For centuries, the church has influenced our world in a positive way. Christians have been at the forefront of scientific discoveries and are well-known for their charities worldwide. In fact, the very hospital that I access in India was built by faithful Christians from a faraway land and my wife was educated at a school built by Christians.
Not surprisingly, and as it often happens in history, the church is now in the midst of culture-driven confusion. A confusion about meaning, origin, values, and the very biology of life. The aftermath of this confusion extends into all aspects of life and society, including academia.
Among the various victims of this cultural and philosophical war is a topic that is very close to my heart: environmentalism. What was supposed to be a movement to make our world better has now turned into a cult with radical ideologies that seek to undermine human well-being.
Some scientists say, “The world will be much better off when only 10 percent or 20 percent of us are left (alive).” This radical form of environmentalism achieves its anti-humanistic agenda through coordinated propaganda in the mainstream media.
It exploits the people in media as merchants of misinformation, and makes the masses subscribe to their radical ideologies about nature, mankind, and climate change.
Merchants of Misinformation
The following are a few examples of climate misinformation that originate from the mainstream media, scientists, and political celebrities. It is quite unbelievable how some of these lies are being actively used by elected officials of many countries to enforce draconian restrictions on their people.
In September of 2006, NASA scientist James Hansen, widely considered as the top expert on climate change, said, “I think we have a very brief window of opportunity to deal with climate change … no longer than a decade, at the most….. This is not something that is a theory. We understand the carbon cycle well enough to say that.”
But 17 years later, we now know that many prominent scientists, including James Hansen, were wrong in their interpretation of climate changes and their subsequent prescriptions for fossil fuel emission reduction.
There was a significant increase in the atmospheric CO2 concentration levels during the last three decades. But between the years 1999 and 2015, there was no alarming rise in global average temperatures as measured accurately by satellites. Again, between the years 2017 and 2023, there has been no significant warming. This is odd since it is believed that an increase in carbon dioxide emissions is supposed to cause an increase in temperatures.
Despite this, it is still a fashionable trend for climate activists to claim that we have only 10 years left to save the earth. The people have been bombarded with this doomsday claim so much that they find it hard to believe that there is no impending crisis.
Another common falsehood spewed by the mainstream media is that extreme weather events like hurricanes, floods, droughts, and wildfires are increasing due to man-made climate change. Metrics on each of these issues are available from official sources and all of them indicate otherwise.
US major hurricane landfalls have reduced, deaths from climate-related disasters have reduced by 99 percent in the past 100 years, forest mismanagement and arson is responsible for most wildfires, and the impact of droughts is now easily negated due to improved crop production, and logistical movement of essential goods and services.
Al Gore, the architect of the climate fear agenda, predicted that the Arctic will go ice-free by the summer of 2014. 16 years after the claim, the Arctic sea ice extent in May 2023 is just below the 1981-2010 median.
The Way Forward
E Calvin Beisner, a theologian and founder of the Cornwall Alliance for the Stewardship of Creation, says, “Environmental policy should be rooted in sound science and wise economics, guided by biblical principles of human flourishing and responsibility.”
In other words, environmental policies that decide our world’s economic progress should not be based on anti-humanistic propaganda that undermines the scientific process. So, the church must buckle up and equip itself with sufficient knowledge about the ongoing environmental issues and try to differentiate between truth and falsehood.
Vijay Jayaraj is a Research Associate at the CO2 Coalition, Arlington, VA and a contributor to Cornwall Alliance for the Stewardship of Creation. He holds a master’s degree in environmental sciences from the University of East Anglia, UK and resides in India.
ashley haworth-roberts says
My email on Climate Change Misinformation.
1.There’s still plenty of it about. Including from fundamentalist Christians based in the US. Human-generated global heating isn’t taught in the Bible, it comes from practical science (or secular science as some would term it). So in their eyes it’s false teaching and a deception and they want to pit the Christian Church against all those ‘hysterical climate change alarmists’.
2. Here’s an example from just this week:
https://cornwallalliance.org/2023/06/merchants-of-misinformation-the-churchs-challenge-in-an-age-of-climate-falsehood/
3. The pontificating begins early on in the article:
Among the various victims of this cultural and philosophical war is a topic that is very close to my heart: environmentalism. What was supposed to be a movement to make our world better has now turned into a cult with radical ideologies that seek to undermine human well-being.
4. And the attacks come thick and fast (supported here and there by out of date examples of failed predictions that were made in good faith). Attacks that use vague and undefined terminology and don’t hesitate to include some outright falsehoods (whilst claiming the ‘opposition’ are lying):
The following are a few examples of climate misinformation that originate from the mainstream media, scientists, and political celebrities. It is quite unbelievable how some of these lies are being actively used by elected officials of many countries to enforce draconian restrictions on their people.
