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Editor’s note: This is not an editorial article, but presents the strong view of the authors against climate alarmism. For an opposite view, see the article interviewing Professor Katherine Hayhoe here. Comments are encouraged by writing in the comment box at the bottom of this page.

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According to popular thinking, our planet is headed for a global catastrophe. In this deep dive, we look at 10 reasons to seriously doubt climate alarmism.

“We are less than 12 years away from not being able to undo our mistakes.” — Greta Thunberg, climate activist

“The world is going to end in 12 years if we don’t address climate change.” — Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, U.S. Congresswoman

“To avert the worst consequences of the climate crisis, we have nine years left.” — John Kerry, former U.S. Secretary of State

“We’re going to pass the point of no return within the next eight to ten years.” — Joe Biden, 46th U.S. President

The belief that humanity has only around a decade left before we trigger a climate catastrophe is now deeply embedded in popular culture. But is it true?

Swedish teen activist Greta Thunberg was the first to popularise the idea that the year 2030 represents an existential ‘cliff’ for planet earth. She was citing a 2018 Special Report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

The opening page of that document states, “Global warming is likely to reach 1.5 degrees C between 2030 and 2052 if it continues to increase at the current rate.” Talk of a climate emergency began when activists adopted the earliest date in that range, 2030 — and when they assumed the IPCC prediction was an infallible prophecy, rather than the speculative computer model that it is.

By giving a range of 2030 to 2052, the report’s authors were admitting to a high level of uncertainty. They were definitely not suggesting we have only 12 years left to “save the world”. Prominent climate scientists, including some of the panelists themselves, have cast doubt on the 2030 deadline and the alarmism it has sparked.

A Closer Look at Climate Alarmism

Climate change orthodoxy states that since the 1800s, humans have been the main drivers of climate change through burning ‘fossil fuels’ like coal, oil and gas. Burning these fuels generates greenhouse gas emissions that create a blanket around the earth, trapping the sun’s heat and raising global temperatures — now to dangerously high levels, or so the story goes.

It is true that since the Industrial Revolution, the atmospheric concentration of one greenhouse gas in particular — carbon dioxide (CO₂) — has risen by over 50% (from 280 ppm in 1750 to 421 ppm in 2022).

But leaping to the belief that a global catastrophe is therefore just around the corner is an extreme position. Unfortunately, it is also now the mainstream position, at least in the West’s most powerful institutions. It is prompting teenagers to suffer from ‘climate anxiety’ and young adults to forgo having children for fear of what the future holds.

No side of this debate has a monopoly on care for the environment. The majority of people, regardless of their thoughts on climate change, want to promote human flourishing while minimising negative impacts on the environment. Both sides want future generations to inherit a healthy planet.

Christians especially have a vested interest in caring for the earth. We believe that nature has intrinsic value because God made it and owns it (Genesis 1:1, Psalm 24:1). When God created the first humans, he put them in the Garden of Eden to work it and take care of it (Genesis 2:15). He extended this mandate to all people and to all creation, making humans the caretakers of the planet (Genesis 1:26, Psalm 8:6).

The greatest commandment Jesus gave was to love God and to love our neighbours (Matthew 22:37-40). We are to do everything to the glory of God (1 Corinthians 10:31), which includes how we use the earth and its resources. Loving our neighbours entails caring for the environment upon which our neighbours depend for their survival.

However, Christians are mistaken when they think the only way to be good caretakers of earth is to embrace the climate alarmism promoted by the media, politicians and universities. Climate alarmism might be wildly popular, but like so many fads, its wild popularity is why it deserves to be questioned.

Consider ten reasons to question climate alarmism.

1. The Uncertainties

If all citizens, governments and nations — including the world’s poorest — are to make drastic lifestyle changes to avert an imminent ‘climate disaster’, we had better be fairly certain that a climate disaster is actually on its way.

In fact, we are far from certain. Climate panic is confounded by a swathe of uncertainties.

Firstly, if humans suddenly stopped emitting CO₂, there is no certainty that CO₂ levels would stop rising. Why? Humans only contribute a fraction — approximately 5% — of all CO₂ to earth’s atmosphere. The rest comes from volcanoes, oceans, plants, animals and decaying plant matter.

Second, if CO₂ levels stopped rising, there is no certainty that greenhouse gas levels on the whole would stop rising. CO₂ is responsible for only 10% of the overall greenhouse effect (and it comprises only 0.04% of earth’s atmosphere). The major player among greenhouse gases is actually water vapour, over which humans have almost no influence, except at a local level.

