Recently a visitor to our website wrote us:
 

Please show me the hard science behind your ‘beliefs’. I just want you to know that as a Christian AND environmentalist, I am appalled at the lies you are propagating. Please help me understand your motivation. Is anyone on your staff a trained scientist?

And please do not put me on a mailing list and send me any propaganda. I do not support your organization.

 
We were of course disappointed to receive this, but we replied as follows:

 
Grace and peace to you in Christ. I’m grateful that you took the trouble of reaching out to ask us for the “hard science behind [our] ‘beliefs’.” That gives us a chance to offer you some of just that, and as your brother in Christ I’m glad to do so.
 
First, the Cornwall Alliance is a network of evangelical Christian theologians, scientists, economists, and other scholars—about 60 in all—dedicated to promoting Biblical earth stewardship (what we also call “godly dominion”: men and women created in the image of God laboring together to enhance the fruitfulness, beauty, and safety of the earth to the glory of God and the benefit of our neighbors, thus addressing both of the two Great Commandments to love God and to love neighbor), economic development for the very poor (think in terms of sub-Saharan Africa and some parts of Latin America and Asia), and the proclamation and defense of the gospel of Christ in the face of an environmental movement much (though not all) of which embraces worldview, theology, and ethics that are anti-Christian, uses poor science and economics, prescribes policies that often are not particularly helpful to the natural environment but are harmful to the world’s poor, and offers substitute doctrines of God, creation, humanity, sin, and salvation from those revealed by God in the Bible. Our scholars and advisors contribute their expertise to us by writing or reviewing articles and major papers and consulting with us as experts about the theology, science, and economics related to the issues we treat.
 
Second, you’ll see some examples of the high-quality scientific (as well as theological and economic) work that goes into Cornwall Alliance’s major publications if you’ll read the following papers—and take note of the credentials of their multiple authors and reviewers (listed in them):
 

• A Renewed Call to Truth, Prudence, and Protection of the Poor: An Evangelical Examination of the Theology, Science, and Economics of Global Warming, written and reviewed by 29 scholars and resulting in a declaration endorsed by hundreds more
• The Cost of Good Intentions: The Ethics and Economics of the War on Conventional Energy, written and reviewed by 15 scholars
• A Call to Truth, Prudence, and Protection of the Poor: An Evangelical Response to Global Warming, written by 4 scholars and endorsed by hundreds more
• An Examination of the Scientific, Ethical, and Theological Implications of Climate Change Policy, written by 4 scholars
• The Cornwall Stewardship Agenda, written, reviewed, and edited by 13 scholars

 
Third, let me respond particularly to your asking for the “hard science” behind our beliefs. That phrase is dear to me and to all the scientists who generously contribute their time and expertise to the Cornwall Alliance. It suggests a rigorous process in which scientists formulate hypotheses to explain how some natural process works; test those hypotheses by careful observation of the real world and of laboratory experiments, diligently disciplining themselves to look as carefully for results that might falsify their hypotheses as results that are consistent with them; and freely share the raw data and the computer codes by which they interpret those data with other scientists so that they can try to replicate their observations and experiments, or find flaws in them. That is the classic, pattern of “normal science,” and it is incompatible with a process in which someone formulates a hypothesis, pays attention only to experimental and real-world observations that seem to confirm it but ignores and even suppresses contrary observations, refuses to share his data and methods with other scientists, and seeks to intimidate scientists who disagree with him or to prevent publication of their research. The latter behavior has come to characterize that of many environmental advocates, whether they are scientists or scientific laymen, especially with regard to climate change—as the experience of the veteran, highly respected climate scientist Dr. Lennart Bengtsson in the last month or so illustrates. (There are many other illustrations.)
 

