Guest essay by H. Sterling Burnett
Pope Francis evidently has decided to make fighting global warming an important papal cause in 2015. He praised the United Nations’ climate treaty efforts in Lima, Peru; the Vatican has indicated he will issue an encyclical letter to the world’s bishops; he is encouraging the world’s 1.2 billion Catholics to take up the battle against climate change; and he’s planning to address the next UN climate conference in Paris to pressure world leaders to adopt a strong climate agreement.
The Vatican Pontifical Academy of Sciences may be behind the pope’s rising interest in global warming as a moral and political cause. Its chancellor, Bishop Marcelo Sorondo, said, “Our academics supported the pope’s initiative to influence next year’s crucial decisions. The idea is to convene a meeting with leaders of the main religions to make all people aware of the state of our climate and the tragedy of social exclusion.”
Many Catholics undoubtedly support the pope’s efforts and, unlike many of his critics, I would argue the views of the pope, a significant moral leader, should be considered as climate policies are shaped. As the leader of the largest Christian denomination in the world, he is charged not just with saving souls but also with alleviating the suffering of the world’s least fortunate, and with leading the Catholic Church in efforts to make the world a better place.
Having said this, I also know moral imperatives and public policies should be grounded in the best-available science, in the reality of the human condition, and in the state of both the planet and the people. Concerning global warming, the pope evidently has been badly misinformed and led astray.
None of the disasters asserted by climate alarmists to result from global warming has come to pass. Hurricane numbers are down, deaths from natural disasters have declined, sea ice is on the rise, and crop production is increasing. Climate models have yet to be validated, missing the lull in temperature rise for the past 18 years and the declining rates of sea-level rise for the past decade. Instead, the gap between temperatures projected by climate models and temperature observed in reality grows yearly.
Investor’s Business Daily has speculated the Vatican is itching to tackle climate change, despite the above-stated facts, because,
[The] Vatican … has been infiltrated by followers of a radical green movement that is, at its core, anti-Christian, anti-people, anti-poor and anti-development. The basic tenets of Catholicism – the sanctity of human life and the value of all souls – are detested by the modern pagan environmentalists who worship the created, but not the creator. … Big Green believes that too many human beings are the basic global problem. People, according to this view, are resource destroyers. Climate change, they say, is due to the overpopulation of Mother Earth.
The pope would do well to question the sources of his information and to recognize his efforts should be focused on alleviating the poverty and suffering of billions of people in the world today. The best policy to accomplish that goal would be alleviating energy poverty worldwide.
As a CNS editorial stated,
Alex Epstein argues, rather than taking a safe climate and making it dangerous through the use of fossil fuels, we have been transforming a dangerous climate into a safer, more manageable one for human flourishing.
Humans have long fought a war with climate, and to the extent we’ve won it has been through the use of technology, most recently including, fossil fuels.
Note from Anthony:
As a Catholic myself, I’m disappointed in this stance, especially since it seems out of place with doctrines of the past where there Church denounced many issues of science through its history, only to later admit they erred, jumped to conclusions, and admitted such errors in judgment decades or centuries later.
For example, it only took the Catholic church 359 years to decide that Galileo was right after all, and that the Earth DOES in fact revolve around the Sun.
I plan to ignore the Pope and its science panel, as many are likely to do given their track record on getting science wrong in almost every case where science and religion have collided through history,
Better than compete.. absorb.
The Pope is just trying a corporate take over, soon new “Catholic” holidays will supplant the holy Ghia days.
of course Rome wants to help with redistributing that wealth, they have a very successful track record, 600 years of successfully redistributing wealth.
Very clever of the Pope, as the Cult of Calamitous Climate implodes there will be millions of true believers desperate for something to cling onto.
Think of it as a missionary movement.
The Pope is way out of line here. He has not done his due diligence on his research. What is indeed very strange is that one of his chief advisers, Cardinal George Pell is well aware that cAGW is rubbish and becoming a religion. The Pope is effectively a traitor to Catholicism.
