One of the true hot-button issues conservatives routinely debate  is climate science and global warming. I have listened to some of the strangest and most confusing debate over this issue. Some of the worst debate over this issue is routinely endorsed by evangelical Christians who laugh at climate science and demonize those who take it seriously. Some even produce impressive looking papers on what is wrong in the ciimate science debate. Much of this makes Christians look rather foolish to those who do rigid research on this problem.

Glaciated_grinnell_area-preview What must be understood in this debate is that there is no doubt that global warming actually exists. The question is not, “Is global warming real?” The question is what causes it and what can, or should, we do about it?

Republican presidential candidate Rick Perry recently suggested that the flow of grants has led to a growing body of research arguing for human causes of global warming. In the September 26 issue of USA Today, Republican Bob Inglis, a two-time member of the U.S. House of Representatives (1993-99, 2005-11), laid waste to this form of reasoning when he noted that scientists do not make a name for themselves by parroting consensus by rather by finding ways that challenge it! If you know anything at all about scientific research, and about how research actually works, you know he is right. You don’t get a theory named after yourself, or a prestigious award given in your honor, for writing papers that say, “Yes, just as he/she said!” You become famous, and make real breakthroughs in science, by demonstrating new insights and by providing new understanding to the scientific community.

What conservatives have done is create an appearance of uncertainty about the science of this issue when little uncertainty presently exists among working scientists. 97% of climate scientists have concluded that the planet is rapidly warming as a result of human activity. 97%! But only 15% of the public knows this to be true. And most of them care very little about this issue. I can count on one hand the number of conservatives I’ve heard in the last year who took this issue seriously at all. Most reason, “It doesn’t impact my life right now so why should I care that much about something that will only impact people decades from now?”

Conservatives sometimes admit climate change is real but then quickly assert that human activity has little or no part in it. And if there is some human element they will then argue that the costs of correction are just too heavy, especially in bad times like now.

Bob Inglis tackled this proverbial response of conservatives when he noted that when they argue that the markets will deliver innovation and ultimately correct the problem they are right but they do not actually practice their own beliefs. This theory about the market is what has been argued about our dependence on foreign oil since 1973 but things have not fundamentally changed. Why? Inglis cogently argues that if we passed along the “real costs” of petroleum (the national security risks, the costs of protecting the supply lines from the Middle East, the cost of pollution from the tailpipes of our cars and the cost of taxpayer subsidies) then we would soon be made aware of our real problem! Markets can and would respond but not when some  fuels continue to escape accountability. Markets work best when they are most freed of interference. This is just good economic sense.

Inglis concluded his opinion piece in the September 26 issue of USA Today on how to engage climate science politically with a credible call to action:

Conservatives can restore our objectivity by acknowledging that Americans are already paying all the hidden costs of energy. We can prove out commitment to accountability by properly attaching all costs to all fuels. We can prove our belief in free markets by eliminating all subsidies and letting the free enterprise system sort out the winners and losers among competing fuels.

Or, more cynically, we can attempt to disprove science, protect the fossilized and deprive America of a muscular, free enterprise, no-growth-of-government alternative to cap and trade.

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Comments

  1. Keith Berndtson December 5, 2011 at 10:36 am

    You’ve hit the nail on the head. Whatever the cause, the earth has a fever that could last for many generations, causing untold suffering. If people are to flourish, counteracting this problem must be on the agenda. Attaching all costs to all fuels is reality-based and morally well-grounded, but the usual obstacles – power, money, greed, apathy, nihilism, etc. – remain firmly in place. Stewardship would have its place in a unified Christendom.

  2. Bill December 5, 2011 at 2:35 pm

    Where did you get the figure of 97% of climate scientists believe the earth’s warming is caused by human activity?

  3. John H. Armstrong December 5, 2011 at 5:53 pm

    Quoted in http://www.alaskadispatch.com/article/scientists-agree-planets-warming-do-you-believe-them, I read that virtually 100 percent of full-time, actively publishing climate scientists agree the planet is warming up, with people playing a major role.
    A 2010 survey found that 90 percent of 3,146 earth scientists surveyed around the world believe average global temperatures have risen over the past two centuries, and 82 percent agreed that greenhouse gas emissions from human activity have been a significant driver of the sizzle.
    Many other studies repeatedly demonstrate this same overwhelming consensus among researchers: There is no widespread scientific “debate” over the reality of global warming. Even one of the most outspoken scientific skeptics now agrees the planet has heated up.
    And yet, about half of all Americans don’t buy it.
    I am among those who do buy it. Please note: I did not make a political statement about what we can or should do about this problem. I dimly acknowledge what seems obvious. Is there a some political gamesmanship in this debate? You bet. But ignoring the truth of the issue altogether seems beyond belief to me.

  4. Bill Nicoson December 6, 2011 at 4:57 pm

    There is no real evidence to support that the Antartica or the Artic are melting. Global ice cover always expands and contracts; nothing new here, and there are many reasons for these movements that have nothing to do with carbon dioxide. It is a highly complex and fluctuating picture; to take on small area where ice is melting and announce on that basis that all sea ice is disappearing through global warming is simply mendacious.In fact, temperatures in the Artic were lower at the end of the 20th century than they had been between 1920 and 1940. Between 1966 and 2000, Antartica cooled. Between 1992 and 2003, the Antartic ice sheet was growing at the rate of 5mm per year. By 2009 global sea ice levels equaled those seen 29 years earlier, according to dataderived from satellite observations of the northern and southern polar regions. – Sources, Dr. Mitchell Taylor, Dept. of the Environment, Nunavut, Canada, Plimer, Heaven and Earth, p. 259, P.T. Doran”Antartic Climate Cooling and Terrestrial Ecosystem Response, vol.415, pp, 517-20
    The temperature is actually falling. Dr. Richard Keen, a climatologist at the Dept. of Atmospheric research and Oceanic Sciences and the University of Colorado, said, “the global temperature for 2007 was the coldest in a decade.

  5. Bill Nicoson December 6, 2011 at 5:10 pm

    Global ice cover always expands and contracts; nothing new here, and there are many reasons for these movements that have nothing to do with carbon dioxide. It is a highly complex and fluctuating picture; to take one small area where ice is melting and announce on that basis that all sea ice is disappearing through global warming is simple mendacious. In fact, temperatures in the Artic were lower at the end of the 20th century than they had been between 1920 and 1940. Between 1966 and 2000, Antarctica cooled. Between 1992 and 2003, the Antarctic ice sheet was growing at the rate of 5mm per year. By 2009, global sea ice levels equaled those seen 29 years earlier, according to data derived from satellite observations of the northern and southern polar regions.
    According to Dr. Richard Keen, climatologist with the Dept of Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences at the University of Colorado said, “the global temperature for 2007 was the coldest in a decade.” Sources, Dr. Mitchell Taylor, Dept. of Environment, Nunavut, Canada, Plimer, Heaven and Earth, p.259, P.T. Doran, Antarctic Climate Colling and Terrestrial Ecosystem Response, Nature, Vol 415, pp. 517-20

  6. George C December 12, 2011 at 9:06 am

    Where are they getting data for the temperatures from 200 years ago?
    Without it there is simply no way to say what is going on.
    We certainly have pollution issues and a lobbying problem from the petroleum folks, but if you don’t have reliable data you don’t have science.

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