January 6, 2017 Show with Dr. Michael Cochrane on “Cutting Through the Noise on Climate Change”

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and you can also go to ironsharpensironradio .com as I mentioned before well today we are going to be revisiting the climate change issue as many of you know who listen to iron sharpens iron regularly we have had

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Dr. Calvin Beisner on the program a couple of times addressing this important issue especially because the hysteria over it seems to be doing great harm to many people millions of people around the world especially those in the most impoverished nations who have new laws restricting their livelihood and preventing them from earning a living and providing food and shelter for their families because of this climate change hysteria that has really run amok and we have we are delighted to have today for the first time through the recommendation of Dr.

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Calvin Beisner we have as our guest today Dr. Michael Cochran he is a 1979 graduate of the

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U .S. Military Academy at West Point he has a PhD in engineering management and systems engineering from Old Dominion University in Norfolk Virginia he's the founder of Value Function Analytics a consulting firm that helps clients achieve their objectives by helping them to think about values and he's also a reporter on technology stories for World News Group who are a sponsor of Iron Sharpens Iron and its daily radio news podcast and he is addressing

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Dr. Cochran is addressing today cutting through the noise on climate change and it's my honor and privilege to welcome you for the very first time to Iron Sharpens Iron Dr.

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Michael Cochran hey thank you so much Chris it's great to be here and let me also introduce my co -host today once again visiting the studio of Iron Sharpens Iron a man who has a background in chemistry his name is

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Charlie Liebert I almost called him doctor again Charlie Liebert who is founder of sixdaycreation .com

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and it's my pleasure to have you back in studio as my co -host thank you Chris it's great to be here and let me give our listeners our email address again it's chrisarnson at gmail .com

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chrisarnson at gmail .com and if you have a question please give us your first name at least your city and state and your country of residence if you live outside of the

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USA well first of all Dr. Cochran if you could tell us something about your own history and how you became so interested in this subject of climate change that you actually have researched it quite diligently and in very great depth so much so that you are assisting corporations and businesses and organizations and so on and learning more about this question that has divided people globally as to whether or not it's a genuine phenomenon that is really posing any great danger to humanity at all well

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Chris actually just to do a full disclosure I'm not a climate scientist by training and profession

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I'm a decision analyst and systems engineer so right I don't think I did say you I didn't say you were a scientist

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I don't think you know but I'm sorry but that's right because my interest in in this has gone back a long ways

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I spent a whole career with the department of defense both in uniform and as a civilian engineer doing you know working with staffs and helping them come to decisions doing prioritization and risk analysis and that kind of thing and help formulating policy and it occurred to me with regard to the climate change issue that so much of it has been politicized over the years and and that raises my antenna in terms of the the quality of the information that policy and decision makers are actually getting to make very important decisions about spending national resources on on what what may be essentially junk science so my concern was to come at this from a policy standpoint you know what sort of rational approach might policy decision analysts or decision makers need to have to wrestle with some of the key questions that surround climate change that's that's really how

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I came into this whole issue of climate change was from the policy analysis standpoint now if you could summarize the the whole concept of what those predominantly on the left when it comes to politics although not exclusively

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I know that there are conservatives who are just as much vociferous alarmists about climate change as those on the left but it seems to be primarily the backyard of liberalism and leftism tell us about if you could in summary form what exactly is going on on the planet earth when it comes to climate change that they think is putting not only humanity but all of nature in great peril and why well there are several questions that that you know one has to answer to really get at this issue and the first one is of course you know is the earth actually warming and there is actual disagreement about what the data show in terms of trends on this and then the second is you know if in fact the earth is warming is that really even going to be a problem because scientists do disagree over the question of whether a warming trend on the earth would actually necessarily be a bad thing of course climate alarmists talk about the danger of rising sea levels for low -lying cities and communities more extreme weather events possibility of famines other kinds of catastrophes but we know that carbon dioxide is a non -toxic odorless colorless gas and all life forms need it all living animals produce it plants need it and so higher co2 levels could you know actually due to warming could actually have beneficial effects such as longer growing seasons expanded ranges with which you know you can grow crops increase plant growth food production that kind of thing but but really what it comes down to and to get at the heart of your question chris is that um whether or not the earth is warming if it is warming and it's a problem to what extent is human activity causing this and this is really where the um i think predominantly it's it's left -leaning um eco socialist kinds of groups are i think tending to seize on this because it's a way to be able to pin the blame on on mankind and uh and industrial activity um by by showing that uh or asserting that carbon dioxide is a pollutant uh so -called greenhouse gas and um and that by reducing this kind of activity then will also retard any any global warming which they say is harmful so it's it's the narrative that says that anthropogenic global warming that is human caused uh is is dangerous so that's called dangerous anthropogenic global warming or d a g w um that's really the issue and um what it comes right down to what was my concern was that you know um we're talking about uh policies that that could really affect the economy in a major way uh of industrialized nations um and so um you know what should we really be spending our money on if there's nothing we can do about global warming uh then maybe we ought to be spending that money and building seawalls around all those low -lying areas um or you know if it's not being caused by human activity maybe we should invest the money in research and development programs to look for alternative ways to deal with the problem so it's complicated but uh political entities are seizing on both ends of the spectrum and it centers on human activity i think in its issue yes whether or not these are uh atmospheric conditions that are uh coming about by nature itself and obviously uh those who are christians would believe that this is all ordained by the sovereign hand of god controlling all things but uh whether it's just a natural thing or whether we the human race are the villains and the culprits who are causing this and if we are causing this is it really going to mean the end of the existence of many life forms on this earth and perhaps uh potentially or eventually us as men and women and children um now uh the what is the actual data that you are aware of about a raise in temperature on the planet earth and is it really any kind of uh realistic threat to the life of not only animals and plant life but also primarily obviously humans well uh in the um in the paper that i uh published last fall on anthony watt's climate change blog i tried to summarize a little bit of the literature on um on the history of of warming and um as i said uh there's there's some disparity um a summary of the modern climate change history suggests that between 1979 and the present there's been uh and this is a quote a large disparity between surface thermometers which tend to show a fairly strong warming and independent temperature readings of satellites and balloons which show little warming trends so right away you've got two different data sources which are showing different things um and so um scientists trying to apply methods to control for some kind of statistical phenomenon that uh that might help to normalize the data they suggest that uh apart from kind of a jump in average global temperature that seemed to occur around 1977 there really hasn't been any statistically significant warming trend since about 1958 or earlier um so that's that's kind of the the summary of of what i found regarding whether or not the earth is actually warming if you if you look at the past history i know in some cases in the 19th century there was what was called the little ice age there was a time when the actually there was some cooling to the extent that there was some damage in europe from that so so right climate change itself is not is not different the earth is climate is always vacillating in some way the question is is it radically increasing enough to cause great damage right um and there is um uh a lot of thought that's been given to the cyclical nature of climate change um who was uh i think it was um uh dr uh singer um he wrote a book about this in 2007 unstoppable global warming every 1500 years basically what he was arguing is that um the solar cycles sun cycles um interact with the earth's climate so that we have cycles of uh increasing temperature and cooling uh temperatures about every 1500 years or so and uh he links that to um what we've experienced or what the earth experienced rather in the ice ages and so forth long before you know human industrial activity put you know any excess carbon dioxide into the atmosphere so is the question then really related to how much human activity has impacted this because that's what the political aspects are yes that's where the issue lies and that that's what i was trying to get to um in trying to analyze this from a policy standpoint okay understand now what what do you think is really going on here with those on the left especially in the scientific arena the holes of academia and so on who are convinced uh at least they say they're convinced that not only is the uh the rise in temperature globally uh a dangerous threat as as uh in regards to the uh amount of the uh temperature raising but they are convinced that uh anyone who would reject this uh that might they might even go to say that they are charlatans when it comes to science that they don't know what they're talking about they're frauds they're morons what what is what is the motivation behind all of this that you constantly hear uh especially from uh leftist politicians who are hammering constantly that if anyone especially a political figure is doubting climate change that is dangerous to humanity that person's a fool or a liar one of the other right well what you're seeing i think uh this is just my view on this but it's shared by a number of people that especially in academia um and in governmental organizations um this is where the the locus and the center of gravity really is is in um sort of the view that um the orthodox view if you will the politically correct view that um human beings are causing climate change they're the primary drivers of climate change and that we need to reduce emitting carbon into the atmosphere because that will then um reduce uh global warming well this has become orthodoxy in academia and within the government and governmental organizations um provide grant money and scientists at universities are looking for grant money to fund their research and um so if you're doing research in the area of climate change uh and if you're going to be able to find money you're going to probably want to um to do research that seems to support the prevailing orthodox view uh and so anyone that um you know has a view that's counter to that is is considered sort of anathema and um they're they're excluded just as you said from from the the community um it's it's sad to see this but um this is as the left

