The interview below was first published in the September 21, 2019, issue of Christian Renewal magazine (www.crmag.com) and is reproduced by permission

We’ve interviewed and featured the work of Dr. Calvin Beisner before. Some might consider that a strong bias to one side of the “climate change” debate. They would be right. Since the mainstream media has swallowed hook, line and sinker the fanaticism of climate change proponents and activists trumpeting the view that this is THE APOCALYPSE of our time, cooler heads are needed to offer a more objective analysis, and it just so happens to come from a Reformed Christian and an organization – the Cornwall Alliance – that is dedicated to a stewardly concern for the Creation.

So we are pleased to give Dr. Beisner space to share his research so that the noise on one side can be countered with facts and figures, some of which may be difficult to grasp. But please, make the attempt. This is a two part interview, the next half will be in the October 12th issue [of Christian Renewal Magazine.] – John Van Dyke, Editor, Christian Renewal

Cornwall Editors Note: The Cornwall Alliance will reproduce the second half of this interview with Dr. Beisner in a separate post on this blog.

CLIMATE CHANGE:

What It Is and What It Isn’t (Part 1 of 2)

Gerry Wisz interviews The Cornwall Alliance’s Dr. E. Calvin Beisner on the real science, hysteria, economic impact and Biblical stewardship involved in climate change.

Dr. E. Calvin Beisner is Found­er and National Spokesman of The Cornwall Alliance for the Stewardship of Creation, a network of over 60 Christian theologians, natural scientists, economists, and other schol­ars educating for Biblical earth stewardship, economic devel­opment for the poor, and the proclamation and defense of the good news of salvation through faith in Jesus Christ’s death and resurrection.

He is author of Prosperity and Poverty: The Compassionate Use of Resources in a World of Scarcity; Prospects for Growth: A Biblical View of Population, Resources, and the Future; and Where Garden Meets Wilderness: Evangelical Entry into the Environmental Debate (a history and construc­tive critique of the evangelical environmental movement).

In 1999, after a colloquium with other scholars with shared inter­est in these subjects, Dr. Beisner composed The Cornwall Decla­ration on Environmental Stew­ardship, which was endorsed by over 1,500 religious leaders from around the world and became the basis on which he founded The Cornwall Alliance in 2005.

In addition to the three books mentioned, Dr. Beisner has written nine other books, and contributed to many more as well as published many articles, both popular and scholarly. Dr. Beisner has lectured at univer­sities, seminaries, conferences, and churches in North America, Europe, Africa, and Asia, and tes­tified as an expert witness on the ethics and economics of climate change and climate and energy policy before committees of the U.S. Senate and House of Repre­sentatives. He has also briefed the White House Council on En­vironmental Policy, and presented a paper to a scholarly colloquium on climate change of the Pontifi­cal Institute for Justice and Peace at the Vatican in Rome.

In 2014 the Heritage Foundation honored Dr. Beisner with the Outstanding Spokesman for Faith, Science, and Stewardship Award at the Ninth International Conference on Climate Change.

Dr. Beisner was associate pro­fessor of historical theology and social ethics at Knox Theological Seminary, and of interdisciplinary studies at Covenant College. He holds a B.A. from the University of Southern California, an M.A. in Economic Ethics from Inter­national College, and a Ph.D. in Scottish History/History of Polit­ical Thought from the University of St. Andrews in Scotland. He has been an elder in the PCA and OPC. Dr. Beisner and his wife, Debby, are parents to seven children and grandparents to nine grandchildren.

CHRISTIAN RENEWAL: Briefly, why was the Cornwall Alliance formed, and what is its mission?

CAL BEISNER: The Cornwall Alli­ance was formed to educate the public and policymakers about three things, all intertwined: Bib­lical earth stewardship, economic development for the poor, and the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

By Biblical earth stewardship, we mean the fulfillment of the “cultural” or “dominion” man­date of Genesis 1:28 for mankind to “be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it and have dominion over” everything in it – a dominion that, because man is made in God’s image, should reflect God’s own cre­ativity shown earlier in Genesis 1, and which we summarize as enhancing the fruitfulness, the beauty, and the safety of the earth, to the glory of God and the benefit of our neighbors. This addresses both of the Great Com­mandments: to love God and to love our neighbor.

