Guest essay by Eric Worrall
Pope Francis has waded into the climate debate again, by attempting to link human trafficking and climate change.
According to the Daily Mail;
Pope Francis has urged world leaders to take a ‘very strong stand’ on climate change ahead of the United Nations summit in Paris this year.
He was speaking at a conference of mayors and governors, who signed a declaration saying it may be the last chance to tackle human-induced global warming, at the Vatican today.
The meeting linked climate change and modern slavery because, according to an introductory paper, ‘global warming is one of the causes of poverty and forced migration’.
…
The cleric, speaking to the group in unprepared comments in Spanish, said he hoped the UN conference would address ‘particularly how it (climate change) affects the trafficking of people.
There is just one problem with this claim: where are the climate refugees?
As WUWT recently reported, the world’s only climate claimant just lost his case. The reason: In relation to the Refugee Convention, while Kiribati undoubtedly faces challenges, Mr Teitiota does not, if returned, face serious harm and there is no evidence that the government of Kiribati is failing to take steps to protect its citizens from the effects of environmental degradation to the extent that it can
I’m not suggesting climate change cannot cause migration – a number of towns in the Swiss Alps were destroyed by advancing glaciers during the little ice age. The beginning of the current interglacial saw huge migrations, as people settled land which was liberated from the vast continental ice sheets.
A number of countries also have serious self inflicted environmental problems, caused by poor resource management, such as soil erosion from over intensive farming.
But if anthropogenic climate change were a major cause of “poverty and forced migration”, not to mention slavery, then why can’t green activists find someone who has a compelling case for claiming climate refugee status? If the unfortunate Mr Teitiota is the best example green activists can muster, we can surely conclude that there currently is no verifiable connection between anthropogenic climate change, forced migration and human trafficking.
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Lordy this pope is stupid. Global warming is the one sure thing to cause more babies, let alone tarts. If he truely were Catholic, he would be thanking God we got it! Cold destroys fragile humans. Warm makes us, well, in a procreative frame of mind, (she said coyly in mixed company).
The Pope’s senior adviser on such matters, Hans Joachim Schellnhuber, does not want us “in a procreative frame of mind”. He’s a 1 billion carrying capacity kind of guy, though I don’t know if he and the Pope share any common ground on that issue. 😉
Any relation to Joachim de Fiore, the great apocalyptic fantasist in the ancient Church?
If the population of the earth was 7 million, there would be people saying that is too many, we need to cut back to 1 million people. Schellnhuber would be one of them.
Have you noticed that those purportedly concerned about overpopulation rarely discuss the path from overpopulation to ideal population.
Velly intellesting! (HT: Arte Johnson)
If you have read the encyclical, you would know that the Pope does blame overpopulation, but greed. He seems to think everything is a zero-sum game. If Mary get’s richer it’s at the expense of John. I cannot deny that there are no profligate Marys, but I can state that wealth creation is a good thing for society. The Pope’s concentration is on the poor where it should be; however, whether all his ideas on helping the poor are good ones is very much open to debate. Perhaps he has been unduly influenced by the liberation theology of Gustavo Gutierrez, but that is conjecture on my part.
One can make a case that Al Gore has profited from global warming, and even argue that grants from such agencies as the NSF may be more forth coming if global warming is mentioned. But it is hard to see how the Pope or the Catholic Church profits from this. I truly think he is seeking to do good and that is his only motive. This is not to deny the Pope is simply wrong. The doctrine of infallibility does not extend to these matters.
One thing I don’t understand about the global warming debate is this. It has been pretty well documented that climate models run hot, and tree rings are not the best proxies for temperature measurement. However it is also demonstrated that C02 prevents energy from escaping and thus should warm the planet.
If the models/ failures are due to climate complexity and overstating the effects of C02, does that mean the effects of climate change have been delayed, or is there no concentration of CO2 at which the predictions come true or is it impossible to reach such a concentration. In other words is the Pope completely wrong or premature?