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I think tends to say that um perhaps uh uh research that comes to a different conclusion than theirs was funded by the fossil fuel industry the same can be said uh by academics who um whose research is funded by governmental organizations that are looking for um conclusions from their research that support the conclusions that they've already come to this the this academic political correctness permeates not just climate change because I see it in the discussion about creation or evolution

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I mean the same thing happens there academia just has one position and they will not allow the discussion of another that's true that's very very true we are going to our first uh station break right now if you'd like to join us on the air with a question uh for our guest

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Dr. Michael Cochran regarding climate change our email address is chrisarnson at gmail .com

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Chris Arnzen, if you just tuned us in. Our guest today for the full two hours, with 90 minutes to go, is

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Dr. Michael Cochran, and we are discussing cutting through the noise of climate change.

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If you'd like to join us on the air, our email address is chrisarnzen at gmail .com, chrisarnzen at gmail .com.

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We do have a listener in Greenboro, North Carolina, Pastor Sterling Vanderwerker.

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He says, I'm interested in how the foundations are set, and what type of data is now compared to them.

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Hopefully, the more objective the foundation is, the easier it is to understand when the interpretation is flawed.

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That's the first question, and I'll let you answer that before I go on with any others that he has. Well, it seems like he's asking about the basic data that are used by scientists when they're addressing the climate change issue.

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Is that kind of what it looks like to you? Yeah, that's what it looks like, yeah. Yeah, and that's a concern that we all have.

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I mean, as I said earlier, I'm not a climate scientist, so I'm not doing that research directly, and I'm relying on other scientists' interpretations of that same data, but that's part of the problem.

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As I think I said in the first segment of your show, it depends on who's using what data and what sources, because weather stations that take temperatures that are located on the surface of the earth, a lot of those can be influenced by what they call heat islands, which is to say areas like urban areas that have a lot of concrete, asphalt, that reflect, or rather, absorb a lot of heat and then reflect that back, they can actually skew the temperature.

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So, I mean, it's important where you cite your temperature sources, and then the temperature aloft at different altitudes certainly is different, and different places in the world, but it's really how the data is kind of groomed,

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I guess, if you will, and there's been some concern about that at the very basic level.

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I don't have some of those sources in front of me, but there's been some criticism of NASA's data that they have used, and that's been used as a basis for a lot of the studies, that they're sort of intensely making it look as if there is a jump in average global temperature that starts, you know, right after the post -war, post -World

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War II era, and it's basically going straight up, but yeah, that's really at the root of it is the data, but that's not going to solve the question for most people, because I think the question is a little bit deeper than that.

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Some of the NASA data that I've seen are photographs of both the Arctic and the Antarctic ice caps, and they have actually been increasing in recent years rather than declining, so doesn't that contradict it to some extent?

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Yeah, well, what I've heard is that the Antarctic ice sheet has been expanding, and what they've been talking about, and this was predicted like, gosh,

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I think it was former Vice President Al Gore predicted this when he was in office, that we would have no polar ice cap by about this time.

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Of course, we still do, but an interesting thing I saw on the news just the other day is that the average ice depth in the

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Arctic is pretty much the same as it was just after World War II. I can't remember the exact number of meters, but it really hasn't changed that much.

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So, again, you've heard in recent months about the whole phenomenon of fake news.

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Well, I mean, now with so many sources of news, some of them more reliable than others, you can put out essentially a narrative that says what you want it to say, and using sources that you find credible, and then people will take that and run with it.

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One of the things that I wanted to point out here was that the Arctic ice cap itself actually floats on top of the ocean for the most part, which means that if it melts, the ocean does not rise one inch, and that's an important thing that most people don't understand.

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Right, right, right, as far as displacement goes, right? Yes, displacement. If the whole

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Arctic ice cap melted, it wouldn't increase the ocean level at all. Now, Antarctic would, but I'm not sure how much.

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I've seen very contradictory research on that. Pastor Sterling Vanderwercker has a second question here.

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He says, how far back and what type of data points provide the statistics that establish the carbon -based facts by which the current data is compared and contrasted?

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Wow, I wish I had an answer for that one, but he's asking the wrong guy.

35:38

Okay. I can talk more about how decision makers can look at the issue of climate change and what kinds of questions they should be asking and how we can model that.

35:52

That's really my interest in coming at this problem. Well, yeah, you believe modeling climate change policy decisions using a probability tree is the wisest route to take right now.

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If you could even explain to us what you mean by that. Well, sure. It's not necessarily the best tool, but it's a tool, and it's one that people can understand intuitively when they see it.

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All it really is is a decision tree. It's a decision tree that models questions.

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I pose five questions that I think are essential that policymakers need to ask before formulating policy on what to do about climate change.

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I think I mentioned the first three earlier in the show. The first one is, is the earth actually warming?

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Because if it's not, then we don't have a problem. The second question related to that is, okay, if the earth is warming, is it a problem?

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And so, again, if it's not a problem, then we have another off -ramp for our decision tree.

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But if then we go on to the third question, if the earth is warming and this is a problem, to what extent is human activity causing the warming?

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And this question really gets at the heart of the issue because the environmental activists believe that human activity, that is, burning fossil fuels and other things that generate

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CO2 and greenhouse gases, is the primary cause of global warming. And then there are, of course, the others that we've talked about that believe that it's largely or wholly a natural cyclical phenomenon that can be caused by solar cycles, ocean current cycles, even the eccentricities of the earth's tilt and orbit.

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So those are the first three questions. But then you've got to ask a key fourth question. If human activity is, in fact, the primary cause of global warming, will reducing this activity also reduce global warming?

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And there's a big assumption or a presupposition that undergirds all these environmental policies, the obsolete now, the

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Kyoto Protocol, but the more recent Clean Power Plan in the U .S. and then the Global Climate Agreement that was negotiated over a year ago in Paris, the underlying assumption is that human beings emitting

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CO2 causes warming, then simply reducing the output of that CO2 is going to retard the warming trend.

