Transcript: Climate Change and Bible Prophecy: Understanding the Connection

The Global Climate Change In this video, and the two that follow, I hope to approach the subject of global climate change in a way that I have so far never seen anyone else do it before. Professing Christians who claim to believe in Bible prophecy are famous for sticking their heads in the sand with regard to the whole subject of climate change. On the other hand, hardly anyone who is seriously concerned about climate change would ever spare a moment to consider whether it may be part of more detailed Bible predictions. Old Thomas Hobbes was wrong. He believed in the doctrine of original sin, his understanding of evolutionary biology was confined to the book of Genesis. But today, we know it is simply wrong. predictions about how the world is going to change, how it's going to be judged, and how things are just plain going to end at this point in history. Please stay with me as I attempt to put these two extremes together in order to paint the full picture, one layer at a time. Layer 1 will be the backdrop, which is climate change itself. Layer 2 is the present world picture, economically, technologically and politically. And layer 3 is the bigger picture, that is, how at least some of this stuff was predicted thousands of years ago and most important, why things are happening as they are at this point in history. But first, the backdrop. Climate change. Recent interest in climate change, and the horrifying implications this has for the history of the planet has produced a very powerful and unique backdrop to a biblical explanation of what awaits the world in the years just ahead. That period just before the creator of this planet decides that he has had enough of our greed, and he steps in to personally intervene in human affairs and to make us individually and corporately accountable for what we have done. Science has done so much for the world, especially in the field of medicine, but arguably, science's greatest hour is something that is happening right now. Thousands of scientists from all over the world have reached almost unanimous agreement on the very serious implications of their various fields of research in relation to what is broadly described as climate change. Ironically, despite the overwhelming agreement and that includes both Christian climate experts and atheistic climate experts despite such unprecedented unity among those who have the best access to all the facts a sizable portion of the world is zealously and often quite irrationally opposed to accepting the conclusions that all these scientists have reached. There may not have been any more significant yet more controversial development in human history than this one. Almost total agreement among those who know the most about what is really happening in weather patterns on this planet does not seem to have fazed the climate change denialists. Yet, what hangs in the balance is simply too horrible to put our trust in amateurs, no matter how many of them band together, and no matter how loudly they scream their various conspiracy theories. Who we choose to believe right now may make all the difference between survival and extinction. We must get this right, and we must get it right very soon. The subject of climate change is so complex and so multifaceted that it has not been easy for even the greatest scientists to succinctly summarize the various conclusions that they have reached as a fraternity. Perhaps because of this, questions and complaints still flow in from the rest of us about myriad details, each of which may need to be dealt with separately in order for us to get a clearer picture. At some point, however, we will need to stop arguing and start trusting those who know more than what any of us can know or understand personally. I will attempt in this video to present a very simple overview of how I, a non-expert, understand what the experts themselves are saying. It will, almost of necessity, have flaws, but hopefully it will be more right than wrong, and hopefully it can cover some of the basics. Number 1. The sun warms the earth. Most of us can see that. It's obvious. Furthermore, much of the heat that hits the earth also bounces off. If that did not happen, the earth would get warmer and warmer at such a rate that the surface of the earth would in a very short period of time virtually catch fire It is this overheating that deeply concerns climate scientists around the world at the moment There are three types of molecules in the air which hold heat in. The main one, throughout the history of this planet, has been water vapor , commonly referred to as clouds. Clouds are like a blanket, absorbing heat from above and holding some heat in down below. During the winter, we usually appreciate cloud cover at night, as it holds in some of the heat that the sun gave us during the day. As I understand it, even water vapors or clouds are increasing slightly at the moment. This is just one of those scary feedback loops you may have heard about. As the oceans warm, more water evaporates, and this evaporation creates more clouds. Those clouds trap even more heat, thus increasing water temperatures further. We call this a feedback loop because it becomes a cycle which feeds on itself, and it may be difficult, if not impossible, to stop once it gets up a certain momentum. There is another concept called a tipping point, where enough of these loops get started that we as a species become totally powerless to stop it. Now, no one knows exactly when we might reach that point, but scientists agree that we are definitely moving closer. Our steady march toward that uncertain tipping point