Unlikely Partners Fight Global Warming

Evangelicals, Scientists Say They Share A "Moral Purpose"

(AP)  Saying they share a moral purpose, a group of evangelicals and scientists said they will work together to convince U.S. leaders that global warming is real.

The Rev. Rich Cizik, public policy director for the National Association of Evangelicals, and Nobel-laureate Eric Chivian, director of the Center for Health and the Global Environment at Harvard Medical School, were among 28 signers of a statement that demands urgent changes in values, lifestyles and public policies to avert disastrous changes in climate.

“God will judge us for destroying the Creation. Therefore, we as evangelicals have a responsibility to be even more vigilant than others,” Cizik said at a news conference Wednesday.

“Science can be an ally in helping us understand what faith is telling us,” he said. “We will not allow the Creation to be degraded, destroyed by human folly.”

Among the project's supporters are Edward O. Wilson, a two-time Pulitzer prize-winning scientist and author; James Hansen, a prominent NASA climatologist; and Calvin B. DeWitt, president of the Academy of Evangelical Scientists and Ethicists.

Chivian said evangelicals and scientists are not as odd a couple as they may seem.

“We discovered that we were both speaking from our hearts and our minds. We found that we really like each other,” he said.

Not all evangelicals were on board.

The Interfaith Stewardship Alliance, formed by evangelicals who say scientific evidence counters claims of climate change, derided Wednesday's announcement as “just another attempt to create the impression of growing consensus among evangelicals about global warming. There is no such growing consensus.”

The alliance charged that the National Association of Evangelicals' board never approved the new collaboration. The NAE said its board approved a “dialogue,” but no specific actions.

The new effort represents the boldest evangelical step yet into the world of environmental activism.

To start, the coalition is meeting with congressional leaders, both Democrat and Republican, organizing a summit on environmental issues and developing public relations tools such as a “Creation Care” Bible study guide.

It also has requested a meeting with President George W. Bush. Senators Barack Obama, Richard Lugar and Olympia Snowe, all signaled their support Wednesday for the collaboration of evangelicals and scientists. Obama is a Democrat and the others are Republicans.

Their pairing grew from a retreat last year at which all sides agreed that human behavior and public policy have put the environment at risk.

In the past, conservative Christians who embraced that cause have met significant resistance.

The Rev. Joel Hunter of Northland megachurch in Longwood, Florida, refused to become president of the Christian Coalition of America last year because he said the group would not expand its agenda to include the environment and poverty. Hunter has now endorsed the new project.

[newsguy57]

Carl Sagan published a very good "baloney detection kit" in his book _The Demon Haunted World: Science As A Candle In The Dark_. One of its parts warned against inconsistent decision-making standards, and gave as an example enormous military expenditures based on worst-case scenarios, but no money spent for global warming, for which solid evidence exists, because it wasn't absolutley 'proven'.

What's really going on here is that most humans spend their lives playing games with other humans, and the worst thing possible is to be "gotten" by another human. Shooting oneself in the foot - well, that's OK.

So spending $500 billion has to be done to root out a few dozen terrorists who might kill another 3,000 Americans in an attack - in the process killing at least that many American soldiers - but spending any money to save perhaps millions of people further down the road from the consequences of our own wastes is too much. It's winning the 'game' that counts for most people, not saving lives.

[rf35]

I would like to apologize for the spelling errors in the last post%u2026need%u2026more%u2026coffee.......

[rf35]

It's nice to see some conservitave Christian types weighing in on the dangers of global warming. I may not agree with their reasoning, but the fact that they are now trying to do something and get the government's attention is heartening. Our president has spent too much time stroking the fossil fuel industry and keeping his head firmly buried in the sand as scientists warn of the potential disasterous effects of global warming; yet he seems to be a devout Christian. Now that his faith may clash with his monitary interests, let's see which religeon he truely believes in...God ot the almighty dollar. This should be entertaining at the least.

[nothappyatall]

Most of the coal burned in the old days was the cheaper dirtier stuff compared to the high quality stuff used today.
Amazing however, we are burning 400% more coal than in 1897, so I take back the "minimal" comment at the start of my previous post

[nothappyatall]

Screw the evangelicals.

If you want to research today's minimal air pollution compared to the HUGE amount of burning of dirty coal during the industrial age years 1880-1897, I have the book from 1904 showing how much was mined for those years in just this country and burned. I won't post the entire list but in 1880 the total mined in the US was; 73,647,997 TONS, within 3 years it shot up to 108,082,118 tons. It increased every year and by 1897 the amount of coal mined and burned in the US was 194,603,980 TONS.
Adding up these figures for 18 years comes to;
2,531,100,626 TONS thats 2-1/2 BILLION tons over just 18 years mined, transported, burned producing carbon dioxide and air pollution. this was used to run trains, street cars and subways, power generation, machinery, heating, industrial plants.
To put that amount in perspective, Germany is said to have 7-1/2 billion tons of recoverable coal in their entire country.
The growth of railroads caused surpassing the burning of coal over previously readily available cheap trees for firewood and which was used for almost everything.

According to another source, proven US coal reserves in 2004 stand at 246,643 million tonnes, we USE 564.3 million tonnes a year (2004) So we burned thru 2-1/2 billion tons in 18 years and have aprox 246 billion tonnes left.

The U.S. has emitted almost 86 billion metric tons of carbon since 1800 from fossil-fuel consumption and cement production