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And many scientists reject this sort of deterministic view of this relationship, that you can simply uncause global warming by reducing the output of CO2, because they say there's too much variability in the atmosphere and a high degree of uncertainty about the effects of changes in atmospheric

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CO2. So, and then the final question is, if human activity is not the primary cause, and we still have global warming, is it still possible to stop it?

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You have to pose this question because it acknowledges the existence and the problem of climate change, but forces consideration of alternative solutions.

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And so what you do is you arrange these questions sequentially in the form of a tree, in which each question has two outcomes, either yes to the question or no to the question.

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And then that leads to the next question. So what you end up doing is if you can assign probabilities to each of those questions, the probability of this thing happening or not, then you can actually start to model what sorts of decisions you should make.

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So that's sort of the way I set it up. And if anybody listening would like to see the actual graphic and see the entire article that Dr.

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Cochran has written on modeling climate change policy decisions using a probability tree, you can email me at chrisorensen at gmail .com

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and request that I send you the URL for that. That's chrisorensen at gmail .com.

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C -H -R -I -S -A -R -N -Z -E -N at gmail .com. We already touched on this, but perhaps you could elaborate a little bit more.

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Tyler in Mastic Beach, Long Island, New York asks, is the climate change issue more political than scientific in its agenda?

40:32

Yeah, that's a good question. And I think it is. I think that this is, again, just my own opinion on this from looking at how politicized it has become, is that it kind of is a hook for essentially wealth transfer.

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If you think about it, if you can point to an environmental catastrophe that all of humanity agrees is the most important thing that we should be addressing, then that's going to drive nations to move resources.

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And a lot of the movement of resources that's being called for in the politics of all of this are resources from wealthier countries to poorer countries, essentially a transfer.

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And the justification for this is, well, if I live in the Philippines or if I live in a low -lying archipelago of islands out in the

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South Pacific, and I'm a poor country, and climate change is going to cause my sea level to rise by 10 feet in the next 50 years, that's going to wipe out my entire country.

41:49

So you need to then industrialize country. You're the ones that are causing the problem, because you have all these coal -fired power plants, and you're putting all this carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, which we've determined is causing climate change.

42:04

Then you need to send me money. And then with that money, I can do what

42:09

I need to do to defend my island nation against the encroaching rising sea levels or whatever. So that's just a simplified example, but it's almost the way

42:20

I see it is that there's a very strong and vocal subgroup within, I think, the more left -leaning socialist circles that,

42:30

I guess I call eco -socialists, that have kind of seized upon this as a way to de -industrialize the

42:38

West and punish the West for what they believe are crimes of de -spoiling the environment.

42:47

And it's all about eventually securing this, we can bring down the

42:52

West and raise up these other countries. Does that make any sense? Yeah. And Tyler in Mastic Beach, Long Island, New York, if you need further clarification, send us another email, and we'll have

43:07

Dr. Cochran elaborate for you. By the way,

43:12

I just wanted my co -host Charlie to know that Pastor Sterling Vanderwerker from Greensboro, North Carolina, who submitted a question that we already read, or two questions.

43:24

He says, Hi Chris and Charlie. The people in North Carolina are scared. Five to eight inches of snow tonight and tomorrow.

43:34

No bread and milk on the shelves at the grocery store. Us Yankees are just fine.

43:40

I've seen that run in North Carolina. The shelves are completely vacated for milk and bread anytime there's a prediction of more than about one inch of snow.

43:48

So I know that you know Pastor Vanderwerker. Yes, I do. Is he a transplant? Yes, he is. He's from the

43:55

North. I'm not sure where in the North, but he's from the North. Yes, he is. Okay. Well, actually, one of the things that I wanted to bring up or ask you,

44:06

Dr. Cochran, is who are those organizations and individuals that are predominantly seeking your counsel on this issue who are actually not as skeptical as the left would be, or I mean skeptical is putting it lightly.

44:29

I'm sure that most on the left, especially if they're involved in the political arena, would not even listen to you because they have global warming as a part of the dogma of their religion.

44:44

They would never call it that, obviously, but it is one of the primary things that they have as a part of their creed in the climate change alarmists is basically to commit heresy.

45:08

So who's actually saying, you know, Dr. Cochran, we are trusting your studied opinion on this and that we need your counsel and advice and so on?

45:23

Well, I wish I could say that I do have some clients that fall into that category, but most of the work that I do has been for either the government or the

45:37

Department of Defense, where I used to work, or subcontractors to them, or people that have small businesses that were making decisions about capital spending, that kind of thing.

45:51

So really, this whole interest in applying decision modeling to the climate change issue happened as a result of a blog that I was writing about five or six years ago, to actually look for examples where you could apply some of these decision analysis methodologies to real world issues.

46:14

And so it was not that I had anyone coming to me and saying, you know, help me with this policy decision, what I'm actually was hoping would happen.

46:21

And that's, that's how I ended up getting to know Dr. Kal Beisner so well, was because, you know,

46:29

I, I knew of him via World Magazine, where I work and write technology stories.

46:36

And so I knew of his, his work in the environmental Christian environmental movement. And, and so I contacted him, and we were talking about policy responses.

46:48

And I sort of ran the paper by him and thought, maybe some somebody could could take a look at that they might actually, it might lead to some fruitful relationships in terms of making some good policy decisions regarding this issue.

47:05

Well, I'm certainly glad to have somebody who works with World Magazine on my program, because as you've heard, they are sponsoring the broadcast.

47:15

And in fact, we have right now in the current issue, our third full page ad in World Magazine for Iron Sharpens Iron Radio.

47:24

So we, we are delighted to have this partnership with them.

47:30

And please send my greetings to everyone over there that I certainly will.

47:36

And we have, let's see here. We have

47:42

Doug in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. I'm sorry, he's in Chambersburg, Pennsylvania.

47:51

And Doug says, I am not a climate alarmist.

47:57

But I do think that warming has occurred primarily because crops are now being grown farther north than they have in the past.

48:08

Farmers are smart people, they would not do this if the crops would not thrive.

48:13

However, this is an example of a positive impact on global warming. It also does not say anything about whether or not global warming is caused by human activity.

48:24

Thank you, Doug in Chambersburg, Pennsylvania. You have any comments?

48:31

I think Doug's looking at empirical evidence of one of the inclusions that many scientists have come to regarding increased average temperatures, that what that does is it can cause the range or the latitude where you can have arable land to cultivate crops, it extends it.

48:57

And you can actually grow crops in parts of the world where you might not have been able to. So if that's the case, then you're actually potentially expanding the food supply.

49:07

So it might not be necessarily a bad thing. And in the policy model, you know, when

49:14

I assigned probabilities to each of these questions for an initial model, and then

49:20

I did what's called a sensitivity analysis on those probabilities. In other words, I buried probabilities of the individual question one at a time to see how that would affect the overall outcome.

49:35

What you find is that even giving 90%, I just, you know, just give the benefit of the doubt to the global warming alarmist crowd.

49:45

And I said, okay, even with a 90 % probability that the earth is warming, and even a 90 % probability that that's a problem, and even a 90 % probability that human activity is primary cause, you still have about a 20 % probability that either the earth is not warming, or that global warming isn't really a problem.

50:11

So, you know, there's, you have to look at the big picture, in other words, and it really does.

50:17

Even if you're generous with the fact that global warming might be a problem, the real issue is, does reducing this activity of human activity, like fossil fuel burning, and that kind of thing, does reducing that activity actually fix the problem, or does it not?

50:36

Because you have to have at least, you have to be 55 % certain that that's a true statement in order for any of the policies that are being suggested today to make any sense.