Third, if greenhouse gas levels stopped rising, there is no certainty that global temperatures would stop rising. The earth’s average temperature has risen and fallen many times in the past. It was warmer during Jesus’ lifetime, cooler when the Anglo-Saxons overran Britain, warmer again in the late Medieval era, and cooler again just before Industrialisation. During the Medieval Warm Period, for example, vineyards were common across northern England, Greenland was much greener (hence the name), and farmers spread into Russia’s northern regions.

In short, the climate has always changed without help or hindrance from humans.

It is very possible that natural forces are largely responsible for the recent global warming we are seeing. The climate models popular today largely neglect these natural forces and cannot explain the warmings and coolings that happened before the Industrial Revolution.

Even since the Industrial Revolution, the causal link between greenhouse gas emissions and global temperature is far from certain. About half of the warming since then took place before cars and planes were invented, and when industrial production was insignificant and CO₂ levels were fairly constant. Conversely, CO₂ emissions soared during the post-War economic boom (1940-1970) even as global temperatures dropped for the same four decades running.

2. The Benefits of CO₂

Consider another uncertainty: even if CO₂ levels were to keep rising at their current trajectory, there is no certainty earth would suffer as a result.

CO₂ is not a pollutant. It is a beneficial, naturally-occurring, colourless, odourless, non-toxic trace gas. More importantly, CO₂ is fundamental for all life on earth. It is what every living creature exhales; it is essential for plant life and photosynthesis; and it forms the basis of the planetary food chain. If CO₂ levels in earth’s atmosphere were to drop by just a small amount, all plants would die, causing oxygen levels to plummet and all animal life to go extinct. That would be catastrophic climate change!

Climate alarmism has made it fashionable to label CO₂ a ‘pollutant’. Humans do emit pollutants, including carbon monoxide (CO), nitrogen dioxide (NO₂) and other toxic gases that combine to form smog and poison the air. But to lump CO₂ with those toxins and call it a pollutant is a betrayal of science, language and reason. Pollution kills, but CO₂ causes life on earth to thrive.

As already stated, the concentration of CO₂ in earth’s atmosphere is currently around 421 ppm (parts per million). In the past, that figure was up to 15 times higher. Today, commercial greenhouses inject CO₂ to achieve levels of between 1,000 ppm and 1,500 ppm for optimum plant growth.

3. Earth is Greening

The role of CO₂ as plant food is not just theoretical. As CO₂ levels have risen, earth has been getting greener.

Over the last 35 years, quarter to half of earth’s vegetated lands have shown significant greening, according to a study published in Nature and publicised by NASA. The growth, measured as an increase in leaves on plants and trees, is equivalent in area to two times the continental United States. Researchers credit 70% of the recorded greening to carbon dioxide fertilisation.

A warmer, greener planet is a more fertile and more inhabitable planet. The record of history also bears this out. Previous coolings have led to famine, social disruption and depopulation. Conversely, a warmer planet has meant more prosperous times for humanity, including increased longevity, longer growing seasons, higher crop yields, population growth and wealth accumulation.

4. Failed Predictions

Most who accept climate alarmism are unaware that climate scientists and the media have been making doomsday climate predictions for well over a century. That so many ‘Chicken Little’ predictions have fallen flat is now omitted from public discourse, but it is a matter of history.

The apocalyptic predictions made include global famine, mass extinctions, a hole in the ozone layer, acid rain, island nations disappearing below the sea, melting polar ice caps, and many other catastrophes that have failed to materialise.

Consider just a selection of them.

In 1981, a NASA scientist predicted global warming of “almost unprecedented magnitude” over the next century that would melt swathes of Antarctica and cause a rise in sea level of up to 6 metres. In fact, in the last quarter century, sea levels have risen less than 8 cm.

In 1987, a U.C. Berkley professor who later served in the Obama administration predicted that a billion people could die from famines due to climate change. He reaffirmed his prediction two decades later. In fact, today the world produces enough food to feed everyone, and although hunger and undernourishment persist, these metrics have plummeted for decades running.

In 2001, the IPCC predicted that milder winter temperatures will decrease heavy snowstorms. Around the same time, one senior climate scientist at the University of East Anglia forecast that within a few years, winter snowfall would become “a very rare and exciting event,” saying, “children just aren’t going to know what snow is”. In fact, since 1967 snow cover in the Northern Hemisphere has grown, with above average snow coverage for almost every year of the 2010s.

