Global Warming and Weather Prophets

The temperature in Sioux Center yesterday was about 15 below, with a wind chill 7 octaves below middle C.

Weather like this invariably provokes comments about global warming—sometimes aimed at me because I am an outspoken believer in the existence of global warming and its accompanying dire consequences for planet Earth.  “So, what do you think about global warming now?”  someone in  The Fruited Plain might say to me.  In the last week our daily newspaper, The Sioux City Journal, has had two cartoons ridiculing global warming.

What can I say?  

I can remind everyone that we are talking about global temperatures—not Iowa temps or North American temps.  Most Americans can define global in the abstract, but when it modifies “warming,” they seem unable to apply it to the noun.  Here are some examples of why that is significant:
  •        November, 2013, was relatively cold in northwest Iowa, but globally it was the warmest November ever.
  •          Even though in the U. S. record low temps outnumbered record high temps in 2013, globally  2013 will be the fourth-hottest year in recorded weather history.
  •           Scientists predict that 2014 will be an El Nino year, and El Nino years cause warmer weather globally.  (El Niños  occur when the Pacific Ocean surface is .09 degrees Fahrenheit warmer than normal for at least three months.) The three warmest years on record were El Nino years.


I hope the weather prophets are wrong about 2014 and instead of a little boy (El Nino), 2014 gives birth to a little girl (La Nina) since little girls occur when the ocean surface temperature is cooler than normal. But I fear this old Earth will continue to get warmer and warmer with, as I have said, dire consequences.

Footnote:  This past semester I taught an introductory literature course at Dordt College and my syllabus included a unit on literature about the creation.  When I introduced the unit, I spent some time talking about creation care, especially our involvement in global warming.  The response of my students shocked me. With a couple of exceptions, they reacted with outrage at the suggestion that Christians have an obligation to work to slow down the warming of the planet.  Some of them suggested that it was un-christian to fight against it, though they could not articulate why.  Others said global warming was not happening, though again they could not offer support for their arguments.
I concluded a vigorous discussion by saying that if I was alive in 20 years I would write them all a letter in which I asked them about their view on globally warming.  And I predicted that by then they would all be believers.

My best self hopes I am wrong, that global warming turns out to have been a false bit of science, and I have to eat humble pie.  Unfortunately, my best self is not usually evident.  Often,  my desire to be right, to be able to say “I told you so,” is stronger than my desire for the earth to be as hospitable as it now is.  Pathetic.

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