Customer Reviews

A Climate for Change: Global Warming Facts for Faith-Based Decisions

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(7)
3 star:		(6)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

The faith in the "faith-based decisions" of the title is narrowly cast as the religion of American Christians who favor a literal interpretation of the Bible. Hayhoe and Farley stake out their territory early -- "We don't worship the earth. We worship the Creator of the universe." However, they also proclaim that they "believe in common sense," and that's where they make a valuable contribution toward bringing current climate science into the average person's living room. Instead of arguing about whether the earth is only a few thousand years old or billions, they look at the scientific evidence for global warming and counter some popular misconceptions about what the studies actually show and where areas of uncertainty remain. The book's largish print, punchy sentences, and full color charts keep the technical information accessible and help readers understand that disagreement among scientists about the details - such as why northern ice caps are melting faster than expected -- doesn't mean there is gross disagreement about the general arc of climate trends. And for the reader who remains unconvinced of the reality of global warming, they suggest a medical analogy: If your doctor said you had symptoms of early signs of a serious illness, wouldn't you want to do what you could to prevent the full onset of that illness?

Much environmental advocacy stops there and says, in effect, humans made the mess, so we are obligated to clean it up. That's not a very inspiring or motivating message. Hayhoe and Farley take a different tactic, one that could be emulated by any faith community using the language of its own holy teachings. They base their call for action not on the guilty conscience of the materialistic West, but on the need for compassion. Hayhoe's research on the possible effects of global warming paints a dismal picture of the potential suffering that billions of the world's poorest could face. The obligation on Christians, they argue, is to stop being ignorant or indifferent about climate change and to act, even if it's in just some small way: "Doing something, anything, about climate change is a step in the direction of caring for people." The book offers a very lean menu of suggested actions - use less heat and electricity, swap out incandescent bulbs for fluorescents, take your own shopping bags to the store, replace worn-out appliances and cars with more efficient models. The reader who has become motivated to act may be disappointed that more ideas aren't offered, but additional resources for environmentally smart living are listed in the back of the book.

For the final contrarian holdouts, the book concludes with reasons why efforts to slow the effects of climate change do not have to be expensive, anti-development, destructive to the economy, or dependent on technology that hasn't been invented yet. True global warming skeptics probably would never make it to those final pages, but the arguments may be helpful to readers seeking a way to justify to their friends why they've started lightening their footprint on the earth.

I give extra points for the discussion questions in the back that make this a potential small group study aid. Also, to keep the flow of the text clean, the authors avoided footnotes and endnotes, but readers who want to know more will find all their sources listed at the end of the book, including dozens of current scientific articles.

I am a scientist who had the pleasure of reviewing this book as it went to press. Written by a climate scientist and an evangelical pastor, "A Climate for Change" clearly explains the science and the urgency of global warming in a way that I hope will resonate with Christian readers.

The book makes it clear that global warming is a scientific reality, not something driven by a political agenda. Furthermore, the authors drive home the point that doing something about global warming is "a step in the direction of caring for people". Quite simply, fighting global warming is the right thing to do.

I hope this well written, visually appealing and morally powerful book reaches a wide audience.

This is a good resource for information about what we can know about global warming and it's likely causes, presented in simple, straightforward terms, and interspersed with a solid biblical basis for why we should educate ourselves and why we should care. Basic historical, ecological, and geological data are presented and compared by a qualified scientist and evangelical pastor; the current state of consensus is presented; and predictions of 10 or 20 years ago are compared to actual changes and to updated predictions of the past few years.

If you really want to respond to this issue as a Christian (and you MUST), this book gives you the information you need to help choose a Christian response. Also a good resource for discussing these issues with family members and those Christians you know who still don't buy the idea that humans might actually be destroying the incredible gift God gave us to live on.

Highly recommended.

Two criticisms: 1) they seem to spend more time than is necessary in hammering home the main points, sometimes referencing backup data more again. As an engineer and scientist, this may just be my impatience to get to the conclusions/recommendations once I'm on board with the facts and statistics, so someone less knowledgable of the background info provided may not find it repetitive. 2) I really wanted to get to the 'how do we respond' bit, but this part turned out to be a bit weak. Yes, it lists a lot of things an individual or family can do, but not much sound theological reasons for any of them, and a bit of a "if you do anything, it's better than nothing" kind of recommendation. Still, the info is there for anyone who really wants to use it.

A Climate for Change is a clearly written, engaging read, with a straightforward presentation of the facts behind today's concerns about global warming and the "positive feedback loops" that are exacerbating the effects of human actions. Written from the perspective of thoughtful Christians, the book challenges all to reflect on what would be loving Christian responses to the impacts of global warming, which will fall most heavily on those least able to move or adapt to its changes. The science data presented is very clear. There are colorful inserts that clearly depict the changing trends the world is experiencing. While respectful of the different responses that people of conviction may make, the authors suggest that, individually, we each will make choices, and those choices will have consequences. They encourage truly keeping God at our center, and choosing to do that which will honor God and best respect God's handiwork.