50:49

And so the importance of this issue is just so, in terms of the number of resources that are involved, and that we're talking about percentages of gross domestic product burden whole nation, in terms of, you know, if the policies of our current president were still to be in effect, in terms of this clean coal plan, it would, it would basically put so much of a regulatory burden on coal -fired power plants that, you know, it might actually shut many of them down, which

51:22

I think was the intent. But then that's also placing an economic burden on the country.

51:27

So if we're going to be dealing with policies that are going to affect national domestic product, then we've got to be pretty certain of the science underneath it.

51:39

And so I don't see that certainty quite, quite yet. Yeah, this whole thing with the left battling the sun is, it reminds me of Don Quixote, in a sense, battling windmills.

51:53

This, it seems like an absurd thing that they would claim it should be our number one priority to pour money and resources and energy into when it's, like you said, there's nothing substantially that could even prove that we could end this cycle with human effort.

52:21

We, by the way, Doug, in Chambersburg, Pennsylvania, you, since you're a first -time questioner, you have won a free

52:28

New American Standard Bible. So please give us your full mailing address so that we can ship you out a free

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So I hope that you enjoy this compliment of the New American Standard Bible Publishers who have been sponsoring

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Iron, Sharp, and Zion since 2006 when we originally went on the air and who have been sponsoring every major event that we hold, including next week's pastor's luncheon and debate.

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So please email us your full address in Chambersburg. And also that will be shipped out to you by our sponsors at Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service, cvbbs .com,

53:31

cv for Cumberland Valley, bbs for Bible Book Service .com. And thanks,

53:38

Doug, for contributing to the program today with your question. We have Joanna in Atlanta, Georgia, who is another first -time questioner on Iron, Sharp, and Zion radio.

53:55

And I have to enlarge the font of her email because I'm going blind and I can't read it.

54:01

What is a more biblical approach to environmentalism? How do Bible -believing

54:07

Christians balance the mandate to be stewards of the earth with the fact that it has finite resources?

54:16

And she has another question, but I'll let you answer those two first. That's a very good question because it really does get us to a biblical worldview of this whole issue.

54:30

And I'm grateful to Dr. Cal Beisner because of the work that he does is right down that line, right up that alley, so to speak, about, you know, what should a

54:41

Christian's view of environmentalism be? You know, first of all, we know, you know, for years we understood that burning gasoline, for example, generated harmful byproducts like carbon monoxide, which is poisonous and is a pollutant, and particulate matter being generated by coal and so forth going into the atmosphere.

55:04

So, you know, all of the work that the Environmental Protection Agency, for what it was originally intended to do, help reduce litter, help reduce tailpipe pollution, help produce smokestack pollutants, all those kinds of things, have cleaned up our environment.

55:21

And that's exactly what we are called to do as Christians. We don't want to, you know, despoil the environment we live in.

55:29

It's almost like living in a house where, you know, you don't throw your garbage away. You just sort of, you know, toss your garbage on the floor and just go about your daily business.

55:36

No, you, you know, you want to keep a clean house because that's the right thing to do and it's the godly thing to do.

55:43

And so we're stewards of the earth. We want it to be fruitful and multiply. We want to take care of the environment in terms of stewarding crops and raising, you know, animals for food and so forth and not harm it.

55:59

And so with respect to the whole ongoing thing with global warming, that's what's so strange to me is that something that has historically never been considered a pollutant, carbon dioxide, and as I said, it's, you know, non -toxic, it's odorless, it's colorless, and it's actually necessary for the environment, that would now be labeled a pollutant.

56:25

So when you start something that historically has been a good thing, a bad thing, then that's,

56:35

I think the Bible speaks directly to that, you know, calling good evil and evil good. So you start, you know, mixing these things up.

56:44

You know, to get back to her concern, you know, there are some good things that are happening and I don't deny that there are finite resources, as she mentioned, and natural gas, oil, coal, they're all finite resources and we should be developing automobiles that get higher mileage.

57:06

We should be getting more out of our use of these fuels.

57:12

And also if alternative sources of energy, such as wind power and solar power, and even tidal power, there's a big effort that's now underway off the coast of England, or Scotland, I believe, that's the first effort to really harness the power of the tide to generate electricity.

57:33

Right now, these technologies are heavily subsidized. And so in order for them to be competitive, they're going to have to be able to make it on their own in the marketplace, the free market of energy.

57:44

But, you know, there's some promise there. And if they can do that, then, you know, we should be looking for them not necessarily to replace fossil fuels, but to allow us to extend the use of them so that we use them up so quickly, because those are finite resources.

58:03

So I'm all for sustainable energy, if it can be done in a free market so that it's not subsidized by government.

58:13

I don't think right now that it's a viable alternative to fossil fuels. But from an environmental standpoint,

58:20

I think that you can find a compromise, you can still have an economy that still uses fossil fuels and not throw the entire thing out and balance that with other sustainable sources of energy.

58:34

Well, you've kind of answered the question already, but perhaps you could elaborate. Her last question is, how can we be good stewards of the earth,

58:44

I'm assuming she means, without elevating environmental concerns above the needs of people?

58:53

Right. And that's an important thing that people who are in positions of power and make decisions, those are the kinds of inputs to their decision matrices that somebody like me as a decision analyst, if I was to sit down with them, and say, okay, if you're building a value model, what are the things that are important?

59:14

You know, how do I husband the resources that I have, and to take care of the environment and still generate economic growth?

59:26

So you have to fit all of these into a decision model that gives due consideration and weight to all of them, instead of having an ideologically driven model that says that, you know, one viewpoint is just automatically not even considered.

59:43

There's got to be a balance. And I believe that we can achieve that. Well, Joanna, since you are also a first time questioner in the

59:53

Iron Sharpens Iron audience, please give me your full mailing address in Atlanta, Georgia. And you have also won a free

01:00:01

New American Standard Bible, the one I just described earlier that Doug in Chambersburg won.

01:00:08

And so please send that to us and Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service will ship you out that new free

01:00:15

Bible as soon as possible. And by the way, I'm assuming, Joanna, that you've been hearing our ads for the

01:00:22

G3 conference right in your city of Atlanta, Georgia. So if you are attending that, or if anybody from your family, or your church, or your friends are attending the

01:00:32

G3 conference, please make sure you greet me at the Iron Sharpens Iron radio exhibitors booth there.

01:00:39

And if you heard about the G3 conference from Iron Sharpens Iron radio, please tell those at Praise Mill Baptist Church, especially

01:00:49

Pastor Josh Bice, if you have the opportunity to, please tell them and him that you heard about the conference through Iron Sharpens Iron, if indeed that is the case.

01:01:02

So keep listening to Iron Sharpens Iron and spreading the word about our program in Atlanta, Georgia. Thank you so much for contributing to the program today with your question.

01:01:12

We're going to another break right now, and if you'd like to join us on the air, our email address is chrisarnsen at gmail .com.

01:01:19

C -H -R -I -S -A -R -N -Z -E -N at gmail .com. Don't go away, we're going to be right back,

01:01:26

God willing, after these messages with Dr. Michael Cochran and more of our discussion on climate change.

01:01:32

I'm Chris Arnzen, host of Iron Sharpens Iron radio, and here's one of my favorite guests, Todd Friel, to tell you about a conference he and I are going to.

01:01:41

Hello, this is Todd Friel, host of Wretched Radio and Wretched TV and occasional guest on Chris's show

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Iron Criticizing Iron. I think that's what it's called.

