![pope-francis-environment-encyclical[1]](https://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2015/04/pope-francis-environment-encyclical1.jpg?quality=83)
Guest essay by Eric Worrall
Pope Francis, addressing members of the press while travelling on his chartered jet plane, has stated that the world is headed toward “suicide” if there is no climate agreement at the COP21 conference.
According to Reuters;
Francis, who visited Kenya, Uganda and the Central African Republic, also said the continent was “a martyr of exploitation” by wealthy countries who lust after its natural resources and try to impose Western values instead of concentrating on development.
The pope was asked if the U.N. climate summit in Paris would mark a turnaround in the fight against global warming.
“I am not sure, but I can say to you ‘now or never’,” he said. “Every year the problems are getting worse. We are at the limits. If I may use a strong word I would say that we are at the limits of suicide.“
Read more http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/11/30/us-climatechange-summit-pope-idUSKBN0TJ2FY20151130#L8vkviEg7TtoBrK4.99
I wish I had my own plane, though my dream is a little more modest than the Pope’s CO2 belching Alitalia jet.
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I’ll go with never.
What was it they used to say ? If he doesn’t play the game, then he doesn’t get to make the rules.
Sounds about the same in Spanish, as it does in Italian.
g
I’ve had it with all of these pontificators; who actually know nothing at all about it.
And which “game” are you referring to? Games where players change rules are rare.
“The Game is a mental game where the objective is to avoid thinking about The Game itself. Thinking about The Game constitutes a loss, which must be announced each time it occurs.”
Welcome to post normal Science – an unlikely Popper carnie treat.
Climate games of course. That’s all we’ve been seeing since 1990- made up stories, magical temperature readings, changing the laws of physics via modeling, and on and on.
Even rarer are instances where I say “change the rules”, when I specifically mean “make the rules.”
g
You may be thinking of the notorious quote from Earl Butz (Nixon Secretary of Agriculture) about the Pope’s stand on birth control: “He no play-a the game, he no make-a the rules”. Mock Italian accent got him in trouble, of course. He had a way with words …
As for the current “Pope goes the weasel”, think of it as an IQ test question on 20th century history.
John Paul is to Poland as Francis is to Argentina.
Never sounds good. Close up the conference and do away with the climate change scam, that is the global warming scam, and we can bring much help to those in poverty.
In supposed response to Pope Francis’ “Now or never” ultimatum, TRM writes: “I’ll go with never.”
I have to note that Pope Francis is in fact a respected religious leader and his opinion on cAGW is likely the most authoritative one we will ever see, outranking even the highest ranking climate scientist. His intellectual domain is completely uncluttered by rational thought. He’s the Guy when it comes to climate experts. You should not take what he says lightly.
The Pope *is* a respected religious leader, and one who knows a few things about ignorance and humility which is why he has personally disclaimed expertise, a step up from a lot of other world leaders who are just as ignorant but much less willing to admit it. The setup in the Church has always been to hear the Pope out, but to vary deference depending on subject and expertise. Scientific matters about which the Pope has personally disclaimed detailed expertise are always accorded the lowest level of deference. When taken as a moral statement, the idea of taking care of the climate is not objectionable in the least. In fact, the Pope is probably the best route for getting around the current impasse as you can make an excellent case that climate levels being targeted are not optimal for the poor and the Pope would be compelled to speak out against that, caring for the poor being an area where he’s got more expertise and less willingness to tolerate posers.
It is generally uncontroversial that increasing TSI would tend to increase temperature and reducing it would cool the planet. An orbital sun shade/mirror is not affordable today but given current progress on reducing launch costs, it’s foreseeable as an affordable item several decades from now, when the apocalyptics claim that global warming will really hit its stride as a global disaster. Modest investments in reducing launch costs and creating orbital manufacturing facilities much less than what is being bandied about in Paris should do the trick of creating a capability to move us to a modern optimum and get rid of the specter of future ice ages.
A sun shade/mirror system would have the advantage of largely being a one time capital cost that can be turned on or off as needed. No disaster?, rotate the objects so they don’t materially affect the planet. A problem appears and you rotate things back over the course of a few hours or even days. Perhaps we can even figure out how to reduce the temperature gradient between the equator and the poles with both sides of the system operating to adjust TSI differently depending on the latitude. A lot of potential improvements there that would enhance the planet, especially for the poor, who are less able to adapt to weather and climate than the rich.
I think that Francis would have kind words to say about such an effort, and the Gaia contingent along with the socialists in watermelon guise would definitely not. Not enough graft available in it, not enough increases in political power there either.