Also in 2001, the IPCC predicted that climate change would lead to prolonged fire seasons, more days with severe burning conditions, increased lightning activity and therefore more fires and larger areas burned. In fact, the global area of land burned each year declined by 24% between 1998 and 2015.

In 2005, experts from the World Conservation Union predicted a polar bear population decline of 30% over the next 35 to 50 years. In fact, over the following decade, the estimated polar bear population rose by around 18%.

In 2007, environmentalist Tim Flannery predicted that Sydney and Brisbane would soon run out of water, stating, “even the rain that falls isn’t actually going to fill our dams and our river systems”. In fact, in 2022, Australia’s east coast saw record-breaking rain, overflowing reservoirs and flooding rivers.

In 2010, a team from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration predicted that “the U.S. Southeast and the Bahamas will be pounded by more very intense hurricanes in the coming decades due to global warming,” and that the strongest hurricanes may double in frequency. In fact, after 40 years of global warming, no increase in hurricanes has been detected. Significantly, deaths from natural disasters in general have declined by over 90% in the last hundred years.

In 2012, a report was published predicting doom for the Great Barrier Reef (GBR), spawning mass media coverage. It claimed that “coral cover in the central and southern regions of the GBR is likely to decline to 5–10% by 2022” and that “the future of the GBR therefore depends on decisive action”. Headlines as recently as 2020 declared, “Half of the Great Barrier Reef’s corals have been killed by climate change”. In fact, in 2022, the Australian Institute of Marine Science reported that two thirds of the reef is showing record levels of coral cover, with 40% more coverage than the historical maximum in 1986.

Indeed, the IPCC has used over 100 climate models to predict future temperatures. In almost every case, the models have seriously over-predicted global surface temperatures in response to rising CO₂.

If so many climate doomsday predictions by leading scientists have been wrong in the past, how will future generations judge the predictions of today?

5. A False Consensus

The claim has long circulated that 97% of climate scientists agree humans are heating up the planet to concerning levels. A detailed analysis of that claim found it to be severely exaggerated.

Among those who disagree are more than 1,600 scientists and professionals who have signed the World Climate Declaration, stating that there is no climate emergency. Likewise, the Global Warming Petition Project has been signed by over 31,000 American scientists — including 9,000 with PhDs — who reject climate alarmism.

Although plenty of dissent does exist in the scientific community, one thing is certain: disagreement is no longer acceptable. Today, if you argue that CO₂ is good for the planet, that nature is largely responsible for global warming, or that climate predictions rely on inadequate modelling, you are demonised as a ‘climate denier’. Even activists and climate scientists who change their minds after a closer look at the data are smeared with this label. Most western governments and private companies refuse to hire scientists who reject climate orthodoxy.

Patrick Moore, who co-founded Greenpeace but has since left the organisation, agrees. He now states unequivocally that “climate alarmism is groupthink” — which he defines as “mindless adherence to a narrative” and “the enemy of science”. Former New Scientist editor Nigel Calder has likewise lamented that, “The whole global warming business has become like a religion, and people who disagree are called heretics. I’m a heretic.”

Other high-profile climate dissenters include Nobel Prize-winning physicist Ivar Giaever, Australian geologist Ian Plimer, American physicist Will Happer, Japanese scientist Kiminori Itoh, the late physicist Freeman Dyson, and many, many more.

Though these scientists are eminently qualified, they are ostracised as apostates for having the ‘wrong opinion’ on climate science, and their professional achievements are considered null and void. They are automatically rendered non-experts. Worse, their views are often censored in the scientific community, the legacy press and on social media, allowing little room for robust debate.

Thus, when climate alarmists say there is consensus on the issue and that “the science is settled”, it is a false consensus, only made possible by silencing those who disagree.

Even if a genuine consensus on climate change did exist, scientific truth is not discovered by consensus. The ‘argument from consensus’ is a logical fallacy, and one that has hindered science at various turns through history. The Ptolemaic model of the solar system was the scientific consensus for 1,500 years, for instance, but it was wrong. Spontaneous generation, Haeckel’s recapitulation theory, Einstein’s static universe and the existence of the planet Vulcan are other examples of consensus ‘science’ that was later found to be false.

Rather than claiming there is a consensus on climate change, it would be more accurate to say climate science has been captured by a ruling paradigm. That doesn’t make the theory of manmade climate change false — but it certainly doesn’t make it true either.