Many people declare themselves to be “lukewarmers”. I find that position enticing, though I freely admit I don’t fully understand the science. Yet I have not seen the above questions addressed.
I have read the Encyclical. I agree with your assessment.
@ur momisugly Ian McGregor” One of the main reasons I left the Catholic Church is the fact that from the pope on down they seem to think they are “infallible” . As human beings and that is very single one of us, there is no such thing.
@Ian MacGregor,
“But it is hard to see how the Pope or the Catholic Church profits from this”.
Just wait and see the identity of those organisations that get their grubby paws into the UN’s Green Climate Fund honeypot, if the nations of the world are stupid enough to fund it to the level the undemocratic UN bureaucracy demands. The Vatican has ensured that it has ingratiated itself with the green socialist authoritarians who will try to control that Fund. I can see it now. More dollars will stick to the to the side of the Catholic Church than was ever filched from Banco Ambrosiano.
Never get between a Roman Catholic priest and a pot of money was the advice my old nan always gave me. She was right too.
You know what isn’t a cause of poverty and forced migration? Cheap and widely distributed electricity.
Good point Don.
this article should have been entitled: ” Pope jumps the shark “.
One thing that will be sure NOT do anything at all to stop slavery is to pretend it is linked to CAGW .
It’s probalby fairly effective way to divert attention from the real problem. And since it is going to take the best part of century before the nearly non existent cooling from reducing “carbon” takes effect, I guess we won’t be seeing a reduction in slavery from what the Pope is suggesting for many generations to come.
This has to be about the all-time dumbest thing ever attributed to CO2.
So we had no human trafficking before Global Warming. What happened to “the Devil that made them do it”.
Has Global Warming now become the new Devil and Mother Earth the new God?
In the church of Vatican 2—-absolutely!
Sedevacantist in Seattle
The Pope admits to being ill informed on economics and in ignoring the emergence of the global middle class in favor of a high intensity focus on the poor and the excluded. At least Pope Francis knows what he doesn’t know. All popes choose focuses and there’s nothing wrong with focusing on the poor and excluded. The problem is that the curia and other structures are supposed to fill in and support Pope Francis so he doesn’t make a fool of himself on issues he is not focusing on, or even issues he does focus on but aren’t a matter of his personal expertise.
Pope Francis knows quite well that this papal support structure is rotten, which is why he provisionally renewed existing positions on his election day instead of the more customary permanent renewal. He must both fight and rely on the same people in a delicate dance that is very much Catholic inside baseball. Skeptical Catholics didn’t get the hint and review the PAS and PASS with an eye to pushing more sound candidates to the posts. Others did. This is not Pope Francis’ fault, but our own. People die and slots open but I still have no clue who would make good appointments to either body and who are sound on a human centered assessment of climate. Again, this is not the Pope’s fault, but our own.
I did not say, nor did anyone else say, the Pope believes in reducing or blaming over population. But apparently he has advisers around him that do. Advisers tell you what they believe you want to hear while still getting you to do their hidden bidding. They said of pioneers that if they needed help to homestead, they shouldn’t have gone out West in the first place. If the Pope needs help to understand basic meteorological weather and climate physics, he shouldn’t be walking in that sea of complicated issues in the first place. As it is, he is vulnerable to clever but ill-willed advice and by repeating that advice, he sends out potentially malevolent intentions in sheep’s clothing.
He is an antipope and this is all very much his fault. The Church has ALWAYS focused on helping the poor.
No the real question is, where did the Church find this chowderhead?
Argentina.
Yeah, like in “Don’t cry for me Argentina.”
They (the College of Cardinals) screwed up. They wanted someone who was not European. So the Cardinals from Africa, South America, and Asia formed a block with some Cardinals from Europe. It was Politics. Note before the Pope issued his Encyclical, he made a comment to the effect that it would anger many in the west.
Perhaps some of this is part of a power struggle within the Vatican. Old guard vs New?
Things are not always as they seem.
michael
And why did Pope Benedict retire? Was it blackmail?
