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Finally, a NYTimes review of Field Notes from a Catastrope

Ms. Kolbert, a former reporter for The New York Times, doesn't doubt that human-induced global warming is real and will likely have dire consequences; the title of her book includes the word "catastrophe."

and

a link to An Inconvenient Truth

Okay, the Wikipedia article again....

Wikipedia on Global Warming

It is therefore not correct to say that there is a debate between those who "believe in" and "oppose" the theory that adding carbon dioxide or methane to the Earth's atmosphere will, absent any mitigating actions or effects, result in warmer surface temperatures on Earth. Rather, the debate is about what the net effect of the addition of carbon dioxide and methane will be, when allowing for compounding or mitigating factors.

(my italics)

In other words, the question is not "Are human activities contributing to global warming?" (Or even "Is global warming happening?") The question among scientists is: "How much is human activity affecting global warming?" At billions of pounds of atmospheric carbon dioxiode per year, I find it hard to believe that it's a minimal effect.

...

The extent of the scientific consensus on global warming—that "most of the observed warming over the last 50 years is likely to have been attributable to human activities"[21]—has been investigated. In the journal Science in December 2004, Dr Naomi Oreskes published a study of the abstracts of 928 refereed scientific articles in the ISI citation database identified with the keywords "global climate change". This study concluded that 75% of the 928 articles either explicitly or implicitly accepted the consensus view — the remainder of the articles covered methods or paleoclimate and did not take any stance on recent climate change.[22] [23]. The study did not report how many of the 928 abstracts explicitly endorsed the hypothesis of human-induced warming.

(my italics)

So, in a 2004 study, 75% of scientists studying global climate change agreed with the consensus that it's caused by humans. The other 25% weren't covering a topic that related to today's issue.



This graph shows different studies' reconstructed temperatures across the last several hundred years.



This shows what we know with more certainty - the rate of changes in temperature since the 1860's.

Salvation

If evil is the hardening of our hearts to God and God’s people, then salvation is the softening of those hearts. Salvation is the change in our selves that makes a relationship with God possible. Through Jesus, we are invited into eternal life, a new life that begins in the here and now. God teaches, heals and calls us, and promises to continue this eternal life, even after we die. This is salvation.

Global Warming - Book Reviews

Thanks to Tara for this article from the New York Review of Books on global warming.

A salient excerpt:

Achieving a decline in CO2 emissions faces two major obstacles: the huge number of vehicles that are inefficient in their use of fuel and the continuing CO2 emissions from power plants. Auto makers oppose efficiency standards and prominently advertise their heaviest and most powerful vehicles, which yield the greatest short-term profits. Coal companies want new coal-fired power plants to be built soon, thus assuring long-term profits.

The California legislature has passed a regulation requiring a 30 percent reduction in automobile greenhouse gas emissions by 2016. If adopted nationwide, this regulation would save more than $150 billion annually in oil imports. In thirty-five years it would save seven times the amount of oil estimated by the US Geological Services to exist in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. By fighting it in court, automakers and the Bush administra-tion have stymied the California law, which many other states stand ready to adopt. Further reductions of emissions would be possible by means of technologies now being developed. For example, new hybrid cars with larger batteries and the ability to plug into wall outlets will soon be available; and cars whose bodies are made of a lightweight carbon composite would get better mileage.

This weekend I was reading a conversation on Myspace in which an active atheist was trying to convert us Christians over into not believing in God.

This op-ed piece from the New York Times reminds me of the issue.

If you're gonna fight for em....

... you should know what the heck they are.

Got tipped off to this in this week's Christian Century: Stephen Colbert asked one of the House Representatives fighting so hard to display the Ten Commandments what they were.

His response here.(YouTube)

The Problem of Evil

The problem of evil is pressing. Because of events like the Holocaust, in which human beings are so blinded to the suffering of others on such a massive scale, I believe there is an active intelligence to evil. This is the kind of thing that is so horrible it is supernatural. Genocide, torture, violence, terror continue in the world, and the problem is: why does God allow it to happen?

Any answer will be incomplete. Job, when faced with the loss of his property, his family, and his health, demands from God to know what he has done to deserve these punishments. The narrator tells us that in fact Job has done nothing wrong. In the climax of the book, God answers Job rather indirectly, asking if Job is capable of taming the great creatures or controlling the sea. Job humbly retreats, but the question remains: why did this happen to Job?

First, natural disasters are not evil in the way that human actions can be. The creation is a gift of God to us, but it’s not limited to that. The creation has its own purposes and its own processes. In other words, the world does not revolve around us; the pain and loss we may suffer is not personal or directed at us because of our actions. Similarly, disease and disability are not punishments for sin. Clearly, a gray area arises when the tragedies that afflict us are ones that we cause ourselves, for example global warming on a large scale, or a car accident caused by a reckless driver. But even in these cases, the suffering may or may not be proportional to the sin—as punishment—but only a consequence of it.

Evil, on the other hand, is not a natural process but a human capacity. In the Garden of Eden, Genesis tells us, Eve and then Adam each eat the fruit of the knowledge of good and evil. This step from innocence to insight is a decisive one with ambiguous results. Because we can choose between good and evil, some people will choose evil. But what makes this necessary is the fact that God wants us to freely choose the good. Without the real ability to choose evil, the decision to choose good is equally unreal, and our relationship with God would be as immature as it was with Adam and Eve before their expulsion.

The next question is, though, if God is all-powerful and is good at the same time, shouldn’t God step in when there are cases of egregious evil? I’m not sure. First of all, it seems to me that God is not responsible for our action. While the Holocaust is an unthinking horror, it is also a human act. Second, this kind of evil suggests that God is not all-powerful, and I believe this is by self-limiting choice. The salvation of the entire creation is a long-term project, and God takes subtle action through the transformation of hearts and minds, not through sudden violence. It is when we harden our hearts to God, and thereby harden our hearts to our fellow humans – God’s beloved children – that we leave ourselves open to violent, dehumanizing, blinding forces of evil.

Atonement

In the past, thinking about Jesus’ death on the cross as a substitution for my suffering was an important way for me to understand God’s forgiving love toward me. In this model, God sends Jesus to die in my place and pay for the sins I’ve committed. The problem with looking at the atonement this way is that it turns Jesus’ suffering into something holy and meaningful qua suffering. The practical result of this is that people with little power are told that they should imitate Christ by accepting suffering as he did. One important example of this is women seeking spiritual counsel as they try to leave abusive relationships. There are many other examples of powerless people asked to imitate Christ in accepting suffering, rather than upset the systems of power that crush them. This is an ironic twist, considering that Jesus came to us as a poor and powerless man, and was crushed in the power systems of his own day. To use the crucifixion as an example for the poor and powerless is to crucify Jesus all over again.

Given these problems, I prefer to pay attention to the real act of redemption in Jesus’ story – his resurrection. Jesus was dead, but he rose again to new life. In the same way, we die to our sins and participate in Jesus’ resurrection through baptism and our entry into relationship with God. The point is not that we sin and die, but that through God in Christ we experience new life.