Five Things Everyone Should Know

Well, here are the five things that Bill Nye says everyone needs to know about climate change:

Number One: Our Atmosphere

#1: The atmosphere is thin. Barely 60 miles, 100 kilometres, in outer space.

Now, we shouldn’t be concerned about our atmosphere being too thin because our atmosphere was designed by the perfect Creator. That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t take care of it—we certainly need to make sure we don’t fill our atmosphere with pollutants or punch holes in the ozone layer. But we also need to remember that our atmosphere was carefully put in place by our Creator. God knew exactly what kind of atmosphere we needed and He gave us that atmosphere. He even made Earth the perfect size to be able to hold this atmosphere! We can be confident that we have the perfect atmosphere for our planet.

Number Two: All the People

#2: There’s 7.3 billion people breathing and burning.

Now, I would like to know what Bill Nye would suggest we do about the number of people utilizing our atmosphere. Of course, since Nye is an atheist, he rejects the idea that there is a God who knew the end from the beginning (Isaiah 46:10) when He created Earth. If Nye accepted God’s Word and God’s sovereignty, he would know that the all-powerful God would not allow humanity to die off by climate change or anything else. Nye also therefore rejects God’s Word as a basis for value, purpose, and meaning in life. Does he realize that, from his atheistic perspective, man is just an evolved animal and, in being consistent with an evolutionary “survival of the fittest” worldview, population alarmists could suggest mass killings or forced sterilizations as possible solutions in reducing the population? I’m sure he would be aghast at such suggestions—but then on what basis does he anchor his morality and determine what is ultimately right and wrong in this world? It comes down to one’s worldview. What solutions are there in Nye’s game of “blame man and his increasing population”?

Furthermore, this overpopulation mantra is losing support even from mainstream sociologists. In fact, some researchers are lamenting the possibility of a disastrous population decline. I remember studying books at university 40 years ago that were claiming the world was overpopulated! (And by the way, as you fly across countries around the world as much as I do and look down below, you realize the world is not overpopulated!) There are many other issues in regard to population, starvation, and so on, but that’s a different discussion altogether.

Number Three: Temperatures Changing

#3: All this heat energy in the atmosphere is changing things. It’s not just getting warmer, it’s changing.

Our climate is indeed changing but this is nothing new. Temperatures have been changing since the time of the catastrophic Flood of Noah’s day around 4,350 years ago. For example, during medieval times there was the Little Ice Age and it lasted until around 1850. The temperature has been rising since then. But before the Little Ice Age there was a warming trend that made it possible to farm the now icy waste of Greenland. Climates change! But we don’t have to be worried that the climate is going to run out of control and cause catastrophic changes. God has promised,

While the earth remains,
Seedtime and harvest,
Cold and heat,
Winter and summer,
And day and night
Shall not cease. (Genesis 8:22)

Number Four: Rising Oceans

#4: This warmth is making the ocean get bigger. . . . When the ocean rises just this much [a few inches], this whole area will be under water, and not just this area, that area, that’s Miami.

Are ocean levels really going to rise dramatically and catastrophically because of man-made CO2 emissions?

It should be noted that evolutionists believe in many ice ages over Earth’s history. These ice ages, in the evolution model, would have dramatically dropped ocean levels, which would then have risen during the interglacial periods. In this view of Earth’s history, this happened many, many times without being caused by humans. Now, of course, biblical creationists reject this idea of multiple ice ages because we start with the true history in God’s Word. The Bible records the event of the global Flood of Noah’s Day. This Flood, and accompanying events such as massive volcanic activity, produced the perfect conditions for an Ice Age. This Ice Age lowered ocean levels for a time before they rose again as the continental ice sheets melted. So changes in sea level are not unprecedented in either an evolutionary or biblical model.

The idea of drastic ocean rise is debated among scientists. For instance, scientists and scholars involved with the Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change reject the idea of alarming sea-level rise. Indeed, a writer for [i]Forbes[/i] notes that in the past the biblical city of Ephesus was a bustling port city but is now four miles from the sea, and that “the old Roman port Ostia Antica located where the Tiber River once emptied into the Tyrrhenian Sea is now two miles up-river. When William the Conqueror defeated King Harold II at the Battle of Hastings in 1066, he landed at an old Roman fort on a small harbor island on England’s south coast. That location, now known as Pevensey Castle, is now a mile from the coast.” So sea levels rise and fall naturally. There’s no cause for panic about rising ocean levels.

Actually, it’s ironic that Bill Nye is concerned about the people living in coastal cities. After all, wasn’t he just complaining about how 7.3 billion people breathe and burn our atmosphere? It’s inconsistent of him and others to express concern about the number of people on the planet but also be worried about the people living in coastal cities. But it’s actually good that Nye is concerned about the people living along the coast since we are supposed to value human life since all humans are made in the image of God (Genesis 1:27–28). Of course, from an atheistic evolutionary position, why should he have any concern at all?

Number Five: Unprecedented Speed

#5: But the main, main, thing, everybody, . . . is the speed, it’s the rate at which things are changing. . . Oh yes, the world was once warmer, there was once more carbon dioxide in the atmosphere than there is today, but all of this never happened this fast. And that’s what you gotta get your heads around.

So Bill Nye is saying that the warming isn't the problem—it’s been warmer before, but it’s the speed of the warming that’s the problem. Really, this exposes how climate change is a matter of interpretation—just like historical science, which depends on your views of the unobservable past.

According to the evolutionary model, which Bill Nye holds to with fervor, the Earth is millions of years old and the climate has been relatively stable since the last supposed glacial period over 10,000 years ago. Based on this model, and given that observational science shows that Earth’s climate is now changing, secularists such as Nye assume that human activity must be the cause of this change. If this is true, then a changing climate is understandably a concern for them. Now, this model uses methods such as tree ring and ice core dating to get these supposed stable temperature readings, but these methods are fraught with unprovable assumptions. So Nye’s concern about the speed of today’s climate change is based on unprovable assumptions about the past that are being used to interpret the data.

According to a biblical model of Earth’s history, Earth is only a few thousand years old. Our planet was created with a perfect climate, but this climate was upset at the time of the catastrophic global flood of Noah’s day, which destroyed and reshaped the surface of the Earth. This Flood was followed by the Ice Age which covered 30% of Earth’s surface in ice. This transitional climate slowly gave way to the present climate as the Earth evened out from the after-effects of the Flood. So, when we start with a biblical model for Earth’s history, we should expect variations in climate and temperature.