My affair with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration began when while I was a pre-teen, Honey Hill Road farm boy, launching small rockets over the heads of Baptist, Methodist and other friends.

It was natural for me to seek global warming information at the Goddard Scientific Visualization Studio, where an animation of the Five-Year Average Global Temperature Anomalies from 1880 to 2007 awaited.

This data visualization of global temperature differences from 1880 to 2007. Dark blue areas show regions where the temperature was cooler then the average temperature. Red areas show regions where the temperature was warmer then the average.

That's global warming in animated color -- the phenomenon an influential group of Southern Baptists addressed recently, to the considerable displeasure of their Republican-enthralled brethren.

Their position is modest, eschewing the strong statements like those of well-respected environmental scientist James Lovelock, who says the Earth is about to catch a morbid fever that may last as long as 100,000 years and which will kill millons of people.

Although they are being abused as "eco nutters" and worse, they statement actually puts them in the modest and scientifically painstaking company of people like CDC Director Dr. Julie Gerberding.

While their view that human activity is at the root of Global Warming is not universally accept among members of the general public, the Pew Research Center finds that it does have a large if not quite majority (47% in 2007) following.

In a marked if gently stated departure from the adopted Southern Baptist Convention position that strong action against Global Warming is "very dangerous," the (initially) 44 say:

Though the claims of science are neither infallible nor unanimous, they are substantial and cannot be dismissed out of hand on either scientific or theological grounds. Therefore, in the face of intense concern and guided by the biblical principle of creation stewardship, we resolve to engage this issue without any further lingering over the basic reality of the problem or our responsibility to address it. Humans must be proactive and take responsibility for our contributions to climate change?however great or small.

Thus they implicitly disavow the Bush Administration's censorship and repression of scientifically well-founded Global Warming research and embrace responsible, immediate action to protect and preserve not only the human race but also the other organisms created by God to inhabit this planet.

While as a whole scientifically complex, the collapse of the Larsen Ice Shelf in 2002 was a dramatic, NASA-documented illustration that forceful, immediate action is prudent, not dangerous.

Viewed in light of the available data and the efforts of groups like the Union of Concerned Scientists, the Creation Care statement is timely, restrained good sense, well-expressed.

Addendum:

On Thursday, March 20, 2008, the editor of the North Carolina Biblical Recorder took a a well-reasoned stand for the Southern Baptist Climate Initiative. and action against Global Warming and posted an forceful blog on the same subject.

March 25: A massive chunk of the Wilkins Ice Shelf collapsed today as a result of global warming. The National Georgraphic story has good photographs.