01:01:56

Hoping that you can join Chris and me at the G3 Conference in Atlanta, my new hometown.

01:02:03

It is going to be a bang -up conference called the G3 Conference, celebrating the 500th anniversary of the

01:02:11

Protestant Reformation with Paul Washer, Steve Lawson, D .A. Carson, Votie Baucom, Conrad and Bayway, Phil Johnson, James White, and a bunch of other people.

01:02:19

We hope to see you there. Learn more at g3conference .com, g3conference .com.

01:02:27

Thanks, Todd, I think. See you at the Iron Sharpens Iron exhibitors booth.

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01:08:02

Chris Arns and if you just tuned us in, our guest today for the full two hours with one hour to go is

01:08:07

Dr. Michael Cochran. We are discussing cutting through the noise of climate change.

01:08:14

If you'd like to join us on the air, our email address is chrisarnsen at gmail .com and please give us your first name city and state and country of residence if you write in.

01:08:25

Dr. Cochran, it seems ironic that those in the secular field of science or those secularists in the field of science, those who are humanists, those who are atheists, those who are either not

01:08:41

Christian or do not hold to any religion seriously or elevate their opinions of science above any religion, they would mock

01:08:54

Christians and those of faith for believing in things about the earth and about all that is in the universe for that matter, based on things that are unprovable, things from the scriptures and so on.

01:09:15

And yet, it seems that they are pushing an agenda that has no evidence, there is no real evidence that the earth is in great peril from this man -made climate change issue.

01:09:31

And yet, just like with many other things in science, the views that Christians have scientifically are very often those that are very provable, things that we can see, feel, taste and touch, things that we know are true.

01:09:51

And one of them is the very fact that millions of people globally are losing their jobs and suffering greatly because of these laws imposed on them due to the global climate change alarmists.

01:10:08

Am I right? Yeah, I believe that's true. And to your initial point, those secularists and those that that despise anyone associated with Christianity and religion, they have their own articles of faith.

01:10:29

I mean, they cling to them every bit as much as they accuse us of clinging to ours.

01:10:35

So, that's just human nature and they're just unwilling to think that they actually do it.

01:10:42

We have RJ in White Plains, New York, who says the polar bear seems to be one of the most frequently used symbols of climate change danger.

01:10:53

Are polar bears really on the verge of extinction at all? Well, again,

01:11:01

I'm not a zoologist or a naturalist, so I don't know the answer to that question.

01:11:08

But I suspect that what's being talked about here is that polar bear habitat might be, according to climate change alarmists, the habitat for the polar bear then is diminishing.

01:11:24

So, if you have shrinking polar ice caps, then consequently you have shrinking habitat for the polar bear.

01:11:32

I don't know that there's really any solid evidence for that. I haven't seen any indicators that the polar bear is anywhere near to the point of being in danger, let alone the point of extinction.

01:11:46

I'd like to make a comment on extinction in general. Extinction is a natural process in nature.

01:11:52

We've seen it since man's observed nature, creatures disappearing, the dodo bird, there's a whole long line list of them.

01:11:58

But the point simply is it's a process that contradicts the evolutionary premise. If evolution were true, we should see new things popping up all the time.

01:12:07

And in fact, we're seeing a decrease in the diversity on planet Earth. It has nothing to do with global warming, it has to do with the fact that we're in a sinful world and the sin is impacting the whole creation.

01:12:18

Doesn't the alarm over that even seem to contradict their own understanding of survival of the fittest? Yes, it does.

01:12:24

Yes, it does. It does. It does clearly. Let's see.

01:12:32

We have CJ in Lindenhurst or from Lindenhurst, Long Island, New York, who is asking, what scientists or politicians or other primary figures can you name that would agree with your positions?

01:12:51

Oh, I can't name them off the top of my head. But I would venture to say that since it does seem to fall along political lines that divide the left and the right in this country and around the world,

01:13:08

I would venture to say that from the standpoint of politics, anyone who tends to be conservative, which would probably mean someone who might be lean

01:13:19

Republican, those politicians tend to be those that find that the whole notion of climate change alarmism is a manufactured thing.

01:13:30

And it's essentially junk science. I think you'd probably find those are the people that would maybe tend to agree with the view that we're taking on this show today.

01:13:44

Let's see. We have BB in Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, who wants to know if you have ever had any contact with those conservative evangelicals who are convinced that the global warming alarmists are true on these issues and that even though they would disagree with them on many other issues that involve liberalism, they feel that to disregard the science that is presented by the global warming alarmists is to be a poor steward of creation that God has given us.

01:14:27

I have seen articles and things about conservative evangelicals who are global warming alarmists, so I know what this listener is referring to.

01:14:42

Yeah, I don't know any personally, but I do agree with you that there are those that are concerned who are believers in conservative evangelicals who think, well, you know, wait a minute, maybe there is something to this.

01:14:57

I would just sit down with them and say, you know, Christian brother to Christian brother,

01:15:03

Christian brother to sister, you know, let's take a look at the data.

01:15:10

Let's take a look at the science behind this. Let's take a look at all the other things that go into the complex entity that we call the

01:15:23

Earth's environment and the Earth's climate, because it's a system. And, you know,

01:15:28

I've got a background in systems engineering and the systems approach, you know, you can look at many things from a systems perspective and there's a whole systems theory that undergirds the nature of systems.

01:15:43

They have inputs, they have outputs, they have feedback loops, they have complex interactions of the entities within the system itself.

01:15:53

And the Earth and its environment and its climate are very complex systems.

01:15:59

And so I would sit down with those folks and say, look, a lot of what the climate alarmists are saying is probably verifiable.

01:16:09

It's probably true. I mean, it very well could be that the Earth is warming, but that's really not the issue.

01:16:14

As I think I mentioned in the first hour, the central issue is the degree to which reducing carbon dioxide emissions is actually going to reduce this trend in climate change.

01:16:29

And I think that's where the science actually breaks down, because much of the basis for the assertions by the

01:16:39

International Panel on Climate Change, the IPCC, which was a governmental body of the

01:16:44

United Nations and other organizations to include NASA and many research universities, they're basing their views of what's going to happen to the

01:16:57

Earth's climate on simulations of the Earth's climate. And these computer simulations are very, very complex.

01:17:04

They're designed to essentially recreate all of the key subsystems within the climate system and try to model how they can interact.

01:17:17

But the thing with any model, I mean, there's an old saying in my industry that all models are wrong, but some are useful.

01:17:26

And we deal with models all the time. I mean, a model can be an intellectual model. It can be a physical model, like something that you put into a wind tunnel, like a model of an aircraft, or it can be a computer simulation model.

01:17:40

But some of the assumptions going into these models can have a huge impact on the climate system.

01:17:48

For example, I mentioned all systems have feedback loops. Well, one of the feedback loops in the Earth's climate is water vapor.

01:17:55

And one of the big assumptions that's being made is the degree to which the

01:18:01

Earth's cloud cover and water vapor cover is actually forcing some of this increase in temperature.

01:18:09

In other words, the clouds can also generate the same sort of greenhouse effect that other gases can.

01:18:17

And the extent to which water vapor is contributing to this, even small assumptions going into the model can have huge impact in terms of, you know, you sort of spin these models out through time over the years.

01:18:34

And we're talking about changes in temperatures of, say, a couple of degrees in the next 100 years on average.

01:18:43

They're saying that small changes like that can make a huge difference in climate. But yet there's so many things, so many variabilities going into the model that can affect those outcomes.

