In this blog we don’t spend a great deal of time on climate change/global warming.  This is not because we do not believe it’s a problem – it is.  But in the larger picture of what is happening in God’s creation, climate change is one of many problems, including loss of biodiversity (extinctions), water, deforestation, chemical pollution – the list could go on and on. The January issue of the Journal of the Royal Geographic Society, one of the most prestigious scientific organizations in the world, devotes itself to the question of whether and when the globe might reach a temperature increase of four degrees Celsius (7 degrees F) and what such a temperature rise might mean.

This is not good bedtime reading, but you need to at least take a look. Keep in mind that the 2070′s (see the first article below) are within the lifetime of today’s college students, and that this is not material from the radical edges of the blogosphere.  These are some of the world’s most respected scientists, but – considering the scenarios they are describing – some of them are more optimistic than I would have expected.

Below are some of the articles in this issue with a quote or two from each.  The content is free today – I’m not sure if it will remain so.  I have copies if the links to the articles no longer work – drop a note in the comments or send me a message. Read more »

Cheez-its that taste medicinal. Metallic cornflakes. Eggo waffles that remind you of “stale straw”.  Meat that calls to mind cardboard or damp dog hair.

If the recent government effort to reduce salt in processed foods is successful, this is what we will have to eat.  Or so says the food industry according to an astonishing front page article in yesterday’s New York Times (free subscr reqd).

Compared to reducing fat and sugar, for which substitute ingredients have been found, eliminating salt and sodium is turning out to be a major challenge for these companies.  Why is that?  It turns out that without salt – lots and lots of salt – we eaters might discover that the stuff that is being sold to us as delicious, tantalizing and even healthy “food” is really nothing of the sort.

It’s a marketing problem.  Without salt to hide the true nature of these products, we might not buy them.   Why not?  It turns out they don’t taste very good: Read more »

Pastor Kevin DeYoung, Senior Pastor of University Reformed Church in East Lansing MI has posted some comments on how Christians can celebrate Earth Day “better”  over at his blog. This is a response to that post.

While I appreciate Pastor DeYoung’s sincere desire to “build a Christian foundation” (his very good image) under the concept of Earth Day, the ‘bricks’ he is using to build that foundation, most of which were purchased somewhat uncritically from Jay Richard’s Environmental Stewardship in the Judeo-Christian Tradition, could have been baked a little longer.

Here are his ‘bricks’ and my thoughts in response: Read more »

I had just finished giving a talk for Blackhawk Church‘s Metro3040 adult fellowship group, and had included a short video from Discovery Channel’s Planet Earth in which one expert says, “I think we’re facing the loss of half the world’s frogs.’

On the way out, one of the participants asked me:  “So, exactly what is killing the frogs?”

It happens that I had just run across an article on this very topic two or three days ago.  Richard Black, BBC Environment Correspondent, was commenting on a world-wide precipitous decline in amphibians of all kinds (think frogs, salamanders, etc) in a post he called ‘The Attack of the Killer Everything“: Read more »

Maybe not the best way to start off a conversation with your seat partner on a plane.  But I could hardly help myself.  (If you have been following my musings for a while you will know that I tend to get into some interesting conversational situations on planes!)

I was on my way back from a week of meetings in Plainview, Texas.  Now, I realize that bringing an environmental seminar to the high plains of east Texas is not the normal thing to do.  People there are warm, friendly – but pretty convinced that “environment” means “liberal” and “government” and that sort of thing, and they’re not interested.  But things are changing.  For one thing, these folks are running out of water, and they know it.  Read more »

Here’s a fun hint if you find you missed the Farmer’s Market this week and would like to know what produce might be from local suppliers.

I just found this out from the Produce manager at Woodmans West, my “local” supermarket:  Explaining to me that it would be really difficult to put signs up telling us what produce might be from a local farm – the main reason being that this week lettuce be local, next week it might have come from California (because nearby farms didn’t have enough supply) – but, he said, you can tell what we’ve bought from local farms: Read more »