6. The Political Agenda

Climate science has also been captured by a political agenda.

Climate alarmism has spawned a $1.5 trillian dollar industry — much of it taxpayer-funded — that depends for its existence on ‘dangerous manmade climate change’ being true. To put it more bluntly, tens of thousands of taxpayer-funded jobs now hinge on the perpetuation of climate panic. Fear of a coming catastrophe keeps the money flowing to the climate industrial complex.

Driving this agenda are globalist bodies like the World Economic Forum and the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which present themselves as neutral and purely interested in the science. In truth, they are political organisations run by political apparatchiks and driven by a political agenda.

Under their influence, groupthink has become as big a problem for politicians as it has for scientists. Politicians no longer dare voice any scepticism toward climate change orthodoxy. In politics, the complexities of climate science are swept aside by pithy catchphrases that prioritise election-day success over truth and accuracy. At best, it is very difficult to separate the climate science from the politics, creating a hostile environment for sound public policy.

The politicisation of climate science has, in turn, led to the corruption of climate science. It is no secret that funding is the lifeblood of science, and that by and large, politicians and bureaucrats hold the purse strings. For the best chance of having a grant approved, advancing one’s career, or getting published, scientists must now echo the politically correct view of climate change.

According to Patrick Moore, the environmental movement has morphed into a political movement: “They are primarily focused on creating narratives, stories, that are designed to instil fear and guilt into the public so the public will send them money.” Illustrating what this looks like on the ground, Nigel Calder explained:

If I wanted to do research on, shall we say, the squirrels of Sussex… I would write my grant application, saying, “I want to investigate the nut-gathering behaviour of squirrels with special reference to the effects of global warming”, and that way I get my money. If I forget to mention global warming, I might not get my money.

7. Fraud and Manipulation

An unfortunate outcome of Christianity’s decline across the West is a marked increase of dishonesty and fraud in research. The field of climate science is no exception.

Just weeks before the 2009 UN Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen, thousands of emails between climate scientists at East Anglia University were leaked online, exposing a scandal known as ‘Climategate’. Though the legacy press hosed down the debacle, in the emails was proof that scientists had deliberately tampered with tree ring data to fit prior assumptions about historic global temperatures.

Soon afterwards, the infamous ‘hockey stick’ graph — a highly-influential graphic that was an icon for climate alarmists — was also exposed as fraudulent. Produced by a team led by Michael Mann of Penn State University, the graph displayed layers of data to reconstruct the last thousand years of earth’s temperature. But it had been fudged: Mann had cherry-picked data to ‘erase’ the Medieval Warm Period and the Little Ice Age from the temperature record. Mann later lost a court case over the matter and refused to pay the court-ordered costs — yet was still awarded the 2019 Tyler Prize for Environmental Achievement!

Australia’s Bureau of Meteorology has also been exposed for deleting high temperatures from past records. In one instance, the BOM erased Australia’s hottest day — 125°F (51.7°C) at Bourke on 3 January 1909 — claiming that it was an anomaly since neighbouring stations did not register similar temperatures. Yet nearby Brewarrina recorded 123°F (50.6°C) for the same day. The Bureau also erased Australia’s second hottest day, where 51.1°C (124°F) was recorded at White Cliffs on 12 January, 1939. The BOM fudged the figures when digitising historic temperature records, but was exposed by then-Liberal MP Craig Kelly who searched the handwritten archives. In fact, the BOM has adjusted all historical temperature records (an adjustment they call ACORN-SAT) to support the warming narrative.

Similar fraud has taken place in the United States. In advance of the 2015 Paris Climate Conference, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) released a paper that altered historic climate data, eliminating a two-decade “climate change hiatus” that had been a bugbear for climate alarmists. The paper’s authors were eventually found out for their dishonesty. NASA has been credibly accused of similar data manipulation to support the case for CO₂-driven global warming.

It is an unfortunate fact that the public remains largely unaware of the climate data that has been fraudulently produced and that is still used in shaping public policy today.

8. The Harms of Hysteria

Over the last three decades, even as the global population has almost doubled, the percentage of people living in extreme poverty has fallen from 38% to less than 9%. This incredible progress has been made possible through the generation of wealth by free markets that have had access to cheap, reliable electricity. Increased crop yields from fertilisers made with fossil fuels have also been immensely helpful in this task.