1. “Hard science” also contrasts with something not quite so sinister but equally dangerous to the credibility of science: the failure to distinguish between predictions made on the basis of a theory or hypothesis, on the one hand, and real-world observations by which such predictions should be tested, on the other. Here, too, there has been a marked tendency among environmental advocates to do just this. Let me give you just two examples:In the 1970s, famed biologist Dr. E.O. Wilson, along with Norman Myers and others, predicted, on the basis of implications from a theory called “island biography,” that deforestation around the world was already causing thousands of extinctions per year and would soon be causing many more thousands per year. Challenged by the late statisticians Dr. Julian L. Simon and Dr. Aaron Wildavsky, in an essay called “Disappearing Species and the Absence of Data” (1984), to provide empirical evidence to back the claims, the International Union for the Conservation of Nature commissioned a multi-year, multi-million-dollar, worldwide field study by field biologists meant to provide precisely that evidence. The result was a book,Tropical Deforestation and Species Extinction, in which, in chapter after chapter, the authors acknowledged that, contrary to their expectations that they would find solid proof of many extinctions in the regions they were studying, they had found none. Nonetheless, such claims, based on models of the relationship between species extinction rates and habitat conversion, continue today—still without empirical support. 
2.  In the climate-change debates, the situation is even more explicitly understood—though not widely acknowledged. Warnings of dangerous, even catastrophic, anthropogenic global warming (CAGW) rest on extremely sophisticated, complex computer models of how earth’s (far more) complex climate system responds to changes in carbon dioxide concentration. From the start, the models have generally predicted that a doubling of CO2 concentration would result, after climate feedbacks, in an increase of global average temperature ranging from about 2 to about 4.5 degrees Celsius, with greater warming possible. A sociologist of science—herself a believer in CAGW—spent years working among, observing, and interviewing climate modelers at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA) National Center for Climate Research (NCAR) in Boulder, CO, with this question chiefly in mind: Do the modelers consistently keep in mind the distinction between their models’ output (hypothesis) and real-world observation (data)? Her conclusion was that many of them no longer recognized that distinction, and even those who recognized it in principle almost never kept it in mind but instead spoke and wrote (including in peer-reviewed studies) of their models’ output as if it were the real world. (You can read her fascinating, peer-reviewed paper reporting her findings in “Seductive Simulations? Uncertainty Distribution Around Climate Models.”) Indeed, she found this to be common not only at NCAR but among climate modelers all around the world—all the very people on the basis of whose work the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and the various national academies of science, etc., based their warnings of CAGW.

That second illustration is especially important because, though it wasn’t clear at the time Lahssen published her article (2005), it is now clear that the computer models’ predictions of global average temperature are hopelessly contrary to the real-world observations, as you can see in this graph prepared by Dr. John Christy, Distinguished Professor of Atmospheric Science and Director of the Earth System Science Center at the University of Alabama in Huntsville (a devout Christian and, though not on our advisory board or among our fellows, scholars, and writers, a good friend of the Cornwall Alliance), shows:
 

Note that this graph compares the models’ predictions for global mid-tropospheric temperature with real-world observations (by satellite and by weather balloons) of the same. The models’ predictions have run higher than the observations consistently from 1980 through the present, and the divergence became major around 1990 and has continued to increase ever since.
 
Another way of seeing how real-world observations falsify the models is from this graph, produced by Dr. Christy’s colleague, Dr. Roy W. Spencer, Principal Research Scientist at the University of Alabama in Huntsville, former Senior Scientist for Climate Studies at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center, where he and Christy received NASA’s Exceptional Scientific Achievement Medal for their global temperature monitoring work with satellites, and still U.S. Science Team leader for the Advanced Microwave Scanning Radiometer flying on NASA’s Aqua satellite (a devout Christian and a Senior Fellow of the Cornwall Alliance):
 

 

As a result of the growing divergence between model-predicted global average temperature and real-world observations, and the failure of the models to predict the complete absence of warming since 1997, many climatologists around the world now are finally beginning to revise their estimates of “climate sensitivity” (how much warming comes from doubled atmospheric CO2 concentration after feedbacks). You can get some introduction to this growing movement by reviewing posts about a variety of scientists’ research by Dr. Judith Curry, Professor and Chair of the School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at the Georgia Institute of Technology. As Nicholas Lewis and Marcel Crok put it in a recent, major, peer-reviewed study, “the new observationally-based ‘likely’ range could be 1.25–3.0◦C, with a best estimate of 1.75◦C.” Climate sensitivity in that range is not dangerous and would quite probably—even according to the CAGW alarmists—have more beneficial than harmful effects.
 