“According to anonymous Vatican officials, Benedict’s continued presence in the Vatican City will assist with the provision of security, prevent his retirement location from becoming a place of pilgrimage, and provide him with legal protection from potential lawsuits.[22]”
He’s a Marxist. I think it’s fine to have a communist pope, it will create very nice tensions and be fun to watch. I imagine Jeb Bush must ge considering the Anglican Church? Being a Catholic with a red Pope must be giving him a conuption.
ferdberple
“And why did Pope Benedict retire? Was it blackmail?”
It wouldn’t be the first time a Pope was driven out of the Vatican, if that is the case.
Also guess who the competition was during Benedict’s election. Makes you wonder.
miichael
Maybe that block wanted a pope who would take a warmist position. (It’s hard to believe that climate change wasn’t discussed among that block. They want that $100 billion-a-year dole.) So maybe now Francis is mostly fulfilling his end of the bargain.
In the crowd of clones in Rome. This is a fellow who aspires to a leadership of an outfit that says it renders him infallible. The sheer empty headed arrogance of that alone says it all.
+1 and thanks
Pope Francis: Climate change causes human trafficking
OMG!
I was just reading that the Pontiff mentions the Devil all the time and has for years. Seems he believes that the Devil is a real person and is very powerful — the Church’s main enemy according to him.
It may be that the Devil himself is the one guiding the Pontiff in matters of climate. It could be.
And no wonder, for Satan himself masquerades as an angel of light…..2 Corinthians 11:14
For what it’s worth…
Yup. Satan. I knew it.
That is not a nice thing to suggest about Hans Joachim Schellnhuber.
LOL! And here I was thinking that saying they might or might not have common ground about frame of mind was not a nice thing ;>O!
Who knew Damien Thorn was real?
Satan Disguised as a… CO2 producer!! They say that “you Burn In Hell” that suggest that HUGE fires are burning in Hell, I suggest that some of the zealot that crowd the newspapers and the air-wave, might want to go down there and start talking to Satan about the “Evil” CO2……
The Devil went down to Argentina,
He was looking for a Pope to brainwash…
Pope?
Jorge Bergoglio thought someone said DOPE!
Oooh, they’ve got him trafficking in lies. Wait’ll God hears.
================
Pope told a fiiib, Pope told a fiib. I’m gonna tell!
Sounds like he’s switching religions anyway
Gaianism?
Well, once you retreat from economic literacy to dogma it is not that hard to do the same with climate science and assorted alternate worlds of reconfigured issues and factors. It’s a slippery slope but more slippery for those predisposed to starting it.
The shear scientific ignorance of this Pope is astounding.
I didn’t hear anything about haircuts… isn’t that “shear” science? Unless you meant “sheer.” Sorry, just having some word fun.
But the Pope has been shorn of the truth…
Doesn’t a hoary tale also imply a hairy tale?
The Lamb of God?
Shorn?
Yep, but it’s the poor of the world who’ll be fleeced.
Boom Boom!
Ignorance or observational skill? He and a lot of others did watch Jerry Brown rake in $6 billion for high speed rail construction in California while singing CAGW scare stories as told to by the White House. It does not take long to learn these methods of behavior for the expected payoff. The line to the White House for more billions gets longer and the more often they sing the tune the better the chance of being moved up the line. Never mind that these billions were produced by the very self interest behaviors of millions of working Americans with rational incentives systems still functioning at this point. In other words capitalism with private property and private investment produces the wealth that they seek in the shadows and in international cocktail parties.
Forbes, Oct.27, 2014
“From 2001-2013, California’s industrial electricity prices were 65% above the U.S. average, and around 700,00 manufacturing jobs were lost-a fleeing of industry is a main reason why California requires less electricity.”
http://www.forbes.com/sites/judeclemente/2014/10/27/hey-epa-the california-model-doesnt-work-and-well-need- more-electricity
700,000 jobs lost to save California and Brown at the Vatican touting how environmental regulations helped save California and planet earth from carbon emissions damages?
