One study showing that religiosity leads to harmony between science and religion comes from Baylor University, where researcher Aaron Franzen finds that increased frequency of Bible reading is tied to, among other things, improved attitudes toward science. “Respondents were 22 percent less likely to view religion and science as incompatible at each step toward more frequent Bible reading,” according to David Briggs, who reported the Baylor study for Association of Religion Data Archives. (Interestingly, higher rates of Bible reading were also correlated with greater support for social and economic justice, simple lifestyles, humane treatment of criminals, and with lower support for abortion, same-sex unions, the death penalty, and the expansion of the war on terrorism.)

Interesting this week that the Obama administration was derided for giving in to “anti-science” pressure when it blocked over-the-counter access to the “morning after” pill for minors. Those pundits are willfully ignorant about what is science and what is morality, thinking that measurements of a drug’s effectiveness ought somehow to determine whether a minor should be able to access it without adult guidance or parental input. The same goes for claims that opposition to fetal stem cell research is somehow anti-scientific. One can certainly accept that experimenting on human embryos may lead to advances in scientific knowledge, while at the same time affirming that it is entirely immoral to conduct such research.

Creation care opponents have thrown caution to the wind. Emboldened by demagogues like Glenn Beck, they’re not averse to painting as “totalitarians” anyone even slightly concerned about pollution, resource conservation, biodiversity loss, or energy efficiency.

The Washington Times published a piece on May 19, 2011, by creation care critic Cal Beisner purporting to reveal the “hidden dangers” in the National Day of Prayer for Creation Care, which was sponsored by the Evangelical Environmental Network (EEN). Among their “dangerous” prayer requests: reducing mercury pollution that passes from pregnant mothers to their unborn babies.

Aside from being a worthy cause in its own right, the campaign seemed to me to be good apologetics as well. Here were evangelical Christians claiming publicly that God’s call to compassion and wise dominion extends to stopping air pollution that affects our most vulnerable citizens, growing the credibility of the pro-life witness by linking it to more than fighting abortion (the frequency of which, we must all admit, remains our greatest current national travesty), and doing so with smart, well-documented research and policy recommendations. I personally know of formerly pro-choice environmentalists who have changed their positions on abortion because of encountering pro-life evangelical environmental advocates.

But the most visible anti-environmentalists never let concerns about the church’s witness in the world overcome their fundamental desire to fight even the suggestion that democratically elected governments might use their regulatory authority to protect the environment. The libertarian ends consistently trump the means, and evangelism tends to be the first casualty, with regard for truth a close second.

In Beisner’s critique, he constructed two straw-man claims that EEN’s materials didn’t make; and even the way he rebuts the fictitious claims reveals a lot about his commitments.

Beisner said EEN claimed “the main source of mercury pollution is dirty air released by coal-burning power plants” and that international sources are more important. Beisner apparently didn’t read the materials he was criticizing, because they didn’t say what he said they did. Apparently the Washington Times can’t afford fact-checkers. EEN gave a quite detailed explanation on the sources of mercury pollution, and the relative contribution of domestic and international sources, which varies from place to place (they even provided a map).

But the reason Beisner invented that red herring is that he sniffed out an attempt to strengthen regulation on emissions from coal-fired power plants. He challenged a fictitious version of EEN’s claims about sourcing, because he didn’t want to draw attention to their well-researched claims about the economic benefits from regulating mercury emissions (which predict $60-140 billion in total health benefits, or a return of $5-13 for every $1 invested in meeting the regulations).

It wouldn’t be surprising, when we look back from the future, if the costs of limiting mercury went down relative to predictions and the benefits went up. That’s been the case with other environmental regulations as well—something even those opposed to regulations at the time now admit. Since we enacted the 1990 Clean Air Act Amendments, the economy has grown 64 percent while air pollution has gone down 41 percent, a puzzle to those who predict economic collapse in the face of strong environmental regulations.