We believe economic develop­ment for the poor depends first on a set of social institutions like private property rights, entrepre­neurship, free trade, limited gov­ernment, and the rule of law, and second on access to abundant, affordable, reliable energy, espe­cially in the form of electricity. Economic history makes it clear that no society can rise or remain out of poverty without these two conditions.

The Gospel of Christ – that sinners are justified, reconciled to the holy God, by grace alone through faith alone in Christ alone – is essential to both Bib­lical earth stewardship and eco­nomic development for the poor because people reconciled to God and made disciples, taught to obey all that God has command­ed, will better understand how God’s creation works and how He intends us to live to enjoy His blessings.

CHRISTIAN RENEWAL: Does human activity really contribute to global warming?

CAL BEISNER: The overwhelming majority of what warms the earth is energy from the sun. (A tiny bit comes from the decay of radioactive materials in the earth.)

Energy from the sun drives ocean and atmospheric currents and the hydrologic cycle (evaporation and precipitation). Global average temperature (GAT) is a function almost entirely of those factors – incoming energy from the sun, outgoing energy reflected by clouds and the earth’s surface, and the distribution of heat by ocean and air currents. Certain atmospheric gases, technical­ly called “infrared-absorbing gases” and misleadingly called “greenhouse gases” (mislead­ingly because greenhouses don’t work this way), absorb infrared (heat) bouncing from earth’s surface back toward space and re-radiate it, sending some back toward the surface, making the lower atmosphere warmer than it otherwise would be (and the upper atmosphere cooler). Water vapor and clouds, which vary considerably with time and place, account for up to about 95% of the “greenhouse effect.” Carbon dioxide accounts for perhaps 4.5%. Methane, ozone, and sev­eral other trace gases account for the remainder.

Those who think human activi­ty has been the primary cause of recent global warming think so because they believe CO2’s warm­ing effect is quite strong. But multiple facts make that unlikely, of which I’ll mention only three.

First, GAT has risen and fallen cyclically throughout geologic history, and the correlation of temperature with CO2 content is fairly weak and, more important, actually the opposite correlation from what would be expected if CO2 drove temperature. The rise and fall of atmospheric CO2 con­centration follows the rise and fall of temperature – especially ocean temperature – rather than leading it. (This is because the oceans take in CO2 as they cool and emit it as they warm.)

Second, atmospheric CO2 has risen from about 280 to about 410 parts per million (ppm) (from about 0.028 to 0.041 percent) in the roughly 250 years since the start of the Industrial Revolution. Most of the added CO2 up through the middle of the 20th century came from natural sources. We can be pretty certain of that, especially because the warming of the oceans as the earth climbed out of the “Little Ice Age” (from about 1350–1850 A.D. and at its coldest from about 1650–1750) released CO2 to the atmosphere. By 1960 it was about 317 ppm, or 37 ppm higher than before the Industrial Rev­olution, and most of that has to have come from natural sources because human emissions were too small to account for it. That implies that natural causes also account for at least some, per­haps again most, of the roughly 90 ppm added since 1960. Even if we assume that human activ­ity contributed a full half of the CO2 added since the Industrial Revolution, then that would amount to only about 65 ppm, or 16% of current atmospheric CO2. Since CO2’s total contribution to the earth’s warmth is only about 4.5 to 5%, that makes humanity’s contribution only about 0.8%, or one-half degree, of the total “greenhouse effect” of about 60 degrees Fahrenheit.

Third, although computerized “General Circulation Models” have, since the Charney Report under the Carter Administration in 1978, generally estimated “climate sensitivity” (increase of GAT, at equilibrium, due to a doubling of atmospheric CO2 concentration) at 2.7 to 8.1 degrees Fahrenheit, with a “best estimate” of 5.4 degrees, actual global temperature data indicate that their estimates are quite like­ly at least two, probably three, and very possibly four or more times too high.