Redistributing money to the poor- at the expense of the rich makes no rational sense. Apart from the old saying “You cannot make the poor rich by making the rich poor”, it is logical. If the rich are not able to provide jobs, where is anyone-poor, rich or middle class going to find employment? If nothing is being produced, no amount of money(or gold for that matter) is going to make up for the lack of produce. They will get their reduction of population all right(so much for the sanctity of human life from the Vatican) in a most horrific manner.
He also made some disturbing remarks proclaiming Islam to be a religion of peace. Once again- do your research. I have read the Qur’an cover to cover- it is NOT a religion of peace. “Peace” to them is when all Infidels(non Muslims) are dead and Islam rules the world. The Qur’an also urges Muslims to kill Christians and Jews as they find them (Sura 2, line 191-193) The pope is effectively a traitor to Catholicism.
The Pope proclaimed that Allah and the Christian God are the same. Once again, he has failed. He has not read the Qur’an. The Qur’an says- Satan is the master of deception, then shortly after states Allah is cunning, wise. To me , cunning and deception are the same thing. Other passages in the Qur’an – verily(surely, not metaphorically) the sun is extinguished every day in a tepid lake. It also says hail, comes from mountains. The Qur’an has the positions of the stars and moon incorrect. So much for being an all-knowing and wise God.If the Qur’an is the absolute word of Allah, there is a problem. The Pope needs to do his homework.Proclaiming Allah and God the same God? The Pope is effectively a traitor to Catholicism.
Perhaps Book of Revelation has it right. Perhaps this is the last Pope, the one who destroys the religion and ushers an era of unspeakable horrors.I could see that if the world follows the insane Pagan earth worshipers’ destruction of human technology and destroys the will to work by depriving those who have worked for their wealth by giving it to those who have not put in that effort, the world will descend in to barbarity. The Pope is not only a traitor to Catholicism, he is a traitor to humanity.
Pope Francis is in-artful at best and a real dope at worst. Gosh! I wish he’d close his cake-hole.
Watching this Pope’s business (the way Hollywood scripts tell actors to move their hands, brows and lips) and listening to him, one can’t help sensing that he would feel much better being a member of the board of Greenpeace, Occupy or Attac!. He doesn’t even appear to be a Catholic, let alone a Jesuit.
Yet nobody knows what he’s up to exept paying lip service to what he assumes to be mainstream saliva. Jumping the environmental bandwagon, Francis is playing hooky on his duties which are — does anyone need to be told? — spiritually, land and sea miles apart from the sideshow he thinks will have the world dancing in the aisles.
He’s the first pope in a century reducing himself to an idle takling head.
This is uncomfortable to watch. Sometimes I wish he’d just hush. He was wrong about trickle-down economics too.
“trickle-down economics” You mean he supports giving trillions of dollars to banks in order to save us?
That should tell you all you need to know about the Pope. Criminals, the whole lot.
Trickle down is not an economic system, it’s the greatest scam ever foisted on the American people. In thirty five years it hasn’t done it and it’s not going to. Tax cuts for the elite only hurts you because you end up paying for it. And now they’ve adopted the crazy BAIL IN, watch out for that.
Agree.
New meaning to the concept of “Papal Bull”.
Pope Francis, Pope Francis, Pope Francis. jeepers!!!!
I will not exploit the Pope’s recent remarks on Global Warming as an opportunity to abuse him on many unrelated matters. Many people will however. That is not helping the cause for reason vs the cult of AGW.
The Pope is the head of a religious order. He is not well versed in climate science. Despite him having a BSc in Chemistry, he long ago abandoned explicit scientific inquiry and delved more deeply into the human condition and faith.