Beisner goes on to accuse EEN of being a mouthpiece for the environmental lobby, repeating someone else’s suspect talking points about how bad mercury is for fetuses. But he ignored the peer-reviewed scientific literature the EEN documents clearly cite—again, he simply makes stuff up about EEN and its campaign to suit his own rhetorical purposes.

Beisner gives a drastically lower figure for unborn babies afflicted with unsafe levels of mercury in their blood—but he doesn’t say where he got his figures. So it turns out that Beisner committed the vice he (wrongly) accuses EEN of. EEN cited multiple studies that demonstrate not just how many infants are affected by mercury in utero but also to what degree, and (crucially) puts a dollar value on the health benefits of mercury pollution reductions.

I’m sympathetic to the problems of exaggeration and the nuances of weighing costs and benefits. I railed in the past about the irrational fears some parents have about the tiny amounts of mercury in vaccines, when the private and public health benefits from being vaccinated so far outweighs any negligible risk. Atmospheric mercury emissions are a different case—but it’s an empirical question, not an ideological question. Because Beisner is motivated chiefly by a libertarian worldview, he simply assumes that the costs of reducing mercury emissions will outweigh the direct and indirect benefits, when the best evidence shows that the reverse is actually true.

Beisner is certainly a devoted advocate. He is faithful to his ideology and political positions and tireless in their defense. There is indeed a strong case to be made for the free market and for capitalism; environmental policies for a flourishing economy would be much better if they reflected the concerns of economic conservatives. That case is not made stronger, however, by a sloppy critique that runs roughshod over facts or by deafness to reasonable counterarguments.

Beisner cites, without apparent sense of the irony, 1 Thessalonians 5:21 (in reference to prophecies, the readers are told to “test them all; hold on to what is good, reject every kind of evil”). Free market advocacy and creation care advocacy can be done with care, rigor, and honesty. When the lost world is watching the way we argue, it is a necessity.

A natural resource economist, Rusty Pritchard is the cofounder and president of Flourish (FlourishOnline.org), a national Christian ministry that serves Christians as they grow in environmental stewardship, healthy living, and radical discipleship.

The main point is that an identifier of denialism (what I call faux-skepticism in the article) is the complete lack of skepticism about one’s own position.

Related to this is the tendency of denialists (which I should think more about) to discount the sheer weight of a consensus position. They cherry-pick evidence and publications, but also completely underestimate the imbalance of opinion. This is different from maintaining that the majority might be wrong (of course they might–that’s how science moves forward). But real skeptics realize when they’re in the minority, and they take on the task of convincing the majority. Faux skeptics either don’t realize they’re in the minority, or they refuse to believe it. They waver between saying that numbers don’t matter and publishing outrageous claims about the size of the skeptic community.

Of course, in the end, numbers don’t really matter, because the majority might be wrong. The theory of plate tectonics held on as a minority view among geologists for a long time after it was proposed, because there was no way to make the observations that could build credibility. But the early skeptics of the consensus view knew they were a minority, and they knew that only by making credible scientific observations and advancing testable hypotheses could they prevail.

In the past 30 years the prevalence of myopia in the U.S. has increased 66 percent (from 25% of Americans aged 12-54 in the early 1970s, to over 40% of Americans today, according to researches at the NIH’s National Eye Institute). Genetics are known to be a factor, but that’s a dramatic increase, so researchers figure something else has changed.

It turns out your parents were wrong about why you need glasses–at least in the case of near-sightedness. For many years we all heard the same advice: don’t read in dim light, don’t use a flashlight to read under the covers, don’t watch too much TV.

Researchers are learning that the real reason for the dramatic surge in myopia is that we are becoming a nation of dedicated indoorsmen.

Don Mutti, of the College of Optometry at Ohio State University, says “If you have two nearsighted parents and you engage in a low level of outdoor activity, your chances of becoming myopic by the eighth grade are about 60 percent,” according to a story reported Monday on NPR. “If children engaged in over 14 hours per week of outdoor activity, their chances of becoming nearsighted were now only about 20 percent. So it was quite a dramatic reduction in the risk of becoming myopic.”

