Climate change is one of the biggest, most politically charged topics of our day. It regularly is used to push political policies, generally accompanied by horrendous doom and gloom predictions about what will happen to the earth if the climate change alarmist’s demands are not met. In one extreme recent example, a Congresswoman in the United States proposed a huge overhaul of the countries way of life calling for the elimination of plane travel, and, among other things, cow flatulence. While her ridiculous plans merely made her the butt of social media mockery, many scientists use equally ridiculous and sometimes falsified data to make points about climate change. This article will discuss one such recent instance and discuss the idea of climate change.
The instance in question isn’t that recent. The journal article is from December 2017, but never gained much traction until a small news outlet discovered it in February 2019. The journal article, published in Earth Systems and Environment pointed out that the sea level is not rising, nevermind the hysteria coming out of the alarmist camp. Not only that, it has not risen since measurements were begun in the 20th century. That does no favors for the climate change alarmists.
However, according to the news article, the journal article went even further. (Note, I do not have access to the journal article so I am forced to assume the news article is representing the facts correctly.) It castigated the Permanent Service for Mean Sea Level scientists, who are tasked with monitoring sea levels, for deliberately doctoring data. According to the article, the climate alarmists have been deliberately changing data points in order to make it appear that the water levels in the Indian Ocean are rising when, in fact, data shows they are either steady or falling.
Unfortunately, this is not the first time climate change alarmists have falsified data. The number one example, prime example of this is the infamous hockey stick graph. This graph was the brainchild of litigious climate scientist Michael Mann, among others. Dr. Mann produced this graph, meant to show known and predicted global temperature averages from around AD 1000 to AD 2000. The only problem with the graph is it was completely fraudulent. The postulated global increase in temperature that made the blade of the “hockey stick” in Dr. Mann’s graph never happened. Further, in an attempt to show that the globe had been at a steady average, the “shaft” of the hockey stick until human industrial activity caused a temperature increase, Dr. Mann doctored his data. There is a well known period in history called the Medieval warm period. It lasted for about four hundred years, beginning about AD 1000 and raised the global temperature about a degree Celsius. It was followed by a global drop of temperature for about three to four hundred years known as the Little Ice Age. Since then, global temperature has been increasing. Dr. Mann erased the Medieval Warm Period from his data. This made it look like man was contributing to the increase in temperature, obscuring the possibility that temperature changes might be cyclical.
Unfortunately, this dishonesty with the data hardly comes as a surprise. After all, science is dominated by an evolutionary worldview. One of the logical consequences of evolution is a lack of an absolute authority. If man decides what is right and wrong, which is how things work in an evolutionary worldview, then why not be dishonest with the data to advance your claim? This is a typical Machiavellian idea of the end justifies the means. And unfortunately, because climate change has been so heavily politicized, it is unlikely to go away any time soon, nevermind the deliberately falsified data.
Climate change should not be frightening to the Christian. We have a promise that “While the earth remaineth, seedtime and harvest, and cold and heat, and summer and winter, and day and night shall not cease.” God gave that promise to Noah after he got off the Ark and it never has been retracted. The earth is going to burn eventually, but that will be a direct destructive act of God in just punishment for sin. Until then, after the Millenial reign of Christ, climate change is not something we need to be terribly concerned about. However, we should still be good stewards of the earth that God has entrusted us with and make sure we do our best not to waste what He has given us.
In His Image 