Author Archives: Elizaphanian

About Elizaphanian

Rector of West Mersea

A last word about AGW

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I really wasn’t going to say anything more about AGW; my list of posts was going to be the last thing because I’m wanting to move on to more interesting things, more spiritually rewarding things… but perhaps a programmatic summary would be of use.

I believe:
1. our present industrialised Western society is going through a great dislocation and that in 10-20 years time we will be in a completely different place.
2. we are called to prepare for this shift; that, for example, it makes eminent good sense to change our patterns of life towards reduced consumption, sustainable energy supplies, localised food and so on. In other words, I think the Transition Town agenda is what needs to be followed.
3. the above is true irrespective of the truth of AGW. However, I think AGW has become a distraction, for the following reasons:
– it is neither the most immediate, nor the most pressing, of the Limits to Growth (Peak Oil is much more immediate and will achieve most of what the anti-AGW advocates recommend; deforestation is probably more pressing);
– the politicisation of the science has obscured what is actually KNOWN about what is presently happening. Clearly the climate is changing, it is probable that human activity is contributing to that change – but the extent of that contribution, the possibility of negative feedbacks in the climate system and, most especially, the reliability of the models used for long-term forecasting (which have not exactly had a good record so far) – all these things are much less certain than the “consensus” would have us believe;
– this politicisation often takes the form of ‘apocalypticising’, ie forecasting a dread future. I see such apocalypticising as theologically corrupt and corrupting and no Christian should indulge in it as it demonstrates a lack of faith (NB I accuse myself in saying this);
– this lack of faith has a correspondence in a form of ecological Protestant Work Ethic – that if only we can be righteous enough, in the form of reducing our carbon footprints etc, then we can achieve our salvation. This too is sub-Christian.
4. “He has shown you, O Man, what is good.” I don’t believe that Christians need to be convinced about Global Warming – or about Peak Oil – in order to move towards the way of life that is God’s intention for us. The root problems that we face lie in particular idolatries – idolatries of Mammon, of Baal, of our own egotistical choices – and the principal manifestations of those idolatries are our worshipping patterns and our abandonment of social justice. I firmly believe that if the Christian community gets its worship right (especially through recentring upon the Eucharist, our new covenant which renews creation) and – on that basis – gets serious about tackling social injustice both locally and globally, then God will heal the world. In other words, all the environmental crises are but symptoms of the more fundamental spiritual crisis.
5. I am therefore convinced – and this may just be for me and not universal for every Christian – that the most important thing that I can do to alleviate the ecological crisis is help Christians to become serious in their discipleship and pursue all that Jesus taught. If we become the fully human creatures that God intends for us to be, then the creation’s groanings will finally cease.

Starbridge insight

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One of the things that I have done with my sabbatical time is re-read the six Starbridge novels of Susan Howatch. I first read them in 1994, and I am sure they played a large part in driving my unconscious towards realising my vocation. They have been equally stimulating this time. I particularly liked this description of Jon Darrow, with whom I was once compared by a colleague and friend, and with whom I do identify myself somewhat (especially given these sorts of thoughts):

“Let me now say something about the qualities that made Jon such an original priest. He was a mystic – by which I mean he was one of that army of people, existing in all religions, who understand themselves and the world in the light of direct experiences of God. Such people do not fit easily into conventional ecclesiastical structures, as their individuality is at odds with institutional life, but the best Christian mystics, the ones who have been able to explore their special knowledge of God to the full by attaining a holy, disciplined life, are always those who have managed to integrate themselves into the institutional life of the Church. The mystic who insists on steering his own course runs the risk of isolation, self-centredness and delusions of grandeur, and this is never more true than for those mystics who are psychics…”

Some of my resolutions from the sabbatical are: a renewed commitment to attaining a holy and disciplined life, an acceptance of the institution (for better or worse) and, indeed, a desire to avoid isolation, self-centredness and my delusions of grandeur.

God is good.

My posts on Obama

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I’m not a fan of President Obama. Here are some of the things I’ve written:

Cloverfield, Obama and Islamists (from Feb 2008, even before he gained the nomination)
Random thoughts about Obama (Oct 08)
A sequence written after his election:
On President Obama 1
On President Obama 2
On President Obama 3
On President Obama 4
On President Obama 5

A very brief review of Dreams from My Father

Unless he changes course in the next year or so, I think he will go down as one of the worst presidents in US history – and he’s up against some stiff competition! Including GW Bush, of whom I am not a fan.

My AGW posts

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This is an index of my posts on AGW, for ease of access.