There was a significant increase in the atmospheric CO2 concentration levels during the last three decades. But between the years 1999 and 2015, there was no alarming rise in global average temperatures as measured accurately by satellites. Again, between the years 2017 and 2023, there has been no significant warming. This is odd since it is believed that an increase in carbon dioxide emissions is supposed to cause an increase in temperatures.
Despite this, it is still a fashionable trend for climate activists to claim that we have only 10 years left to save the earth. The people have been bombarded with this doomsday claim so much that they find it hard to believe that there is no impending crisis.
Another common falsehood spewed by the mainstream media is that extreme weather events like hurricanes, floods, droughts, and wildfires are increasing due to man-made climate change…
5. And the parting shot: E Calvin Beisner, a theologian and founder of the Cornwall Alliance for the Stewardship of Creation, says, “Environmental policy should be rooted in sound science and wise economics, guided by biblical principles of human flourishing and responsibility.” In other words, environmental policies that decide our world’s economic progress should not be based on anti-humanistic propaganda that undermines the scientific process. So, the church must buckle up and equip itself with sufficient knowledge about the ongoing environmental issues and try to differentiate between truth and falsehood.
6. But there’s no sound science in this article just misinformation, attacks, irrelevant and out of context comments – and a demand that the Church (which in many places has a good track record of warning about climate change’s likely impact in both impoverished nations and the developing world) needs to ‘buckle up’, gain more ‘knowledge’ (from people like him), and try to differentiate between ‘truth and falsehood’. His pitch? ‘Even most of the Church has been fooled by this anti-humanist hoax.’ It’s the Cornwall Alliance and similar organisations – including many with no particular Christian allegiance – who are doing the hoaxing. Climate change is very likely a worse problem now than it needed to be because these hoaxers have obstructed progress and caused delays.
7. Some information about the article’s author and about the agenda of the Cornwall Alliance:
https://www.climateofdenial.org/track-climate-change-denial/vijay-jayaraj/#
continues
ashley haworth-roberts says
https://co2coalition.org/teammember/336/
He claims to speak for the developing world on the issue of climate change and its impacts. He is a regular writer for a Christian organisation that expresses concern about ‘stewarding creation’.
8. In the very same week as Mr Jayaraj’s salvo was published this has been happening across the pond:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-65816466
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-65828469
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/world-us-canada-65836890
9. And during the last decade or so world temperatures have risen despite an unusually prolonged La Nina event in the most recent years that’s now coming to an end and will be followed by an El Nino:
https://www.nasa.gov/press-release/nasa-says-2022-fifth-warmest-year-on-record-warming-trend-continues/
https://www.weather.gov/news/230706-ElNino
10.Is there anything that could convince people at the Cornwall Alliance that global heating and an increase in extremes of heatwaves droughts flooding and tropical storms is caused primarily by human actions adding greater concentrations of greenhouse gases to Earth’s atmosphere? And that if they recognise the scientific reality they need not ‘compromise’ the Bible? If they are wedded to the fossil fuel industry in America and elsewhere I suspect they will remain utterly unpersuadable and continue their mission of undermining climate science and policies aimed at cutting greenhouse gas emissions. And unprecedented weather events will continue and perhaps increase further.
AND MR JAYARAJ IS BLOCKING MY EMAILS. WHY IS THAT?
ashley haworth-roberts says
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-65837040
Ian MacNeil says
God’s answer to the climate change delusion:
“As long as the earth endures, seedtime and harvest, cold and heat,
summer and winter, day and night will never cease.” Genesis 8:22
ashley haworth-roberts says
Ian’s comment is extremely simplistic in my opinion. The promise is only that there won’t be another global flood, that seasons and day and night will continue. Which has been the case. The verse says absolutely nothing about any climate change/global warming – but it is happening. We still astronomical seasons and seasons as before, thanks to Earth’s orbit around the Sun and its rotation – and we also have increasing extremes of heat, flood, drought and wildfires. Thanks to humans adding extra greenhouse gas emissions to the atmosphere, primarily through the burning of fossil fuels to create electricity. This is a scientific issue not a theological one.
ashley haworth-roberts says
Meant to write:
We still have astronomical seasons, including harvest time, and day and night as before, thanks to Earth’s orbit around the Sun and its rotation …
ashley haworth-roberts says
A reply I’ve received from the UK Met Office:
Thank you for your email on misinformation around climate change.
You have provided a thorough critique of the post from the Cornwall Alliance, pointing out the issues with how they present climate change. We have seen many of these claims before and we see them raised repeatedly, in spite of repeated critiques and new evidence of the impacts of climate change.
It is important to continue to use authoritative facts and findings around climate change. Some excellent sources for this are the reports from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), in which the Met Office Hadley Centre has played a key role. The IPCC’s Sixth Assessment Report provides the latest overview of the state of climate science.
The Met Office website also includes a great deal of information on climate change, its causes and its impacts, as well as a page answering the most common questions we receive about climate change. You might also be interested in posts from climate scientist Katharine Hayhoe, who has written extensively about the intersection between climate science and faith.