The key to understanding his comments on Climate is embedded in his comments on trickle down economics, the poor, and socialism.
http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/365004/pope-francis-and-poverty-samuel-gregg
I believe the Pope is a socialist. Catholicism is opposed to socialism and liberation theology publicly exemplified when Pope John Paul II assisted in bringing down communism in Poland and the world and by publicly denying communion to a bad priest who embraced liberation theology.
see it here:
Pope Francis on the other hand advocates liberation theology and he met with a liberation theology pioneer. Remember, the Pope alone does not speak infallibly for the Church when making remarks about current affairs. He can be a real dope.
http://ncronline.org/news/theology/pope-meets-liberation-theology-pioneer
You see, the papal position on global warming underscores the religious-like nature of the AGW adherents. AGW is a cult. It is like revolution theology, which is embraced by this socialist Pope and NOT the church as a whole…yet.
Most Catholics know that liberation theology is heresy. Jesus Christ was not a Marxist or a murderer. Che Guevara, and Fidel Castro are both, so-called catholic, murdering Marxists.
So one should cleave this issue and see the good and bad in it for what it is. AGW is defacto a cult, supported by a socialist Pope who sees liberation theology as good and trickle down economics as bad. AGW was ALWAYS about wealth redistribution and the Pope agrees. The AGW now has papal imprimatur.
Most Catholics are appalled by the many stupid remarks made by an in-artful klutz of a Pope who hates capitalism. I am appalled. I am all in favor of good custodianship of the earth, charity to my fellow man etc. I am not in favor of stealing money from the rich based on a lie like AGW and giving it poor countries via UN government edict.
I want my religion and sense of charity SEPARATED from eco-activism and wealth redistribution.
So please be critical of what this Pope says about climate science. Jumping into other ad homina, much of which is untrue, does not serve our interests in the long run. Most Catholics agree with WUWT.
Nothing left to be said, sir. You are right.
“I am not in favor of stealing money from the rich based on a lie like AGW and giving it poor countries via UN government edict …”.
================================
It usually ends up coming from the relatively poor in rich countries and going to the relatively rich in poor countries.
Christopher, I stand corrected. So true. So true.
The Jesuits have a very dark past. They have a long and deep seated grudge against the Catholic church. The Catholic church destroyed the order of Templars. All Jesuits, and that includes Tony Abbott, need to be viewed with caution. Personally, I have to be suspicious with his choice of new cardinals. There is a relatively high number with voting rights for a new pope. If they are political appointees, the Vatican could be destroyed rather soon. If the Vatican gets infiltrated (which I believe it has) it will be destroyed, leaving a “belief” vacuum.This vacuum will be filled by something highly undesirable. Islam or Gaia (pagan) is the likely result. .
As the Pope is in the business of faith and religion, he’s not really out of his territory getting involved in the global warming religion is he?
Revkin attended the Vatican workshop:
31 Dec: NYT Dot Earth: Andrew C. Revkin: Tracing the Roots of Pope Francis’s Climate Plans for 2015
One of the highlights of my year, perhaps my career, was being able to participate in ” Sustainable Humanity, Sustainable Nature: Our Responsibility,” a four-day Vatican workshop aimed at shaping strategies for human advancement that are attuned to the planet’s limits, organized by the Pontifical Academy of Sciences and Academy of Social Sciences last May. Now there are signs that the themes and conclusions developed in those sessions are helping to shape Pope Francis’s planned push for serious international commitments in 2015 to curb greenhouse gases and gird communities, particularly the poorest, against climate-related hazards…
http://dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/12/31/tracing-the-roots-of-pope-franciss-climate-plans-for-2015/?_r=0
***the Doran article linked in the following is a must-read:
29 Dec: Catholic World Report: Carl E. Olson: If Pope Francis is a “radical” environmentalist, what was Pope Benedict XVI?
