Why Some White Evangelicals Are Rethinking Their Politics l FiveThirtyEight
The individuals featured in the provided link, IMHO, understand what Christ's teachings were really about better than the majority of Evangelicals who now so slavishly and fanatically support Trump.
Trenton Lucas, one of the commenters to the above video wrote:White evangelicals are often seen as a solidly Republican voting bloc. In the 2020 election, 84 percent of them voted for Donald Trump. In fact, according to the Pew Research Center, many of Trump’s supporters began identifying as evangelical during his presidency.
But white evangelicals aren’t a monolith. In our first episode of Political Outliers, meet two devout evangelicals who were raised in conservative households, but are now self-proclaimed “progressives.” They both say that their political views became more liberal as they immersed themselves deeper into their faith.
The prominent climate scientist, Katherine Hayhoe, one of the most effective proponents of acknowledging the reality and dangers of man caused climate change and working to mitigate it, is also a devout Evangelical.The thing is, the average evangelical doesn’t actually know much about evangelical theology. They just seek out leaders who reinforce their preconceived political views. It’s really telling that both of these gentlemen changed their political views in response to actually studying their own theology.
Obviously, one doesn't necessarily have to be anti-science, pro-Trump, or even a hard right conservative, to be a devout Christian, or even an Evangelical. President Jimmy Carter, whom I consider to be one of the most unfairly underrated Presidents during my lifetime, was also a devout Evangelical.WHO I AM
I’m an atmospheric scientist. I study climate change, one of the most pressing issues we face today.
I don’t accept global warming on faith: I crunch the data, I analyze the models, I help engineers and city managers and ecologists quantify the impacts.
The data tells us the planet is warming; the science is clear that humans are responsible; the impacts we’re seeing today are already serious; and our future is in our hands. As John Holdren once said, “We basically have three choices: mitigation, adaptation, and suffering. We’re going to do some of each. The question is what the mix is going to be. The more mitigation we do, the less adaptation will be required, and the less suffering there will be.”
WHAT I DO
I began my career with a B.Sc. in physics and astronomy from the University of Toronto. My first published papers were in the field of observational astronomy, on variable stars and galaxy clustering around quasars. As I was finishing my degree, I took a class in climate science with Danny Harvey, who had previously been a postdoc at NCAR with Steve Schneider, and that class completely shocked me – and ended up changing my life. I didn’t realize climate science was based on the exact same basic physics – thermodynamics, non-linear fluid dynamics, and radiative transfer – I’d been learning in astrophysics. And I definitely didn’t realize that climate change wasn’t just an environmental issue – it’s a threat multiplier. It takes the most serious humanitarian issues confronting climate change today – hunger, poverty, lack of access to clean water, injustice, refugee crises and more – and it makes them worse. How could I not do everything I could to help fix this huge global challenge?
I switched gears and headed to the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign to work on a M.S. in atmospheric science with Don Wuebbles, a climate scientist well known for his leadership in policy-relevant science. Working with Don, my masters research focused on understanding human and natural sources of methane, and quantifying the contribution of methane and other non-CO2 greenhouse gases to emission reduction targets. After participating in a climate change assessment for the Great Lakes, I recognized the need for high-resolution climate projections to integrate into impact studies in areas ranging from ecosystems to energy. For my Ph.D., I refocused my research to survey and compare a broad range of the statistical downscaling methods often used to generate these projections: research that now feeds directly into my contribution to the World Meteorological Organization’s Coordinated Regional Downscaling Experiment for Empirical Statistical Downscaling, or WMO CORDEX-ESD. There’s no one like a scientist for generating long unpronounceable acronyms, is there?
To date, my work has resulted in over 125 peer-reviewed papers, abstracts, and other publications and many key reports including the U.S. Global Change Research Program’s Second National Climate Assessment; the U.S. National Academy of Science report, Climate Stabilization Targets: Emissions, Concentrations, and Impacts over Decades to Millennia; and the 2014 Third National Climate Assessment. In addition to these reports, I have led climate impact assessments for a broad cross-section of cities and regions, from Chicago to California and the U.S. Northeast. The findings of these studies have been presented before Congress, highlighted in briefings to state and federal agencies, and used as input to future planning by communities, states, and regions across the country.
Today, I am the Chief Scientist for The Nature Conservancy and I am also a Paul Whitfield Horn Distinguished Professor and the Political Science Endowed Chair in Public Policy and Public Law in the Department of Political Science at Texas Tech University, where I am also an associate in the Public Health program of the Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences. I am also a principal investigator for the Department of Interior’s South-Central Climate Adaptation Science Center and the National Science Foundation’s Global Infrastructure Climate Network. My research currently focuses on establishing a scientific basis for assessing the regional to local-scale impacts of climate change on human systems and the natural environment. To this end, I analyze observations, compare future scenarios, evaluate global and regional climate models, build and assess statistical downscaling models, and constantly strive to develop better ways of translating climate projections into information relevant to agriculture, ecosystems, energy, infrastructure, public health, and water resources.