Examples could be multiplied of CAGW alarmists’ predictions’ being falsified by real-world observations (not just about global average and regional average temperatures [e.g., the fact that, contrary to prediction, there has been no upward trend in global average temperature since 1997], but about the frequency and severity of extreme weather events, about changes in precipitation, about loss of glaciers or of Antarctic or Greenland ice sheets, about increasing rate of seal-level rise, and on and on) yet the alarmists’ refusal to abandon or revise their hypotheses.
 
Why is this so important? Consider what the late great physicist Richard Feynman wrote in The Character of Physical Law (1965):

 
In general we look for a new law by the following process. First we guess it. Then we compute the consequences of the guess to see what would be implied if this law that we guessed is right. Then we compare the result of the computation to nature, with experiment or experience, compare it directly with observation, to see if it works. If it disagrees with experiment it is wrong. In that simple statement is the key to science. It does not make any difference how beautiful your guess is. It does not make any difference how smart you are, who made the guess, or what his name is—if it disagrees with experiment it is wrong. That is all there is to it. [Emphasis added.]

 
What the CAGW-promoting community has shown again and again is that it refuses to embrace this fundamental insight about science: “If it disagrees with experiment it is wrong.”
 
The Cornwall Alliance is committed to hard science, and that is precisely why we differ from those who predict climate catastrophe (and some other sorts of catastrophe). While I myself am not a scientist but an interdisciplinary scholar with strengths in philosophy, theology, economics, and history, I read assiduously in the science—as well as the economics—of climate change. I’ve read something on the order of 50 books on the science and 30 or so on the economics, plus thousands of articles on each, over the past seven years, after having studied both fairly consistently over the previous 18 years as well. I consult frequently with fully credentialed scholars in the appropriate fields. Indeed, one of them—Dr. Spencer—once told me that, because I read about all the different aspects of the science of climate change, while most actual climate scientists study only extremely narrowly bounded aspects of it, he believes I actually have a better grasp of the whole issue than the vast majority of climatologists and meteorologists. But our work doesn’t depend on my scientific understanding but on that of the many bona fide scientists who generously contribute to our work by writing, reviewing, and editing our publications. I, no doubt, am responsible for any errors we make; but they should get credit for the good stuff!
 
As just the most recent example of the hard science that the Cornwall Alliance’s scholars produce, you might wish to read the expert testimony Cornwall Alliance Senior Fellow Dr. David R. Legates, Professor of Climatology at the University of Delaware, presented to the U.S. Senate Environment & Public Works Committee today. The written statement is online at https://wattsupwiththat.fileswordpress.com/2014/06/6-3-14-witness-testimony-legates.pdf.

You asked also about our motivation. Our mission statement expresses that clearly: “We seek to magnify the glory of God in creation, the wisdom of His truth in environmental stewardship, the kindness of His mercy in lifting the needy out of poverty, and the wonders of His grace in the gospel of Jesus Christ.” I can expand on one aspect of that a little for you here, though: We are particularly concerned that many environmental policies, whether intentionally or not, have profoundly harmful effects on the world’s poor by increasing the costs of such basic goods as food, energy, and disease prevention and treatment. We seek to prevent such policies’ adoption and to roll them back where they have been adopted, while still seeking to be good stewards of God’s beautiful earth.
 
I hope you find this helpful and that you’ll come back to our website and spend some time reading our materials. If you do, I believe that, even if you’re not persuaded by it, you’ll find that our work is indeed scientifically respectable. Most important, I hope you’ll see that we are committed to honoring the name and redeeming work of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, whom we serve.

 
Such was my reply.
 

I suspect that the writer is herself a victim of the increasing tendency in contemporary society to abandon the rationality of the Biblical worldview and embrace instead either the Secular Humanist or the neo-pagan, pantheist or animist worldview, each of which undermines real science.