TMLutas writes: “The Pope *is* a respected religious leader, and one who knows a few things about ignorance and humility which is why he has personally disclaimed expertise”
It’s always a little embarrassing when someone takes a sarcastic comment literally and I appreciate the measured tone of your reply but I must admit the part about declaiming expertise in the subject, while potentially true, has little influence on the majority of scientifically uneducated people, catholic or otherwise. The Pope is perceived by many (and proclaimed by the same) as a person who literally interprets and represents God’s will on Earth. It’s impossible to reconcile this position with one of ignorance on any subject.
He made a bad bargain at his meal, and forgot to bring his long spoon.
==============
We are going to find out what happens when CO2 goes up. China is not waiting. India is not waiting. Parts of Africa don’t want to wait. Most of the developed nations are not prepared to come close to the carbon reductions required to even slow the increase, never mind halt it.
We are going to find out what happens when CO2 goes up.
So these folks are going to have their apocalyptic claims tested. It may be quite embarassing.
They will simply rely on people not remembering past apocalyptic claims, while making up wild new claims far enough into the future where they will not be alive to answer for them. This has become a lifestyle of the far-left loons. Sure glad I never fell into their delusions.
Don’t forget they are making claims abut weather events now, let alone well into the future. The UK Wet office responds to questions about whether this storm or that storm was climate related, & say no it isn’t for certain but we expect more like this!
Alan the Brit…Liberal logic is non existent nowadays, they have mostly been converted to Socialism but are too dense to know it!!
The capacity of the loons to disregard their mistakes is frightening. One would think that the hiatus or reduction in warming would shake the believers to the core but that is never the case with the faithful. Y2K was a similar but smaller scale scam that brought all the worms out of the woodwork. The media were beside themselves with anxiety. All the experts were paraded past us ad nauseam. The moment the disaster didn’t materialize, all was forgotten and forgiven and we moved on to the next scare campaign. Who can forget the colossal farce of the WHO declaring H1N1 a pandemic. Apparently the whole world can. Countries which didn’t vaccinate had a below average flu year (Poland) of a less than average lethality strain. Our leaders (read con men) have discovered that they are really adept at solving problems that don’t actually exist. The other kind- not so much.
Y2K wasn’t a problem precisely because thousands of companies invested millions of man hours in preventing the problem before it occurred.
As a programmer who spent several months updating dozens of legacy programs in 1999, I can attest to that.
If the temperature goes up, they say “we told you so”. If it goes down, or stays stable, they say “look, we saved the planet”
What MarkW said. Y2K was a problem analyzed, prioritized, and dealt with. I find it disgusting and distressing to see such a good example slandered as a “scam”.
I’m with MarkW on this. Y2K is a great example of a problem analyzed, prioritized, and solved. It is harmful to [utter false criticism of] it as a “scam”.
(I posted this earlier and metaphorically used a legal term which may have stuck in an auto-moderation filter.)
P.S. If you don’t want your comments to linger for an hour in moderation, avoid using legal terminology, even as a metaphor. (Right?)
The only Y2K effect I know of is that it glitched the NASA/GISS adjustment codes.
With you on the examples except the Y2K. Yes the media did their scare routine but as someone who updated dozens of servers and thousands of clients it was not a false expenditure. The cycle is usually 3-4 years for a client system and 5-7 for servers. Some got done early some late in their cycle and there was a pause in purchasing after 2000 to allow the cycle to renew. It was never as big as the media claimed but what is?
BUT — the Y10K problem is coming up in 7,984 years and 29 days!!! Just think of all the legacy code written with output for only 4 places of decimal digits for the year instead of 5.
I say we’re doomed! — Spread the word! (At least try to divert attention to something other than CAGW.)
Y2K was real. It was known, planned for and most problems solved. Perhaps the feared “calamitous” events weren’t going to happen but indeed it did require upgrading of critical components and we did see a few interesting things with computers we didn’t bother with as they weren’t connected to our network systems. Not a big deal for non-critical components but it did have impacts – and we did testing to see what would happen on the rollover (as did many other people) just to see what would happen. Mostly the date would just revert to the initiation date (I forget what that was) but some unexpected things happened so we made sure we had most things upgraded by the fall of 1999. There are several retrospectives – just search Y2K retrospective.
Here is just one: http://www.grantjeffrey.com/article/y2kretro.htm
“MarkW
December 1, 2015 at 10:56 am”
There are two countries I know of that did nothing in the run up to Y2K. Ethiopia and Romania, and Romania had nuclear power stations.
