From Scripps:
Vatican Science Panel Calls Attention to the Threat of Glacial Melt
Pontifical Academy of Sciences working group of leading scientists to present report to Pope Benedict XVI
Scripps Institution of Oceanography / University of California, San Diego
A panel of some of the world’s leading climate and glacier scientists co-chaired by a Scripps Institution of Oceanography, UC San Diego researcher issued a report today commissioned by the Vatican’s Pontifical Academy of Sciences citing the moral imperative before society to properly address climate change.
The co-authors of “Fate of Mountain Glaciers in the Anthropocene” list numerous examples of glacial decline around the world and the evidence linking that decline to human-caused changes in climate and air pollution. The threat to the ways of life of people dependent upon glaciers and snow packs for water supplies compels immediate action to mitigate the effects of climate change and to adapt to what changes are happening now and are projected to happen in the future.
V. Ramanathan
“We are committed to ensuring that all inhabitants of this planet receive their daily bread, fresh air to breathe and clean water to drink as we are aware that, if we want justice and peace, we must protect the habitat that sustains us,” the authors write in a declaration prefacing the report. “The believers among us ask God to grant us this wish.”
Scripps Climate and Atmospheric Scientist Veerabhadran Ramanathan co-chaired the working group with Nobel Laureate Paul Crutzen, formerly affiliated with Scripps and Lennart Bengtsson, former head of the European weather forecasting center. The group also included Nobel Laureate Carlo Rubbia, former director general of the CERN Laboratory. Among the rest of the 24 authors are Lonnie Thompson of Ohio State University, Wilfried Haeberli from Switzerland, Georg Kaser from Austria and Anil Kulkarni from India, considered among the world’s foremost experts on glacial change. Former Scripps Director Charles Kennel and Scripps Professor of Atmospheric Chemistry Lynn Russell are also members of the working group.
“The widespread loss of snow and ice in the mountain glaciers is one of the most visible changes attributable to global climate change. The disintegration of many small glaciers in the Himalayas is most disturbing to me since this region serves as the water tower of Asia and since both the greenhouse gases and air pollutants like soot and ozone contribute to the melting,” said Ramanathan, who has been a member of the Pontifical Academy of Sciences since 2004.
Report authors met at the Vatican from April 2 to April 4, 2011 under the invitation of Chancellor Marcelo Sanchez Sorondo of the pontifical academy. The report was issued by the Vatican today and will be presented to Pope Benedict XVI.
Though scientists usually refrain from proposing action, Ramanathan said the circumstances warranted advancing suggestions from the working group. The authors recommend pursuit of three measures: immediate reduction of worldwide carbon dioxide emissions, reduction of concentrations of warming air pollutants such as soot, ozone, methane and hydroflurocarbons by up to 50 percent, and preparation to adapt to climate changes that society will not be able to mitigate.
Main Rongbuk Glacier on Mount Everest in 1921 and 2007. It experienced average vertical glacier loss of 101 meters (331 feet) between 1921 and 2008. Photo credits: (1921) Courtesy of Royal Geographical Society, (2007) Courtesy of Glacier Works.
The report title refers to the term coined by Crutzen to describe what is considered a new geologic epoch that began when the impacts of mankind on the planet became a major factor in environmental and climate changes.
“The recent changes observed in glacial behavior are due to a complex mix of causal factors that include greenhouse gas forcing together with large scale emissions of dark soot particles and dust in ‘brown clouds’, and the associated changes in regional atmospheric energy and moisture content, all of which result in significant warming at higher altitudes, not least in the Himalayas,” the authors write.
“Changes of mountain glaciers all around the world are rapid and impacts are expected to be detrimental, particularly in the high mountains of South America and Asia,” said Kaser, of the Institute for Meteorology and Geophysics at the University of Innsbruck. “Yet, our understanding about glacier changes in these regions is still limited and ambitious and joint efforts are required to respond to these problems. With its report, the pontifical academy contributes considerably to raising awareness.”
“Glaciers are one of our most visible evidences of global climate change,” added Thompson. “They integrate many climate variables in the Earth system. Their loss is readily apparent and they have no political agenda. Glaciers remind us of the stunning beauty of nature and in turn the urgency of doing everything in our power to protect it.”
