Global Warming: Why Evangelicals Should Not Be Alarmed

In a documentary aired August 23, 2007, by CNN and titled “God’s Warriors,” Richard Cizik, vice president for governmental affairs of the National Association of Evangelicals, said about evangelicals who disagree with his urgent appeals for action to fight global warming: Historically, evangelicals have reasoned like this: Scientists believe in evolution. Scientists are telling us climate change is real. Therefore, I won’t believe what scientists are saying.  It’s illogical. It’s an erroneous kind of syllogism. But is that what’s been occurring?  Absolutely.

That kind of statement, frankly, riles a lot of us. It would be interesting to see if Mr. Cizik can offer a single documented instance of a single notable evangelical critic of his views on global warming who has argued in any way remotely like that. As one of his foremost critics and someone in frequent contact with many others, I can testify that I know of not a single such instance.

But painting the critics of catastrophic anthropogenic global warming (CAGW) that way is nothing new in this controversy. We are routinely called “deniers,” the intent being to associate us with Holocaust deniers. We are said to ignore science, to oppose the stewardship of creation, to fly in the face of an overwhelming consensus of scientists from around the world who have studied the issue and come to the firm conclusion that human action (mainly burning fossil fuels and thus adding to atmospheric carbon dioxide) is the primary cause of a recent global warming that is beyond the bounds of natural variability and threatens to become catastrophic, especially for the world’s poor.

Read the rest of this article by E. Calvin Beisner