Yesterday, the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) issued its long-awaited, sixth Assessment Report on global warming caused mostly by humans burning fossil fuels–mainly coal, oil, and natural gas–to produce energy to heat and cool our buildings and motor for transport. This report is most alarming. It says some climate change is now “irreversible for centuries to millennia.”
Earth’s atmosphere is now two degrees hotter than it was since the late 19th century, when the Industrial Revolution started cranking up. The result is that earth has been suffering from a recent increase in the number and intensity of natural disasters caused by this global warming, such as heat waves, hurricanes, cyclones, floods, droughts, and rising ocean levels due to the melting of glaciers. Ocean levels have risen 8 inches in the past century, and half of this rise has occurred since 2006, indicating this problem is greatly accelerating. And all of this is hurting human agriculture and animal habitat, causing animal extinction and animals migrating toward earth’s warming poles.
This UN panel was established in 1988, and it issued its first report on climate change in 1992. This sixth report is based on more than 14,000 studies, the work of 244 scientists, and it is approved by 195 nations. The biggest emitters of these carbon emissions are China, the U.S., and Europe, thus the advanced, wealthy nations in the world. Two main ways we humans can reverse this global warming we are causing is by reducing the burning of fossil fuels and restoring forests.
I have blogged about this before, about the Bible predicting man’s destruction of planet earth. The chief text is in the Bible’s most apocalyptic book, which is it last: the book of Revelation. The author, John, saw and heard in vision “loud voices in heaven, saying, ‘The kingdom of the world has become the kingdom of our Lord and of his Messiah, and he will reign forever and ever'” (Revelation 11.15 NRSV). This refers to the end of the age at the second coming of Messiah Jesus.
John the revelator continues, “Then the twenty-four elders who sit on their thrones before God fell on their faces and worshiped God, singing, ‘We give you thanks, Lord God Almighty, who are and who were, for you have taken your great power and begun to reign. The nations raged, but your wrath has come, and the time for judging the dead, for rewarding your servants, the prophets and saints and all who fear your name, both small and great, and for destroying those who destroy the earth'” (vv. 16-18).
Thus, it appears that this human destruction of planet earth will be a continuing problem right up until the end of the age. Of course, most humans contribute to this global warming–which is only one facet of human destruction of earth–simply by driving their internal combustion engine automobiles. But apparently, those who are much more responsible for earth’s destruction will be held accountable for it on that future Judgment Day.
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