The authors conclude: “We appeal to all nations to develop and implement, without delay, effective and fair policies to reduce the causes and impacts of climate change on communi¬ties and ecosystems, including mountain glaciers and their watersheds, aware that we all live in the same home. By acting now, in the spirit of common but differentiated responsibility, we accept our duty to one another and to the stewardship of a planet blessed with the gift of life.”
# # #
Reminds me of some old jokes:
“How low can they go? Dachshunds!”
“Lawdy, Miss Scarlett, I’se don’t know nothin’ ’bout birthin’ babies!”
“Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition!”
Someone please explain this to me:
Planet warms. Glaciers melting… gives melt water … irrigation, drinking water etc. Good, no? Glacier melts all away… rain still falls… water still flows … irrigation, drinking water etc.
But: planet gets colder: glacier doesn’t melt… rain or snow falling on glacier freezes and no water flows… no irrigation, no drinking water. IOW, what the heck is the point these people are trying to make? What am I missing here?
Time to
‘hide the divine’
Glaciers and trees prove there was a Medieval Warm Period followed by the Little Ice Age, (and evidence of an even earlier Roman Warm Period)
from WUWT August 31, 2009
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/08/31/new-ice-core-project-in-greenland-looks-at-eemian-period/#more-10405
crosspatch (16:44:34) :
I began reading a paper today:
Tree-ring crossdates for a First Millennium AD advance of Tebenkof
David J. Barclaya, Gregory C. Wilesb and Parker E. Calkinc
The crux of it is that while the Tebenkof glacier (Alaska) has been receding since about 1900, it has been exposing trees (discovered in 1935) from a forest the glacier had advanced through. There were apparently two major periods of advance. The oldest of the trees discovered had started their growth in the AD 220s. They all ended their growth in the 710’s and 720’s. The ice apparently didn’t remain long at the terminal location of this advance as there is no moraine established there. Trees were recolonizing the area by the AD 950s.
A more extensive advance occurred in two phases during the LIA. The first phase advanced through forest sometime between the 1280’s and 1320’s. The more recent second phase pushed through forest in the 1640’s and 1650’s. It apparently maintained this maximum extent for about 200 years before starting its retreat. There is an absolute boundary whereby the maximum extent could not have reached as there is an 800yo tree living just beyond the terminal moraine of the second LIA advance.
The ice then began a retreat receding some 250-350m by 1910, 300m more by 1935, 500m more by 1964, and a total of 1.6km from its LIA maximum in 1984.
The point being that as the glacier has receded since 1900 it has exposed trees that prove the area had been forested in the past. The area being exposed now has been exposed in the not-so-distant past. Also, this first millennium advance was not limited to Northern North America. The timing also coincides with glacial advances (also dated with growth ring correlation) in the European Alps.
What we are experiencing is not “human induced warming”, it is “recovery from the Little Ice Age” that is happening at the same time as human population expansion.
“Glacier retreat in the hot 2003 summer exposed remains from several distinct periods: from ~ 2800-2500 BC; from 2000-1750 BC; ~150 BC-250 AD; and the MWP up to the 14th/15th Century.”
Steve McIntyre – Archaeological Finds in Retreating Swiss Glacier
Or was that a different kind of warmth back then…
Anyone for vineyards?
Oh god no. Adding validity to the AGW religion. A return to the 17th century !
@Allan M:
“Once upon a time, the Christian Church took over from the pagans throughout Europe. It is perhaps an indication of the pathetic state the church is in, that it rolls over and capitulates.”
The church ‘took over’ from paganism because the secular power (Emperor Constantine and successors) needed it to validate and support its shift into universal totalitarianism and made Christianity compulsory. Echoes, echoes….
Richard deSousa says: (May 9, 2011 at 1:57 am)
“The last time the Vatican got involved with “science” they put Galileo under house arrest for opposing the earth centric universe. It took the Vatican nearly a half a millennium to admit they were wrong.”
They also burned Giordano Bruno (a distant relative of mine) at the stake for the same reason. On the other hand, the Pope does have a nice hat.
A little premature and in the wrong direction in my humble opinion, but it does once again set the church on record as being pro-people if the Pope signs off on it, and he probably will. (Hot or cold, suffering is suffering, politics is politics, and helping people costs money.) Churches deal with people. People suffer during climate change of any sort. Popes worry about human welfare and suffering. Odds are that something will happen someday and, right now, there’s apparently still more money in AGW than not. After all, just look at all the “concerned Noble Prize Winners” who think the Sky is Falling. From here it looks opportunistic and transparent, a little like The Salvation Army ringing bells after Turkey Day. Oh well, people are only human. Right?