Y2K was “fear mongering”.
If there was a Y2K problem in some of the software then it was the fault of lazy or incompetent programmers because there has been a simple little programming algorithm available since at least the 1960’s (when I first used it) for determining when there is a millennium “roll-over” as well as “leap years” ….. and there has not been a banking or money management program pertaining to mortgages, loans, depreciation, accrued interest, interest payments, etc. in the past 40/50 years that did not “use” that algorithm, …….. otherwise they would have done “crashed n’ burned” long, long before Y2K occurred.
Not all programs had the Y2K problem.
Code that did no date calculations would not have the problem.
Code that was written properly to begin with did not have the problem.
You can also fake out your computer by telling it that the year is 1990 instead of 2000.
The fact that a couple of countries did not have a problem is not evidence that there was never a problem to begin with.
“There are two countries I know of that did nothing in the run up to Y2K. Ethiopia and Romania, and Romania had nuclear power stations.”
Countries that are well known for the massive number of computers they had in operation at that time. Hint: that’s sarcasm.
Telling those of us who had to work on Y2K problems that it wasn’t a problem is not going to impress us.
@ur momisugly MarkG
Cause ya’ll saved the business world and every government agency from total collapse on January 1st, 2000, …… RIGHT?
Vunderful, simply vunderful.
Yup, and an intelligent DP Manager or programmer could also fake out their computer by telling it that the year was 2001 …… and then execute a “test run” to see iffen there were any “queertrons” buried in the “code” that would cause it to “blow its mind”.
True but even if their apocalyptic claims do not materialize, they will simply ignore it and carry on.
Once this carbon tax scheme is in place, it will never go away.
The first US personal income tax was created to pay for the Civil War, somehow we’re still paying.
Yes , freeing the slaves is STILL costing us a pretty penny !!!!
How is it different from the last 18 years? CO2 went up, temperature didn’t. I cannot assume the warmists will see the light with another few years of contradictory data. They will simply adjust the numbers, talk about model predictions, change the subject to ocean acidification/extreme weather/etc etc etc, or shout you down that you are an evil capitalist that doesn’t care about the earth/poor people/minorities/etc etc etc. I’m so tired of this ridiculous waste of resources!
We’re definitely headed for suicide with the agreement the Pope, Obama, and the rest of the progressives in Paris have in mind. I’ll take my chances with no agreement.
Good thing for the Pope that he was not around in the 70s following Jim Jones, because he would have consumed the Kool-Aid for sure.
Desperate times call for desperate words from on high. same old same old.
What a 5 star hypocrite.
The Vatican is the capitalist headquarters of the planet.
Nowhere are the poor more exploited for their last few dollars than by this arrogant organisation.
Don’t mention tax to these super greedy parasites.
Marxists always want all the power and all the money.
They see the M.M.G.W. racket as their best chance ever, to get it.
Second rank, but not far off, is Scientology.
The Pope ought to rent Travolta’s 707….
So, why not take money off the table? Why shouldn’t developed nations support a barter system with developing countries until they have reasonable infrastructure and a reasonable GDP?
Fuller’s World Game is a possible approach:
https://bfi.org/about-fuller/big-ideas/world-game
Very 60’s but it’s better than a grab bag full of useless script and doesn’t require UN nonsense.
Because money is all they want, and I bet they won’t use if for what it is intended.
Tom,
Look at the win win of an alternate approach. This approach employs in both developed and developing countries, it takes profit off the table in favor of exchange rates based on barter agreements which can’t be traded to inflate or deflate their value, it focuses on true needs, it’s an approach which focuses on the true needs of the developing country and contains the good old boy elitists, etc…
Developing countries don’t want worthless script (money), they want help!
Note: if you’ve got a solution, win 100k and enter the contest:
“Each year, The Buckminster Fuller Institute invites scientists, students, designers, architects, activists, entrepreneurs, artists and planners from all over the world to submit their innovative solutions to some of humanity’s most pressing problems. A $100,000 prize is awarded to support the development and implementation of one outstanding strategy.”
Best, John
re: John McClure December 1, 2015 at 9:55 am
John, that assumes those in power really want to solve the problem. But they do not, they only want more power and control.
Remember:
First you take their money
Then you take their guns,
Then you take their freedom.
I just watched Bill Nye teaching some dumb microphone inhaler about how we are going to fix climate change. I wish I cold tell you how he is going to do it, but he was just completely incoherent.
