Year 4, Month 9, Day 6: Be Sure To Hide The Roaches

The Christian Post runs an Op-Ed by two evangelical climate scientists, desperately trying to shake off the Limbaugh-stink:

Rush Limbaugh doesn’t think we exist. In other words that evangelical scientists cannot subscribe to the evidence of global warming.

Specifically, during a recent segment on his radio show Limbaugh stated, “If you believe in God, then intellectually you cannot believe in manmade global warming.”

Talk radio personalities often make hyperbolic statements. It is what their listeners expect and want to hear. But in this instance, Rush’s uninformed rhetoric is demeaning to Christians who care deeply about what humans are doing to God’s Creation and ignorant of the consequences that future generations will face if we don’t respond quickly to the challenge of climate change.

We are both atmospheric scientists who study climate change, having earned advanced degrees in our respective fields and having devoted our lives to increasing knowledge through scientific research. We know climate change is real, that most of it is human-caused, and that it is a threat to future generations that must be addressed by the global community. We are also evangelical Christians who believe that God created the world in which we live.

Good luck with that. Sept. 1:

It’s reassuring that some evangelicals acknowledge the existence of the burgeoning climate crisis, and recognize the urgency of action. On this issue, the nature of one’s faith is a trivial factor in comparison with the magnitude of the emergency.

That said, it is not enough for Katharine Hayhoe and Thomas Ackerman just to rebuke talk-radio host Rush Limbaugh’s assertion that Christianity is incompatible with accepting the evidence of climate science. The evangelical community must recognize the role it has played in supporting those institutions of denial which stand in the way of action. The Republican party owes its current power to evangelicals who were cynically and callously manipulated by politicians far more concerned with their own fortunes and those of their corporate paymasters than with the lives of their constituents. Now these same lawmakers are obstructing meaningful legislation on climate issues, thereby increasing the probability of a catastrophic temperature increase over the coming century — a secular Armaggedon wholly explainable by the laws of physics and chemistry.

And regardless of your faith, that’s not Good News.

Warren Senders