Emissions down due to lost manufacturing and not to California CO2 regulations.
Something radically wrong with this new pope. He is a shill for the “Agenda 21” crowd.
(Global Warming) Climate Change causes:
Forced migration: Pope-a-Dope somehow didn’t consider the economic conditions where forced migration has occurred, especially Africa and Greece, which can be traced to corrupt politicians.
Human Trafficking: Pope-a-Dope somehow didn’t consider human greed supplying the human depravity as the main reason. Not that many years ago, UN officials in Europe were involved in trafficking (and drugs) and were given only a slap on the wrist cuz of the UN political connections – they should have been hanged.
dang….and all this time I thought it was money
aka, “Devil’s Dung”.
Be careful before you cast unwarranted aspersions. Google “Asafoetida” and you will find a that “devils dung” has popular medicinal and culinary virtues, which in my time I have explored.
You can buy it in Tesco’s for God’s sake (sorry Francis).
Also look up “Durian” – smells like a 3 week corpse, tastes like ambrosia.
A regret the encyclical and these latest comments only have half of these properties.
Is anyone interviewing the migrants and their handlers? There is now a flood of humanity moving from African states north and from the Middle East. This should involve more than color photo essays by National Geographic. Detailed interviews are possible if anyone bothers.
When it gets hot, I get frisky. I’m sorry… I can’t help it.
That seems to be a very normal response according to Pamela Gray.
Finger raised, the man in white in the vanguard of CAGW – makes the Cold War look sane.
“Pull my finger!”
Too bad Ali isn’t boxing any more… he should give this guy the ol’ “Pope-A-Dope.”
just pre-paris hype, that’s all
It still amazes me that the Pope has any power or influence at all. Hopefully someday soon, the entire Roman Catholic debacle will be a bad memory.
the entire Roman Catholic debacle will be a bad memory.
===============
so long as there is money to be made the Church will be around.
“give us your loot or you will burn in hell.”
you and I tried that, it would be extortion and hard time in prison. for the church it is standard practice.
@ferd, for how long now? Two thousand years?? The history of the RC is absolutely astounding, it makes some dictators look like humanitarians!
Dang it… I should have read all the replies… someone beat me to the “Pope-A-Dope” joke. I lose my gold star for the day.
I will treat _this_ pope’s pronouncements as authoritative as any other Marxist agitator’s.
I’m waiting for the IPCC to put out an epistle discussing Virgin Birth.
is the Pope a virgin? if not, why not?
if a 40 year old virgin is a loser without a clue, what is the Pope?
How is a man a virgin? Sorry, but the word virgin has been misappropriated in the modern age to include men. In my view it is a female condition only. The word “virgin” meant “young girl” meaning she was defined based on being per-menstrual, thus perpetually “clean”. In biblical days, as soon as a female began menstruation, she was no longer a young girl but a woman. The biblical story of the “virgin” birth has been interpreted according to modern word usage, thus we mistakenly are told she had not had sex prior to giving birth and therefore it could not have been a human male who impregnated her. It is however, highly possible that the mother of Jesus was impregnated prior to her first menstruation, thus she was impregnated while still a virgin. She was impregnated while still held to be perpetually “clean”. The “virgin” birth was from a body that had never been made unclean by menstruation.
So stop with the nonsense of male virginity.
He seems determined to make a laughing stock of the Catholic Church. Doing a god job of that so far. Religion and politics never did mix well. And the last time the Church mixed with basic science did not go well either. Cardinal Pell’s view rings true.
No, dammit. The world is flat. And so is the Pope’s head.
Some people already believe he is the false prophet. http://twoheartspress.com/blog/how-to-respond-if-pope-francis-is-the-false-prophet-2/
the third prophecy of Fatima:
“John XXIII fainted when he read the third secret because it specifically states, according to eyewitnesses, that the Pope would betray the flock and turn his sheep over to the slaughter devised by Lucifer himself. John XXIII fainted because he thought he would be the Pope who would open the door to Satan and that he would be the long awaited antipope.”
