Climate Change (& friendly debate)

Climate change. Does it happen? Of course! Is it man-made? The news will tell you the science is settled. Now right off the bat that phrase should concern you. If science is settled, it’s not science. “Settled science” is anti-science as it disuades further study. Actual science welcomes new ideas and debate.

In my studies I quickly learned that when the news media reports a science story they normally quote mine for a juicy quote that will create clicks. (Click bait). The quote is normally part of the story, but when I would go to read the actual study or article the news report was based on I would find that the results did not infer the attention grabbing headline. Sometimes the complete opposite.

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The following is an exchange I had with someone on Facebook after I posted this to my personal profile.  Their comments are in bold.

Sooo because God is going to end the world and not climate change (even though lots of people die in God’s ending… Earthquakes that shake the entire planet and all) We should take care of our planet but not believe we did it because skepticism. 

I am a scientist. My work, my life is based on the physical universe God made. Did man contribute to climate change in a way that has heated the oceans and melted glaciers? Yes. That is something that science has in fact lead towards the most likely possibility. Has the planet been getting “better” since we as humans have been fighting our man-made contribution to climate change? Yes!! Check out the story of refrigerants we used to use that were messing up the molecular make-up of our atmosphere.

Does this post spur humans to act because of their mistakes? No. As much as the news bugs me because I read the studies not just listen/watch the news. Their panic sells, but also their panic that they have whipped the public into has done good things. It has informed the public/senators to do something about it. Which is a main contribution to “green” energy. Does money change the hearts and minds of politicians? Yes. It is always some seedy organisation looking to just get rich? Not always. Also if you can make money on making the planet a better place that is the whole point right. Using our natural resources costs something. It is not free. We should use our economy to save our planet. We should use our political system to help fix the molecular make up of the atmosphere when we send it out of whack with our economy and policies. 

Politics and economics are not bad things in themselves. Try not to demonize them when we talk about solutions to real problems.

I’m against the fear mongering that’s all. I’m for truth. First truth says we are not the cause of the demise of this planet. We may have done some things that have hurt the environment and we should work to fix those when we learn of them as much as possible. You say fear produces action and so is justified. I think it produces fake or short lived action. I believe truth produces the most actions. When someone believes something undoubtedly, they will stop at nothing. But…if you don’t have enough truth, fear can be a helpful seller. Again, we need a bigger government to protect us from our stupidity…and we’ll pay them more to do it to.

Just as there are studies you can cite showing man made climate change, there are studies I can cite showing the opposite. Study bashing is boring and doesn’t prove or do anything. But how can there be studies that show opposites. You know it happens all the time, right? My theory is human bias.

 I have read studies on both sides, but I also know it is not just throwing studies back and forth it is the overwhelming evidence that leads to the conclusion humans have unequivocally been a leading contribution to climate change. Did we do it alone? No. Did we do a large percentage of it? Yes. I have a deep rooted belief in our flaws as humans. Scientists believe the truth of their study. Humans on the other hand most often have apathy for the situation unless you can prove how it harms them individually because we are selfish creatures. So your belief in the goodness of man to fix their wrong when pointed out to them in my life has been proved to be wrong. Your faith in humanity is wasted. We suck. We don’t care. We would party into our own destruction. It is the job of those that fight for truth to be applied to these apathetic humans. The only way to get an apathetic human to do anything is by fear.

Also I never said if fear produces action it is justified. I said I don’t have an issue with it because I am down here fighting to fix our planet from apathetic jerks. I am too busy to fix the fear that media makes money off of. I would rather solve real problems like people losing their homes on the coast due to ocean waters increasing in temperature and height.
If you have an army of undoubting believers you can do amazing things, but just like Christianity has Christians who are apathetic to their community and only care about their personal salvation. You are never gonna find that.

Your human bias of studies is white washed out of meta studies of climate change studies that agree HUMANS ARE A LEADING CONTRIBUTION TO CLIMATE CHANGE. Meta studies are a study of all the studies. They collect all the data and come their own conclusion with all the data and it is that conclusion.

I always take issue with studies and conclusions based on extrapolations. Even if man is contributing now, it requires extrapolations to come to the conclusion that it will severely harm the environment. I understand the logic of that, but reality infers that so many unknowns factors can majorly change the conclusion.

For example, the age of the Earth is calculated using extrapolations. Rocks decay at a given rate today, using that rate and extrapolating into the past we get an age of 4.5 billion years. But that extrapolation ignores any Biblical possiblities that God intervened in the process and/or created things in an aged state necessary for the immediate sustaining of life. Studies that extrapolate make sense logically, but they don’t necessarily equal truth.

Yeah your interpretation of the Bible and how God could have interacted with the physical world is not something we agree on so I don’t think it is a good point to work off of. 
I believe the Bible. I believe God created the cosmos. I also believe thata new earth creationism doesn’t make sense to what the world around us tells us. God’s world. Words can be interpreted in many different ways, but scientific constants and laws of the universe can’t really be interpreted any other way. I choose to bend language and explode my imagination and God’s power rather than limiting humans understanding of the universe God made. God is crazy awesome. I believe he is capable of interacting in our world without it having to go against what we have observed in his physical universe.

After all it says God created the universe and everything in it. Next big event garden stuff

Not God created the universe then changed the constants of his universe so some sticklers to my word that only wish to read the stories literally can age out the world.

What it says is God created in six days, made Adam on the sixth day, then gives a 4000 year geneology from Adam to Jesus who lived 2000 years ago. To come to any other conclusion is to force your own interpretation onto the text. I do not believe there is a single piece of evidence against a young earth perspective. Of course their are faulty interpretations based on extrapolations that ignore the Bible as a historical record.

That’s my point. You can ignore certain evidences and make extrapolations to give you conclusions that may not be true. I believe that happens with the age of the Earth looking backwards and climate change looking forwards.

I don’t think Genesis is meant to be literal history. That is our different perspectives. I think it is a story we can learn from. I have never thought we should take it literally because it doesn’t make sense literally. I believe God meant to make sense not to change. He is immutable.

 I am not ignoring the genealogy when I take it as a story, it just doesn’t mean as much to me as it does to you.

You don’t think Genesis is meant to be taken as literal history because of your preexisting belief in an old earth and evolution. You recognize the two are telling different stories and you side with consensus science despite the continual warnings in the scripture about siding with man. I’m not anti science, I’m pro truth and that requires looking at all angles. If you interpret the evidence in the world using Genesis as your hypothesis, then it all lines up. There is no need to interpret it as allegory.

how do you know with 100% certainty you are not forcing a perspective on the text that is just not there. Like what if God’s day in Genesis is not our day? A day is a revolution around the sun, but the sun had not been created yet so you are forcing a definition that had not been defined yet.

If Genesis is allegory it still lines up with science. There is no conflict. I didn’t have to change any definitions. I just read the text and looked at the world and made sense of it.

A day is not a revolution around the sun, it is a spinning on its own axis. A sun is not required.

Sorry let me correct myself. How can you have a day a revolution without a starting point? The sun

I can spin a ball without another ball in the room.