Climate alarmists have romantic notions of a world powered by ‘renewables’ but their favoured technologies cannot produce the utopia they long for. Better termed ‘unreliables’, wind and solar power are intermittent, only producing power about 10–30% of the time for most of the year. Their limitations are natural, not technological: no amount of innovation will make the sun shine longer or the wind blow more consistently. The only solution is to cover more landmass with wind and solar farms, which, like any farm, means clearing vast tracts of wildlife. Wind turbines also regularly kill big birds and represent one of the greatest threats to endangered big bird species.

Despite these realities, climate alarmists now demand a shut-down of reliable electricity. In the words of Greta Thunberg, “Just reducing emissions is not enough. Our greenhouse gas emissions has to stop… Zero in 2050 means nothing if high emissions continues even for a few years.” The predictable result of such climate hysteria will be de-growth and deindustrialisation.

There are no current examples of low-energy societies providing a decent living standard for their citizens, though a team of European researchers created a realistic model of what it would look like. They found that, in order to “save the planet from catastrophic climate change”, Americans would have to cut their energy use by over 90%, share a 60m² house between four people, and fly only once every three years.

If that sounds ominous, those most harmed by climate hysteria will actually be the poorest of the poor. “The rich countries can afford to engage in some zealous experimentation with other forms of energy,” says African economist James Shikwati. “But for us, we are still at the stage of survival.”

Shikwati laments those who are “keen to kill the African dream”, explaining that “the African dream is to develop”. He warns, “We are being told, ‘don’t touch your resources, don’t touch your oil, don’t touch your coal’. That is suicide.” Shikwati recognises there is no way Africa can be industrialised with unreliable energy: “I don’t see how a solar panel is going to power a steel industry, how a solar panel is going to power maybe some railway train network. It might work maybe to power a small transistor radio.”

Those who sow fear of a climate catastrophe actually prevent vital industrial progress in the developing world. In countries too poor to develop, this perpetuates the burning of dung and wood for energy, which endangers the poor and pollutes the environment. In fact, lifting the poorest out of poverty as quickly as possible — which requires reliable energy — will deliver the best outcome for them and for the environment. As Bjørn Lomborg writes:

The cleanest places are not the poorest countries, but the richer economies that have cleaned up their act. As societies become richer, individuals can afford to stop worrying about food and sanitation, and to start worrying about the environment.

Much harm has been done and will be done by climate hysteria. Conversely, according to former Ronald Reagan adviser Thomas Gale Moore, “The optimal way to deal with potential climate change is not to embark on a futile attempt to prevent it but to promote growth and prosperity so that people will have the resources to deal with it.”

9. The Hypocrisy

The greatest tell that climate alarmism is overhyped is the hypocrisy of its loudest proponents.

The World Economic Forum (WEC) claims one of its principle aims is to “limit global temperature rise and stave off disaster”. Yet at their 2022 annual summit in Davos, WEC delegates shunned Switzerland’s railway network and instead flew on 1,040 private jets to the alpine resort town. In doing so, they belched out the same amount of CO₂ as 350,000 petrol cars would have over the same weeklong period.

President Joe Biden’s climate czar John Kerry emitted 325 metric tons of CO₂ through private jet travel in just his first 18 months in the role. In 2019, he flew by private jet to Iceland to receive the Arctic Circle award for his work on climate change, and defended the decision as “the only choice for somebody like me who is traveling the world to win this battle”.

Billionaire philanthropist Bill Gates’ latest book is called How to Avoid a Climate Disaster, in which he warns that humans must reach zero emissions within 30 years to avoid a catastrophe. Gates owns not one but at least four private jets, and calls the collection his ‘guilty pleasure’.

At Davos in 2023, Al Gore claimed that climate change is “boiling the oceans”, causing “rain bombs” and will create one billion climate refugees. Gore’s hype is hard to believe, given that he lives in a 20-room Tennessee mansion that uses up to 34 times the energy of an average American home. He justifies his lifestyle by buying carbon credits to offset his ‘carbon footprint’ — from companies in which he is heavily invested and that have profited handsomely from his alarmist activism.

