The Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission

A Call to Truth, Prudence, and Protection of the Poor: An Evangelical Response to Global Warming

By Interfaith Stewardship Alliance - Jul 27, 2006 - 5 -

Preamble

As evangelicals, we commend those who signed the Evangelical Climate Initiative’s “Climate Change: An Evangelical Call to Action” for speaking out on a public issue of ethical concern. We share the same Biblical world view, theology, and ethics. We are motivated by the same deep and genuine concern they express for the poor not only of our own nation but of the world. That very concern compels us to express our disagreement with their “Call to Action” and to offer an alternative that would improve the lot of the poor more surely and effectively.

It is important to speak directly to the issue of motive. We do not question the motive of those who produced or signed the ECI’s “Call to Action.” We assume that they acted out of genuine concern for the world’s poor and others and considered their action justified by scientific, economic, theological, and ethical facts. We trust that they will render us the same respect.

It is not sufficient, however, to have good intentions. They must be linked to sound understanding of relevant principles, theories, and facts. As we shall argue below, that linkage is lacking for the ECI’s “Call to Action.”

We present our case in two stages. First, we respond point-by-point to the ECI’s four claims and the four assumptions on which its “Call to Action” rests. Second, we present five contrary conclusions. The first four follow from the evidence presented in our critique of the ECI’s claims. The fifth sets forth our own alternative call to action to protect the poor, the rest of humanity, and the rest of the world’s inhabitants–not only from global warming but also from other potential environmental
threats.

Response to the ECI’s Four Assumptions

The ECI’s “Call to Action” rests on the following four assumptions:

• Human emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases into the atmosphere as we burn fuels for energy are the main cause of global warming.
• Global warming is not only real (which we do not contest) but is almost certainly going to be catastrophic in its consequences for humanity–especially the poor.
• Reducing carbon dioxide emissions would so curtail global warming as to significantly reduce its anticipated harmful effects.
• Mandatory carbon dioxide emissions reductions would achieve that end with overall effects that would be more beneficial than harmful to humanity and the rest of the world’s inhabitants.

All of these assumptions, we shall argue below, are false, probably false, or exaggerated.

ECI’s First Assumption: CO2 emissions from fossil fuels are the main cause of warming.

The ECI’s first assumption appears under “Claim 1: Human-Induced Climate Change is Real.” While almost certainly true (since humans have long affected climates in which they live), the claim is too vague to have policy implications. It is possible, under some assumptions, to attribute all recent globally averaged warming to mankind. But our knowledge of climate history also reveals substantial natural variability. The mechanisms driving natural climate variations are too poorly understood to be included accurately in computer climate models. Hence, the models risk overstating human influence.

For support the “Call” cites the Executive Summary of the Third Assessment Report (2001) of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) as attributing “most of the warming” (emphasis added) to human activities. However, the Executive Summary does not reflect the depth of scientific uncertainty embodied in the report and was written by government negotiators, not the scientific panel itself. Indeed, the wording of the conclusion supplied by the scientific panel as of the close of scientific review did not attribute “most” warming to humans. Instead it emphasized the existing uncertainties: “From the body of evidence since IPCC (1996), we conclude that there has been a discernible human influence on global climate. Studies are beginning to separate the contributions to observed climate change attributable to individual external influences, both anthropogenic and natural. This work suggests that anthropogenic greenhouse gases are a substantial contributor to the observed warming, especially over the past 30 years. However, the accuracy of these estimates continues to be limited by uncertainties in estimates of internal variability, natural and anthropogenic forcing, and the climate response to external forcing¹.” While much valuable scientific research is reflected by the IPCC’s reports, their executive summaries have been so politicized as to prompt MIT climate scientist and IPCC participant Richard Lindzen to testify before the United States Senate, “I personally witnessed coauthors forced to assert their ‘green’ credentials in defense of their statements².”

Further, a number of studies support the conclusion that natural causes–e.g. fluctuations in solar output³, changes in cloud forcing⁴, and precipitation microphysics⁵–could outweigh human CO2 emissions as causes of the current global warmth⁶. Other studies find that rising CO2 follows rather than leads warming and thus is not its cause but might be its effect⁷. In addition, other human activities (e.g., land use conversion for agriculture and cities, particulate pollution) cause regional climatic changes that go largely unmentioned. Thus the human-induced part of the warming trend is only partly driven by CO2 and other manmade greenhouse gases. Recently sixty topic-qualified scientists asserted that “global climate changes all the time due to natural causes and the human impact still remains impossible to distinguish from this natural noise,” and that “observational evidence does not support today’s computer climate models, so there is little reason to trust model predictions of the future⁸.”

The discerning reader of the ECI statement should ask: How much of current global warming is man-made versus natural? How much future warming can we reasonably expect? What changes in human behavior that affect climate may be anticipated, under what conditions? What difference will such changes make to the world’s climate? And what would it actually take to fix the alleged problem? In other words, the first assumption, which by itself suggests no policy, only becomes relevant when coupled with the second.

ECI’s Second Assumption: Global Warming Will Be Catastrophic, Especially for the Poor

The ECI’s second assumption appears under “Claim 2: The Consequences of Climate Change Will Be Significant, and Will Hit the Poor the Hardest.” We shall respond separately to the two parts of this claim.

The first part asserts that “the consequences of climate change will be significant.” It is impossible to quantify what is meant by “significant,” but the “Call to Action” goes on to list a variety of consequences, asserts without evidence that these will be hardest on the poor, and concludes, “Millions of people could die in this century because of climate change, most of them our poorest global neighbors.”

Catastrophic climate scenarios critically depend on the extremely unlikely assumption that global average temperature would rise 6° C (10.8° F) or more in response to doubled CO2. But more credible estimates of climate sensitivity to doubled CO2 have been in the range of 1.5° to 4.5° C (2.7° to 8.1° F). Researchers using several independent lines of evidence asserted a “maximum likelihood estimate . . . close to 3° C” (5.4° F). They concluded, “our implied claim that climate sensitivity actually has as much as a 5% chance of exceeding 4.5° C is not a position that we would care to defend with any vigour, since even if it is hard to formally rule it out, we are unaware of any significant evidence in favour of such a high value⁹.” It is very unlikely that warming in that range would cause catastrophic consequences. Why? Among other reasons, because CO2-induced warming will occur mostly in winter, mostly in polar regions, and mostly at night. But in polar regions, where winter night temperatures range far below freezing, an increase of 5.4° F is hardly likely to cause significant melting of polar ice caps or other problems.

Even if the recent strong warming trend (at most 1° F in the last thirty years) is entirely manmade (and it almost certainly is not), and even if it continues for another thirty years (as it might), global average temperature will only be at most 1° F warmer then than now. Predicting climate beyond then depends on assumptions about future use of fossil fuels. Such assumptions are dubious in light of continuous changes in energy sources throughout modern human history. Who could have predicted our current mix of energy sources a century-and-a-half ago, when wood, coal, and whale oil were the most important components and petroleum and natural gas were barely in use? The ECI predicts that “even small rises [emphasis added] in global temperatures will have” a variety of supposedly disastrous impacts. In each instance, there is good reason to reject the prediction:

• “sea level rise”: Contrary to visions of se

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