This is a wonderful book about climate change and what it means for Joe and Jane Q. Public. The discussion of climate science is crisp, intuitive, and non-political. For anyone whose sister-in-law ever said "oh, it's cold today, I guess global warming is over," this is the book for you.

It's a collaboration between a top climate scientist, Katharine Hayhoe, and a leading linguist (to whom she happens to be married). Both are fine writers to start with, but like Lennon and McCartney, they bring out each other's best work.

The climate scientist, Dr. Hayhoe, is one of the lead authors of the influential report (issued in June 2009) by the US Global Change Research Program about the likely impacts of climate change in the U.S. Dr. Hayhoe knows her science, but she also knows how to communicate vividly to a lay audience. And her husband, Andrew Farley, does the same in explaining why evangelicals should be concerned about a changing climate.

Kudos to the good Professors for this one.

I think this is one of the more balanced books out on the subject of climate change. I was hoping it was more of a bible study for use in our church. We may still do this and while there are biblical references it is more of a science based book than biblical based.

So if you are looking for a bible study I would rate this as fair, but if you are looking for a book on climate change I would rate it very good.

I may be a bit biased here as I was searching for a possible book to use as abible study at our church, so I had a specific objective in mind. Unfortunately I have not been able to find anything better.

The National Centre for Science Education, on its website, requests donations of items for its library and resources, including this book "A Climate for Change: Global Warming Facts for Faith-Based Decisions" (why they want it is a question I don't know the answer to; they also want Willian Dembski's book "The End of Christianity").

While I was purchasing this book for the NCSE, I decided to also buy a Kindle version for myself, to see what the authors' take on climate change is.

It starts off well, with an evocative description of the effects climate change are having on the Inuit. I was a little bemused that it actually even mentions the question whether the Earth is 4.5 billion years old, or whether God just created it 10,000 years ago to look old (with also the current ice age apparently lasting 3 million years, including 50 or so glaciations and 50 or so interglacial periods-including the current one we are living in) and the constant quotation of Scripture to justify their views.

I give it 3 stars; worth reading, but not worth reading again. It's a bit better than Ian Plimer's "Heaven and Earth", which I gave 2 stars (which in my rating system means that I found it difficult to finish), because it was badly written and grossly inaccurate in the science (see my review of it for examples; I initially was highlighting all the errors in it until the memory on my iPad for highlights gave out less than a third of the way into the book, and the Kindle App kept on crashing).

At least "A Climate for Change" doesn't have the same number of science errors (but only because it's actually 'science light'). Not that it isn't capable of making mistakes; for example, "As coral grows, it absorbs one of two kinds of oxygen, standard or deuterium, from the seawater". Actually, deuterium is an isotope of hydrogen, with one neutron in addition to its one proton. I know what they meant to write; with warming corals take up more Oxygen 18 (with 2 extra neutrons) than the standard Oxygen 16, because with a warming sea, more of the lighter water with O16 evaporates, leaving more of the heavier water with O18 (that's the way heavy water with deuterium was made; slowly heating and evaporating much of a very large volume of ordinary water to leave more concentrated D2O behind).

It also makes other errors. The American Association of Petroleum Geologists hasn't changed their position on anthropogenic climate change, as the authors claim they did in 2008. After noting that extreme weather conditions can't be used to support the idea of climate change, they then proceed to do that. Katrina was disastrous because the levees were structurally unsound, wetlands surrounding New Orleans had disappeared removing the buffer to storms and building had occurred in the wrong places. The disastrous bush-fires in Victoria Australia in 2009 were largely due to the neglect of basic preventative control burns in preceding years (Australian trees drop a lot of branches throughout the year, leaving a lot of highly combustible ground tinder, which eventually will have to catch fire, either in a controlled burn in the cooler seasons, or at the height of a hot Summer), and also due to people building in dangerous, but very scenic, bush settings.

I find it very annoying that debate on climate change has become very polarised, with almost religious fervour demonstrated on both sides.

I wish we could all come to some sort of agreement as to what is known about climate, what is speculative and what is just wrong.

My list of facts would include:

Climate is very complex. There are many influences, including solar output, slight orbital changes of the Earth (the Milankovitch cycles), the distribution of the continents with tectonic plate movement, aerosols in the atmosphere from volcanos and industry, changes in cloud cover and changes in albedo of the Earth (including carbon soot darkening snow and ice increasing absorption of heat). And changes in greenhouse gases. Some are cooling. Some are warming.

