hr.jr. Posted October 23, 2007 Group: Senior Member Followers: 0 Topic Count: 1 Topics Per Day: 0.00 Content Count: 615 Content Per Day: 0.09 Reputation: 12 Days Won: 1 Joined: 05/21/2006 Status: Offline Share Posted October 23, 2007 I said global warming doesn't exist because there is not enough evidence to support it, not because there is hypocracy in it. We've only been tracking weather patterns for a short amount of time, how do we know this is not NORMAL? How do we know this is not in God's holy plan for the earth at this time? What evidence do "they" have that it man at all? 1. There is a massive amount of evidence that earth is warming, and that human activity is largely behind it. 2. Through glacial samples and other proxies we can very accurately reconstruct Global Climate for the last 700,000 years, and beyond that we can still determine trends over a much larger scale. Moreover, we know the causes of past climate swings. Now I have made the case on here many times as to the evidence for Global Warming, so I am not going to do so again. However, The New Scientist has done a great job of doing so, and it should do a good job of answering your questions. Climate change: A guide for the perplexed http://environment.newscientist.com/channel/earth/dn11462 I am not an environmentalist, I'm just practical and poor. I don't like environmentalists because most of them are hypocrites. Tree hugging wacos who, live in huge [energy sucking] mansions, drive [gas guzzling] SUV's and wear MINK coats. Makes no sence to me. I think the problem is that your confusing clueless celebrities looking for a cause to take up, and actual environmentalists. I have known a lot of what I would call environmentalists / conservationists, and none of them lived in mansions, wore mink coats, or lived extravagant lives. If they drove a truck or SUV is it was because they were a wilderness outfitter and needed to haul backpackers or canoes around, and not just as some status symbol to drive the kids around the burbs in. Basically, it seems the picture that you have of environmentalists is like the picture that a lot of people have of evangelical Christians. When a lot of people think of evangelical Christians they think of rich rolex wearing, self-righteous, power hungry televangelists, living off of the phoned in contributions of lonely old people. Of course thats not the case at all, most evangelical Christians are good people doing their best to live a good life and be of service to God and their fellow man. Your looking at some celebrities out there that are latching on to what ever they see as the hip cause and then you must think they represent the environmentalist movement. They don't though, they don't at all. Actual environmentalists dislike those hypocritical celebs as much as you do. I think environmentalists put to much emphasis on CREATION instead of the CREATOR. What is really important? "He has shown you, oh man, what is good and what the LORD requires of you. To do justice, to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God." (Micah 6:8) The vast, vast majority of environmentalists are not a bunch of rock worshiping wiccans. A lot of them are Christians. They just take their biblical role as stewards and tenants seriously. To care a great deal about the environment does not mean that you worship it. To argue that it does is like saying that pro-lifers worship embryos. Obviously, we can reverse the damage that has been done. But something I have noticed, "nature" always finds a way. Around Chernoble, it's becoming green and lush and there are animals there, not three headed monkeys or dogs with 7 eyes but normal animals. Even if we do nothing to undo the damage we have done, God will help preserve the earth till it is HIS time to start new. I will always do my part, but I'm not going to run around yelling at everyone around me telling them to do what I am doing. Well wait a second. Yes, nature is very, very resilient. Many species around Chernobyl have already evolved some traits to deal with the high radiation levels (such as reaching sexual maturity much earlier due to shorter life spans). However, it will be thousands of years before the area around Chernobyl is habitable by man again. Similarly, say you log an old growth forest. Yes, that forest will regrow. Within 50 years you will have an adolescent forest there again. However, it will take between 300 and a thousand years depending on the forest type before it becomes a true biologically diverse old growth forest again. The goal should be how to live and work in a sustainable fashion where the actions we take now do not adversely effect the environment for generations to come. If we went in and logged the last of the Redwoods, they would eventually grow back (in about a 1000 years), but your kids certainly would not get to see them. I think what you continue to overlook is God's part in this. No matter what man does, none of it is a surprise to God. He can repair or overturn anything that man does that does not fit in with His plan for this planet. Nothing is going to happen here without it fitting into His plan. Once again, it is not that any of us do not care. When I used to go hiking, I left nothing behind. Whatever I took in got brought back out. I love nature, and I don't like to see it abused or trampled over, but I do not buy into the global warming myth. I. Don't. Buy. It. I am not going to panic, or start hoping that the government does something about it because: A. I don't believe it, and B. It's all part of the plan. What is more important, the environment, or reaching out to those that do not know Christ? I believe that global warming is actually true. However, I believe it is absolutely irrelavent. Any believer with any knowledge of prophecy has to be 100% sure that the return of our Savior is very near. The signs are abundant. Never before in history have the signs for the return of our Savior been so obvious. The generation that saw the re-birth of Israel is also getting quite old. The Church should be much more concerned with evangelism than carbon dioxide. