November 9th, 2009
What do you get when a scientist and a minister collaborate?
When the subject is climate change, you get a book, A Climate for Change, co-authored by scientist Katharine Hayhoe and her husband, pastor Andrew Farley.
A Climate for Change
The premise of the couple’s book, published Oct. 29, is that before anything can be done about climate change, people need to be convinced that there is a need to do so. Their book, as the subtitle suggests – “Global warming facts for faith-based decisions” – attempts to address questions that Hayhoe and Farley have received in their respective lines of work.
Hayhoe, who is an atmospheric scientist, was a reviewer for the Nobel Peace Prize-winning Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). She is a professor in the Department of Geosciences at Texas Tech University. Farley, who also is the author of The Naked Gospel: The Truth You May Never Hear in Church, is the lead teaching pastor at Eccleisia, a church in Lubbock, as well as a professor at Texas Tech.
“We wrote this book in a non-political way,” says Hayhoe, in a phone interview. Climate change is not a political issue, but how we go about fixing it, is, she says.
“Our book is dedicated to anyone who’s ever asked if climate change is real. My husband and I could find no book that answered the questions that people had. How do we know that it’s humans who cause climate change? What’s the science?
What we do is offer the really basic facts.”
And, as Hayhoe, notes, numbers don’t lie. Sixteen pages of the book are devoted to full color graphics that explain climate change in facts and figures. One graph shows how the earth’s average temperature has risen from 1850 to the present day. Another shows various sources of greenhouse gases and where the most emissions come from — deforestation is listed at 8 percent; electricity generation is the highest at 21 percent. (Many experts would consider those numbers too low. Among environmental scientists there’s near consensus that deforestation is responsible for about 20 percent of greenhouse gas emissions, and that burning fossil fuels for electricity production causes at least 25 percent of greenhouse gas emissions.)
One particularly fascinating graph shows the human impact on climate change with one line showing the effect of humans on temperatures and the other line shows simulated temperatures without humans. The latter line, the one without humans, has noticeably lower temps.
While Farley is a Christian minister, Hayhoe says their book isn’t just for Christians. The book is for “anyone with any compassion,” she says. “Climate change is hurting our global neighbors. All religions believe in taking care of others who are disadvantaged. The people being hardest hit by global warming are the economically disadvantaged, in part, because they don’t have the resources.”
Hayhoe and Farley use the example of the Inupiaq people of Kivalina, a remote 600-foot-wide reef in northwest Alaska. They have made their livelihood for generations along the frozen shores of the Chukchi Sea. Today the protective sea ice, which used to buffer the island from winter storms, is taking longer to form each year. As a result, autumn storms hit the area before the sea ice can form, causing erosion. Until now, the Inupiaq people have built seawalls to protect their village, but erosion is destroying the area so rapidly that the people may have to leave the island permanently. Relocating the village will cost between $150 and $250 million, a price that these villagers cannot afford.
“We were given a perfectly designed balance that we have altered,” Hayhoe says. However, the book notes that people have proven in the past that these imbalances can be repaired. The authors point to the original Clean Air Act which was developed in 1970 in response to the acid rain created by coal-burning power plants. They also note that chloroflurorocarbons (CFCs) were banned once scientists realized that the ozone was being depleted thanks to the CFCs used in air conditioners, spray cans and refrigerators. Most recently prior to the 2008 Olympics in Beijing, the Chinese government figured out a way to clean the air for the athletes. They did so by shutting down factories and limiting car use. All of these events show that humans can address climate change, Hayhoe and Farley say. It just takes motivation and innovation.
An interesting point that Hayhoe and Faley make is that there is such a thing a good greenhouse gases. “If we didn’t have these good greenhouse gases,” says Hayhoe, “ the planet would be a frozen ball of ice. These good greenhouse gases would keep the earth at about 55 degrees.”
“Unfortunately, we have taken something that is good and then taken too much of it – similar to overeating. We should have some greenhouse gases , but we have now tipped the balance,” she says.
The authors say they by and large, they have received support from both environmental and faith-based groups. “Interestingly, we have had some negative reaction from the environmental community,” Hayhoe says. “They say our book spends too much time explaining climate change; that it’s not urgent enough.”
“Our thought has always been that there is no point in talking about the urgency of climate change unless people understand what it’s about,” she says.
“People of faith have told us this is the resource they’ve been looking for,” says Hayhoe. “Among the questions we have gotten: ‘If we believe God is in control, how can climate change happen? Isn’t global warming just part of a natural cycle?’”
The facts are clear, says Hayhoe. From 1850 until 1910, temperatures were stable; they rose from 1910 to 1940; then between 1940 and 1970, they were stable again. However, since 1970, temperatures have steadily risen.
And it’s important, say the authors, to differentiate between weather and climate. They are not the same. Weather, as they point out in the book, is the day-to-day condition. Climate is the weather over a long period of time.
Respecting God’s creation is the answer to dealing with climate change, says Hayhoe. Making wise choices while living on Earth and understanding that what we do, affects others, are key. Farley advises readers to act based on the freedom of choice, not out of a sense of guilt. Guilt, he says, isn’t a good motivator. People should act from the heart, no matter what their religion.
Copyright © 2009 | Distributed by Noofangle Media