Being a bookworm turns out not to be a problem at all, unless it keeps you from being outdoors. In the case of watching TV or playing too many video games, it’s not staring at the screens that causes near-sightedness, it that addiction to screens displaces outdoor play. And it’s not that exercise helps avoid mypopia–kids who got plenty of indoor exercise still have high rates of near-sightedness (although a high level of physical activity outdoors and indoors is great for kids for lots of other reasons–think of the obesity epidemic, and the rise in diabetes). Just being outside reduces the risk of developing myopia and needing glasses.

I asked Mutti how much time outdoors is the right amount. He said, “What we found was that 14 hours outdoors per week was the lowest risk group. However, this is not the same thing as knowing what the effect of sending kids out for 14 hours per week really is. That takes a randomized clinical trial — and that has not been done yet. The good news is that exercise is good regardless of whether it prevents myopia.”

For now, scientists are investigating the role of outdoor light on retinal development, thinking that outdoor light affects children’s developing eyes differently. According to Mutti, it could also be the case that opportunities to focus on far, clearly-lit objects plays a factor.

Mutti noted that the dramatic rise in myopia is likely not a result of better screening. The data in the US come from a standardized national screening effort–the National and Nutrition Examination Survey, unique because it combines interviews and physical exams–that has been uniform across the years.

As reporter Joe Shapiro of NPR noted another reason all this matters: “Eye care is expensive.” Lead researcher on the rise in myopia, Dr. Susan Vitale of the National Eye Institute, made a back-of-the-envelope estimate that the increased costs of glasses, contacts, and eye exams has taken the costs of treating myopia from about $2 billion a year in the 1970s, to over $3 billion today.

The statistic bears repeating:
Two hours a day outside reduces the chance of becoming nearsighted to one-in-five, even with two near-sighted parents. If those kids stay inside much of the time, that risk goes up to 60%.

Whether it’s watching birds or baseballs, kids that spend a lot of time outside have better vision.

Related articles
Videophilia replacing love of nature
Family Fun activities at Flourish Online (including tips for getting kids outdoors)

Courage is a virtue...

Wendell Berry said in The Unsettling of America that “the environmental crisis is a crisis of character” (thanks Aaron James, for the reference). That idea reminded me of a lecture I heard given by N.T. Wright, talking about the nature of virtues (at last year’s Intervarsity “Following Christ” Conference, audio files available) . As a prelude to talking about the Christian notion of virtue, he talked about the classical notion. It’s an important idea for the tasks of environmental stewardship, decisionmaking, and action, because we so often drift into following rules, or “getting in touch with our hearts”–weak and unreliable methods for getting to right actions. Wright began by talking about the virtue of courage:

Take one of the classical virtues, namely, courage. What does courage consist of? Some might imagine that courage, if you’re going in to battle, say, consists in taking a very large swig of a very strong drink and then charging off into battle waving your sword around you, yelling some awful war cry and hoping for the best. That’s not courage in any kind of classical virtue sense.

Courage as a virtue, is what happens when you take a thousand small decisions over a period of time, consciously to place the safety and security of someone else ahead of your own safety and security, so that on the thousand-and-first occasion, when suddently a real crisis or danger appears you act in that way as though by instinct.

It isn’t instinct–we humans are self-preserving animals–but if you train yourself by conscious mental and moral effort to practice in the little things the virtue you know you ought to be developing it can become second nature–second instinct, if you like. Virtue is a matter of acquiring habits the way you acquire tastes, by sustained practice.

Seen like this, the moral life is not a matter simply of learning and remembering rules. Rules can help while you’re on the way, they may well point in the right direction, we are foolish to ignore them, but we need to practice the virtues which will enable us to keep them by transcending them.

Nor is it a matter of being true to whatever impulses you find within yourself–it’s more like learning a language, practicing it so that eventually you can go to the country and speak it like a native. It takes time, there is vocabulary to learn, there are irregular verbs to master, there are nuances and metaphors and emphases that make a living language the lovely but difficult thing it is. You’ll often get it wrong, but it is worth persevering for the goal-the telos–of what lies ahead.

