{"id":16006,"date":"2024-10-10T04:30:00","date_gmt":"2024-10-10T08:30:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/christoverall.com\/?p=16006"},"modified":"2024-10-10T06:54:03","modified_gmt":"2024-10-10T10:54:03","slug":"the-antihuman-insanity-of-net-zero-climate-policy-how-climate-catastrophist-energy-and-farming-policies-threaten-human-thriving","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/christoverall.com\/article\/concise\/the-antihuman-insanity-of-net-zero-climate-policy-how-climate-catastrophist-energy-and-farming-policies-threaten-human-thriving\/","title":{"rendered":"The Antihuman Insanity of Net-Zero Climate Policy: How Climate Catastrophist Energy and Farming Policies Threaten Human Thriving"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Self-professed evangelical climate scientist Katharine Hayhoe, a professor in (significantly) the political<\/em> science department of Texas Tech University, published, as paid content, her essay \u201cLove Thy Neighbor: The Christian Case for Climate Action<\/a>,\u201d in Christianity Today<\/em> on August 30, 2024. Its appearance a month after the release of Megan Basham\u2019s Shepherds for Sale: How Evangelical Leaders Traded the Truth for a Leftist Agenda<\/em> was quite ironic. Basham repeatedly, and convincingly, charges various evangelical leaders with abusing the Second Great Commandment to \u201clove thy neighbor\u201d by pinning it to every political policy they want\u2014climate action, open borders and unrestricted immigration, opposition to the death penalty, adoption of Critical Race Theory, approval of the LGBTQ+ agenda, and more.[1]<\/a> Indeed, in her chapter on climate change, Basham presents as an example of such abuse a lecture by Jonathan Moo (professor of environmental studies at Whitworth College), delivered at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary, titled \u201cLoving God and Neighbor in an Age of Climate Crisis.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

1. Disclosure: Basham writes positively of the Cornwall Alliance for the Stewardship of Creation, the nonprofit I founded, and about me.<\/h6>\n\n\n\n

So, I was tempted to title this essay \u201cLove Thy Neighbor: The Christian Case AGAINST Climate Action.\u201d But precisely in light of Basham\u2019s above critique, I\u2019ll refrain from that. Is \u201cclimate action\u201d really loving your neighbor? Is it ever enough to say, \u201cI did it because I loved\u201d\u2014when that\u2019s such a common excuse for violations of God\u2019s clear commands, e.g., against adultery and fornication? Or might Christian economist Walter Williams have gotten something right when he wrote, in his book The State Against Blacks<\/em>, \u201ctruly compassionate policy requires dispassionate analysis\u201d? So, dear reader, when you finish this article, I\u2019ll leave it to you to decide what love of neighbor calls for in response to claims of catastrophic climate change and demands for radical action to combat it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Someone Pulled the Fire Alarm, But Where Is the Fire?<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

In May of 2023, former Secretary of State John Kerry, speaking as President Joe Biden\u2019s special envoy on climate, told a gathering in Washington, D.C. that the world must achieve drastic cuts in greenhouse gas emissions from agriculture to avoid what Reuters called<\/a> \u201cthe worst impacts of climate change.\u201d Claiming \u201cA 2-degree future could result in another 600 million people not getting enough to eat,\u201d Kerry added, \u201cYou can\u2019t continue to warm the planet while also expecting to feed it.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

(Purveyors of panic prefer to provide protection for their predictions by adopting frightening but equivocal language. \u201cCould result\u201d also means \u201ccould fail to result.\u201d If the quasi-prediction proves wrong, Kerry can always say, \u201cWell, I didn\u2019t say it would<\/em>; I only said it could<\/em>.\u201d)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On the basis of this sort of reasoning, and at the urging of climate-change catastrophists the world over, President Joe Biden pledged<\/a> that the U.S. would reach \u201cnet zero\u201d greenhouse gas (primarily carbon dioxide) emissions by 2050.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Kerry\u2019s speech was at the AIM Climate Summit\u2014the \u201cAgricultural Innovation Mission for Climate.\u201d It advocates for \u201cclimate-smart agriculture,\u201d i.e., growing food in ways that don\u2019t increase global atmospheric greenhouse gas emissions (more on this later).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the case of agriculture, the principal component of such emissions is nitrous oxide, a greenhouse gas that is, molecule for molecule, 230 times more powerful<\/em> than carbon dioxide, the most well-known villain (the alleged, but probably not<\/a>, sole <\/em>driver) of global warming (aka climate change). And since the whole world has been taught that carbon dioxide emissions are evil because carbon dioxide warms the planet, and warming the planet is evil (never mind that cold kills far more people than warmth), it\u2019s a no-brainer that nitrous oxide emissions must be 230 times more evil. Quod Erat Demonstrandum\u2014the prosecutor rests his case.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Not So Fast<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

As I pointed out nearly two years ago<\/a>, the devil\u2019s in the details\u2014details called \u201cradiative forcing,\u201d that is, the capacity of a molecule of a greenhouse gas to absorb infrared radiation (heat) moving from Earth\u2019s surface out toward space and send some of it back down to the surface, thus impeding Earth\u2019s ability to cool its surface.[2]<\/a> Those who reason that since nitrous oxide is 230 times more powerful than carbon dioxide as a greenhouse gas neglect, I explained<\/a>,<\/p>\n\n\n\n

2. My apologies, but what follows is going to have to get into some numbers and science. To avoid littering this article with dozens of references to technical sources, let me simply state that support for most of the details and all of the overall picture appears in Climate and Energy: The Case for Realism<\/em><\/a> [Regnery, 2024]. I co-edited this volume with my colleague, award-winning climatology professor Dr. David R. Legates, and it contains sixteen chapters by nine climate scientists, three economists, three energy experts, and myself.<\/h6>\n\n\n\n
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. . . two important things. First, nitrous oxide\u2019s concentration in the atmosphere is about 0.334 parts per million, while carbon dioxide\u2019s is nearly 1,300 times as high: 420 parts per million. Second, and more important, carbon dioxide\u2019s concentration is increasing at a rate some 3,000 times that of nitrous oxide. Consequently, the contribution of each year\u2019s addition of nitrous oxide to the annual increase in forcing is 230 divided by 3000, or about 1\/13th [7.7 percent] that of carbon dioxide. . . .<\/p>\n\n\n\n

To cut to the chase, it can be calculated<\/a>, based on the well-understood physics of radiative transfer, that the combined<\/em> radiative forcing of carbon dioxide, methane, and nitrous oxide that are being added to the atmosphere is enough to raise global average atmospheric temperature by about 0.1 degree Celsius (0.18 degree Fahrenheit) per decade, or 1.0 degree Celsius (1.8 degrees Fahrenheit) per century. But since the rate of increase of nitrous oxide\u2019s concentration in the atmosphere is much, much lower than that of either carbon dioxide or methane, it turns out that the radiative forcing of nitrous oxide being added to the atmosphere is only about 0.01 degree Fahrenheit per decade, or 0.1 degree per century\u2014one eighteenth of the combined warming from all three gases.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

In short, nitrous oxide\u2019s contribution to global warming is minuscule. How minuscule? Well, consider that:<\/p>\n\n\n\n