This week on April 22, known as Earth Day, we will be once again subjected to claims that global warming will bring catastrophic changes. It is time that we exposed these claims to the sunlight to find out the truth about climate change.
Let’s start with the sun itself, which is the generator of about 500 degrees of global warming. The sun is a variable star and its increases in energy output correspond to increases in the number of magnetic disturbances called sunspots. During the last half of the 20th century, the number of sunspots and sun’s energy output were at their highest levels in 300 years. The corresponding temperature increases brought global temperatures up to levels last seen during the medieval warming period, about 1,000 years ago.
At the beginning of 2017, astronomers issued a warning that solar energy output was decreasing and that we could be facing another “Maunder Minimum.” During the “Maunder Minimum”, from 1645 to 1715, there were very few sunspots, and the earth suffered through one of the coldest periods of the global cooling episode from 1315 to 1850, known as the Little Ice Age. The temperature drop during the Maunder Minimum led to shorter growing seasons and freezing of the Thames River and Boston Harbor. At the beginning of the Little Ice Age in 1315, cooler temperatures brought seven years of flooding and famine as the cooler atmosphere lost water vapor. Global cooling, not global warming, may be the real threat.
Although annual weather is subject to large variations, the earthy weather of 2017 seems to have changed following the change in “solar weather” (i.e. sunspots). The average global surface temperature dropped almost one degree Fahrenheit in 2017, according to the U.K. Meteorological Department. We have seen record rainfalls, a sign of global cooling, from storms like Harvey, which dumped four feet of rain in Southeast Texas, and record flooding in California, France and other places. Record cold snaps hit Singapore, South East Asia, China, and the U.S., with blizzards still occurring in the Great Plains. Arctic Sea ice coverage was up 8 percent in 2017, and there was in rise no sea level in 2017.
Atmospheric levels of carbon dioxide, blamed for the global warming probably caused by the sun, are growing at a lower rate since 2002. There is also a very beneficial effect of increased a carbon dioxide on plant growth, according to an article the Nov. 12, 2016 Economist magazine. Since 1982 new green growth, primarily in the far north, has covered an area twice the size of the U.S. Higher levels of carbon dioxide also cause plants to grow up to 40 percent faster, indicating that the campaign to reduce carbon dioxide could lower food production.
Only God knows how the climate will change, whether by cooling or warming, in the years ahead. Yet in the face of our uncertainty and ignorance of the climate, global warming has almost become a religion for some. And those who stray from climate orthodoxy are turned over to the inquisition-like attacks of the true believers. We need the sunlight to shine on the question of climate change so we can learn the unvarnished truth.
Let us pray that the policies of the climate extremists, who would impoverish millions in the developed world and lock billions into poverty in the underdeveloped world, will be tempered by humility and compassion for the poor. At the same time, we pray that God will protect us from the authoritarian government advocates and crony capitalists who use climate change to increase their power and wealth.
As people of prayer we know the Master of the climate (Ps. 135:7). Let us humble ourselves and seek His face, and ask that He relent from sending climate calamity (Joel 2:13), whether by warming or cooling.
And let us remember on Earth Day that “The earth belongs to the Lord, and its fullness, the world, and those who dwell in it” (Ps. 24:1) {eoa}
Ron Allen is a Christian businessman, CPA and author who serves in local, national and international ministries, spreading a message of reconciliation to God, to men and between believers. He is founder of the International Star Bible Society, telling how the heavens declare the glory of God; the Emancipation Network, which helps people escape from financial bondage; and co-founder with his wife, Pat, of Corporate Prayer Resources, dedicated to helping intercessors.
