Climate change isn’t the sort of thing we normally cover here at Think-Biblically.com, but when the President declares it is a greater threat than terrorism its time to have a look at the issue.

What is the issue exactly? According the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) in Boulder, Colorado the temperature of the earth has risen 1.8 degrees over the last 100 years. It is believed that this increase in global temperature is the result of man’s industrialization and that this increase will continue unabated until an environmental crises is reached. If true, then the President is right in the long view of human survival. In the short term, if a terrorist is on your plane you probably don’t care much about 1.8 degrees. The question is, is it true? The answer is, no one knows. There are simply too many variables and not enough data to come to any kind of conclusion.

Accurate weather data has been recorded in some parts of the world since 1659, so roughly 350 years. This sounds like a long period of time, but in comparison to the age of the earth – regardless of whether you are a young earth creationist or a dyed in the wool evolutionist – it is an amazingly small amount of data. If you are the former, you believe the earth is roughly 6,000 years old, which means the 350 years of data (for the UK only, not the globe) is about 17% of the world’s weather history. It gets astronomically worse if you are an evolutionist believing the world is 4.5 billion years old. That means the data only represents about 1/13,000,000 of global climate data. Remember, that’s just for the UK. For good global data we have only about 100 years of accurate information. So for those who say “the science is in,” it simply isn’t.

Also unknown is the cause for the increase in temperature over the last 100 years. Is it man made as the proponents of Climate Change Theory allege? Or is it a naturally occurring phenomenon that takes place every few hundred years, or every millennia, or every 5,000 years? Due to these very basic probes into the theory one would be right to be skeptical about the claims. Even so, according to BBC News Environmental “Activists want action to limit the rise in the average global temperature to 2C (3.6F) above pre-industrial levels.” How they arrived at this number is unknown, and why they think we can do anything about climate change is also unknown. Take solar energy as an example.

According to recent studies by NCAR areas where there are large solar farms experience atmospheric cooling in the area due to so much of the sun’s heat being converted to energy. As a result, greater precipitation takes over, which means more cloudy days which render the solar panels useless. Not to mention that solar power costs anywhere from 5 to 10 times more per kilowatt hour than coal or nuclear energy (depending on which panels are used). Even though solar energy is now proven to cause climate change, albeit regional, it is still pointed to as one of the saviors for a global climate crisis. Why?

The answer to that question is as yet unknown. Some believe Climate Change is an idea that is being used to accomplish political change rather than environmental. Think-Biblically.com has no evidence to suggest this is true, but it is troubling that so many people around the world have bought into an idea when so there is so little information to suggest that there is any danger. The most pressing question we have is, does the Bible have any insight into these questions?

While the Bible is not a science text, it does contain the history of God’s interaction with humanity. God commanded Adam and Eve to “Be fruitful and multiply! Fill the earth and subdue it!” (Genesis 1.28). This command suggests that the planet can take a lot more of us than presently exist, including vastly more industrialization. This is not to say that mankind’s sinfulness cannot do damage, only that God created a world that is built to survive the effects of sin. There is one other Biblical teaching that may apply. According to prophecy about the end times there are to be radical changes in climate, insect populations and a number of other environmental factors but these are all aspects of God’s judgment not a part of man’s folly.