Goracle gushings on faith-based science.

• Author: Marsh, Gerald E.
• Position: National Affairs

AL GORE WON an Academy Award for his skillfully done film, "An Inconvenient Truth. It was well-deserved. Had he given as good a performance during his campaign for president, he would have won in a landslide. As environmental drama, it only can be compared with Michael Crichton's novel, State of Fear. Both have elements of scientific and political fact, and both are excellent fiction. Gore's admiring fans call him "The Goracle"--a fitting title because, although he cloaks himself in the mantle of science, his belief in human-induced global warming is faith-based. However, while a growing number of people receive their certainty from the Almighty, Gore's faith is based on hubris.

The Nobel Committee recently bestowed the Peace Prize upon Gore and the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Unlike the other Nobel prizes, which are awarded for scientific excellence, the Peace Prize traditionally is given with a not-very-subtle political goal--to prod various governments in directions that the Committee deems desirable. In this case, in step with conventional wisdom, the Nobel Committee clearly has elected to endorse the idea that human activity is causing global warming.

Another faith-based actor on the environmental stage is John Houghton. In 1988, when the IPCC was formed, Houghton became the chair for scientific assessment, and held that post for the first three IPCC reports--spanning a period of some 14 years. Those reports formed the scientific basis for the Kyoto Protocol, an international agreement to reduce carbon dioxide emissions. Houghton also is the founder and president of the John Ray Initiative, a nonprofit organization that educates Christians about the environment. He believes he is on a mission of "creation care," maintaining that "Christians believe that we have been put into the world to look after it and to care for the whole of creation. That's a message presented very early on in the Bible. Adam and Eve were put into a garden and they were told to look after that garden. That garden is Earth."

Does Houghton's idea of "creation care" jibe with other Christian thought on this issue? Not according to the Rev. Louis R Sheldon, the outspoken founder of the Traditional Values Coalition, an interdenominational public policy organization that claims to speak for more than 43,000 churches. On reading Houghton's above quote, he responded, "Nature is no more than the gift of God, given for human domination, development, and stewardship. Some would have us believe that humanity is here to serve the land and the animals. Environmentalism has become a New Age religion unto itself. God our Creator is alone deserving of worship. He is the one who created all life and placed humanity on the Earth as the highest order, allowing the lesser orders to serve us. Environmentalism wrongly focuses on our responsibility of stewardship and too often excludes any acknowledgement of God the Creator of all riving matter."

In making this statement, Sheldon is arguing religion; he does not say his view is scientifically mandated, while Houghton maintains a religious righteousness about his interpretation of climate science. Houghton also implies that those who disagree with him either are in the pay of, or duped by, "vested interests, led very much by the Exxon Mobil oil company and some [U.S.] coal companies, [which have] set up a misinformation campaign aimed at persuading people that the science was flawed and that no action was required. In particular, they tried very hard to discredit the IPCC. That campaign was influential at all levels of American society."

One can wonder how that campaign would compare with the $100,000,000 or so a year that Gore's Alliance for Climate Protection is spending on lobbying and changing attitudes. One also might wonder whether those who wrote the IPCC "Summaries for Policymakers" that were published during Houghton's tenure ever had read the heavily caveated scientific papers that were included in the bodies of the IPCC reports. Given the gap between the impression of certainty conveyed by the "Summaries," and the warnings in the scientific part of the reports, there is good reason to raise questions about the IPCC and its internal processes. The "Summaries," after all, represent a consensus of government representatives (many of whom also are their nations' Kyoto representatives), not of scientists. They are designed to convince world leaders to take action.

The faith-based approach to the issue of global warming has expanded far beyond Houghton and his "creation care" initiative. The enormous growth of climate change as a religious issue clearly is set forth in the 2005 report, "Americans and Climate Change: Closing the Gap between Science and Action," of the Yale School of Forestry & Environmental Studies Conference on Climate Change. It is authored by Daniel R. Abbasi, who is the department's associate dean as well as the director of the Environmental...