Bryan Fischer
Evangelicals who jumped on the "global warming" bandwagon looking silly
By Bryan Fischer
Some segments of the evangelical community jumped on the "global warming" bandwagon and tried to ride it right into honorary membership in the Ruling Class. Their motive apparently was to get the right people to say wonderful things about them, and in turn give them the opportunity to boast about their new-found access to the corridors of power.
Only one problem. "Global warming" was and is not a problem; in fact, there has been no global warming since 1995, and today we read of snowfall — in September! — in Montana. Many climatologists on Kool-Aid free diets are predicting that we in fact may be headed toward decades of global cooling.
Eventually the truth becomes so evident that even the most ardent proponents of scientific quackery have to change their tune. And it is occurring again right before our very eyes. The fact-challenged left has abandoned the term "global warming" just after having convinced swathes of the evangelical community to adopt it.
This, by the way, ought to be a lesson to the church. Some leaders in the church, in their ongoing and misguided efforts to be cool, hip, and admired by the world, are always chasing after the latest public policy fad, and just about the time they catch up, the world moves on, leaving them looking silly and foolish. It's happened again.
Now President Obama's science advisor, the crackpot John Holdren, is scolding us to drop the phrase "global warming" like a hot rock and adopt a new and utterly meaningless term, "global climate disruption."
In other words, we have won the global warming debate and they, along with all their naive evangelical buddies, have lost.
I'm guessing that "climate disruption" has been chosen over "climate change" as the new phrase, since they still might be able to use the phrase to scare the pajamas off some gullible folks who haven't been paying attention. At least "disruption" sounds bad, "change" not so much.
At least Holdren's latest fumbling is better than NASA's, which once suggested the term "inadvertent climate modification," a surefire snoozer if there ever was one.
This tactic will not work. They are toast, done, finished. The public is on to the global warming scam, and is unlikely to be fooled again. I predict evangelical adopters of warming catastrophism will suddenly stop talking about the subject. We will hear no apologies, no "Whoops!", no embarrassed mea culpas. No, what we will hear will be the deafening sounds of silence from those who should have known better and now have nothing to say on the subject at all.
"Global warming disruption" has no chance of gaining any significant traction as a scare tactic. People don't even know what the phrase means. And people know that the climate has been "disrupting" ever since the fall of man, and there's not a thing puny man can do about it.
The push, since Al Gore's 1992 screed, "Earth in the Balance," is that we must adopt draconian and enormously expensive policies to keep man from incinerating the earth. Now all of sudden the plea will be to adopt the same policies to keep it from belching. Sorry, folks, it ain't gonna work. And the American people have every right to say, Hey, let's wait until you guys figure out what's going on before you start wrecking the economy for no good reason at all.
What this illustrates is the sad spectacle evangelicals make of themselves when they try too hard to be trendy. They just wind up looking like dupes in the end.
As the man once said, I'd rather be part of a church that's 500 years out of date rather than one that's five minutes out of date.
In fact, it is evangelicals such as Cal Beisner of the Cornwall Alliance, who ground their public policy views on the word of God and sound science, who wind up being ahead of their time. If we stand on the truth and remain unmoved, the church will no longer be chasing the world. Instead, the world will eventually catch up to the church. That's the church I want to be a part of.
(Unless otherwise noted, the opinions expressed are the author's and do not necessarily reflect the views of the American Family Association or American Family Radio.)
© Bryan Fischer
September 20, 2010
Some segments of the evangelical community jumped on the "global warming" bandwagon and tried to ride it right into honorary membership in the Ruling Class. Their motive apparently was to get the right people to say wonderful things about them, and in turn give them the opportunity to boast about their new-found access to the corridors of power.
Only one problem. "Global warming" was and is not a problem; in fact, there has been no global warming since 1995, and today we read of snowfall — in September! — in Montana. Many climatologists on Kool-Aid free diets are predicting that we in fact may be headed toward decades of global cooling.
Eventually the truth becomes so evident that even the most ardent proponents of scientific quackery have to change their tune. And it is occurring again right before our very eyes. The fact-challenged left has abandoned the term "global warming" just after having convinced swathes of the evangelical community to adopt it.
This, by the way, ought to be a lesson to the church. Some leaders in the church, in their ongoing and misguided efforts to be cool, hip, and admired by the world, are always chasing after the latest public policy fad, and just about the time they catch up, the world moves on, leaving them looking silly and foolish. It's happened again.
Now President Obama's science advisor, the crackpot John Holdren, is scolding us to drop the phrase "global warming" like a hot rock and adopt a new and utterly meaningless term, "global climate disruption."
In other words, we have won the global warming debate and they, along with all their naive evangelical buddies, have lost.
I'm guessing that "climate disruption" has been chosen over "climate change" as the new phrase, since they still might be able to use the phrase to scare the pajamas off some gullible folks who haven't been paying attention. At least "disruption" sounds bad, "change" not so much.
At least Holdren's latest fumbling is better than NASA's, which once suggested the term "inadvertent climate modification," a surefire snoozer if there ever was one.
This tactic will not work. They are toast, done, finished. The public is on to the global warming scam, and is unlikely to be fooled again. I predict evangelical adopters of warming catastrophism will suddenly stop talking about the subject. We will hear no apologies, no "Whoops!", no embarrassed mea culpas. No, what we will hear will be the deafening sounds of silence from those who should have known better and now have nothing to say on the subject at all.
"Global warming disruption" has no chance of gaining any significant traction as a scare tactic. People don't even know what the phrase means. And people know that the climate has been "disrupting" ever since the fall of man, and there's not a thing puny man can do about it.
The push, since Al Gore's 1992 screed, "Earth in the Balance," is that we must adopt draconian and enormously expensive policies to keep man from incinerating the earth. Now all of sudden the plea will be to adopt the same policies to keep it from belching. Sorry, folks, it ain't gonna work. And the American people have every right to say, Hey, let's wait until you guys figure out what's going on before you start wrecking the economy for no good reason at all.
What this illustrates is the sad spectacle evangelicals make of themselves when they try too hard to be trendy. They just wind up looking like dupes in the end.
As the man once said, I'd rather be part of a church that's 500 years out of date rather than one that's five minutes out of date.
In fact, it is evangelicals such as Cal Beisner of the Cornwall Alliance, who ground their public policy views on the word of God and sound science, who wind up being ahead of their time. If we stand on the truth and remain unmoved, the church will no longer be chasing the world. Instead, the world will eventually catch up to the church. That's the church I want to be a part of.
(Unless otherwise noted, the opinions expressed are the author's and do not necessarily reflect the views of the American Family Association or American Family Radio.)
© Bryan Fischer
The views expressed by RenewAmerica columnists are their own and do not necessarily reflect the position of RenewAmerica or its affiliates.
(See RenewAmerica's publishing standards.)
