Where Did the Hurricanes Go?

This week, hurricane season will come to a close, but not without first embarrassing quite a few advocates of the Global Warming scare. Last spring, cataclysmic predictions were made, claiming that human-produced greenhouse gases warmed the earth's oceans, which in turn would produced hurricanes in record numbers. Seventeen named storms would likely form in the Atlantic, experts said. One in six Americans could be directly affected. The Northeastern U.S. was "staring down the barrel of a gun." As it turned out there were only nine named storms, five of which were hurricanes, compared to a record-setting 28 named storms during the 2005 hurricane season.

What happened? Neil Johnson of the Tampa Tribune points to masses of dry Saharan dust and a rapidly growing El Nino. But hurricanes are notoriously unpredictable. We used to accept this. Things changed, however, when the environmental Chicken Littles exploited the 2005 hurricane season to scare Americans into submission.

To date, scientists have not been able to establish a link between Global Warming and manmade greenhouse gases. That is not to say that the earth isn't undergoing a warming trend. It is. Over the last century the earth's surface has warmed by one degree Fahrenheit.

Furthermore, our cars and factories are producing more carbon dioxide, which is part of the greenhouse effect, the process by which the earth is insulated by greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. However, water still accounts for 90% of the greenhouse effect. Nobody's talking about reducing cloud cover.

Weather patterns are cyclical. We are presently in a warming trend. Thirty years ago we were experiencing a cooling pattern. (Newsweek is still licking its wounds after printing a cover story in April of 1975 predicting another Ice Age.) Before that, we were again in a warming stage. Warming and cooling patterns can be traced back to the creation of the universe. The truth of the matter is, Global Warming is real, but it is not as scary as politicians and the media make it out to be.

Christians ought to be interested in these things. After all, this is God's world (Ps. 24:1; Job 41:11; Ps. 50:10-12). We are but stewards of our own environment (Gen. 1:26-28; 2:15). In the days before Christ, God set forth laws to protect the land--a Sabbath rest (Ex. 23:10-11), the law of jubilee (Lev. 25:23), etc. There is no reason to believe these concerns should not be shared on the other side of the cross.

But let's not get carried away. Politicians will always be haranguing about something. We'll fix our thoughts on the Word of God.