Catholics and a climate of cool.

Al Gore may have won an Oscar for his vision of impending doom 'unless we mend our carbon-emitting ways' in An Inconvenient Truth, but February was anything but a good month for Gore's brand of global warming alarmism.

Oscars, secular awards and indeed the acclaim of the world generally, have never ranked high on God's agenda for the Christian. But one of the problems the Church has always faced is what response to make to the key moral issues of the day--and global warming is a moral issue--when the world calls us to 'do something.' Sadly, parts of the Church have all too often given in to cultural and peer pressure and conformed to the response society generally demands of it.

First, new revisions

Conversely, Christians, desperate to be seen 'doing something' all too often end up doing the wrong thing. The Book of Revelation was written for Christians precisely so that they should never become hyped by the world. In that sense, Revelation is very much a de-alarmist book. If for no other reason then, we should reject the world's alarmism over global warming and, instead, review for ourselves, before acting, the cold hard facts. And the fact is that alarmist predictions over global warming are already being revised--and revised downwards.

Indeed there are signs that other politicians are about to moderate their tone and language on climate change. This ought not to come as a surprise in the light of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)'s latest downsizing of claims to forthcoming cataclysmic events. Along with other accruing scientific evidence so much currently points to an overplayed alarmism and science data that is far from conclusive.

Firstly, in February the IPCC report downplayed its own apocalyptic scenarios upon which Mr. Gore's more colourful observations are currently based. The IPCC report in fact downsized its 2001 projections for temperature rises by a third and its projections for sea level rises by half. Almost before the ink was dry on the page we learned that America, allegedly environmentally 'irresponsible,' was actually doing a far better job of cutting CO2 emissions than almost any of the Kyoto-signing nations. Cue red-faced EU embarrassment.

As if that was not enough, the British-founded GLOBE (Global Legislators Organisation for a Balanced Environment) group of nations meeting in Washington in mid-February decided to ditch the short-termist, potentially economy-destroying, approach of Kyoto altogether.

Instead, GLOBE's members signed a declaration establishing a long-term approach to stabilising greenhouse gas concentrations. GLOBE's declaration is now likely to form the basis of a new accord at the coming G8 summit in June, 2007. You might think that a declaration founded upon a belief in anthropogenic global warming would at last bring some harmony to the disparate alarmist and sceptic elements. But not a bit of it.

Greenpeace: no to revisions

Responding to the new GLOBE declaration Greenpeace's head of climate change campaign, Charlie Kronick, was keen to maintain the hyper-rhetoric: "The projected target for climate-change gases would result in a disastrous three-degree increase in temperature. This would see the loss of 20-30% of species, melt two polar ice sheets, add one or two billion more people to those suffering water scarcity and trash the world's remaining rainforests and coral reefs. Real action and political will is urgently needed to prevent a global disaster." Note the "woulds" and 'wills' in Mr. Kronicks' statement, which even the latest IPCC reports are reluctant to assert.

The real world science (i.e. actual evidence as averse to highly fraught computer modelling predictions) has in recent months, as lately revised IPCC predictions reflect, confirmed that scepticism has, to a degree, proven valid. But now increasing numbers of scientists have come forward to dispute even the 'settled' view of the consensus science. Worse still for the alarmists, a raft of new evidence is specifically pointing to an alternative culprit altogether: solar activity.

Solar activity rather than man-made climate change

Two major books are also currently making the case for the effect of cosmic rays and solar activity affecting clouds, a key factor affecting climate. Water vapour or clouds and not carbon dioxide is, after all, by far the major factor contributing to the greenhouse gas theory. Unstoppable Global Warming: Every 1500 Years, by U.S. climatologists S. Fred Singer and Dennis Avery, makes out the historic case from ice cores, seabeds and tree rings for increasing (presently) cyclical solar activity. Professor Svensmark, with science writer Nigel Calder, in their new book, The chilling stars: A new theory of climate change, reveals the more detailed evidence confirming this from the science laboratory. But the fact remains that we already know from historical sources that the earth has been hotter that it is today--and with no help from human-induced activity.