He did hold his hands up to show her about how deep eight inches of water is.
Hey Bill ! The reason that water lies around in puddles, is because the bottom of those puddles is at a lower altitude than other places that don’t have puddles.
Don’t stand around in places with puddles. In particular, never try to push your Detroitosaurus Maximus out of a water puddle.
Nine times out of ten, you will be pushing your car uphill.
g
I used to visit a quite historic Mexican fishing town, on the Sea of Cortez.
I noticed that the kids in the town liked to fish with some nylon fishing line wrapped around an empty beer bottle (Dos equies), and they used an old outboard motor spark plug for a sinker to hurl their line and bait out into the Bay for fish.
So one year, I bought a half dozen well made plastic Hawaiian hand reels, which I loaded up with about a hundred yards of good quality line. I figured their spark plugs were as good a choice for sinkers, so I didn’t get any lead ones.
So I handed those out to some of the kids, and showed them how much better than a beer bottle the Hawaiian hand reel was.
At the end of the week, as we were leaving to come home, I saw a couple of those kids, dragging the Hawaiian hand reel around the street, trying to get it to bowl like a small hoop.
Some times, there are good reasons, why third world peoples do what they do.
And we aren’t going to be able to teach them anything better.
g
Hi George,
Exactly, the solutions must be culturely insightful or they will fail. It’s a wonderful and very difficult design exercise. Obviously, the UN isn’t up to the task. So let’s discard the UN goofs and build a proper basis for resolution.
There’s more talent on WUWT than we’re likely to find anywhere. Instead of bitching in comments, why not team up and fix some of the nonsense?
Speaking of people wanting all the money, much of the 3rd world is so corrupt that the money thrown at them will never go any where but in government officials pockets:
http://www.worldbank.org/en/news/press-release/2013/12/19/corruption-developing-countries-world-bank-group-president-kim
http://www.forbes.com/2007/04/03/corruption-countries-nations-biz-07caphosp-cx_da_0403corrupt.html
Exactly, so take money off the table in favor of a better approach! ; )
Send an email to the UN, John . . maybe they’ll reconsider ; )
Nowhere are the poor more exploited for their last few dollars than by this arrogant organisation.
==============
So true. The Vatican has trillions of tax free dollars socked away
Perhaps the weathiest parasitic organization on earth. Criminally extorting biilions each year from the poorest of the poor, lest they burn in hell. The current Pope installed in a coup. With the previous pope forced to resign. The third prophecy of Fatima, the downfall of the Roman Catholic church now unstoppable.
So presumably if there is an agreement, humanity is not at the limits of suicide anymore. Good grief.
And if there is an agreement, will the UN let us know when the climate has stopped changing?
Once the UN and the far-left achieves global control and power, they will never give it up, and if it takes a perpetual climate fraud to keep it, so be it.
Pope Frank said: “Try to impose Western values instead of concentrating on development” … isn’t that something of an oxymoron? But then maybe it’s just the standard socialist doublespeak.
So look at the values that his operation has instilled into the peoples of Central and South America, where population explodes unceasingly driven by his birth control science.
Fix your own house first.
g
South America could have been a genuine economic giant had it been colonised and managed like the United States.
Despite centuries of mismanagement and dictatorships (not to mention the questionable role of the Catholic Church) Venezuela in 1950 for instance was the 4th wealthiest country in the world per cap., Argentina in 1913 was the 10th wealthiest.
Most of the countries colonized by Britain are doing pretty well.
All of the countries colonized by Spain are basket cases.
Mark,
Colombia and Chile are doing fairly well now. Maybe Costa Rica.
The problem with the Spanish and Portuguese colonies was that they didn’t develop a middle class. Even when Venezuela was rich, it was because of Los Ricos, not Los Pobres or Los Indios, the three classes there then. To the extent there was a middle class in Latin America, it tended to be military or militarized police. Colombia and Chile have developed prosperous middle classes now and are undergoing the kind of economic expansion reminiscent of the post-war USA. Or were until the collapse of oil and copper prices. Chile is the only Latin American member of the OECD, ie officially a First World country. Parts of it remain pretty backward, though.
Yes, we don’t want to impose “Western values” on Africa, such as those taught by the Church of Rome. Why force such concepts as compassion, love, and equality on people who are so much better off without them. Is this guy Pope or what?
So, Francis wants to recall all Catholic missionaries from the Third World?
Can this nitwit possibly be as stupid as he sounds?
Is the pope that he replaced still alive? If so, maybe they should make some more smoke and bring him back.