01:18:56

And so that's why this is so, how we call it, probabilistic.

01:19:02

It's all related to the probabilities that are in the model. And goodness, if weather forecasters can't even accurately or agree on a weather forecast for 10 days, how are they going to do something in a model that looks 100 years out?

01:19:22

And, you know, the complexity of the atmosphere is incredible. I mean, there's so many parameters that you have to consider.

01:19:28

I would even question whether models can be realistically constructed. Well, that's a valid question.

01:19:36

Whether you can accurately reconstruct the Earth's climate. Yeah, because, you know, you take all the atmospheric effects, even things like sunspots are going to affect the climate to some extent.

01:19:45

And you know that there's a whole myriad of things that are going to impact it that, to me, would be kind of hard to model, particularly mathematically.

01:19:55

Yeah. And, you know, there's a lot of research on the effect of the sun and the

01:20:01

Earth's orbit and the Earth's axial tilt on long cycle climate change.

01:20:08

In other words, I was mentioning earlier about Fred Singer's work on solar cycles.

01:20:14

And he found a signal in the geologic age of the

01:20:20

Earth of about 1 ,500 years from peak to peak in terms of ranges of cycles between warming and cooling.

01:20:28

And that's driven primarily by the sun, which he says is the primary driver of the Earth's climate, not human activity.

01:20:35

I mean, human activity might have some sort of a small signal in terms of the larger signal.

01:20:42

But the fact that we've had, you mentioned the Little Life Age, well, you know, we had a period of,

01:20:50

I guess it was a period during the time of the Roman Empire, about the time of Christ, where there was a relatively warm period in the

01:20:59

Earth. And that actually contributed to the flourishing of humanity under the

01:21:04

Roman Empire. And then you had, you know, a cooling period. And I can't remember exactly what those years were.

01:21:11

But again, because that 1 ,500 year cycle sort of fit right in there. We saw that even before large scale industrial activity took place in the latter half of the 19th century.

01:21:23

Well, generally, would you say then in terms of warming, a slight warming is actually beneficial because it's going to increase the crop production?

01:21:31

Is that true? Yeah, on the whole, I think that's one of the benefits. I think also, use of energy.

01:21:37

I mean, you saw, I can't remember the news stories, but you see them periodically each year.

01:21:44

Severe cold affects people negatively more than severe warming does.

01:21:51

You know, you have more deaths of elderly people because they can't afford to heat their homes in a cold snap.

01:21:58

And, you know, so while heat waves are bad, extreme cold can actually be worse.

01:22:04

So on balance, there's lots of reasons why a slightly milder winters, slightly increase in average temperature might actually be on balance a good thing.

01:22:17

Would we get more arable land too as a result? I think that's one of the arguments, that you would have, you would expand the latitude farther north on continents and farther south, where you would actually be able to cultivate certain types of crops.

01:22:37

And, you know, we don't know how it would affect the expansion or the contraction of, say, desert areas, because a lot of those are sort of localized climate situations like what we find in North Africa with the

01:22:52

Sahara Desert and so forth. But as I said earlier, I mean, the climate is just such a complex system that it's really hard to figure out, you know, how it's evolving or changing from week to week and month to month, let alone centuries to centuries.

01:23:09

I would think also, would it affect the altitude of being able to cultivate crops?

01:23:17

In other words, could you go farther up the mountain or the plateau? Because the climate was slightly warmer?

01:23:24

That would be true. I mean, if you have, like I live in western North Carolina, right in the mountains, the

01:23:31

Smoky Mountains, and so, but yet North Carolina is relative to the other states is a fairly southern latitude.

01:23:39

But, you know, up here in the mountains, we get colder temperatures and snow because of the elevation. Right. So if you were to have a slightly warmer environment, then presumably that would have an effect on areas, even if they are elevated.

01:23:55

So you'd have less severe winters, perhaps, in the mountains than you would otherwise have. I guess maybe some ski resorts would have to not open as long or something.

01:24:04

But I don't think it would be catastrophic, however. So then I have to ask the question then, what is the catastrophe that's coming if global warming is really true?

01:24:14

What is it that they point to that creates all the panic? Well, I mean, it's such a slow process that, you know, you'd think that you'd be able to prepare for it.

01:24:27

But I think that the environmental dangers that they're talking about are things like, as I said, rising sea levels and more intense storms, maybe more intense hurricanes, weather events of that nature.

01:24:46

And it just seems like there's an attempt to really use hype and scare tactics to make it sound worse than it is.

01:24:57

But I don't think we're dealing with a catastrophic problem like, say, for example, an asteroid impacting the

01:25:05

Earth. You know, that would be a pretty severe catastrophe. Yeah, because increased weather phenomena, to me, is not a catastrophe, you know, a crisis.

01:25:16

And then on the other side, increased sea levels. Well, the Dutch cope with that constantly with dikes.

01:25:22

I mean, you know, it's not hard to do if you've got a rise in sea level, even with several feet. And I don't see that you get much more than that if you melt even the

01:25:29

Antarctic ice cap. Yeah. And as I said, in the paper that I wrote, one of the things that I wanted to do was to match up potential policy responses to the possible outcomes of those questions that I modeled in my decision tree.

01:25:48

And, you know, one of the primary policy responses is what we would call mitigation or adapting solutions.

01:25:57

These are defensive solutions. So they would be things like directing resources to erecting sea walls around low -lying coastal areas, you know, doing things like subsidizing certain, you know, crops or things if they're struggling or whatever.

01:26:14

But basically spending money on a defensive level by saying, okay, if the environment's going to cause, if warming is going to cause these kinds of things to happen, there are ways that we can protect ourselves.

01:26:26

The other general policy approaches are the ones that the eco -socialists and global warming alarmists, you know, want, which is environmental regulation, things like cap -and -trade legislation and big treaties that force countries to cut industrial production to certain targets.

01:26:49

And then there's the other policy response that says, okay, if it's possible to stop global warming by some other means, then maybe we should spend money on a massive research to develop an effort to produce alternative solutions to global warming.

01:27:07

And then, of course, there's the response that says there's no response needed. So what

01:27:14

I found is that the best solution, if we really are going to look at this as a problem, and if it's a real problem, it should probably be the defensive solution.

01:27:25

But that would be admitting defeat for the global warming alarmist crowd. And they don't want those kinds of solutions, because they've already got it locked in that reducing carbon emissions is automatically going to reduce global warming.

01:27:41

And they've continued to push that mantra over and over again until it's become, you know, the orthodoxy.

01:27:48

And so they don't listen to potentially reasonable solutions that might be more defensive in nature, because then that would be admitting defeat.

01:27:59

So if that assumption or presupposition is actually wrong, that carbon dioxide is not the cause, then their whole structure falls apart.

01:28:10

Exactly. No, no, you go ahead.

01:28:16

We're just going to go to a break, but finish your thought, though. No, I was just going to say that even if you acknowledge that humanity is contributing something to it by admitting global warming, or admitting that carbon dioxide is part of the problem, the question is, is reducing that actually going to reduce global warming?

01:28:33

And there's a lot of insecurity and uncertainty about that.

01:28:39

I agree. We're going to our final break right now. If you'd like to join us on the air, now is the opportunity to send in your email as soon as possible to chrisarnsen at gmail .com.

01:28:55

Please give us your first name at least, your city and state, and your country of residence if you live outside the

01:29:01

USA. So don't go away. We will be right back, God willing, with Dr. Michael Cochran after these messages.