I ask the question because I made the mistake of reading an article, “Pope Francis’s edict on climate change will anger deniers and US churches,” written by John Vidal for The Guardian(Dec. 27th), and now feel obligated to clear the air a bit from all of the pollutants released by the ill-informed, sensationalistic bit of punditry. The overarching problem is that Vidal, like so many others in the media, wishes to use the pontiff as a political tool with which to bludgeon those he deems ill fit to lead or be taken seriously in the public arena…
Benedict’s warning that “the deterioration of nature is in fact closely connected to the culture that shapes human coexistence” should be taken far more seriously; I suspect that Francis will repeat it—and I am confident it will be largely ignored.
***In the meantime, I suggest folks read the newly posted CWR feature, “Catholicism and Environmentalism”, by Thomas M. Doran, (LINK) which provides food for thought that is free of ideological posturing and sensationalist “reporting”. http://www.catholicworldreport.com/Blog/3601/if_pope_francis_is_a_radical_environmentalist_what_was_pope_benedict_xvi.aspx
Would Naomi et al lie to the Pope?
Is the Pope Catholic? I bet the penance for their sins at confession would be more than ten Hail Marys!
How very post-ecumenical of Pope Francis.
One of the oldest religions embraces the dogma of one of the newest.
The mass media is notorious for taking papal quotes out of context. As such, if and when any documents on this issue are issued by the Vatican, I would want to want to read the complete document, rather than than a few media snippets. The media frequently covers faith as well as it covers climate.
True. The media recently lied about what Francis said about, of all things, dogs going to heaven. he made no such remarks. The media actually misquoted a Pope that has been dead for 40 years. Seriously… they did.
“The idea is to convene a meeting with leaders of the main religions to make all people aware of the state of our climate and the tragedy of social exclusion.”
Huhhh? Psychobabble and bogus science do good bedfellows make, I suppose.
Perhaps Il Papa should take a word of advice from someone whose work should be familiar to him. It goes like this: “Render unto Caesar those things that are Caesar’s; render unto God those things that are God’s”.
What does it mean when a church takes a political stance? It means the church has been reduced to a mere political party.
Catholics should be outraged at yet another debasement of their faith.
We are.
Ditto
The Pope and the Catholic Church are on dangerous ground here. If the climate doesn’t change then they lose credibility. And Anthony for how long will you “chose to ignore…” if the Pope gains traction and there is no warming or associated climate change? Are you just hoping they won’t gain traction? You haven’t avoided others in the past from what I have observed over the years so why ignore the Pope and the Vatican. They have such enormous influence they have to be challenged, fairly, whenever they make assertions at odds with hard reality. That’s just what sceptics do. That is what you have done for ages and that is why more and more people after visiting WUWT are questioning the settled science.
Pope Francis’s pending encyclical to the world’s bishops is neither the first, nor worst example of failure in Papal moral and spiritual leadership. Consider, for example, the papal bull on witchcraft issued by the poorly named Pope Innocent VIII:
The prosecution of witchcraft generally become more prominent throughout the late medieval and Renaissance era, perhaps driven partly by the upheavals of the era – the Black Death, Hundred Years War, and a gradual cooling of the climate which modern scientists call the Little Ice Age (between about the 15th and 19th centuries). Witches were sometimes blamed. Pope Innocent VIII, in his papal bull Summis desiderantes affectibus (5 December 1484), called for measures against magicians and witches in Germany. The grip of freezing weather, failing crops, rising crime, and mass starvation were blamed on witches.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inquisition
–sp
Former Catholic & current agnostic, always willing to consider that some gods may be knowable.
Steve P
Thanks for providing the quote. if you read it carefully you will fail to find any support for the claim that ‘Pope Innocent VIII called for measures against witches and magicians in Germany.’
– alba
Cradle Catholic turned agnostic now joyfully returned to the faith.
And the Catholic church condemned Malleus Maleficarum which was written by one of its own priests.
That did not stop it being used by zealots however.