Yes, the deposed pope Benedict is still alive, if not bumped off by palace coup perpetrators. And unlike Francis, he’s a Christian rather than a Commie.
A big majority of the influential people in the Western World has done morphed into being “PC berserk ”.
The Church of Rome and its Catholic claiming parishioners has Francis as their Pope …. and the US citizenry has Obama as their POTUS, ….. which is a direct result of Politically Correct “actions” by a portion of the populace.
Get off the jet, Pope Francis. The engine noise makes it hard to hear that last part. That part about, “the boogeyman is gonna get ya if you don’t watch out.”
He could of gone with the biblical precedent set in the New Testament and made his triumphal entry into Paris on an ass.
Why an extra ass? His worshipfullness alone is sufficient.
So what if there is agreement at COP21; that all is ok, and the scam is so unraveled that we can’t keep it up any more ?? The sheeple are getting too smart.
G
He forgot to finish off with his own famous words … “Who am I to judge?”
“… try to impose Western values instead of concentrating on development…”
Mark from the Midwest, above, has already commented on this, but I’ll make it more pointed. Without imposing some western values in these endeavors, such as transparency, honest accounting, efficiency and so forth, one does not get “development” but rather feeding by kleptocrats.
Translation: “If I don’t get my way I’m going to hold my breath until I turn blue!”
Too bad Picasso is no longer with us.
Is the Pope going to show up at COP21 at all? Seemed odd that he wasn’t one of the media celebrities of the opening day.
Jef: I guess that would be the ultimate appeal to authority.
The Vatican is a city state, so he should have been there. If the true goal of COP21 is redistribution of wealth among nations, the Vatican could float us all!
Ok, once again I’m forced to do this. Yes, this is God, and yes, once again I’m speaking to you through the admittedly decrepit body of TomJ. That clown I put in the Vatican has once again forced me to enter a human body and come down and issue another goddam (yes, I’m starting to use that phrase too) apology to all of you. Didn’t my son come down to Earth (he can assume a human body better than I can; I’m stuck using TomJ’s) and tell everybody to render unto Caesar the things that are Ceasar’s and unto God – that’s me and not Obama – the things that are, well, mine? And, my son was a helluva (I’m using that phrase now, too) younger than that old fossil. Francis, for chrissake (sorry, my son hates it when I use that phrase) I’m tired of apologizing for you. Grow up. Acquire a little wisdom. Not everyone who doesn’t succeed doesn’t succeed because they were exploited. In fact, guy, if you really understood exploitation you’d boycott that goddam (there I go again) conference. And, don’t go around insinuating that people who are capable of building that jet you fly around in are exploiters. And, if you think so, stop flying.
Wow, God’s a cool dude. Who knew? And not one whiff of fire n’ brimestone.
That was the “old” God.
There’s an explanation about Francis not knowing Mark 12:17: being an old school hard-line Marxist, he’s never read the Bible.
At least, the pope must literally be the biggest CAGW “believer”.
What an id…. (sorry).
I have no idea how ecclesiastical training fits you to comment on things scientific!
Gulping the kool aid is never a good plan. I noted an early reward for gulping though in the cover story of Nat Geo on the Virgin Mary. Such a cover story would not have been approved in advocacy bias land without the Vatican partaking of the kool aid. I can’t say what was in the article because the final few gift issues are going in the trash with the plastic cover still on.
He must be trying for the U.N. ” Socialist of Year ” award !! Too late, Obama has him beat !
So, I hear the Pope declared that we are in a slow motion 3rd world war.
Did he declare a side?
Liberal socialists interrupting with ” Denial of Service ” at the
House hearing on Paris Climate Change Conference today
The TRUTH must be prevented at all costs !!!!
Good thing they are recorded !!
He should have taken the name Pope Pessimist. He’s hung up on admonishment and puts more faith in bureaucrats and human vanity, than God’s omnipotence, to maintain this earthly existence of ours.
Mainstream religion as it has evolved requires that one make too many justifications and rationalizations of conflicting ideas to be very useful to people who employ critical thought. Does a behavioral code of ethics for humanity have to be issued by a deity to serve the people best?
Let the excommunications and burning at the stake begin for deniers and skeptics. Is there such a thing as acidic holy water?
No doubt that plans for Inquisition II are being drawn up.
Nobody expects the climate inquisition!
ug
http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-34977265
nice pic of STEAM there trying to be passed off as smoke
Science, logic and common sense are things that socialists ( today’s liberals ) don’t want your children to know !!!!