Why Global Warming Has Nothing to do with Genesis 8:22.

On Genesis 8:22.

I am told that some of those who deny global warming assert that it can’t be happening because of Genesis 8:22.  Apparently, they are reading Genesis 8:22 to mean that human beings do not have the power to alter the Earth’s climate at all.  They say it would be arrogance to make such a claim, because in Genesis 8:22 God says the climate can’t be changed.  Case closed.

So I read Genesis 8:22.  Here it is.

As long as the earth endures,

   seedtime and harvest, cold and heat,

summer and winter, day and night,

   shall not cease.

Genesis 8:22 appears at the end of the story of Noah and the Great Flood.  After that comprehensive disaster, God promises not to do it again.  Destroy virtually all life on the planet, that is.  

There is no scientific scenario associated with global warming that indicates that it will destroy the Earth or wipe out all life.  Genesis 8:22 says that seasons will continue.  Global warming does not threaten the seasons, which are a result of the angle of the Earth as it orbits around the sun.  Even if the temperature of the Earth reaches the maximum predicted by scientists, and the icecaps and glaciers all melted away to nothing, and sea level rose the predicted 64 meters or so, and so on, there would still be “seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night.”  

Nothing in scientific global warming predictions contradicts Genesis 8:22.  Seedtime and harvest will be different in terms of timing and geography, cold and heat will be distributed differently, summer and winter will be changed, and of course the recurring pattern of day and night isn’t even in question.  But they will all still happen.  Genesis 8:22 doesn’t say these things shall not change.  It says they shall not cease.

The Bible makes the point that changes in weather and climate do continue to happen without violating Genesis 8:22.  There are droughts.  There are localized floods.  There are earthquakes and volcanoes.  There are famines and plagues.  Disasters still happen.

So the Genesis 8:22 thing is a red herring.  It is not relevant to global warming.

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