Global Warming - Wayne County Journal Banner

A lot of time and money is invested in predicting the weather. Researchers plot weather patterns and record weather-related statistics such as daily high and low temperatures, average temperatures, and seasonal weather changes. Over the last few years the subject of global warming has become a hot topic of discussion (no pun intended). According to the Danish Institute for International Studies, global warming refers to an increase in the earth’s temperature caused by human activities resulting in a multiplicity of cataclysmic events. If some scientists are correct, global warming is bringing changing weather patterns that will result in environmental disaster.

In January of 2006, director Davis Guggenheim released a documentary entitled An Inconvenient Truth. The film details former Vice-President Al Gore’s campaign to educate people about global warming. In the film, Mr. Gore projected that the Globally Averaged Temperature of the Earth would rise +0.72° Centigrade by January 2010. But according to Dr. Roy Spencer’s Globally Averaged Satellite-Based Tropospheric Temperatures that are released each month, through February of this year globally averaged temperatures have plunged to 0.56° Fahrenheit (0.31°C) since An Inconvenient Truth was released at the Sundance Film Festival on Jan. 24, 2006.

There is much debate in the scientific community on the subject of global warming, and especially regarding governmental efforts to prevent global warming. E. Calvin Beisner, of the Cornwall Alliance for the Stewardship of Creation, claims that the plan proposed would cost $50 trillion to lower the earth’s temperature by 0.2°F. 

The subject of global warming was first broached nearly two thousand years ago when Peter wrote, “But the day of the Lord will come like a thief, in which the heavens will pass away with a roar and the elements will be destroyed with intense heat, and the earth and its works will be burned up … the heavens will be destroyed by burning, and the elements will melt with intense heat!” (2 Peter 3:10, 12 New American Standard Bible).

While scientists and scholars and other interested parties quibble over fractions of degrees, Peter warned that the ultimate global warming will come on a much grander scale. Peter said there will be a heat so intense that it will destroy the elements. When you consider that gold melts at 1949°F and vaporizes, that is, evaporates at 4675°F, and iron vaporizes at 4982°F, a few tenths of a degree doesn’t seem like all that much.

Because the earth and the things of the earth will be destroyed, Peter asks, “Since all these things are to be destroyed in this way, what sort of people ought you to be in holy conduct and godliness, looking for and hastening the coming of the day of God” (2 Peter 3:11 NASB). 

I believe that Paul answered that question for us when he wrote, “Let us walk honestly, as in the day; not in rioting and drunkenness, not in chambering and wantonness, not in strife and envying. But put ye on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make not provision for the flesh, to fulfil the lusts thereof” (Romans 13:13 â€" 14 King James Version).