warming or not?

Climate Change: A Guide for the Perplexed ... the title already indicates I am not the target audience and therefore the article may not have the force required. While I may be perplexed, I am more pessimistic. Admittedly I'm not pessimistic based on data regarding global warming, I'm pessimistic because of my opinion of its champions. Therefore my friend Geoff Mattheson thought I might be swayed and has convinced me to read it.

So here goes, the first sentence hit me as a good start, "Our planet's climate is anything but simple." Agreed. Then comes the thesis,

Yet despite all the complexities, a firm and ever-growing body of evidence points to a clear picture: the world is warming, this warming is due to human activity increasing levels of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, and if emissions continue unabated the warming will too, with increasingly serious consequences.

We'll see, I'm not there. The first link is to a guide to assessing the evidence. This was good in that it recognized that most of us don't know much and that the first question to ask about a claim is to look at who is making it. I like that. And frankly, this is still where I get bogged down. This article has a section called the "global swindle" in which it proffered that global warming is true and attributable to human activity ... and that arguments to the contrary have been debunked. The report is honest in saying that "few people have the time to wade through the scientific literature weighing up the evidence and trying to work out which findings have or have not stood up to scrutiny." But then it provides the IPCC as help for that ... which brings me back to the earlier point, why would I believe them over others? I haven't seen the irrefutable evidence and I haven't heard from someone(s) that I would consider inerrant.

There's a good blog reference with a lot of data again, as I skimmed the articles, if I believe New Scientist it all makes sense. If I do not, then it just doesn't hunt. Everywhere I searched was simply reinforcement of the original suppositions by New Scientist. I could not find data that changed my mind. To be fair, knowing myself as I do, I'm not even sure I know what that would look like.

So without belaboring the rest, there are many links in this overview piece. In the end, I remain unconverted.

But I don't get why that is important to Christians. As redeemed image bearers, we are to have dominion of the earth in a way that humanity clearly has not practiced. And as with all other ways that we humans fail, I find it fruitless to point toward those failings. Rather fruit is born by pointing people toward Christ Jesus. I desire to live rightly toward all creation and I am open to help seeing where I could do better. But targeting something such as global warming seems less than helpful. And that's about all I have to say ... I think ...