A Weather-Related Break from the Norm

Weather break.

It snowed tonight here in the deep, deep South. This makes two years in a row this locale has gotten snow that typically falls once every twelve to fifteen years or so. It's difficult to witness such an occurrence and not think "global warming"--well, climate change, in any case. This last week has given me reason, however, to examine my knee-jerk reaction ("strange weather? darn climate change!").

As has been reported out the wazoo, the scandal/tempest-in-a-teapot (depending upon whom you ask) called "Climate-gate" broke when some 1,000 e-mails were leaked to the public recently. The e-mails and assorted documents came from the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia in the UK, a well-respected center for climatology. The leaked e-conversations seem to implicate several prominent climatologists in acts of fudging the presentation of climate data so as to make the case for anthropogenic climate change more plausible to the public. That, along with some disparaging remarks about climate change skeptics, have led some global warming critics to cry "ah ha! We knew all along it was all a conspiracy--and climate-gate proves it!"

I spent quite a while last night (playing one of my favorite games, "avoid going to bed") wading through a lengthy and at times vicious discussion thread about climate-gate on the website of the Chronicle of Higher Education, where scientists, non-scientists, and every kind of academic in between got to have their say (and more) about the issue.

From what I could tell from that debate (and the debaters, being academics, link like mad to multiple and sundry articles, blogs, analyses, and position statements), the following seems to be the case: 1) Climate-gate, embarrassing as it is for the center and the scientists involved, doesn't qualify as the silver bullet to kill/discredit the global warming consensus among climatologists. 2) The documents and mails, many of which are taken out of context, represent at most ethically shady strategies in presenting data, not proof that data were falsified or fabricated.

3) That being said, many climatologists are uneasy with the popularization of global warming data, especially by non-climatologists. It appears that, while most climatologists accept that humans have a definite and likely detrimental impact on climate, determining exactly what that impact is and how realistically to fix it are more complicated issues than is sometimes suggested. Climatology, like any scientific discipline, consists of ongoing debates and uncertainties--areas where more modeling and experimentation are necessary. This scientific uncertainty understands the term in a quite specific sense--as in "open questions posed upon a foundation of accepted knowledge," not "wild guesses based on hunches or political biases." Unfortunately, scientific uncertainty does not translate well into political or lay arenas. Some of the leaked e-mails appear to indicate strategy sessions among some scientists about how to limit or mute the uncertainty factor in order to foster support for, say, reducing carbon dioxide emissions immediately when in fact many climatologists point to human-caused factors beyond or instead of carbon dioxide as equally or more influential.

I write about this here not merely because of the odd snowfall and a late night but because the politicized elements of conservative evangelicalism (i.e., the religious right) seem to have folded a staunch resistance to theories of human-caused climate change into their larger sense of what "conservative"--or at times even "Christian"--means. The conservative-religious news sites I frequent all feature stories about the shocking (well, not-so-shocking, to them) revelations from the UK, which simply go to prove (in that discourse) that climate change as a whole is a liberal hoax.

Exactly what this has to do with Christianity is a bit vague for me. As best as I can make out, the religious argument against a model of anthropogenic climate change would be that God in Genesis establishes a system of human domination over the earth. Adam is to subdue the earth, to make use of it for himself. That earth will endure as God promised until God decides to destroy it (or not--whether earth survives the Final Judgment depends upon one's particular eschatology). I suspect, however, that this argument (which I have not seen articulated often) has less to do with the religious right's resistance to climate change theories than does the right's collusion with economic forces such as secular energy lobbies and with a political tradition that distrusts "big government."

Lately, many evangelicals have been interpreting creation passages in ways that support environmentalism. Dominion, these green evangelicals argue, means that God tasks humans with responsible stewardship of the earth. Environmentalism has thus occasionally served as common ground for faith-based and secular organizations to work together. Of course, the rise of such ecumenical, working-with-the-liberals efforts only strengthens the resolve of more conservative evangelicals, proving that the liberal evangelicals are just CINOs ("Christians In Name Only"--after RINOs--"Republicans In Name Only").

The debate on the Chronicle pages ranged from divergent interpretations of data by experts to the relative take on/trust in scientific consensus from nonspecialist scientists, to good old-fashioned doubt by some non-scientists. This being an academics' row, questions of turf and comparative expertise ("who cares what you say? You aren't a scientist!" "Yeah? Well, you're just a meteorologist, not a climatologist...") got fired this way and that.

Oddly enough, one of the most sensible (to my non-scientist eyes) bits of reasoning came from a professed humanities scholar, who used Pascal's Wager, an apologetics chestnut, to argue for environmental action. Pascal's Wager is, basically, that one should believe in God because believing in God (and presumably becoming a Christian) has a low cost--a life lived in service to God, loving neighbors, etc.--relative to the potential gain (i.e., heaven). If God doesn't exist, then you've at least lived a full life, and you lose nothing. If you don't believe in God, however, and God does exist, you spend eternity in hell. Believing in God makes good sense, for Pascal, because it's the safest bet.

Similarly, this poster argued that environmental stewardship is a good idea. Even if the global warming skeptics are right and anthropocentric climate change turns out to be Y2K all over again, it makes good sense to wean ourselves off of nonrenewable energy sources, to reduce pollution, and to cultivate more energy-efficient lifestyles. After all, the cost of doing nothing if the more worrisome climatological prophets are even partially correct is just too extreme to ignore.

I have some difficulties with Pascal's Wager (e.g., who said a life lived as a Christian is easy or easier than a life lived as a non-Christian?), but the environmental analogue makes sense to me on a secular-reasoning level. I am also persuaded that part of Christian agape involves extending love for the neighbor to creation more generally.

I suppose that's still more confirmation--as if any were needed--of my own inveterate liberalism.

More tomorrow,

JF