The Earth has been both hotter and colder in the past, at various times. The causes for climate change then might not be the same for all, and not the same as now. The past only provides information as to how quickly climate can change.

Computer climate models are likely to be inaccurate in predicting the future. Actually, all they do is make projections, based on assumptions as to how we are going to act in the future, giving ball park estimates to give some idea as to what might possibly happen. There's no certainty.

I find it distressing that climate change skeptics don't apply the same skepticism to their own arguments. I have often heard it claimed that increasing cloud cover as a result of any climate warming will largely negate the warming (it begs the question as to what the effect reduced sunlight will have on our agricultural crops).

My take on climate change is; 1. Do we have enough evidence to justify taking action? 2. If not, are there any other reasons for taking action?

My personal worry is actually resource depletion. There currently are no large untapped reserves of oil available. Present reserves of oil might last another 50 years. There might be large reserves under the Arctic Ocean, but there is no current technology to exploit them (unless warming is much larger than expected, there will always be sea ice in the Arctic, and pack ice driven by wind and current against ocean oil rigs will be like the irresistible force coming up against the immovable-by us-object). Energy shortages will only increase; there are currently 1.5 billion people who currently without any electricity. If nothing else, justice demands that they should get at least some minimum amount of the abundant energy we currently enjoy.

Of course we need the right plan, which I concede will be very difficult.

Making biofuels from crops grown on valuable farm land is a very bad idea (particularly since there is minimal if any net gain of energy).

I also think carbon sequestration in coal fired power plants is a bad idea too, although I think coal should be phased out. The term 'clean coal' is an oxymoron. As the authors point out, coal contains trace amounts of heavy metals, but because so much coal is burned, the trace amounts become significant. Fluorescent light globes, because they reduce the energy required, reduce mercury pollution generated from the coal (and LCD lights would be even more effective) outweighing any possible exposure from the mercury in the bulbs (which anyway are sealed). A coal powered plant generates more radioactive pollution than a similarly sized nuclear plant, due to the trace amounts of radioactive metals in coal.

Everything should be on the table; including nuclear (unfortunately Clinton/Gore canned development of the 4th generation nuclear reactor in 1994; it promised to be able to use the waste from the current 2nd generation reactors and solve the waste problem to manageable proportions. Whether it would have been viable is unknown).

So we need alternate energy sources, energy efficiency and energy conservation. We need to live more intelligently and sustainably, and be happy with what we have. We are going to have to make some adjustments anyway; inevitably the price of oil will increase, so we will need to mitigate (decarbonise the economy) for economic if not global warming reasons.

I recycle just about anything I can recycle. Cans, newspapers, plastic bottles. I compost and try to save water where I can. But I really never gave Global Warming much thought.

When I did think about it, I figured a lot of what was being said out in the `world' was being blow out of proportion or was being used for political gain.

After reading this book, my eyes have been opened more to the possibility that it's not really a political issue. There is proof that things are changing and it's mans fault that it's gotten this way.

From the very beginning of this book I was drawn in. I was comforted in the very first statements of the authors.

"We're Christians. We don't worship the earth. We worship the Creator of the universe. We believe that God spoke the world into existence and sustains it by His power. We believe that Jesus Christ is the way to eternal life, that the Bible is God's Word, and that nothing compare to the importance of the gospel message."

I knew after reading that statement I would be able to gain a lot of wisdom and information.

I highly recommend reading this book. I read it in just a few sittings--I couldn't put it down! It was easy to read while at the same time efficiently explaining the science that goes into determining if global warming is truly happening.

Katharine Hayhoe, a climate scientist, answers nearly every question or argument raised in this hot debate about global warming. For example, "Isn't the planet cooling; not warming?" Others ask, "Aren't sunspots producing the change?" And, "Don't scientists themselves disagree about the reality of climate change and its causes?" These questions and more are answered with sound scientific scholarship and a warm tone.

Given the facts the authors lay out about global warming, how should we then live as the people of God? Along with Hayhoe, Andrew Farley--an evangelical pastor and linguist, gives a resounding answer that echoes the Hebrew prophets, Micah (see 6:8) and Isaiah (see 1:17), as well as Jesus himself when he summarized all of the Hebrew law and the prophets with this: "Love God; Love others." (Matthew 22:37-40) The Apostle Paul also said, "Love does no wrong to a neighbor." (Romans 13:10) How does all this relate to climate change? You've got to read this book!

I've been interested in the climate change argument I've been digesting both sides of the debate for quite some time, and the authors provide a fresh perspective in this work. While a faith-based perspective is at the forefront of the book, it is really based on solid logic and scientific arguments that transcend much of the mainstream news. I believe it is a must-read for anyone wanting to see evidence of climate change from a balanced perspective.