Celebrities are some of the biggest climate hypocrites. Director Steven Spielberg calls global warming a “scientific reality” that “terrified” him. But in just two months during 2022, his private jet burned more than $116,000 in fuel and emitted 180 tons of carbon dioxide. Just two days after Prince Harry wrote on Instagram that “every choice, every footprint, every action makes a difference” in saving the planet, he and Meghan Markle took a private jet to Ibiza — and then a week later to the French Riviera. Taylor Swift has called climate change one of the “horrific situations” plaguing the world. But her private jet, which she regularly lends out to friends, emitted 1,200 times the average person’s total annual emissions. According to an analysis by Yard, that makes Swift the worst ‘emission offender’ among celebrity jet-owners, whose average carbon emissions are at least 480 times that of the average person.

Some of the biggest climate activists continue buying waterfront mansions with huge ‘carbon footprints’ along coastlines they claim are disappearing under the ocean. Among them are Bill and Melinda Gates, Barack and Michelle Obama (whose Martha’s Vineyard property is pictured below), John Kerry, Al Gore and Tim Flannery. Too many to number, climate hypocrites prophesy disaster, guilting ordinary people into downsizing their lives, all the while enjoying immense wealth that will protect them from any such sacrifice.

They do not deserve to be taken seriously until they start practicing what they preach.

10. A Rival Worldview

Greta Thunberg has declared, “The climate crisis is not just about the environment. It is a crisis of human rights, of justice, and of political will. Colonial, racist, and patriarchal systems of oppression have created and fuelled it. We need to dismantle them all.” While Greta doesn’t speak for all climate activists, the view she expressed is increasingly mainstream. Greenpeace co-founder Patrick Moore identified this trend many years ago:

World Communism failed, the [Berlin] wall came down, and a lot of peaceniks and political activists moved into the environmental movement, bringing their neo-Marxism with them. [They] learned to use green language in a very clever way to cloak agendas that actually have more to do with anti-capitalism and anti-globalisation than they do anything with ecology or science.

IPCC panelists like German economist Ottmar Edenhofer have stated, “we redistribute de facto the world’s wealth by climate policy”. According to Edenhofer, “One has to free oneself from the illusion that international climate policy is environmental policy. This has almost nothing to do with environmental policy anymore.”

At best, it is increasingly difficult to separate climate alarmism from neo-Marxism. At worst, far from being motivated by Christian concerns for the environment, today’s climate alarmism springs from an ideology deeply hostile to Christianity. Sadly, many young and naive Christians are being seduced into a movement that will do little for the planet but will almost certainly shipwreck their faith.

Australian cultural commentator Martyn Iles identifies climate alarmism as a “fully integrated ideology” that seeks to displace Christianity in a post-Christian world:

When you scratch below the surface, this is not merely about climate change. This is an entire worldview. It has its own theory of human rights, of justice, of the nation state, of immigration, of humanity, of democracy, of good and evil… It is an anti-West, anti-capitalist system… Climate change alarmism is one of the many suits of clothes that is being worn in the modern West by Marxism.

Like all millenarian religions, climate alarmism preaches impending catastrophe if certain radical changes are not made, and a strict moral code offering a path to ‘salvation’. But it denies central tenets of the Christian faith. Climate alarmists view humans as a mere cog in the machine of nature, rather than as creatures uniquely made in the image of God with authority and care over other created things (Psalm 8:3-8). In the worst instances, activists like David Attenborough have described humans as a “plague on the earth”. Some even call for depopulation. Either way, most climate activists also proudly support policies that encourage sterility and depopulation, including abortion to birth, euthanasia and child transgenderism.

Perhaps the most subtle tenet of Christianity denied by climate alarmists is that God is sovereign over his creation. After the greatest natural catastrophe the world has ever seen — the global flood of Noah’s day — God promised, “While the earth remains, seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night, shall not cease” (Genesis 8:22). Christians can have confidence that God designed the climate to be broadly stable, and that there is only one apocalypse to herald: the glorious return of Jesus Christ.

There is No Cause For Panic

Belief in a coming climate catastrophism will doubtless be with us for years to come, but it is a house of cards. There is no ‘climate emergency’ and no cause for panic.

Debate remains over the role humans play in shaping earth’s climate, what changes the climate will undergo into the future, and how the planet and humanity will adapt to those changes. Without question, we have a responsibility to care for the environment, curtail pollution and preserve our planet for future generations.

But waiting for impending doom will only disappoint and disillusion — and radical action to try to avert it will likely do more damage than good.

Far better to apply the words of Scripture: “Trust in the Lord and do good; dwell in the land and enjoy safe pasture.” (Psalm 37:3).

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For further reading, see Dr Don Batten’s brilliant article, Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW) — a biblical and scientific approach to climate change. Image via Freepik.