An article in the Washington Post, "Gore Films Sparks Parents' Anger", tells of a teacher in Federal Way, WA who attempted to show Al Gore's movie, "An Inconvenient Truth", to his class of 7th graders.  The parent stated:

"No you will not teach or show that propagandist Al Gore video to my child, blaming our nation -- the greatest nation ever to exist on this planet -- for global warming,"

and the Post reported that:

"he believes that a warming planet is "one of the signs" of Jesus Christ's eminent return for Judgment Day."

While I agree whole heartedly that he has every right and a responsibility to say what his child will and will not view, I think that he could have responded a little better.  Because we are scrutinized to the Nth degree on how we respond as Christians and conservatives, we need to be careful to speak and respond in a very well thought out and concise manner.  We cannot be given in to the type of emotional outbursts that we receive from those on the other side of the issue.

I don't know from what text the parent gets his belief on global warming being a sign of the return of Jesus.  I know that Revelation talks of wars and rumors of wars and earthquakes and other natural disasters, but I don't even see global warming as a catastrophic event.  A better response would be that if you examine the scientific evidence instead of the summary information that is provided to the media and to politicians, you will see that we are well within normal temperature variations and that "greenhouse gases" from humans are a very small contributor.  As I read articles on "Global Warming," I see more and more scientists who oppose the mainstream view, categorized as ignorant and irresponsible.  We seem to have gone from sitting and examining the evidence from both sides of the table to determine the truth to attempting to embarrass those who have a different opinion of the evidence.  The one who wins the day is the one who can convince the talk show hosts to make jokes about the opposition.

The documentation that is used to make these statements is the IPCC Political Summary which is a document composed mostly by politicians for politicians in the U.N. to make political decisions about "Global Warming."  A lot of politics in that last sentence, huh?  They do not wait for the full IPCC report to be published before making policies or sweeping statements on TV. (Al Gore)  The IPCC full report, until published, is a living document that can be edited and will be edited to coincide with the summary.  How can you refute the politicians when they can edit the scientific documents as needed to fit their world view?

Well, how do we address this whole "Global Warming" issue as Christians?  I believe that the bible has charged us to be good stewards of what God has provided for us, but we are not to forget why we are here.  We are not here to worship the creation, neither are we here to buy huge SUV's and drive around tearing up said creation.  Something that the politicians are not making a big fuss about are the poor.  There are billions of people in under-developed countries that do not have access to energy.  They do not have lights, heat, air conditioning, etc...  They cannot afford it.  If we impose the radical propositions from extremists, we will edge out more and more people from being able to afford the same comforts that we enjoy in our more developed countries.  Do these people deserve any less than us?  Shouldn't we be concerned about them?  There are billions of people who would say that they are already suffering from catastrophic conditions.  We are more than capable to have a balance and provide cheaper clean energy to these people.  In this arena of legislation I cannot help but to conclude that those that are pushing the hardest for it are those that have a personal agenda or a monetary interest.  When working a problem we need to consider all of the variables before we accept a solution.