For every Pope there is an equal and opposite Anti-Pope?
Human trafficking is one activity that IS human caused.
True enough. But, apparently, the Pope has claimed it’s caused by the environment.
“There is just one problem with this claim: where are the climate refugees?”
And where is the climate change?
Will somebody pleeeeeze remind this pope of his Latin and the meaning of “post hoc ergo propter hoc”. You could just as easily model that the global warming is caused by his increasing age as warming being caused by CO2. I have never, ever seen such a fuster cluck of critical thinking errors in my life as this cargo cult religion of global warming. From pheph error to confirmation bias to special pleadings to the criminalization of critics to the “madness of crowds” in all of its glory the CAGW religion stopped being science many years ago. It is causing and will cause massive misallocation of resources. Quite frankly, there will be people who will die because of it.
Pheph is a good pattern recognition system to locate possible hypotheses. After locating them, they must withstand critical examination by forward prediction. Any model with enough knobs can predict the past. A simple foolscap pad with the previous observations does it perfectly. It is how it does in the future that matters. As we have seen the models have produced biased estimates of future temperature when examined against what really happened. As Dr. Feynman as said: “It does not make any difference how beautiful your guess is, it does not make any difference how smart you are, who made the guess, or what his name is – if it disagrees with experiment, it is wrong.” The CAGW hypothesis is wrong. Is the solar hypothesis right? I do not know either, but the test is the next five to 10 years.
In the meantime, the Pope does his followers and everyone else a disservice by attempting to reduce them to a total poverty status in the future because they do not have enough power to meet their most basic needs.
As a statistical note the non-parametric correlation of the Pope’s age and the CO2 content of the atmosphere is very close to 1.0 depending on how fine your time resolution is. Pope, please stop producing all that CO2!
“I have never, ever seen such a fuster cluck of critical thinking errors in my life as this cargo cult religion of global warming. ”
By the gods, that made my day. Thanks.
Quite frankly, there will be people who will die because of it.
================
Why would the Church be against death? The dead go to heaven, which according to the Church is a much better place than here.
Why would an all powerful, all loving God permit people to die before their time unless the place they are going to is better than where they are?
How can for example a child of 5 die in agony from cancer? Surely the child did nothing to warrant this cancer or the pain. So how can God be loving or just, unless the child is going to a better place.
And what of the pain and agony of the parents to see their child suffering and then lose the child. Why would a loving and just God inflict this upon them? They are not going to heaven, at least not right away.
Instead they are left to suffer the loss, which can mean years of agony to the parents, to the point where it breaks up marriages and even leads to suicide. And i the case of suicide, no matter how great the suffering that drove them to it, they will never find heaven.
And the church celebrates this as proof of the greatness of God. Given from your heart, lest God take you next.
For the Pope to so misrepresent the sources of the refugee crisis in Africa and the Middle East since the Second World War is almost too astounding to wrap your brain around.
Personally, I love how the Progs and watermelons are fawning over this moron. I’m sure they’ll now be very supportive of those who follow traditional religious values over secular ones. (/sarc)
As for me, I was baptized Catholic to try and please my then-wife. Once I started seeing it’s a power structure just like the government, I quickly distanced myself. Apparently bored with the Word and wanting to stay hip with the kids, they’ve moved deep into politics over the last few decades.
With that in mind, it only makes sense that Statists – both left and right – now appreciate it; I just don’t see why it took them so long. It’s why left-wing developed countries are okay with an official religion: it’s a convenient way to influence those who don’t defer to the secular enticements of the clowns they elect.
Marketing 101
If you have a high value product => sell the value
If you have a low value product, but with some distinct features => sell the features
If you have a sub-standard product across the board => get a celebrity endorsement
The pope is just a type of celebrity, just like Arnie (see earlier thread). The use of celebrity endorsement betrays the weakness of their case to any critical thinker. Unfortunately, celebrity endorsement works, that’s why you see so much use of it in advertising.