Or you might think of it like learning a musical instrument: you have to master the basic technique, the angle of the bow on the cello, the position of the shoulders for the brass player. You have to practice scales and arpeggios not so that you can go on stage and play scales and arpeggios, but so that when you are suddenly faced with a complex sheet of music, you will know, as though instinctively, but in fact by second nature, by force of habit, what to do. It will seem to happen automatically, but that automatic behavior will be the result of practicing things which certainly didn’t feel automatic at the time. Now that’s how virtue ethics works.

Knowing that, the thing that we can’t do is simply experience a “conversion” to the project of creation care–an awakening to the need to exercise environmental stewardship–and expect that we are equipped to respond to the “environmental crisis”. That’s true for the Christian church as much as it is true for any individual. We don’t automatically have the skills, the virtue, to act courageously or prudently or justly when faced with environmental issues. Neither do we, as a Christian community, possess the automatic ability to distinguish between sound and unsound environmental claims. Those virtues and abilities, like a foreign language or musicianship, must be cultivated. And that takes time.

Having ignored environmental issues for so long, we may wish we could simply look up some Bible texts, or trust our hearts,  to determine what to do–how to steward the earth well. We can’t. We wind up aping the ideologies and practices of the left and the right, without much to contribute ourselves, being either uncritically accepting or unreasonably dismissive of claims of environmental crisis. The way to learn a virtuous approach to creation care, is to begin with small, repeated, steps of faithfulness, knowing that we will make mistakes, but concerned more to develop a virtuous character than to “follow rules” or “follow our hearts”.

In the end, we will find that sometimes it will be right to act swiftly, sometimes to wait and learn more, sometimes to make peace. But we can’t discern that by being thrown in the deep end of a cultural debate we’ve ignored until now, simply “choosing sides” without training in interpreting both special and general revelation (more on that in another post).

The classic virtues are prudence, justice, courage, and temperance. The “theological” virtues are faith, hope, and love. I’ll be covering some of these ideas in more depth in the future. But for now, which virtues do you think will help us be better stewards? How can we cultivate them?

That's a time out for you, young man

By now you’re bound to have heard of the great “Climategate” scandal of late 2009. Hackers broke into the computer archives of the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia and stole data and email archives dating back 10 years. Then, somehow (who can say?) these files found their way into the hands of climate uber-skeptics. It was discovered that–shock, horror–climate scientists were saying rude and very unscientific things about their most relentless critics. (A good synopsis and discussion, written by someone outside the conflict, is the one by Peter Kelemen at Columbia University.)

Now, to put things in context, you should know something about my two boys, ages 7 and 9. Although they get on fine most of the time, and even like each other, there is some sibling rivalry.

Ewan, the youngest, is a professional little brother. He takes his job very seriously. He needs to mess with his older brother’s stuff, to do everything that his older brother does, and he needs to irritate him whenever he can get away with it. He knows he might get walloped, but he specialized in walking on thin ice.

Angus, the elder, though he enjoys life, is still a little perturbed that his comfortable sinecure as only child was abolished seven years ago. Moreover, he knows he is accorded little of the respect due him in his firstborn status. While largely resigned to the new status quo, he maintains his dignity by adopting a patronizing air, issuing innumerable slights and disparagements, and claiming dubious rights over territory and property. Occasionally his temper gets the best of him. Ewan pushes too far, and Angus wallops him.

My wife or I enter the crime scene, declare that guilt is shared, and they both get a time out.

In a few days, it is the same thing all over again. We recognize this situation.

Back to the climate debate. I think I recognize some of the same dynamics. Climate scientists have the upper hand right now–their knowledge base is growing ever broader, their understanding of the climate system ever better established, and their certainty about the reality and impact of global warming is increasing. Policies are beginning to be shaped based on their understanding, though they believe it is at least ten years too late. Global elites believe climate science to be increasingly trustworthy (though the general public vacillates in its opinion of global warming science).