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Biblicist Posted October 23, 2007 Share Posted October 23, 2007 Forrest, you seem to have a lot of worldly answers to the "Global Warming" issue, but you tend to ignore the Biblical ones. Man's ways are not God's ways. But you only seem to care about man's ways and man's agenda and not God's. I don't need to innumerate all the things that I am doing to preserve the environment for my children's future, any more than you do. That is not important to me. Helping to preserve their souls for eternity is. I get that you are passionate about this issue. The hole in the ozone is not as important as the salvation message. Don't be more interested in the hole than the soul. If a new ice age is coming, or some major catastraphy, God's gonna wanna know why we didn't try to tell more people about HIM. He's not gonna care what we did to preserve the earth that He intends to destroy and rebuild. I'm fairly certain that's not going to be the question we are asked when our time comes. I know plenty of "environmentalists" that are not waccos, well, borderline. They happen to be my family. And they are missing something vitally important. Salvation. They don't need to save the earth, they need to BE saved. What do you think God wants me to concentrate on with them when I see them? Recycling? I think NOT! I think you need to ask yourself, when you talk to someone who is unsaved. . . what's the first issue that comes to mind? Saving the environment or saving their eternal soul? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
forrestkc Posted October 23, 2007 Group: Royal Member Followers: 0 Topic Count: 114 Topics Per Day: 0.02 Content Count: 4,015 Content Per Day: 0.59 Reputation: 8 Days Won: 1 Joined: 12/15/2005 Status: Offline Author Share Posted October 23, 2007 Forrest, So you would speculate that natural carbon like from wildfires and volcano's are dealt with naturally by the Creation. Yet carbon that exists in nature and the Creation when burned by the activity of humans would be foreign to the Creation. Peace, Dave There is a natural carbon cycle. Over the last 400,000 years, CO2 ppm in the atmosphere varied between 180 ppm and 300 ppm. This matches the reconstructed temperature record almost exactly (carbon lags temp) with Ice Ages correlating with CO2 ppm under 180 and warm periods correlating with CO2 ppm between 250 to 280. Major Paleo-climate cycles in the past correlated to orbital variations. When the earth's orbit moved further from the sun, the climate cooled and we entered into an ice age. When the earth's orbit moved closer, the climate warmed. Now, the reason why C02 ppm varied was the cooling and warming of the oceans. Colder oceans can sequester far more carbon than warmer oceans. So, during an ice age, as the oceans cooled, they sequestered more atmospheric C02 and as a result had a positive feedback on climate. In this case, less C02 was in the atmosphere, and thus more heat radiated back into space. As a result, the earth's climate got even colder than what would have otherwise been possible just because of the decrease in solar forcing. Conversely, as the climate warmed, the oceans warmed and released sequestered carbon back into the atmosphere. This had a positive feedback as well and amplified climatic warming greatly. During all of these climatic cycles, over the last 400,000 years, CO2 ppm in the atmosphere never got above 280. The reason for this is that the huge amounts of carbon sequestered in fossil fuels, specifically oil and coal, never was released during warm periods. Then comes the industrial revolution and we started burning lots of coal, and then later lots of gas. So now, that carbon that had been sequestered for tens of millions of years and in some cases hundreds of millions of years was starting to be released into the atmosphere. At the start of the industrial revolution, C02 ppm in the atmosphere was about 265. Today, its at about 400 ppm, and the growth in C02 directly corresponds to economic growth and development. Thats higher than C02 ppm has been in at least the last 650,000 years (as far as we can go back with glacial samples). What is happening is that we are releasing CO2 into the atmosphere at 30 times the natural rate (volcanoes included), yet at the same time, land use changes are reducing the amount of forest cover worldwide that sequesters carbon. Thus far, the oceans, which are the world's largest carbon sink, have been sequestering much of what we have been introducing into the atmosphere. The problem is that as the climate warms, the oceans are also beginning to warm, and as they warm they are not able to sequester as much carbon. The concern is, and no one in science knows what the exact tipping point will be, but just the same, the concern is that the oceans will warm enough to where they no longer sequester carbon and begin to release they carbon currently sequestered in the ocean. This is the problem, humanity is conducting this massive experiment on the world's climate, and no one really knows exactly what will happen. The IPCC projections are the most conservative out there, they are by far best case scenarios, and they are not good. So thats pretty much the problem in a nutshell. Which is why we have to figure out a way to power our societies in such a way that we decouple energy from carbon emissions. Thats probably going to be a combination of nuclear and renewable energy sources. There is one thing that is completely accepted in all of science though, and that is we cannot burn all of the fossil fuels available to us without drastically altering our climate. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