CHRISTIAN RENEWAL: Why is that?

CAL BEISNER: Because according to the best estimate of the GCMs, GAT should have been rising, due to nothing but human emissions of CO2, by about 0.54 degrees F per decade during the 40 years during which satellite data (the most accurate we have) have been available. But the actual warming trend has been only about 0.23 degree per decade – and we can be pretty sure that at least some, and perhaps all, of that has been driven by the same natural causes that lifted us out of the Little Ice Age. More empirically driven estimates of “climate sensitivity” tend to put it in the range of 2.25 to 5.4 degrees with a best esti­mate of 3.15 degrees, and some estimates go even lower.

CHRISTIAN RENEWAL: And so, then a drastic shift from fossil fuels to renewables would have little impact on climate change, it seems.

CAL BEISNER: It follows from the fact that humanity’s total contribution to the “greenhouse effect” is only about one-half degree that substi­tuting renewables (chiefly wind and solar) for fossil fuels (the main but not only source of our CO2 emissions – agriculture, ce­ment making, and other activities are significant sources as well) would have only a very small effect. Even assuming the high “climate sensitivity” estimates behind the 2015 Paris climate accord, and assuming complete implementation of all the emis­sion reductions envisioned in the accord, the total reduction in GAT achieved by that by the year 2100 would be only about 0.3 degree F – an amount that is smaller than the margin of error in estimating GAT.

CHRISTIAN RENEWAL: Would an aggressive, world­wide charge toward renewables in place of fossil fuel hurt the world’s poor?

CAL BEISNER: The briefest answer is that it would substitute more scarce, diffuse, expensive, unreliable electricity sources for more abun­dant, dense, affordable, reliable electricity sources. Abundant, affordable, reliable energy – es­pecially in the form of electricity – is absolutely indispensable to lifting and keeping any whole society out of poverty. Wind and solar – the most popular renew­ables – can’t provide that because they’re not readily available everywhere; they’re low density, they’re more expensive than fos­sil fuels to convert into electrici­ty, and they’re intermittent. As a result, electricity generated from them is more expensive and less reliable than electricity generated from coal, natural gas, or oil. For the roughly one billion people in the world who still have no access to electricity, and another billion or so whose access is only to intermittent, unpredictable electricity, that’s very bad news.

CHRISTIAN RENEWAL: There’s at best, it seems, “fuzzy” science behind the head­line-grabbing climate alarmist stories. Would you explain how inconclusive some of these are (climate model simulations, what data-driven studies show, etc.)?

CAL BEISNER: The range of uncertainties in climate models is huge. Even the supposedly likely range for equilibrium climate sensitivity projected by the CMIP5 mod­els – 1.5–4.5 degrees Celsius, or 2.7–6.75 degrees Celsius – has a high end that’s three times the low end. What’s also shocking is that this range – given in the IPCC’s 2013 assessment report – is identical to the range given by the Charney report under the Carter administration roughly 35 years before – and that’s after having spent many billions of dollars trying to refine the models. Good, em­pirically driven science reduces uncertainties over time. There’s been no reduction of uncer­tainty in the models, which suggests – along with the fact that they project anywhere from two to four times as much warming as actually observed from CO2 – that they’re bad science.

CHRISTIAN RENEWAL: Please explain how tornadoes are caused by cooling rather than warming temperatures.

CAL BEISNER: What’s needed for tornadoes to form is the intersection of cold, dry air with hot, moist air. America’s Midwest and Midsouth are ideal locations for that as hot air moves up from the Gulf of Mexico and meets cold air coming from the Rocky Mountains. The likelihood and intensity of the right con­ditions for tornadoes is driven in large measure by the El Niño Southern Oscillation. Global av­erage temperature has essentially nothing to do with it.

In Part II of Christian Renewal’s interview with Dr. Beisner, he addresses issues such as cli­mate-change “consensus,” how false or incomplete information is provided to exaggerate climate change, and attempts by climate alarmists to infiltrate evangelical institutions.

Featured Photo by Joshua Newton on Unsplash.