A summary of where I’m coming from
Climate change is a secondary issue
Two steps towards climate change scepticism (when my thoughts were still in flux)
Why am I an AGW sceptic?
The historic link between CO2 and temperature
Something brief on AGW
Some thoughts on climate change and Peak Oil
My first stirrings of scepticism in 2006

And some broader posts to put that scepticism into context (the important thing is that I very much accept and endorse the broader Limits to Growth argument):
Babylon at the gates
That time has come and gone my friend
Why bother saving the planet?

For a full exposition of my point of view on all this go to my talks (which will hopefully become a book before too long).

The historic link between CO2 and temperature

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Alex asked me to comment on this graph:

1. Correlation is not causation.
2. The causation, such as it is, is almost certainly the other way around, ie temperature is the cause of the change in CO2 (historically the rises in CO2 follow the rise in temperatures). So at most this graph might indicate a supplementary role for CO2 in climate change.
3. The image only shows the last 400,000 years. In the Ordovician period CO2 levels were generally over 4000 ppm, with an average temperature (only) around 4 degrees higher than today (main difference was polar temperature); that period also culminated in an ice age. Try fitting that on to the graph!
4. Peer reviewed research shows that the climate over the last 500 million years is much more strongly correlated with the solar flux than with CO2.

I think most climate scientists would agree that CO2 is not the only driver of temperature (which is what I take you to be suggesting with that graph). I am happy to accept that it plays a role, and, indeed, that it might amplify other trends. However, I also think that the science is more complex than it is sometimes (IPCC summaries) made out to be.

Babylon at the gates

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Jeremiah is the prophet for our times – he is the one who warned Judah that having the Temple wouldn’t save them from the armies of Nebuchadnezzar, and that the people of Israel had to return to the living God.

We don’t have a literal army encamped around our civilisation (not yet anyway) but we can see the dimensions of the forces which will destroy our way of life – in sum, the Limits to Growth. In so far as our civilisation is based upon the physical growth of our economy, then so far will it cease in the foreseeable future. How far in the future? I don’t know, but I feel that our civilisation is like St Sebastian and the first arrows have already hit.

I wanted to say this because it puts my comments about AGW in their proper context. In particular, I feel that much of the sturm und drang about climate change is a displacement activity. It is as if Jeremiah spent his time shoring up the defences of Jerusalem. That time has come and gone my friend. Which is why my thoughts these days are more along the lines of ‘Why bother saving the planet?‘

We have our instructions and commands and we know what it is that the Lord requires of us. If we pursue that path then the Lord’s patience will be our salvation: “If my people, who are called by my name, will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then will I hear from heaven and will forgive their sin and will heal their land.” (2 Chronicles 7.14)

Why am I an AGW sceptic?

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This is in response to an e-mail, which asks: “I wonder if you could enlarge on your global warming scepticism?
1. Is it not a fact that there is less ice over the North Pole, and that glaciers are retreating all over the world?
2. CO2 is a greenhouse gas, and as a result of burning fossil fuels over the last 200 years we have increased the proportion of CO2 in the atmosphere by 50%.
Does it not seem likely that 2 has contributed to 1?”

I say:
– no denial that there has been significant warming, esp. through the second half of the twentieth century, the issue is about the A of the AGW (ie how far is it anthropogenic);
– the level of CO2 in the atmosphere has been rising consistently since industrialisation;
– the temperature has not displayed anything like a linear relationship with CO2;
– the temperature has fluctuated significantly in previous centuries without any regard to CO2 (and, I believe, has been warmer than today eg in the Medieval Warm Period);
– I’m therefore dubious about the anthropogenic element, and I haven’t seen very much that convincingly links the temperature shifts to human activity. It’s a reasonably plausible hypothesis which I find, at present, ‘not proven’.

I could well be wrong. I don’t think that AGW is a ‘hoax’, I think that there is a perfidious industry of ‘climate change denial’ and I am quite open to the idea that human activity has indeed had an effect on the climate change. However, even if AGW is true, I see it as largely irrelevant because a) the peaking of fossil fuels places an absolute limit on emissions (at a much lower level than the IPCC expect, and which will achieve vastly more than any inter-governmental agreements like Kyoto or Copenhagen) and b) we need to change our behaviour (we will be forced to change our behaviour) anyway due to the many other limits to growth.

In other words, I’m starting to see all the fuss about climate change as being like an engineer rushing up to tell the captain of the Titanic that he needs to shut down the engines because if he doesn’t, they are likely to blow up in a day or two, and the captain says ‘Engineer, we’ve just struck an iceberg!’

I’m also getting more sceptical about the way that the church is latching on to the issue (and, indeed, on to Peak Oil). I think that we miss the point of our calling if we hitch our behaviour to contemporary issues. We need to live sub specie aeternitatis whatever the science tells us.