Good evening folks. I write this tonight having just watched a programme about snow. Yes, I am that geeky! However, before you turn off/fall asleep/flick back to facebook give me a second to explain a bit more.The programme was a mixture of scientific explination (how snow is made, how many incredible varieties of snow actually exist etc), as well as historical case studies demonstrating both the typical way in which snow falls in the UK and some of the more freakish patterns of snowfall. For the most part it was also very interesting and entertaining - the story about a cricket match in the middle of June being interupted by a sudden flurry of snow bringing about some amusing anecdotes for instance.
Yet, the last ten minutes of the programme left me with a distinctly puzzled thought process. One minute the documentary was explaining how Charles Dickens (who, we were being told, essentially created the notion of a 'white Christmas' in his book The Christmas Carol) grew up experiencing a sucession of literal white Christmas' largely as a result of the massive dumping of sulpheric material in the atmosphere by a truly collosal volcanic eruption in the Philipines in 1815. Such was the impact of the eruption that it altered global weather patterns for a large number of years.
The next minute though the narrator began explaining how Dicken's white Christmas' are becoming increasingly less frequent and that 'worryingly' this is largely a result of the essentially unstoppable process of global warming, or climate change as is now more p.c. in the media.
Fare enough you may be thinking. Whats the problem? Well, in my mind I can't get away from how certain that last point was put across. Essentially climate change and the progressive warming of the planet was put over as if we know for certain that it will happen. Yet, in my mind the documentary itself contradicted that certainty before the point on climate change was even made. The volcanic eruption, an event that by and large we don't really know is going to happen, had such an effect that it produced a climactic event (or events even) that was then discussed as a norm which climate change was altering. So the colder winters of Dicken's childhood, influenced by a proliferation of volcanic material ejected into the atmosphere, are changing because of global warming.
Thus the programme bases something that it just regarded as a change produced in the meteorology by an unsual event (the volcano) as its starting point (which seems a bit unfortunate scientifically), and then seems to reject the way in which an unusual event (such as a volcano, but there are others including the sun which is apparently much less active at the moment than normal and could produced an unexpected global cooling affect) can influence the climate in a way that is hitherto unforseen.
I realise that to slam climate change and its potential effects based on a single documentary seems on the one hand a tad harsh and on the other perhaps even irresponsible. I understand that quite a bit of evidence may well show that the climate is warming as a result of human activity (I say may well because I don't know for certain and have read reports by people who do seem to know what they are taking about which disagrees with the accepted climate change position), and that that evidence is based on long term trends. But my point is that we don't know whats going to happen. The programme on snow talked of freakish events for which we have no explination (in the case of random June snowfall for example, although we understand how it happened - ie a low pressure system was able to move over the UK for an adverse time because a high pressure system moved out to sea - we don't know why that happened, if that makes sense), as well as the mini ice age - a 300 year cooling period that no-one can quite make sense of.
So it is that even with long-term trends suggesting that the earth is possibly warming, it does seem that history is teaching us that we don't know what is going to happen. A volcano could erupt tomorrow which will cool the earth for the next twenty years (indeed it is not without good reason that scientists are considering seeding the Earth's atmostphere with dust so as to replicate a volcanic eruption as means to tackle climate change). The lack of solar activity could produce a stabilisation of the climate in a way not forseen, and that is not to even consider the potential for another mini-ice age.
You may have guessed from reading this that I am a climate change sceptic, if only in the sense that I am aware of the possibilities that lie ahead that we don't know of, that history tells us have happened previously and may occur again. If you are Christian then the Bible speaks of how no-one knows anything about their future (Ecclesiastes 7, v14). I believe that we should not forget that lesson from history (and the Bible) and it is deeply lamentable that the media at least are choosing to present a view of the climate debate that is so certain of the reality of what will happen in our future, that of unstopable man-made climate change.
However I do not believe that should be taken as an excuse for not caring about what we do with this marvellous and amazing planet that we live upon. As a Christian I believe that we are to be good stewards of what God has given us. As someone who is passionate about the outdoors and facinated by so many of the natural sciences (biology, botany, hydrology, meteorology, vulcanology) then I think we should do all we can to care for what we have. But let us do it within reason, and let the debate on climate change be a debate. Rather than presenting each documentary with such an absolute truth of what will happen, lets be humble and willing to listen and present the our arguments with the possibility that we are wrong, whilst caring for this world we all live on.
