the witnesses: Rev. Dr. Jim Tonkowich, President of the Institute on Religion and Democracy; Russell D. Moore, Ph.D., Senior Vice President for Academic Administration, Dean, School of Theology, Southern Baptist Theological Seminary; Executive Director, Carl F. H. Henry Institute for Evangelical Engagement, Louisville, KY; and David Barton, Founder and President of WallBuilders. All three have endorsed Cornwall’s “A Call to Truth, Prudence, and Protection of the Poor: An Evangelical Response to Global Warming,” now endorsed by over 168 leaders.
Cornwall Alliance spokesman Calvin Beisner will speak on global warming, environmentalism, and economics at Summit Ministries, Manitou Springs, Colorado, Friday, June 8, from 9 a.m. to noon.
Continue reading "Environmental Stewardship News Round-Up"
Sat, 11/22/2008 11:34
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