Yet, climate scientists are relentlessly irritated by the same tired objections, the same discredited critiques, put forward by what seems like the same twelve people. So they adopt an air of patronizing disdain for their critics, calling them deniers (as in “Holocaust deniers”; although in truth that monicker is used far more by environmentalists than by scientists). This quite rightly infuriates the skeptics, who continue to claim that they’re being oppressed.

Then out come purloined personal emails between climate scientists which seem to say exactly that. Surprise, surprise! Climate scientists are, behind the scenes, real people, with real foibles, who are really, really fed up with attempts to portray their careful life work as a political hoax, or to portray scientists as dim-witted groupthinkers. Their frustration with industry-sponsored smear campaigns spills over into their attitudes toward fellow scientists who adopt the role of gadfly, even though the whole enterprise needs more gadflies.

A little–no, a lot–more respect on both sides would seem to be warranted. If I were in charge, I’d give both the mainstream scientists in question, and their prominent skeptics, a great big time out. Then I’d make them apologize, shake hands, and spend the next hour shoveling Legos from off their bedroom floor.

As a Christian, it is easy to see that the whole arena needs to be more infused with grace. Climate scientists shouldn’t have to feel attacked for trying to build the best understanding they can of how the climate system operates. Those scientists who are skeptical about the mainstream science should be recognized–even lauded–for their important role in asking hard questions. Political operatives who pretend to be more certain than scientists about whether people are or aren’t contributing to climate change need to stop fomenting antagonism.

Moreover, as others have noted, these behind-the-scenes emails reveal that much more transparency is needed in terms of access to original data and the process by which scientific ideas are reviewed and promulgated. Doubtless, to some scientists, turning over their original data to those with little respect for science feels like asking for trouble, like giving your house keys to known vandals. In this contentious environment, however it is worth the risk that some will misuse the data. Similarly, the stolen emails reveal some contempt for editors that let skeptical papers through the peer review process.

But bad papers, with unreplicable results or with fatal flaws, will inevitably slip through the peer review process, which is not a “truth machine” (and some journals will always be more cautious than others). The final arbiter of the quality of a paper is whether it survives AFTER peer review–are other scientists able to replicate and use the results? Does it lead to better questions, and better research? The truth is, skeptical papers do get published, when they consist of good science, but because the current science was built piece-by-piece over a long period of time, it won’t be easily overturned by just a few skeptical papers.

In the meantime, we have to ask whether any harm was actually done, not to the reputation of climate scientists or to their relationships, but to the underlying science itself. Was there anything in any of the emails to cast doubt on the science that says people are, in part, causing the climate to warm? (In fact, as the science journal Nature showed in its commentary, the bluster between scientists about suppressing certain controversial papers didn’t result in any suppression; both papers in question were included and discussed in the IPCC assessment.)

As an exercise for the attentive reader, review the six-step explanation for why CO2 is a problem (from RealClimate–motto: “climate science from climate scientists”), and try to guess which step is undermined by the testy language in the hacked emails.

Hint: it might be that the science is more robust than scientific decorum.

Rusty Pritchard thinks climate change is happening and that people are causing part of it, but his views are his own and not those of his parent organization, Flourish. Flourish believes every Christian should be caring for creation, no matter where they come down on the climate issue. A version of this article appeared in the ESA ePistle this week.

What’s the best book for Christians who want to learn about climate change? It isn’t the book written by the Nobel-prize winning author who appeared in the Academy-Award winning movie a few years back. After all, that author, though smart, was not a climate scientist, and because he was a polarizing political figure, he didn’t appeal to most Christians who don’t share his political views.

It also isn’t the massive tome, Global Warming: The Complete Briefing , by evangelical scientist and world-renowned climate expert Sir John Houghton. It’s very good, VERY complete, very thoughtful–it really lives up to its name. But it is quite an investment, not just of time but of money. If you’re looking for Climate Science 101, this isn’t it. (I think of how my kids sometimes ask my wife questions about environmental science. She’ll answer them, and then ask “but why didn’t you ask your father that question?” To which they reply, “Well, Mom, we didn’t want to know that much about it.”)