In addition, Professor Patrick J. Michaels, a senior fellow in environmental studies at the U.S. Cato Institute, and author of Meltdown: The Predictable Distortion of Global Warming and A Shattered Consensus has recently lambasted Gore's film as a "riveting work of science fiction." Michaels notes that revised predictions by the IPCC on prospective sea level rises now reveal that "Gore's film exaggerates the rise by about 2,000 percent." In the same article Michaels alludes to a February, 2007 issue of Science magazine in which a new paper reveals that Greenland's ice loss from its huge glaciers has "suddenly reversed." See what I mean about it being a bad month for alarmism?

Unbelievers

Remaining unconvinced by the case for human activity above solar activity and aware of warming and cooling periods throughout history, at the request of others I recently launched a new website, GlobalWarmingHysteria.com, to link all the relevant materials that the mainstream media appears reluctant to publish and cover.

Though the GLOBE Declaration may not go far enough in reviewing the actual scientific evidence for global warming 'unbelievers' like me, I still welcome the far more rational tone the GLOBE Declaration represents. Unfortunately, the media hype will not, I suspect, dim (scare stories are good for business) nor Green angst be assuaged, even if the coming G8 conference does adopt the GLOBE approach. The ideological activists at Greenpeace will, no doubt, perceive any such moderation of alarmist language as merely 'the typical capitulation of elites to capitalist interests.'

The Romans in the north of England, however, basking in the balmy late Autumn sun and sipping their locally made wine from locally grown grapes (try that today!) over 1500 years ago, were more than happy to simply adapt and welcome warming periods as man always has. The Vikings, on the other hand, who had set up home in Greenland only to find life becoming impossible when a severe cooling period arrived, were forced to adapt by leaving. It seems that our media-hyped generation may be the first in history to fear warming as much as cooling periods. Hopefully, the next G8 might help to foster an altogether cooler political perspective.

But just as significant is what all this says about the powerful 'religious' themes that run through the movement known as environmentalism. In that regard, I would urge all interested Christians to read Michael Crichton's powerful address: "Environmentalism as Religion" in the "Speeches" section at www.michaelcrichton.com.

In the address Crichton warns: "Today, one of the most powerful religions in the Western World is environmentalism. Environmentalism seems to be the religion of choice for urban atheists. Why do I say it's a religion?" asks Crichton. "Well, just look at the beliefs. If you look carefully, you see that environmentalism is in fact a perfect 21st-century re-mapping of traditional Judeo-Christian beliefs and myths."

"There's an initial Eden, a paradise, a state of grace and unity with nature, there's a fall from grace into a state of pollution as a result of eating from the tree of knowledge, and as a result of our actions there is a judgment day coming for us all. We are all energy sinners, doomed to die, unless we seek salvation, which is now called sustainability. Sustainability is salvation in the church of the environment. Just as organic food is its communion, that pesticide-free wafer that the right people with the right beliefs, imbibe. Increasingly it seems facts aren't necessary, because the tenets of environmentalism are all about belief."

Christians, above all people, should perhaps recognise the inherent dangers in allegedly science-based movements where a great deal of faith in unproven science has been mixed in. And here is former Margaret Thatcher economist Lord Nigel Lawson making a similar point in November, 2006: "It is not difficult to understand ... the appeal of the conventional climate change wisdom. Throughout the ages something deep in man's psyche has made him receptive to 'the end is nigh' apocalyptic warnings." Lawson believes we, as individuals, are "imbued with a sense of guilt and a sense of sin" and he notes how easily we convert this into a sense of "collective guilt and collective sin."

This in turn spawns a "new religion of Eco-fundamentalism" whose "new priests are scientists (well rewarded with research grants) rather than the clerics of established religions." The irrationality and intolerance of Eco-fundamentalism, says Lawson, regards the "questioning of its mantras" as "a form of blasphemy." And he concludes with an apocalyptic vision of his own: "There is no greater threat to the people of this planet than the retreat from reason we see all around us today."

If these things are so easily discernible from a worldly perspective then they really ought to be discernible to the well-informed Catholic too. This is another inconvenient truth Mr Gore's film missed.

Peter C. Glover is a freelance writer and journalist, as well as the site director at www.globalwarminghysteria.com.