Jitterbugging for Jesus

“The people that I go to church with and the people who live in the place I live, in West Texas, are the people who are most doubtful that [climate change] is a real problem, and who are being targeted and misinformed by the people whom we trust.

“I felt like it was my responsibility to say: ‘Here I am, and here is what I believe. Here are all the values that I share with you, and here is what I, as a scientist, know to be true.’ I felt it was important to be that voice in the wilderness.”

— Katharine Hayhoe, devout, evangelical Christian and Texas Tech University scientist

The Christian digital magazine Plough has a great interview with the Texas Tech University climate-change expert Katharine Hayhoe, a much-respected scientist with the peppy, engaging personality of front-desk clerk at a beach resort.

Like most of the masses who have come to know her, I came to know Hayhoe via the actor Don Cheadle when I watched the “Showtime Channel’s” documentary “Years of Living Dangerously.”

Few scientists are as adept at explaining at the grass-roots level how we are changing the climate–and how dangerous it really is right now and to future generations, too.

And thank God for her willing to stand up to the abuse she takes from other Christians, who bombard her with astoundingly hate-filled e-mails.

And yet it’s not surprising considering the utter contempt that so many people in politics, the news media and the oil & gas industry influential–people with clear political and financial agendas–have for scientists like Hayhoe, Christian or no Christian.

As she tells Plough:

“Every time you stick your head out of the ivory tower and tell people in the real world that climate change is real, that scientists agree, and that it’s affecting us now and we need to do something about it, you will get attacked. Unless maybe you’re doing it in Berkeley.

“The attacks come in waves. When you become visible in the public arena a bunch of people write you nasty notes or blog about you, and then it kind of dies out until the next time. But the next time, all of those people are still there, plus you have extra people who just noticed you. Now it’s to the point to where, for some people, I am a regular source of blog fodder. They are building a career out of following me and making stuff up about me. I’ve discovered that the healthiest, most sane thing for me to do is to not even look at that stuff. A lot of the nasty emails come in through my website. I don’t read those emails; my assistant goes through them. Anything that she needs to report to the police she does, and I don’t see it.”

What a sad commentary on our times that quote is.

At any rate, I commend the whole interview with Hayhoe to you, which can be accessed by clicking here.

Also check out videos of her like this one, or others on you tube you can access here:

Or you can take the word of climate-change deniers like Newt Gringich or Sean Hannity or Bill O’Reilly or most of the people running for currently running for President, who apparently don’t believe that NASA scientists put Americans on the moon.

I think I’ll go with the Christian expert at the great university in the western climes of Texas Our Texas.

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Here’s a good resource for climate-change skeptics taken from one of Hayhoe’s own recommended resources. Click here.