No, the book you should read this Christmas, and buy for your skeptical friends and family, is written by an evangelical husband-wife team–climate scientist Katharine Hayhoe and pastor/teacher Andrew Farley. A Climate for Change–Global Warming Facts for Faith-Based Decisions is a great resource for connecting with conservatives (like me) who are skeptical about the science (as I was for the first ten years of environmental teaching and research). It’s readable, understandable, scientifically accurate and theologically sound.

It’s also a good refresher course on the science and impacts of climate change, replete with great illustrations and ideas for communicating what we know and what we don’t know. It is obvious that the authors have spent many, many hours patiently and winsomely explaining these concepts to interested but skeptical audiences.

Things that I noted immediately–the science and theology behind creation care, as they presented it, do not require a commitment to an old earth or to theistic evolution. They tackle that issue head on. Moreover, they build a strong case for why creation care should be a priority even for those who believe (like many of us) that the Earth will one day pass away, to be replaced by a New Heaven and New Earth.

Together, Hayhoe and Farley walk through the basics of what any citizen should know about God’s creation and the climate system. They don’t drift into politics; they instead concentrate on informing us about what we need to know BEFORE we get into policy considerations.

You can order it now on Amazon: A Climate for Change–Global Warming Facts for Faith-Based Decisions by Katharine Hayhoe and Andrew Farley. I’m a curmudgeon who doesn’t like most climate books, but this one I recommend to everyone I meet.

Other resources:
To those who want a more in-depth “guidebook” to global warming science, I recommend the Rough Guide to Climate Change. Be sure to get the second edition, since it contains information from the last IPCC assessment in 2007.

Of course, climate science has continued to unfold since the last IPCC summary of the science nearly three years ago, and many of the predictions have proven to be outpaced by the rate of change on the ground. For a summary of recent science, look at the Copenhagen Diagnosis, written by leading climate researchers, which also corrects some of the enduring misconceptions about climate change science.

The website for the book A Climate for Change is pretty cool too. You can follow Katharine Hayhoe on Twitter and get great up-to-date analysis of breaking climate news.

Rusty Pritchard thinks climate change is happening and that people are causing part of it, but his views are his own and not those of his parent organization, Flourish. Flourish believes every Christian should be caring for creation, no matter where they come down on the climate issue.

In an opinion leader and an associated issue briefing, the Economist newsmagazine last week (Oct 29 issue) reported on the worldwide decline in fertility rates, which mollify concerns about how to address the “overpopulation” of the planet. (The “fertility rate” is a technical term from demography–how many children a woman has during her lifetime.) In the undergraduate teaching program in Environmental Studies I helped found in 1999 at Emory University, I would survey incoming freshman on what they thought the world’s most pressing environmental issues were. Nearly always, they expressed grave concerns about “overpopulation”, by which they mostly meant population growth in less developed countries. Never mind that the United States and other first world nations consume far more than their share per capita of the world’s resources–these students were worried about the sheer number of people the planet would be called on to support.

What to do about it? I shudder to think about the despotic and manipulative practices a few of the students advocated. Some were insufficiently repulsed by China’s draconian “one child” policy. So many had already picked up their not-so-latent misanthropy in old-school environmentalism–the evil “lifeboat ethics” of Garrett Hardin and others. Others, more enlightened, figured that easier access to contraception would help reduce birth rates, although the Economist article shows that this is rarely the case. Families the world over have about the number of children they want to have.

Falling fertility is most obviously a result of the demographic transition–first infant mortality declines due to modern medicine, leading to a short-lived population boom. Then other factors make large families less attractive, and enlightened public policy has reduced birth rates as a side effect. When stable financial systems make it possible to save for old age and even participate in pension programs, when education for girls, rising pay and job opportunities for women make employment possible, when industrialization moves people off farms, it is no longer so attractive to have large families for economic survival, as the article details.