This is an inevitable conflation of two Christian doctrines (I speak as a practising Christian). The first, with which I have no problem, is being a good steward of the resources of this planet which God has entrusted to us. So, being responsible users of energy, food and so on and ensuring that there is enough for all is laudable and something I strive to do.
The second, with which I do take issue, is the tendency of Christians to assume personal responsibility for anything that has gone wrong or has been presumed to have gone wrong. It’s the modern equivalent of self-flagellation, whipping oneself as a means of atoning for unspecified sins, one of the Catholic church’s less praiseworthy practices, along with the Inquisition and selling indulgences. In a perverse way, many Christians feel better when they can feel guilty about something, so unquestioningly assuming personal responsiblity for “AGW/climate change/disruption” enables them to feel extra virtuous as they adopt the hair shirt of “green living”, contrasting themselves with those “sinners” who don’t. There is also a nasty tendency among some Christians who are politically on the left and therefore susceptible to “green” politics to assume that Christians with right wing views are somehow not “proper” Christians and thus those who express contrary views may be shouted down.
The answer to soot pollution, which seems to be the major culprit for local climate change, is not to take us back to medieval standards of living but to bring the Third World up to ours, enabling them to have ample supplies of cheap, non-polluting power and get rid of their reliance on open fires and obsolete coal power stations.
And this from a relegion that had its stamp, savagely & brutally, upon who was (is?) to believe what, where, & when? I know, lets try & find an old crone or even young beauty (when I’ve finished gazing at her to determine if she is wearing low-carbon underwear…………………….bliss!) who we don’t like, accuse her of being a witch, we can then tie her to a ducking stool, dunk her a few times, & if she drowns, she is innocent, but if she just plain refuses to die she is clearly guilty, we’ll tie her to a stake & burn her alive, yey! Simples, that’s real science for you! sarc off.
I (protestant, Australia) thank Cardinal Pell (Catholic, Australia) for questioning such views. And how it upsets the Greens – ‘Pell is not a scientist’ – neither are the likes of our pro-CAGW fanatics Peter Garrett (rock musician), Penny Wong (lawyer) or Tim Flannery (paleontologist). The media of course give them a dream run, with rare exceptions like Andrew Bolt (agnostic, Herald Sun Melbourne).
The two shots of Everest are interesting but were they taken at the same season? Does anybody know? From reading climbing books I recall that Everest’s snow cover increases markedly when the monsoon arrives. Anyway the difference may be due to the end of the LIA.
Ah yes. The P.O.P.E commission. Pass Out People’s Earnings. For centuries, the Vatican has been at the forefront of sharing the wealth equally among all people, and would then be able to send one tithe from the original combined amount to the Vatican City. What would be the downside to that? Seems like a win/win situation. Everybody get the same little bit, and the Vatican City can spruce up. For sure they need to replace their guard uniform. There hasn’t been enough gold in the pot to update their outfit since the middle ages.
ENCYCLICAL LETTER
CARITAS IN VERITATE
OF THE SUPREME PONTIFF
BENEDICT XVI
TO THE BISHOPS
PRIESTS AND DEACONS
MEN AND WOMEN RELIGIOUS
THE LAY FAITHFUL
AND ALL PEOPLE OF GOOD WILL
ON INTEGRAL HUMAN DEVELOPMENT
IN CHARITY AND TRUTH
(29 June 2009)
Excerpts:
‘The search for love and truth is purified and liberated by Jesus Christ from the impoverishment that our humanity brings to it, and he reveals to us in all its fullness the initiative of love and the plan for true life that God has prepared for us. In Christ, charity in truth becomes the Face of his Person, a vocation for us to love our brothers and sisters in the truth of his plan. Indeed, he himself is the Truth.
4. ….Truth, by enabling men and women to let go of their subjective opinions and impressions, allows them to move beyond cultural and historical limitations and to come together in the assessment of the value and substance of things.
5. …..This doctrine is a service to charity, but its locus is truth. Truth preserves and expresses charity’s power to liberate in the ever-changing events of history.