01:29:08

I'm Chris Arnsen, host of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, and here's one of my favorite guests, Todd Friel, to tell you about a conference he and I are going to.

01:29:16

Hello, this is Todd Friel, host of Wretched Radio and Wretched TV, and occasional guest on Chris's show

01:29:25

Iron Criticizing Iron. I think that's what it's called.

01:29:32

Hoping that you can join Chris and me at the G3 Conference in Atlanta, my new hometown.

01:29:38

It is going to be a bang -up conference called the G3 Conference, celebrating the 500th anniversary of the

01:29:46

Protestant Reformation with Paul Washer, Steve Lawson, D .A. Carson, Votie Baucom, Conrad M.

01:29:52

Bayway, Phil Johnson, James White, and a bunch of other people. We hope to see you there. Learn more at g3conference .com,

01:30:00

g3conference .com. Thanks, Todd, I think. See you at the

01:30:06

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01:30:32

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01:30:40

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01:34:59

hc bible .org call 609 -494 -5689 609 -494 -5689 harvey cedars where christ finds people and changes lives hi i'm pastor bill shishko inviting you to tune into a visit to the pastor's study every saturday from 12 noon to 1 p .m

01:35:35

eastern time on wlie radio www .wlie540am .com

01:35:44

we bring biblically faithful pastoral ministry to you and we invite you to visit the pastor's study by calling in with your questions our time will be lively useful and i assure you never dull join us this saturday at 12 noon eastern time for a visit to the pastor's study because everyone needs a pastor welcome back this is chris arnzen if you just tuned us in our guest has been for the entire program and also the next 25 minutes to come dr michael cochran we have been discussing cutting through the noise of global warming or climate change if you'd like to join us on the air with a question our email address is chris arnzen at gmail .com

01:36:26

and uh let's see uh doug from chambersburg pennsylvania once again has a couple of questions he'd like to add to what he already asked i've i've seen some discussion of nuclear power as a replacement of fossil fuel but not very much given that the latest nuclear power plant designs are inherently safe complicated cooling systems are not needed and that enough capacity to provide a large amount i've seen the number 50 used of the electrical needs of the u .s

01:37:03

could be built within 20 years why isn't this being pushed by the politicians and environmentalists i understand the issue of nuclear waste and fear need to be addressed that seems to be a matter of political will yuca mountain was close to being open before it was mothballed thank you doug fisher in chambersburg pennsylvania well that's a good point we haven't mentioned nuclear power to date or up to this point in the show but you know i i'm a very interested in in nuclear power because uh there's there's actually more to the nuclear power than just the traditional um you know uranium 238 based reactors um in fact it was last year i think i did a story for world radio on thorium reactors and it was actually a very old well old you know as far as nuclear stuff but this this uh you know dates from just after world war ii the scientists were working on the manhattan project recognized really early on that thorium which is an element that i won't go into the details of it but um you know uranium 233 were uh derived from it they weren't going to be any good for nuclear weapons but they were really outstanding for nuclear reactors so they started sketching out some plans for building nuclear reactors around thorium and the great thing about that is that uh you know um thorium you know is um doesn't doesn't have the let's see if i can find um um it doesn't have the same sort of um half -life issues that you have with the nuclear waste i mean it doesn't generate nuclear waste like a traditional reactor um and they can you can operate these reactors at atmospheric pressure so they require no containment vessels to prevent the escape of radioactive steam there's no no risk of meltdown uh they said there's no waste um and it's really difficult to turn thorium into a weapon so the technology has existed but basically the u .s

01:39:25

stopped researching it um just around the nixon administration and um there are um groups that are are hoping to um really revive it uh the chinese government in fact in 2010 because they were motivated for the need for clean and reliable energy they've sort of picked up the the r &d baton for thorium research and they've sort of started to push it forward so you know i i think that um um liquid thorium reactors um might be something that we could see in the future and if that's true if they're they can be made commercially viable uh then they're very very safe and um i think uh would be a wonderful you know alternative for um for for power generation i'm i'm i'm a chemist by training and i went to my periodic table here and looked at it and uh thorium 232 which is one of the higher levels of thorium radioactivity has a half -life of 1 .45