The point, however, is that the Pope was blaming all sorts of misfortune – including bad weather – on witches and magicians, proving himself to be no better than the superstitious ignoramuses for whom he was expected to provide the highest spiritual and moral leadership. The result of the papal bull was predictable: thousands of innocent wretches of all stripes were burned alive at the stake.
It wasn’t just the church’s bad decisions and murderous cruelty that drove me from its ranks however, but rather my lack of faith in the primary documents, i.e. Old and New Testaments.
There is zip, zero, zilch credible evidence for the historicity of Jesus.
I’m agnostic because I’m not afraid to say I don’t know.
Plus, I never cared for that bit about Original Sin. We humans may be flawed, but I can’t buy the idea that we’re born guilty.
To base one’s faith on ancient, wobbly documents of uncertain provenance when mankind is still wallowing in ignorance about a great many things seems to me to be not that logical, captain.
-☺-
Steve P. You can’t be serious.
Where were you in 1480? Didn’t one of your colleagues have a laser beam, or a nuclear powered time machine or a smart phone to show the Pope the “real deal”? To bad you weren’t alive then. Well things would have been so different. You would have devised quantum mechanics at 8:00 am Monday morning.
I alway find amusement at modernists, enjoying the benefits of 1000s of years of accumulated learning, mocking those oh-so-stupid people who live back when. Steve P. What great contribution have you made to the world? I didn’t see your name on the list of Nobel Prize winners but Steve P is just an alias right?
Jeese…. Steve P Sir Issac Newton, a cleric in the Anglican church, came up with calculus by candle light, while he was working with Alchemy to produce a philosopher’s stone. I guess he was a dope too.
I am not in the least surprised at the Popes stance and intentions.
I recommend the reading of Ian Wishart’s book “Totalitaria”, of which I have independently verified much of his many sources.
United Nations Agenda 21, the source of this contrived “crisis” of “Global Warming” cleverly makes it advantageous for every organisation, government or influential individuals – whether it be money, mana or business advantage – to espouse global warming and the somewhat twisted UN doctrine of “sustainability”
For instance “big oil” which is supposed be on the side of “deniers”, will never be because they are being offered greater margins as energy prices go up and there is less need to keep volumes up. (Incidentally the good old free market currently has recently made a mockery of this).
Governments are threatened with economic sanctions if exports are not “sustainable” and local governments are recipients from such organisations as ICLEI http://www.iclei.org/ and “Resilience” http://www.100resilientcities.org/pages/about-us#/-_/ just to name a few. (If you see an organisation that is loudly proclaiming “sustainability”, just check where their finance is coming from).
And now the Catholic Church is stepping onto the bandwagon, Wishart has a lot to say about this and it is both well documented and shocking.
Cheers
Roger
ps No I did not write this book but my independent research supports its conclusions, scary as they may be.
http://www.thedemiseofchristchurch.com
I have no doubt Naomi & friends would not only lie to the Pope but would choose to incarcerate the Pope if they thought it was helpful.
If true it may be an attempt to recruit more followers. Or at least get the CAGW faithful to donate cash to the Catholic church. The Vatican Bank has been plagued by scandal in recent years. Money laundering,cover-up payouts and mafia involvement to name a few.
I think a good few of you are going to be in trouble with the Spanish Inquisition if you keep disagreeing with the pope.
As I recall, the Catholic Church had a problem with Galileo Galilei back in the mid 1600’s for his belief that the earth rotates around the sun and not vice versa. Amazing how so little has changed in almost 400 years.
Your history is lost in populism. Better you read Galileo’s letters for yourself. Remember Copernicus, a Church cleric, published his book on heliocentricity in 1543, half a century before Galieo’s non-discovery of the telescope. So, what did Galileo do or say that caused a problem? Facts are stubborn things.
Yes, but Copernicus delayed publication and printing and distribution of his book and his ideas until he was near death.
