IS GLOBAL WARMING BUNK? PART II
Coming to a local theater near you: a catastrophe movie, or a documentary about global warming. The idea of global warming is coming into every household. Movies involving everything from aliens to evil scientists are bringing global warming into plots these days. And you’re probably hearing more about it on the news almost every day.
Some people worry that we’re causing it. Forget evil billionaire industrialists. In just a few decades, household chemical agents that we have used in the past have burned a hole in the ozone layer! It will take hundreds of years to fix it! People everywhere who are burning trash are ruining the environment! Our herds of cows are releasing methane! The sky is falling! When will the madness end?
Really, if we look at the polar ice caps, scientists seem to have documented quite a bit of melting lately. What are we to make of it? Secular scientists and Evangelicals alike can collectively breathe a sigh of relief (or panic if they wish). Here’s why it doesn’t matter from either perspective.
If you are one who believes the earth has been around for millions of years, then global warming shouldn’t even matter to you. Some have theorized that the earth changes its course regularly from a circular orbit to an elliptical orbit. Whatever mechanism could cause such a phenomenon, many believe that this is a cyclical phenomenon.
All one has to do is look at the fossil record. From the time of the dinosaurs until the present age, the climate has changed dramatically. The “ages of the dinosaurs” were a time when the climate was more or less a tropical paradise. Believe it or not, if you have ever been interested in fossils, it was a frightening time of insects the size of your head or bigger! Just swat one of those! Get out your baseball bat! Blech! If I remember the theory correctly, some believe the earth was in more of a circular orbit at that time.
For some reason (who knows exactly why) the theory then suggests the earth moved into an elliptical orbit. In this type of orbit, the earth was at times further away from the sun, allowing for ice ages to develop.1 Ah, the ages of mammoths and saber-toothed tigers. Alas, those magnificent creatures are practically extinct (though we can probably say they have living cousins or ancestors—elephants, lions, and tigers.)2
If you believe this, global warming just doesn’t matter. It’s cyclical. Someday, thousands of years from now, this theory would suggest a return to an ice age. We’re just moving back to a tropical paradise climate right now.
Others may theorize that it might just be temperature variations in the sun causing warming, which are cyclical as well. Whatever happens, the earth and its life will find ways to adapt.
Some Evangelicals—the religious conservatives who some liberals may be hoping to find a way to court these days (notable example: Hillary trying to shift to the right and court “moderates/right-wingers” thus alienating her base)—may simply accept what the secular scientists say. But there is another group of Evangelicals and other Christian groups (to generalize this truly non-homogeneous group—they’re much more diverse than even they themselves may know) who have not accepted the idea of millions of years, or according to secular scientists, billions of years. Without getting into distinctions between the Christian groups or going into thorough detail about the assumptions behind the theory above, let’s get into why those who don’t buy the “millions of years” idea need not be worrying about global warming either. . . soon.
> -Cal Samuel August
> Endnotes:
> 1. There are difficulties for those who theorize about ice ages. For example, glaciers are not found at lower altitudes, such as Iowa and other Midwestern areas where huge sheets of ice were known to have been, so how is this explained? And how were these sheets of ice maintained through the warmer summer months?
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> 2. You know how you go to the science museum and see pictures of cave-men hunting mammoths with spears in arctic tundra environments? If the mammoths really lived in an ice-age climate exactly what did they eat to sustain their large bodies, and how did they get enough water?
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