01:40:22

times 10 to the 10th so so it doesn't disappear hardly at all basically it would be almost we would say almost eternal in terms of in in a reactor so that certainly would be a good approach i've not heard this before this is a new one for me yeah it was it's interesting but i think we'll see perhaps more of this because there's there's several um uh folks that are still trying to push this research and um uh so who knows we may see something on this uh on this yet well i what i want to do is i want to make sure before i go to any more listener questions i want to make sure that you have five or six minutes to really summarize the things that you most want etched in the hearts and minds of our listeners in regard to this issue before we go off the air today well sure chris um i think you know that the whole reason that i'm on the program is because um we this this paper that i i was um uh that i wrote uh relating to policy decisions um related to climate change and and and that was really for me um kind of my attempt to to wrestle with uh the questions that i thought were the most important ones that the decision makers needed to to ask uh and have answers to or at least have have higher confidence about the answers to in order or before spending money um or entering into agreements like treaties and so forth that might affect uh our nation's economies and so um i think the big takeaway that i would want for your listeners would be that um there are ways to to very in a very very simple form to model questions um that that one needs to ask in any kind of an issue and and that was i used climate change because it's a contemporary one and it's one of importance to a lot of people but um but you can model a series of questions uh in the form of a decision model and you can assign probabilities like you know zero percent chance all the way up to 100 chance um and and see you know what your model is basically telling you and when i did this um and i tried to be as i said um very conservative uh and and basically grant the argument uh much of the argument to the global warming alarmist crowd that uh if even if global warming is a problem and i weighted that at 90 percent and even if human activity is contributing to it and i waited that at 90 percent what i waited at 50 50 was uh reflecting the indifference or the uncertainty surrounding whether reducing human activity is actually also going to reduce global warming and um when i when i uh finished my model result i came up with a probability score of um 44 percent chance that um reducing human activity does not fix the global warming problem and that we can't stop it and a 36 percent chance that reducing human activity fixes the problem and 19 percent chance that global warming really isn't a problem or that the earth isn't warming and then a one percent chance that it's possible to stop warming global warming by some other means so um the the top probability score ended up being that we really should um the solution or the response to to the the top score would be um defensive solution because if if reducing human activity doesn't fix global warming and we can't stop it then we're pretty much left with spending our money on defensive solutions that um help us to adapt to a world in which we've got the effects of arising temperatures um and i found that um on the question of whether or not reducing human activity actually also reduces human or global warming you have to be 55 percent or more confident that that's a yes to that question um before um taking the current policy approaches such as the you know environmental regulation so that the global warming alarmist crowd is calling for so um and in my conclusion i basically said that um you know we really have to be um certain that human activity will cause the corresponding reduction in global warming and we we haven't demonstrated that uh that is actually the case and so um you know i think that we need more information and more science that that can prove that but i don't think it's going to be forthcoming so um i just wanted to uh and and that was that was weighting the model heavily in favor of uh the fact that global warming is the problem um or that you know human beings are the most important cause if you um change those probabilities down closer to 50 50 um it would be even more skewed so um i was trying to be as generous as i possibly could on that score and i still came up with uh a model that suggested that you know we really don't know and um if in the event of this kind of a level of uncertainty why would you commit your your nation to uh to policies that could potentially uh wreak havoc with uh the um gross domestic product and and uh you know with jobs and the economy so yeah that was that was a big takeaway for me was that um was that you know this this really is the best way that we should spend our money if it's a problem is not on what we're doing now we have christopher and uh from suffolk county long island new york who says are you convinced that many scientists are lying through their teeth in order to preserve their careers over the over these matters well um i think many scientists um genuinely believe uh the stuff that they're putting out um i don't think they're intentionally deceiving anyone uh i just i i think that it's uh there's a sort of group thing that goes on um you know and it's it's interesting i don't know um if any of your listeners are familiar with um thomas kuhn's uh kuhn his book from the 1950s called the structure of scientific revolutions but it was a very seminal book um and pretty easy to read but basically he's a he was a historian of science and he went back and looked at um scientific revolutions all you know all the way back to things that we are familiar with like the revolution that sort of changed um our view of of whether or not the sun is at the center of the solar system or the earth is that kind of thing and um what he found was that people within a field of science tend to get a group think or a bias in a certain direction and it's like an echo chamber i mean they're they're constantly you know listening to the same things and putting out the same information and um and you can get group biases uh in terms of um viewpoints on on um on particular scientific theories and very often and what he found was people from outside the field who are also reputable scientists but may not necessarily be in that field look at that problem and and add something to it from a different perspective that upends the entire paradigm and i think he actually coined the term paradigm shift in that book um and so what we're seeing now with uh anthropogenic global warming is a group think paradigm and there are lots of people that just um are totally convinced of it i don't think they're they're necessarily intentionally lying but they they really haven't had um they really haven't allowed themselves to listen to um the minority report now that the people that are also reputable scientists that are also saying hey wait a minute um you know there are other things to consider here um and uh we see the same problem with um the uh the people that believe in darwinian evolution um there is no empirical evidence that supports uh neo -darwinism at all i mean we don't see speciation we don't see uh any of the things that darwin predicted in his theory at least the fossil record hasn't provided that um but that's that's the same reigning paradigm as the global warming crowd um and and so it's going to take people from outside the field in some cases to um in thomas kuhn's um theory to alter that and and and eventually as with all scientific revolutions you know the change does come about and i'm confident that in the next you know several decades um you know scientists and more and more scientists with regard to evolution are coming to the conclusion that darwinism is just unsustainable um as a theory and they're going to be looking for something else and i think the same thing will happen with uh with climate change i'm sorry yeah the the problem with with darwinism is uh if they give it up there's no other place to go they're kind of painted into a corner here uh there there's no other no other way to explain either either suddenly appeared or it came about slowly and there's really no other option so i i i see the darwinists getting more and more in a corner but the the reaction i get from academics when i talk to them and i do this occasionally on the college campus uh is shut up and believe it they don't even get the students the ability to to ask questions you'd say shut up and believe it just like the roman just like the roman catholic church once did uh with galileo and copernicus exactly exactly yeah and eventually someone is going to you know basically say uh you know be the person that says the emperor has no clothes yes exactly uh we have joseph in uh suffolk county long island new york who asks what is innately involved to global warming that is inherent to its thesis that is such the big attraction to those on the left side of the aisle politically it seems to militate and contradict against their own views of looking out for the needs of the impoverished and the poor who are the biggest victims of global warming conspiracy theories you know that's a that's a very good point and you could almost do an entire radio show just on that one question because um you know uh i think that um to a large extent there would be and and dr bisner's website um does a very good job of of laying this out that um if we really were to care for the poor then we we wouldn't be supporting these climate change policies um because um you know right now energy is cheap because we have things like hydraulic fracturing which allow us to tap oil and natural gas and shale formations that we wouldn't otherwise be able to get to and so we actually have quite a bit of a very inexpensive fossil fuel that we could use uh to help um poor people in other parts of the world um you know have energy keep a cheaper energy i think right now go ahead go ahead i just was going to say that that in a lot of ways um they're actually doing the the poorer nations a disservice by driving up the cost of energy i think i i think there's another motivation and i'm going to get political political here for a second and i i think the motivation is the left always wants to regulate and control so this is another excuse or reason or so -called scientific reason to to basically control to legislate control and and and and that's the that's their solution to every problem legislating control and it hasn't helped the poor in this country certainly in the last 20 years eight years no it hasn't and and so what you're right i think that's the political response from the left is centralized control but they need to have the as i said earlier in the show that hook and that hook is the problem of dangerous global warming if they can convince the world that global warming is dangerous and that humans are causing it and it's industrial nations that are causing it then guess what we have the solution to the problem and that is you know uh controlling the economies of the industrialized nations and forcing them to heal and transfer wealth to uh to poorer countries well that that's going to cause impoverishment of the whole world well of course it will yeah because it's going to retard and uh you know growth uh and wealth creation yes all all growth it would basically stifle uh continued economic growth and uh put probably the world into a great uh recession at least probably depression now uh isn't it true that the founder of greenpeace uh who is not known as a conservative uh he abandoned greenpeace because of global warming hysteria didn't he because he doesn't believe in it isn't it the are you aware of that or have you heard that i i was not i think i might have heard something about that but i i don't know any details i'm almost uh certain that uh uh that uh greenpeace uh the founder of greenpeace in fact i think i heard that originally from calvin bisner that he has no has it disassociated himself from the organization um because because of the fact that he believes that is fake science uh involved in it but uh if you could now uh just conclude uh with the things that the average person listening uh suggestions advice counsel to the average person listening how to make a greater impact in their local communities in their local churches in their local uh government on this issue how how uh can they be a contributor to this whole discussion and in an effective way well i think i think just um thinking about how we as christians um how god would want us to steward the the earth's resources and to um to care for the earth the earth um life and uh and the people on it um after all we're we're all made in god's image despite the fact that you know somebody doesn't believe in god they're still an image bearer of god and so um um you know getting all of the uh all the facts about uh issues like this uh and and looking at them from a reasonable standpoint and saying that you know um we god gave us the cultural mandate to um to um make the earth fruitful and to uh cause it and to have dominion over the earth and that doesn't mean to um to just rip it up and destroy it but it means to to steward the resources that we have and we have masses of uh of fossil fuel resources for for energy that uh are still yet to be tapped and can be and can be tapped in a a very environmentally friendly way so um you know as christians i think we have to be able to say there are ways that we can be reasonable about this we don't have to have an extreme case of one or the other we don't have to just throw out all sources of of energy just because they happen to be fossil fuels there's nothing inherently bad about that because it's all part of god's creation i mean we we know that uh that uh peter had to learn when he had that vision of the sheep being dropped down you know with all of the animals that he thought were unclean um and had the lord told him peter what the lord has called clean um is is not unclean for you um so um you know that god created the the earth uh and he created it to be good and he created it resources for us to use and to steward and and so i think if christians um who are who are interested in this um can can really learn more about the science behind um climate and what causes um changes in climate and if they if they do that then they can speak rationally to to people that might disagree with them about um about the complexities of that climate and the things that influence it and also about you know when it comes to policy decisions um about you know um stewarding god's resources in in a way that um it's both biblical as well as beneficial to humanity well i know that uh dr cal beisner's website at the cornwall alliance for the stewardship of creation is cornwall alliance .org

01:58:47

cornwall alliance .org do you have any specific website or contact information you care to provide um well i would i've mentioned uh dr beisner's website definitely from that standpoint um also um i think probably the best uh climate blog um and the most i think the one that's gotten the most views and is the most reasonable uh is um and that's where my paper is published but it's uh what'supwiththat .com

01:59:21

it's it's w -a -t -t -s for anthony watt what up with that u -p -w -i -t -h -e -h -a -t .com