Pick up any major newspaper and you don’t need to peruse very far from the front page to find an article, opinion or even a faith-based piece addressing climate change. To say the least, the snow blanketing much of the Northeast and particularly the Nation’s Capitol, have introduced new terminology to our vocabulary, i.e. snowmageddon, snOMG, and snowcalism to name three. The term ‘snowmageddon’ has been introduced to indicate not only the storms dumping large accumulations of snow, but also to change the landscape of the discussion from ’global warming’ to ‘climate change’. Or as one senior fellow at the liberal Center for American Progress wrote (see ‘On Faith’, Washington Post, February 11), “it is ‘global weirding’, in fact, and that's climate change in its erratic weather pattern manifestation.” All this on the heels of what is being called ‘Climategate scandal’; the salacious exposure of hidden emails and side stepping of the Freedom of Information Act in Great Britain by scientists contributing data to and writing reports for the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC); the same scientists that produced the 2007 report for the IPCC indicating serious temperature increases in the Earth’s climate based on data collection that they refused to share with the public.
The United Nations Climate Change Conference was recently held in Copenhagen, Denmark (December 2009), where the Copenhagen Accord set the framework for the global concern by governments to climate change. Basically, the Accord focuses on three key issues; 1) It raised climate change to the highest level of government; 2) The Accord reflects a political consensus on the long-term, global response to climate change; 3) The negotiations brought an almost full set of decisions to implement rapid climate action near to completion. Although the Accord is not a legally binding document as yet, it again targets developing countries in assisting them in adapting to a warmer world and helping to transition to a lower carbon dioxide emission economy through financing by developed countries ($30 billion) by 2012. This approach potentially limits their development and economic success; a topic of concern previously addressed on the Forum.
What are we to believe? What is fact and what is fiction? What impact if any, will be wrought from unscrupulous scientists desiring to preserve their own self interests and research in an attempt to shape the debate and influence global public policy focusing on the climate? This Monday, February 15th we once again welcome Dr. E. Calvin Beisner founder of and the National Spokesman for, the Cornwall Alliance for the Stewardship of Creation (www.cornwallalliance.org), to the Forum as our guest. Dr. Beisner attended the Copenhagen Conference and we will be discussing this as well as Christian Creation Stewardship and our response as Christians, to environmentalism.