So the “problem of overpopulation” is taking care of itself. Public policy should focus more directly on the things that make people better off, rather than trying to control their reproductive decisions. Coercive population control is immoral, and other efforts at regulating population are less effective than helping families lead productive, rewarding, and flourishing lives.

[I'll be posting a longer essay on this topic in the next few weeks, based on my recent lectures on population and environment.]

Photographer James Gathany--CDC Judy Schmidt

A: Good question. Ok, it’s not really an “environmental” issue, but it does concern our physical bodies (and those of our children) so it is a “creation care” issue. The underlying real connection is whether we are willing to trust scientific consensus on some issues but not others. Hint: if you wear a seat belt but also believe that thimerosal preservatives in vaccines cause autism, you may be inconsistent. Similarly, if you buckle your kids up but don’t believe people are causing global warming, you may be inconsistent in your attitude toward expert opinion.

A strong scientific consensus exists that says seat belts save lives, a strong scientific consensus says that people are causing global warming, and a strong scientific consensus exists that thimerosal preservatives in vaccines are safe . Why trust one and not the other?

You didn’t answer the question: Should you worry about mercury in swine flu vaccines?

I’m not a doctor (well, actually I am, but a Ph.D. doesn’t qualify me to give medical advice). So the first caveat is, you should ask your own doctor about the swine flu shot (H1N1) and the safety of vaccinating your kids.

Joanna and I vaccinated all three of our children (ages 2, 6, and 9), because the risks from seasonal and swine flu seem so much greater than the risks from the mercury in the vaccinations. The swine flu injections they received contained thimerosal (although not all do). The amount of mercury in the vaccinations was about the same as that contained in a  six-ounce can of chunk light tuna (25 micrograms in the vaccine, versus 20 micrograms in a can of chunk light tuna). It’s much LESS mercury than in a can of albacore tuna. So we could simply cut out tuna for a week and make up for whatever mercury they were exposed to in the vaccine.

In addition, the form of mercury in thimerosal is ethyl mercury, which is excreted much more quickly than methyl mercury, so the actual exposure is much, much less. So we’re not worried at all about that mercury exposure.

Wait, there’s mercury in tuna?

Yes, and THAT’S the kind of mercury exposure we should all be much more worried about (because most childhood vaccines no longer contain mercury as a preservative). Methyl mercury levels in many kinds of fish are high enough to cause harm when consumed regularly. Fish is good food and should be a part of a healthy diet, but because of the world’s dependence on coal-fired generating plants, we put a lot of extra mercury into the environment, which ends up in the fish and shellfish we eat.

The biggest anthropogenic source of mercury in the environment is pollution from burning coal to produce electricity, and that pollution gets into our bodies. If you have kids, you should feed them chunk light instead of albacore tuna (or tuna steaks) and limit the amount to a six ounce can a week or so. There is a joint FDA/EPA advisory about mercury in various kinds of fish, which everyone should read.

Should you get the swine flu shot if you’re pregnant?

Almost certainly. Both seasonal flu and H1N1 pose serious risks to pregnant women and their babies. It appears to be much more dangerous for a woman and her unborn baby if she gets the flu. You may be able to get a thimerosal-free formulation, but in any case the CDC recommends that pregnant women are vaccinated–they’re near the top of the priority list for H1N1 vaccination. Talk to your doctor, or read the CDC guidance on H1N1 vaccines and pregnancy.

Life is complicated, and requires that we weigh risks carefully, and that we rely on good science and not rumor, conjecture, and pseudo-science. Sometimes we avoid one risk and

inadvertently put ourselves in danger of much greater problems. Whether it is people refusing to buckle their seat belts for fear of being trapped in a car crash, people in high risk groups avoiding the flu vaccine, or people who fear environmental regulation but don’t worry about the dangers of unmitigated climate change, we need to take a deep breath, ask for wisdom, and act accordingly. Buckle up, fight climate change, and follow your doctor’s advice on the flu shot.