9. The Church does not have technical solutions to offer[10] and does not claim “to interfere in any way in the politics of States.”[11] She does, however, have a mission of truth to accomplish, in every time and circumstance, for a society that is attuned to man, to his dignity, to his vocation. Without truth, it is easy to fall into an empiricist and sceptical view of life, incapable of rising to the level of praxis because of a lack of interest in grasping the values — sometimes even the meanings — with which to judge and direct it. ‘
source: http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/benedict_xvi/encyclicals/documents/hf_ben-xvi_enc_20090629_caritas-in-veritate_en.html
As a result of so very many child abuse scandals, the Roman Catholic Church is losing its members rapidly. In a desperate attempt for a comeback, they are now trying this. A wrong move at the wrong time, since Global Warming is losing its believers rapidly too, now the Earth is heading towards a new Maunder Minimum. As Professor Easterbrook has said: The cooling has already commenced. In just a few years this message will become so clear that the Church, already losing its members because of the child abuse scandals, will also lose its members because of the AGW scandal that they are now – foolishly – making a part of their own religion.
Just business. Pope admit AGW and no more accusations about pedophiles in catholic church in MSM. This is the game. Just it.
The Vatican prb’ly had alot to do with pontificating the “causes” & resulting sufferings from the Little Ice Age — human sin.
Some things never change.
” citing the moral imperative before society to properly address climate change. ”
I just don’t think Jesus would have considered it a ‘moral imperative’ to hold a gun to someone’s head to force them to emit less CO2.
I see a real similarity between California’s Austrian Gov Arnold Schwarzenegger and his Germanic cousin, Pope Benedict. Their minds are so hopelessly clouded by the Green religion that they cannot think clearly. There appears to be a cultural bias at work.
Umm! Some of these comments disparage without crediting a legitimate point. It is entirely reasonable to be concerned about the earth’s climate and what we might be doing to it. Just because it is the Catholic church offering an opinion does not make the comment any less the relevant. That said however leaves us with a problem, for the proclaimers rarely offer realistic solutions. In fact they never offer any answers.
It is abundantly clear that electricity is fundamental to modern life with all that it can offer. Those of us in the developed nations who have benefited know this all too well. So the question really is. How can we get it without causing other issues that may compromise the world in which we all live? I do not feel we can just go on burning fossil fuels willy nilly without recognising that it may have unknown and unpleasant long term consequences. OK, the concern is unproven. Indeed it maybe entirely groundless! But there are unknowns here that cannot be entirely rubbished.
Those interested in practical solutions already realise the answer is not ugly inefficient windmills or any of the other so called renewable sources apart from hydro. None of these can provide a consistently stable supply at an affordable price, something the world needs, not just Europeans or Americans.
As it stands today there are few routes to this nirvana apart from those involving the nuclear process. Unfortunately this brings us face to face with wilful scientific ignorance and the scaremongering tactics of those who have reached positions of political and media influence. While the future of this may lie with fusion, progress has been slow, apart that is from the extracting of huge sums to equip and pay those involved in the international effort. Perhaps it is time to divert a little of this money to investigate the polywell reactor and any other fusion reactor that might show promise. If that decision means putting someone’s nose out of joint, well that’s too bad, but there is more at stake here than exaggerated human sensibilities. Integral to this redirected effort must be something that offers the promise of a much shorter return, perhaps via the creation of an international programme under the IAEA to see what the Liquid Fluoride Thorium Reactor (LFTR) has to offer the world.
Naturally this means the political classes will have to show some leadership and backbone. Given Mr Obama’s recent discovery that he has one, perhaps he will also admit that bankrupting American industry by making electricity prohibitively expensive is nonsensical. A strategic rethink of this economic naivety might lead him to conclude that America ought to take the lead in this effort towards exploring and developing a practical LFTR, one that will offer immense hope to an energy starved world.
Then: Indulgences, to buy absolution for your sins.
Now: Carbon Credits, to buy absolutions for your sins.
And guess which institution gets on the bandwagon now…
Old habits never die.
give them a large grant to stay inside and contue to count there money Amen
Hmmm…well, why not? I know when accurate, cutting edge science is mentioned the first thing I think of is the Catholic church. Galileo must be spinning in his grave fast enough that if you could hook him to a generator you could power Rome.
Do you think this is what Boy George meant with the song “Church of the Poisoned Mind”?
It is no surprise really. It isn’t the first time the Vatican pushed religious doctrine and the current AGW movement certainly qualifies as that.