Hail storms, droughts, earthquakes, hurricanes, tsunamis, super storms, and more! Why are these happening with ever increasing frequency?
Arguments are raging around the world as to the reality or otherwise of climate change. And also, is man causing it?
Now I'm no scientist and so cannot weigh in to the debate from that angle. But I can provide a view from the Bible as one who reads and believes what it says. Climate change is real and Bible prophecy supports it. There is no doubt about it and regardless of the sceptics; this is not just a natural cycle of events.
The world is baffled at the events taking place in the weather, and yet it was foretold two thousand years ago in bible prophecy that this would happen.
Jesus said, "...there will be great earthquakes and in various places famines and pestilences..." (Luke 21:11) In the recent past there have been plagues of locusts and mice across sections of Australia. Earthquakes are being reported with alarming regularity in the news. The United States Geological Survey recorded 16,590 earthquakes in 1990 and this has risen to 31,777 in 2008.
Bible prophecy also says, "...upon the earth distress of nations in perplexity at the roaring of the sea and waves..." (Luke 21:25-26)
The frequency and magnitude of tsunamis are clear evidence of the roaring of the sea and waves. The Boxing Day tsunami in South-East Asia (2004) and the recent tsunamis in Fiji and Samoa were unparalleled disasters. Tsunamis have caused such anxiety amongst island and coastal dwellers that unprecedented efforts have gone into development of early warning systems.
In all of these matters the nations are perplexed as to what is causing these chaotic and dramatic shifts in weather. Governments are discussing climate change to an extent previously unheard of across a background of conflicting scientific experts on both sides. Arguments are raging about carbon footprints, emissions trading schemes and the like in attempts to try to do something about these events.
Which brings us to the question: what is causing these dramatic climatic events?
The answer: God. Bible prophecy stated that this would occur in the last days, along with other signs of the times. Signs such as nation rising against nation, kingdom against kingdom, wars, tumults and rumours of war, all of which point to the end times. These climatic changes were prophesied to herald the last days in preparation for the return of Christ.
Now if these things are signs from God, is there any likelihood that man can prevent these things occurring? Not a chance! If the hand of God is indeed behind these events, then man would have more chance of holding back the tide than trying to prevent these things from happening.
So should we be concerned about this? In short, no we should not. These are prophesied as events that must happen. Christians can actually take heart because these signs are telling us that the time of the Lord's return is soon. We can take comfort in the knowledge that as these things get worse, and they will, we know that the Lord is not far away.
But how bad will it get? Well I can't answer that but it will get worse than it is today. What we are seeing is just a beginning. However the Bible also tells us that when the Lord returns it will be like when God flooded the earth or when he destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah. He says that the people will eat and drink, marry and be given in marriage right up until the day the Lord returns (Luke 17:26-30). So this tells us that mankind will be doing all of the normal things they do right up until the end.
So is climate change a thing to fear? No. It is a necessary part of the process that God set in train thousands of years ago and from which he will save his people. He has told us two further things in the scriptures from which we can be encouraged. He says, "When these things begin to take place, look up and raise your heads because your redemption is drawing near." (Luke 21:28), and, "...when you see all these things, you know that he is near, at the very gates." (Matthew 24:33), so take heart and be prepared.
By freegiftfromgod.com
Heat, Flood or Icy Cold, Extreme Weather Rages Worldwide
WORCESTER, England — Britons may remember 2012 as the year the weather spun off its rails in a chaotic concoction of drought, deluge and flooding, but the unpredictability of it all turns out to have been all too predictable: Around the world, extreme has become the new commonplace.
Especially lately. China is enduring its coldest winter in nearly 30 years. Brazil is in the grip of a dreadful heat spell. Eastern Russia is so freezing — minus 50 degrees Fahrenheit, and counting — that the traffic lights recently stopped working in the city of Yakutsk.
Bush fires are raging across Australia, fueled by a record-shattering heat wave. Pakistan was inundated by unexpected flooding in September. A vicious storm bringing rain, snow and floods just struck the Middle East. And in the United States, scientists confirmed this week what people could have figured out simply by going outside: last year was the hottest since records began.
“Each year we have extreme weather, but it’s unusual to have so many extreme events around the world at once,” said Omar Baddour, chief of the data management applications division at the World Meteorological Organization, in Geneva. “The heat wave in Australia; the flooding in the U.K., and most recently the flooding and extensive snowstorm in the Middle East — it’s already a big year in terms of extreme weather calamity.”
Such events are increasing in intensity as well as frequency, Mr. Baddour said, a sign that climate change is not just about rising temperatures, but also about intense, unpleasant, anomalous weather of all kinds.
Here in Britain, people are used to thinking of rain as the wallpaper on life’s computer screen — an omnipresent, almost comforting background presence. But even the hardiest citizen was rattled by the near-biblical fierceness of the rains that bucketed down, and the floods that followed, three different times in 2012.