absolutely must be reversed, and it must be reversed very soon. There are two other molecules, besides water vapor, which trap heat in the Earth's atmosphere. These two molecules are methane and carbon dioxide. I'll get to methane shortly, but let's first talk about carbon dioxide, or CO2, as the chemists call it. Human beings breathe in oxygen, and we breathe out carbon dioxide. Plants need carbon dioxide in order to survive. So, as they grow, they take in tons of carbon dioxide and give off clean, pure oxygen for us to breathe. For millennia, plants... well, trees in particular... have been more than capable of soaking up any excess carbon dioxide in the air. But, as the population of the earth has grown, and as the number of trees have diminished, our production of carbon dioxide has proven to be too much for the plants to absorb and the situation is getting worse every year. Some of this carbon dioxide comes from us breathing, but we produce carbon dioxide in other ways too. When you burn anything that has carbon in it, the carbon combines with oxygen in the air to form carbon dioxide molecules. Every lit candle and every blazing fireplace churns out carbon dioxide. Extremely dangerous amounts of carbon dioxide come from the millions of tons of coal that we burn to produce electricity. More CO2 comes from millions of fuel-driven motors. Motors on trucks, cars, trains and planes. These motors burn various forms of carbon-based fuels and they do it day in and day out all over the world. Finally, there are a lot more animals on the planet now, as we humans raise them for meat and for other by-products such as milk and eggs. There is, for example, one cow for every seven human beings in the world, and there are about 20 times as many chickens as there are cows. All of these animals breathe out carbon dioxide in the same way that we humans do, so they too are contributing to global warming. But there is another molecule besides water vapor and besides carbon dioxide which is estimated to be about 30 times more dangerous than carbon dioxide when it comes to absorbing heat from the sun. That molecule is called methane, or CH4. Methane is produced whenever animal or vegetable matter decomposes. Emissions happen most widely in natural wetlands and rice paddies, but they also come from fecal waste from humans, cows, and other animals. Decomposition in landfill also contributes to the methane threat. Accurate predictions are still uncertain, but evidence suggests that methane emissions from natural wetlands and rice paddies could be one of the most dangerous loops facing the planet. This is because methane gas emissions from such vast areas of the earth not only cause global temperatures to rise but as the temperatures rise the emissions themselves rise even more Heat speeds up the decomposition and decomposition gives off more heat The cause and the effect are both the same. Increased global warming. But how much overheating are we talking about? After all, most of us have experienced temperatures higher than 100 degrees Fahrenheit or higher than 38 degrees Celsius, with no lasting damage to ourselves or our possessions. Surely we humans are not going to be wiped out by a change of 2 or 3 degrees in overall temperature of the earth. But it's not as simple as that. When we talk about a rise in temperature of a few degrees, we are not talking about weather. We are talking about climate. Failure to recognize the difference between weather and climate is the most common giveaway that someone does not understand the issues. As far as, you know, predicting the climate change or it's going to warm 2 to 3 degrees, they can't even get my weather right and tells me it's going to rain and never doesn't rain. Weather changes, often quite dramatically from day to day and from place to place. We can have heat waves and cold spells, hot spots and cold spots in the same day but climate change is about long-term global averages going up by as little as half a degree over a period of several decades or more. Where this is probably most significant is in our oceans. Ocean water temperatures are more stable than any other part of our planet. An overall average rise of just half a degree Celsius in ocean waters can have devastating effects. Already the Great Barrier Reef in Australia, the largest living thing on earth, has been bleached white because of warming in the waters around it. What that means is that the various algae, which usually give the reef its beautiful colors, have died off. These delicate plants could not adapt to such a minuscule rise in water temperature. The reef itself, despite an ugly whiteness, has not necessarily died yet. But if we cannot reverse the temperature of the water covering the reef very quickly, it will most certainly die. And all of that is a result of a rise of a fraction of a degree Celsius. This tiny rise in ocean temperatures has also affected world weather patterns. With slightly more heat rising from the ocean, those huge updrafts have significantly altered normal air currents. Currents which used to move predictably around the globe and which were often shown on world maps and globes because they were so predictable. But now, all of that is changing. Then there are the land masses of Earth. Even on land, we are still only talking about a slight rise in temperature between 1.5 degrees Celsius and 2.5 degrees Celsius. So how would you or I know if an average increase of 2 degrees was happening all over the globe? We wouldn't. We have no way of knowing that without huge amounts of data collected over many decades and collected from all areas of the world. where you or I live might actually be getting colder, at the same