"Global Warming Is Not Your Fault"?

A Christian’s Response to a Christian Argument

This past weekend we visited the Ark Encounter in Kentucky, and barring the volumes of people we had to navigate around in those narrow hallways, we had a great time. The ark is impressive—three stories of full-scale animals and human sculptures and fully decorated rooms depicting what life would have been like for those 300-plus days that Noah and his family lived on a cruise-ship-sized boat.

Along with cages of every kind of animal believed to have existed when Noah was alive—two of every kind, of course—and gifts shops and indoor theaters, the ark also contains exhibits throughout its three-story experience. One exhibit caught my attention in particular: the one on the Ice Age.

Toward the end of this exhibit is a posted sign that you can’t miss even if you skip the exhibit altogether. It’s visible from the aisle, and it’s the reason I entered the exhibit in the first place. The title on this sign simply asks, “Is Climate Change Natural?”

The final sign in the Ice Age exhibit.

Not the Problem Scientists Make It Out to Be?

After reading the sign, it became clear that the perspective of the people who put this exhibit together is that global warming is not a problem Christians (or anyone) should concern themselves with (or, at least, it's not the problem most scientists today make it out to be).

I say this for two reasons: (1) the exhibit showcases that global warming patterns have taken place in the past (referencing the Roman Warm Period and the Medieval Warm Period), so the global warming of today—if true*—is deemed as simply natural, and (2) because global warming is a natural phenomenon—based on two recorded global warming events from the past 2,000 years—then human involvement is irrelevant and, further, climate change in general is irrelevant.

In other words, we (humans) are not the problem. This is just life, and weather’s going to weather. So as you finish reading the sign, feel free just to slurp your drink from your plastic straw, shake off any feelings of guilt you may have had over the state of our planet, and move on with your life.

A Few Problems with the Exhibit

If you’ve followed my writing at all up to this point, you can imagine this sign put me a bit on edge. In fact, my husband, knowing this, took a picture of my face while I was reading it.

Yet before responding to the climate change exhibit, let me back up and say this: I’m 100% Christian. I’m 100% on God’s team. I love the story of creation and learning more about the stories of Noah, Abraham, Joseph, David, and other biblical heroes. Because of that, I loved walking through the ark, and I value what they’re doing—bringing to life the stories that I believe are anything but fictional. Stories that come from the one Book that the God of the universe gifted to us: the true, inspired, Spirit-breathed Word of God.

Okay, that said, I wholly disagree with the sentiment of this exhibit, and here’s why.

1. Global Warming Is Not the Only Issue

Even if you believe global warming is 100 percent natural, when it comes to climate change, global warming is by far not the only issue.

Take away global warming, and still, our planet (and its humans) face habitat loss, loss of biodiversity, pollution (of our air, waterways, and land), rising CO2 levels in our atmosphere, the destruction of the ozone layer, rising sea levels, and intensifying storms—just to name a few. So even taking global warming off the table completely (which is the only aspect of climate change this exhibit emphasizes), work remains to mitigate and, hopefully, reverse the damage humans have caused on our shared Earth.

2. Key Details from the Research Report Are Left Out

In an article by Cincinnati News, one of the minds behind the ark’s ice age exhibit, Alan White (who holds a doctorate in chemistry, but to my knowledge does not have any academic or professional background in the world of environmental science), cites a research paper by Fredrik Ljungqvist published on behalf of the Swedish Society for Anthropology and Geography.[1]

I found this research paper, and after reading it, I think it’s worth sharing that, yes, Ljungqvist (the Swedish professor from Stockholm University who wrote the report) and his team have conducted studies (and his studies corroborate others’ research) that support the reality of two distinct warming events in the past 2,000 years. Both of these—the Roman Warm Period (c. AD 1–300) and the Medieval Warm Period (c. AD 800-1300)—are showcased at the ark’s exhibit and referenced in the Cincinnati News report.

However.