Rescuers plucked people by boat from their swamped homes in St. Asaph, North Wales. Whole areas of the country were cut off when roads and train tracks were inundated at Christmas. In Mevagissey, Cornwall, a pub owner closed his business for good after it flooded 11 times in two months.
It was no anomaly: the floods of 2012 followed the floods of 2007 and also the floods of 2009, which all told have resulted in nearly $6.5 billion in insurance payouts. The Met Office, Britain’s weather service, declared 2012 the wettest year in England, and the second-wettest in Britain as a whole, since records began more than 100 years ago. Four of the five wettest years in the last century have come in the past decade (the fifth was in 1954).
The biggest change, said Charles Powell, a spokesman for the Met Office, is the frequency in Britain of “extreme weather events” — defined as rainfall reaching the top 1 percent of the average amount for that time of year. Fifty years ago, such episodes used to happen every 100 days; now they happen every 70 days, he said.
The same thing is true in Australia, where bush fires are raging across Tasmania and the current heat wave has come after two of the country’s wettest years ever. On Tuesday, Sydney experienced its fifth-hottest day since records began in 1910, with the temperature climbing to 108.1 degrees. The first eight days of 2013 were among the 20 hottest on record.
Every decade since the 1950s has been hotter in Australia than the one before, said Mark Stafford Smith, science director of the Climate Adaptation Flagship at the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization.
To the north, the extremes have swung the other way, with a band of cold settling across Russia and Northern Europe, bringing thick snow and howling winds to Stockholm, Helsinki and Moscow. (Incongruously, there were also severe snowstorms in Sicily and southern Italy for the first time since World War II; in December, tornadoes and waterspouts struck the Italian coast.)
In Siberia, thousands of people were left without heat when natural gas liquefied in its pipes and water mains burst. Officials canceled bus transportation between cities for fear that roadside breakdowns could lead to deaths from exposure, and motorists were advised not to venture far afield except in columns of two or three cars. In Altai, to the east, traffic officials warned drivers not to use poor-quality diesel, saying that it could become viscous in the cold and clog fuel lines.
Meanwhile, China is enduring its worst winter in recent memory, with frigid temperatures recorded in Harbin, in the northeast. In the western region of Xinjiang, more than 1,000 houses collapsed under a relentless onslaught of snow, while in Inner Mongolia, 180,000 livestock froze to death. The cold has wreaked havoc with crops, sending the price of vegetables soaring.
Way down in South America, energy analysts say that Brazil may face electricity rationing for the first time since 2002, as a heat wave and a lack of rain deplete the reservoirs for hydroelectric plants. The summer has been punishingly hot. The temperature in Rio de Janeiro climbed to 109.8 degrees on Dec. 26, the city’s highest temperature since official records began in 1915.
At the same time, in the Middle East, Jordan is battling a storm packing torrential rain, snow, hail and floods that are cascading through tunnels, sweeping away cars and spreading misery in Syrian refugee camps. Amman has been virtually paralyzed, with cars abandoned, roads impassable and government offices closed.
Israel and the Palestinian territories are grappling with similar conditions, after a week of intense rain and cold winds ushered in a snowstorm that dumped eight inches in Jerusalem alone.
Amir Givati, head of the surface water department at the Israel Hydrological Service, said the storm was truly unusual because of its duration, its intensity and its breadth. Snow and hail fell not just in the north, but as far south as the desert city of Dimona, best known for its nuclear reactor.
In Beirut on Wednesday night, towering waves crashed against the Corniche, the seaside promenade downtown, flinging water and foam dozens of feet in the air as lightning flickered across the dark sea at multiple points along the horizon. Many roads were flooded as hail pounded the city.
Several people died, including a baby boy in a family of shepherds who was swept out of his mother’s arms by floodwaters. The greatest concern was for the 160,000 Syrian refugees who have fled to Lebanon, taking shelter in schools, sheds and, where possible, with local families. Some refugees are living in farm outbuildings, which are particularly vulnerable to cold and rain.
Barry Lynn, who runs a forecasting business and is a lecturer at the Hebrew University’s department of earth science, said a striking aspect of the whole thing was the severe and prolonged cold in the upper atmosphere, a big-picture shift that indicated the Atlantic Ocean was no longer having the moderating effect on weather in the Middle East and Europe that it has historically.
“The intensity of the cold is unusual,” Mr. Lynn said. “It seems the weather is going to become more intense; there’s going to be more extremes.”
In Britain, where changes to the positioning of the jet stream — a ribbon of air high up in the atmosphere that helps steer weather systems — may be contributing to the topsy-turvy weather, people are still recovering from the December floods. In Worcester last week, the river Severn remained flooded after three weeks, with playing fields buried under water.
In the shop at the Worcester Cathedral, Julie Smith, 54, was struggling, she said, to adjust to the new uncertainty.
“For the past seven or eight years, there’s been a serious incident in a different part of the country,” Mrs. Smith said. “We don’t expect extremes. We don’t expect it to be like this.”
By Sarah Lyall