time that the overall average is rising. We must trust the data that the experts have collected, especially when there is such unanimous agreement among the experts that climate is changing and that the change threatens massive extinction an extinction which is already happening to both plants and animals all over the world. I might add that neither side should rely too heavily on isolated incidents to prove anything. To be fair, this must include the catastrophic bushfires that destroyed millions of hectares of bush in Australia this year. There will be more fires, both here and elsewhere, because overall, the world is getting hotter and drier. Winds are changing too, as a result of climate change. if urgent action is not taken, there will eventually be worse fires. But, in the short run, this is still weather, and there are likely to be better years than what we have experienced this year as well. If we climate activists don't make that clear, and if we cannot consider the possibility that this is extreme evidence that it may not be as bad next year or the year after, then we set ourselves up for those who are in denial to argue that the crisis is past, if and when things settle down. But we can say this Until very strong action is taken to counteract climate change things like widespread bushfires will eventually get worse So what needs to be done I know people don want to hear it but it going to take a lot more than recycling your rubbish or doing away with plastic shopping bags to save the planet We are talking about serious changes, one which most of us have never even considered. Probably the least difficult change which the entire world could make to solve the climate crisis would be to stop eating meat and other animal products. Even if we all just stopped eating beef, we would be able to cut the world's cattle population by two-thirds. That would represent a significant drop in both carbon dioxide and methane as produced by the cattle themselves. But, more than that, on the land that would become available, we could grow six times as much grain as what all those cows weigh, or about 1.5 billion tons of grain per year. That is double the amount of rice that the world consumes each year. In other words, if we used all the grain which is now being fed to beef cattle, if we used that grain for human consumption instead, we could, theoretically, replace rice with other grains and thus eliminate methane emissions from all the rice paddies in the world. Land which is now being used to grow rice could be put to some other use instead. A very high percentage of climate change activists now recommend that a meatless diet be the first consideration in making the kind of changes that are needed to bring climate change under control. The other most simple solution is to plant trees. Millions of them, if not billions. Trees just naturally gobble up carbon dioxide by the ton. Obviously we need land that is fertile enough for the trees to grow, but, as I just pointed out with regard to meat eating, if we all stopped eating beef, we would have more than enough land to grow replacement crops for the rice paddies. If we did nothing more than plant trees in all the rice paddies of the world, that would represent enough trees to soak up 3 billion tons of carbon dioxide per year. That's a lot of CO2. There are, however, other changes that need to be seriously considered as well. Take coal, for example. While Australia continues to close its eyes to what our coal production is doing to the planet, the rest of the world is beginning to see that we can no longer depend on coal for electricity. We must find other ways to generate power. We will probably continue to use coal to create steel, but if we stop burning it to generate electricity, then the coal stocks we now have will last much longer and put far less strain on the environment. Then there are the fuels that we pump into our machines. trucks, tractors, generators, airplanes, ships, trains and automobiles. The long-term solution is to stop shipping commodities all over the world. We need a more village-centered economy, where most of what we use is produced locally. Much of the world already lives like that today, and the rest of us could as well. This would significantly reduce our need to travel, But we would also need to consider ways of local transport that are not dependent on oil products like bicycles, mass transit, maybe even horses. There will always be some things that require cooperation between nations, but on the whole we have been telling ourselves for decades that we cannot live without millions of things that we absolutely can live without, and we need to start doing that. Let's stop competing to see who can get the most, and put our emphasis on who can achieve happiness while getting by on the shortest list of necessities. In this video, I've tried to paint what I call a backdrop for understanding where this planet is and where our species is at this crucial point in history. Climate change, while it is the single most pressing issue for the world at the moment is not the only issue to be considered. Climate change and its implications will impact on governments and business, just as governments and business will impact on climate change. So now, we will move on to an overview of other significant developments, which will soon impact on the whole climate change movement. Please watch the second video in this series, which is called The Present World Picture. This video looks at changes in technology, changes in the world economy, and changes in world politics, which will soon affect all of us, possibly even more directly and more quickly than climate change. Thank you.