In Ljungqvist’s report, he also said “the temperature since AD 1990 is . . . possibly higher than during any previous time in the past two millennia” (p. 343). And in his conclusion—in no uncertain terms—he adds this: “Since AD 1990 . . . average temperatures in the extra-tropical Northern Hemispere exceed those of any other warm decades the last two millennia, even the peak of the Medieval Warm Period” (p. 347).

Nowhere in White’s interview, or on the ark exhibit’s sign, or in White’s article published by Answers in Genesis (titled “The Globe Is Warming, but It’s Not Your Fault!”) is this important deviation mentioned.

In other words, while our globe has likely experienced warming events in the past, the numbers we started seeing in 1990 were unprecedented. And those numbers are much higher now. According to a report by climate.gov, “the ten warmest years in the 175-year record have all occurred during the last decade (2015–2024)”—years that the ark’s ice age exhibit completely ignores, stopping their graph at the year 2000.

3. Any Kind of Christian Stewardship or Responsibility Is Unspoken

While the Cincinnati news article reveals (though it’s buried deep in the interview) that White is a supporter of stewarding our planet—specifically, they quote him as saying we should be “good stewards of the world God has given us to tend, even when we can’t be sure of the degree of human activity that might contribute to changing climates”—this sentiment is nowhere to be seen in the exhibit on the ark.

Instead, the question is asked whether climate change is natural, global warming is presented as something that has happened (as a purely natural phenomenon) in the past, and that is that. Nothing is said of the Christian’s responsibility to care for God’s planet even as we stand in a replica of an ark designed to care for God’s creatures.

White says more about the Christian’s responsibility to the planet in his article on Answers in Genesis (a website associated with the Ark Encounter). However, again, nothing is mentioned within the exhibit itself, and the odds of someone reading his article and getting the full scope of his opinion about Christian stewardship versus someone walking through the ark and reading the sign and moving on with their lives . . . well, you tell me.

Final Thoughts: Arm Yourself with Truth

Let me be clear: I’m not at all saying you shouldn’t visit the Ark Encounter. It was fabulous and well-designed, and it fortifies our faith in God and the stories of truth found in God’s Word to see stories like Noah’s ark come to life and to imagine what might have taken place during that time in our world’s history.

However, I think some of the exhibits posted within the ark (and the information posted on Ark Encounter–associated websites) need some serious recasting.

To know that literally thousands of people will walk through your exhibits on a weekly basis and yet to cherry-pick information from one scientific report and fail to include either the wider conversation about current global warming trends or (more important) the biblical responsibility of Christians toward God’s planet—regardless of whether that Christian adheres to climate change science or not—is, in my view, irresponsible at best.

I’m not going to say the Ark Encounter is spreading misinformation. The two warming events they point out seem scientifically verified, and I appreciate learning about them. However, there’s more to the conversation. And that information needs to be shared.

It’s vital that Christians arm themselves with truth because, without it, we miss important details, and—whether we realize it or not—those details can cause us to misstep in our Christian walk. At times, those missteps may be more critical than we realize—after all, the term sin literally means “to miss the mark.”

May we share the truth of God’s Word and the truth of God’s world. Armed with that truth, may we make any and all necessary changes so that God’s Earth is made better and our lives and the lives of others are made whole. 💛

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*Some people doubt the current scientific research that supports global warming. However, if you trust the data that supports the two previous global warming events (i.e., the data that's referenced in the Ark Encounter's exhibit and the data that is self-reported as “too limited and unevenly distributed around the globe to say anything with reasonable certainty about temperatures on a global or hemispheric scale prior to c. AD 1600”—see p. 339 of Ljungqvist's paper), then it seems odd not to trust current scientific research, which is collected with better equipment and far greater certainty.

Source

[1] Fredrik Charpentier Ljungqvist, "A New Reconstruction of Temperature Variability in the Extra-Tropical Northern Hemisphere During the Last Two Millennia," Geografiska Annaler, A Physical Geography 92, no. 3 (2010): 339–351.