Global Warming’s Six Americas

In reality, the American scene is not so neatly divided into climate alarmists and climate deniers. A useful recent report describes “Global Warming’s Six Americas”, and it used extensive surveys to distinguish between groups that differ on climate change beliefs, attitudes, risk perceptions, values, public policy preferences, and barriers to action.

The Alarmed (18%) are fully convinced of the reality and seriousness of climate change and are already taking individual, consumer, and political action to address it. The Concerned (33%) – the largest of the six Americas – are also convinced that global warming is happening and a serious problem, but have not yet engaged the issue personally. Three other Americas – the Cautious (19%), the Disengaged (12%) and the Doubtful (11%) – represent different stages of understanding and acceptance of the problem, and none are actively involved. The final America – the Dismissive (7%)– are very sure it is not happening and are actively involved as opponents of a national effort to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

I assume many readers, concerned as they are for the global poor who are most at risk from climate change, fall into the first two categories—Alarmed and already taking action, or Concerned and waiting. But we dare not write off the other categories, because the Dismissive are not at rest. Sadly, the segments most likely to identify as evangelical Christians are the Dismissives, followed by the Doubtfuls. But there are many religious folks among the Cautious and Disengaged, and these are also the groups admitting to the highest likelihood of changing their minds.

We must be willing to communicate winsomely to bring these folks on board. The Disengaged segment, interestingly, show a higher than average concern for justice and egalitarian values, so there is a pool of Americans who may well respond to clear moral messages about the relationship between global warming and justice.

Answering Skeptics

But communicating winsomely is not the only skill climate advocates need—we also do need to be ready to give an answer for our positions against the worst kinds of misinformation campaigns. Right now climate deniers are making the most hay out of the leveling-off of global temperature increases following the incredibly hot El Nino year of 1998. “Global warming has now stopped,” they say. Climate activists have paid so much attention to the human causes of global warming (mainly carbon dioxide pollution from burning fossil fuels) that when natural variability manifests itself (as it will), the deniers have a field day. We have to be clear and conservative about the science, which is more than sufficient to warrant action without needing exaggeration. Recommended sites for answering skeptics’ questions are Grist Magazine’s “How to Talk to a Climate Skeptic” and RealClimate.org, where real scientists blog.

The UK Meteorological Office report just issued a report putting the leveling-off of the last decade in perspective. Climate skeptics might have claimed that global warming stopped more than seven other times in the 20^th Century, but they would have been wrong every time, as they are this time, when each time warmer temperatures returned with a vengeance.

Differences in global average near-surface temperatures - 1850 to July 2009.

Fighting Global Warming is Conservative, Too

Finally, as argued forever by the Republicans for Environmental Protection, conservation is conservative. If progressive Christians want to make a difference in communicating this issue to their more conservative brothers and sisters (and they must), the project can’t be about asking people to give up their cherished political perspectives to climb on board a “liberal” bandwagon. There is a limited but strong indigenous voice among conservatives on climate change, but it is at risk of being drowned out in the backlash against current administrative initiatives on other issues. Encourage and respect such voices, while realizing that you may differ on recommended policies.

Buy This Book

A great resource for connecting with conservatives who are skeptical about the science (or to give yourself a refresher course)  is a soon-to-be-released book by a climate scientist and an evangelical pastor (a wife and husband team), who together walk through the basics of what a citizen should know about God’s creation and the climate system. You can pre-order it now on Amazon: A Climate for Change–Global Warming Facts for Faith-Based Decisions by Katharine Hayhoe and Andrew Farley. I’m a curmudgeon who doesn’t like most climate books, but this one I recommend to everyone I meet.

A version of this post appeared on the Sojourners God’s Politics blog.

Rusty Pritchard is not an environmentalist, but he does care about Creation and the people who depend on it. He is the president of a national Christian environmental ministry, and he blogs at rustypritchard.com. He and his family live in community in urban Atlanta.