nebula Posted October 23, 2007 Group: Royal Member Followers: 10 Topic Count: 5,823 Topics Per Day: 0.75 Content Count: 45,870 Content Per Day: 5.92 Reputation: 1,897 Days Won: 83 Joined: 03/22/2003 Status: Offline Birthday: 11/19/1970 Share Posted October 23, 2007 When the earth's orbit moved further from the sun, the climate cooled and we entered into an ice age. When the earth's orbit moved closer, the climate warmed. Hold - you lost me on this one. Are you saying the Earth's orbit got wider (that's the only way I can visual it's orbit moving further form the Sun) and then narrower? I have never heard of this phenomenon. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
forrestkc Posted October 23, 2007 Group: Royal Member Followers: 0 Topic Count: 114 Topics Per Day: 0.02 Content Count: 4,015 Content Per Day: 0.59 Reputation: 8 Days Won: 1 Joined: 12/15/2005 Status: Offline Author Share Posted October 23, 2007 When the earth's orbit moved further from the sun, the climate cooled and we entered into an ice age. When the earth's orbit moved closer, the climate warmed. Hold - you lost me on this one. Are you saying the Earth's orbit got wider (that's the only way I can visual it's orbit moving further form the Sun) and then narrower? I have never heard of this phenomenon. See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milankovitch_cycles Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Matthitjah Posted October 23, 2007 Group: Royal Member Followers: 4 Topic Count: 1,285 Topics Per Day: 0.16 Content Count: 17,917 Content Per Day: 2.26 Reputation: 355 Days Won: 19 Joined: 10/01/2002 Status: Offline Share Posted October 23, 2007 Grace to you, Forrest, So you believe that the activity of man as part of the Creation is not in sync with the Creation? Man is a kind of cancer? Peace, Dave Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Biblicist Posted October 23, 2007 Share Posted October 23, 2007 I have heard people say that before, that we are a cancer or a blight to the earth. As if we do not belong here and we are to be eradicated so the earth can go on as it was originally intended to! LINK Humans are a Cancer of the Earth Earth has undeniably suffered a rapid deterioration in health over the past few centuries. The symptoms of her illness, including global warming, water pollution, and deforestation, are ever-increasing and cannot be ignored. Dr. William Hern believes he has discovered the culprit behind this malady: Homo ecophagus, a newly-coined label for the present day humans that are devouring the environment in cancer-like fashion (Dr. William Hern, p. 8). His diagnosis involves drawing parallels between a malignant neoplasm and humans. My immediate reaction after reading this thesis was to reject a proposal that so debased the human race and exacted such a harsh blow to every human's ego. Upon further consideration, however, Hern's reasoning becomes less blatantly offensive and more plausible. Although his argument and its correlating implications contain some contradictions, his overall points appear regrettably compelling and difficult to refute. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Matthitjah Posted October 23, 2007 Group: Royal Member Followers: 4 Topic Count: 1,285 Topics Per Day: 0.16 Content Count: 17,917 Content Per Day: 2.26 Reputation: 355 Days Won: 19 Joined: 10/01/2002 Status: Offline Share Posted October 23, 2007 Grace to you, Yes, it is sad isn't it Bib. However I believe that it is a misunderstanding of mans role in God's economy. It is the error of placing man before God and it is the fallacy of the Green Gospel. Peace, Dave Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
forrestkc Posted October 23, 2007 Group: Royal Member Followers: 0 Topic Count: 114 Topics Per Day: 0.02 Content Count: 4,015 Content Per Day: 0.59 Reputation: 8 Days Won: 1 Joined: 12/15/2005 Status: Offline Author Share Posted October 23, 2007 Grace to you, Forrest, So you believe that the activity of man as part of the Creation is not in sync with the Creation? Man is a kind of cancer? Peace, Dave No, I believe our role from a biblical perspective is more of a tenant. One can be a good tenant, and thus be a good steward of a property, or one can be a bad tenant, and trash a property. Its the choice of the tenant. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Matthitjah Posted October 23, 2007 Group: Royal Member Followers: 4 Topic Count: 1,285 Topics Per Day: 0.16 Content Count: 17,917 Content Per Day: 2.26 Reputation: 355 Days Won: 19 Joined: 10/01/2002 Status: Offline Share Posted October 23, 2007 Grace to you, No, I believe our role from a biblical perspective is more of a tenant. One can be a good tenant, and thus be a good steward of a property, or one can be a bad tenant, and trash a property. Its the choice of the tenant. Yes, being a tenant denotes that there is a Landlord or Householder. I believe that the Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ is quite clear when it comes to what the tenants ought to be doing with their Talents. The Householder knows what to with His with His Vineyard. He has meerly asked us to lay hold of it's harvest as Laborer's. Peace, Dave Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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