Further, technically, Copernicus was wrong – now, he was wrong about the orbits themselves (claiming they were circular) and not about the idea of the orbits – but he was wrong about the shape of the orbits. As was Tycho Brahe in the details of the orbits.
The “old” consensus about epicycles was actually more accurate than the new theory of orbits about a fixed star. Worse, NONE of the new theories explained “why” they rotated about the sun nor “how” gravity actually worked holding the planets in place.
RACookPE1978 You aren’t quite correct.
You said that Copernicus held off publishing his manuscript “Yes, but Copernicus delayed publication and printing and distribution of his book and his ideas until he was near death.”
Copernicus’ work was embraced by the Church and was under development for years and he was under fierce attack (during the emergence of protestantism) for being an “astrologer”. He was being criticized, not by the Church, rather by anti-catholic protestants. His work was partially published about 10 years after its completion by one of his pupils, Rheticus, after permission was GRANTED by Pope Paul III. The work contains a dedication to Pope Paul III and is held in the family library of the Counts Nostitz in Prague.
Rheticus was denied his old job back at Wittenberg because of his Copernican views.
You see the opposite of popular belief is true. The Church embraced scientific investigation and supported Copernicus. It was the protestants who tried to silence him.
We survived Alexander VI, will survive this one too.
There are prophecies that point to the Church ending about now, St. Malachy’s Prophecy (end coming soon) and the legend/tradition that when all the spaces for the popes’ portraits in of St. Paul Outside the Walls are filled, there will be no more popes. Check it out for yourself:
http://www.vatican.va/various/basiliche/san_paolo/vr_tour/Media/VR/St_Paul_Tomb/index.html
Pope Benedict’s image is behind the column, lit by a spotlight. Francis’s space is to its left. Zoom to the ornately carved white pillar, then look to the left, up inside the colonnade. There are two spaces straight ahead of you, three to the left of that, behind the square Corinthian column.
The Catholic bishops in Seattle will be pleased, they of neo-Marxist persuasion.
Anglican church offshoot of Catholic is similar these days.
But the Amway dealers in Spokane were opposite.
You can find whatever you want in Christianity, devil versus good, free will vs determinism.
ignore the HUNDREDS of it’s-a-done-deal headlines such as:
“Pope Francis Takes on Climate Change” – Bloomberg
“Is 2015 the year Pope Francis defeats climate change? – Grist
it’s more fun,and probably more accurate, to read Booker:
3 Jan: UK Telegraph: Holy smoke (and mirrors) over the Pope and that climate treaty
The Guardian deserves a special prize for its claim about Pope Francis and his supposedly warmist encyclical, writes Christopher Booker
But a special prize must go to the Guardian for its claim that Pope Francis will soon issue an encyclical calling on the world’s 1.2 billion Catholics to pressurise their politicians into supporting this treaty.
The Pope has been persuaded to take this dramatic step, it is alleged, by a series of papers from something called the “Pontifical Academy of Sciences”, which might sound vaguely impressive until we see who wrote them. They are like an A-list of the world’s most strident climate alarmists. Cambridge professor Peter Wadhams has been crying wolf over the melting of polar ice since time immemorial. Martin Rees is the astronomer who turned the Royal Society into little more than a hotbed of warmist propaganda. The “social scientist” Nancy Oreskes sprang to fame in 2004 for her analysis of 928 scientific papers, 75 per cent of which she claimed endorsed the case for man-made climate change. Only subsequently was it shown that the true figure was 2 per cent, while the vast majority of the papers did not mention it at all.
Did the Guardian fall for the lobbyists’ wishful thinking?…
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/11323131/Holy-smoke-and-mirrors-over-the-Pope-and-that-climate-treaty.html
A Pope well chosen by the chosen ones, just doin God’s work folks.
http://biblehub.com/matthew/10-35.htm
“For example, it only took the Catholic church 359 years to decide that Galileo was right after all, and that the Earth DOES in fact revolve around the Sun.”
Well it doesn’t and that was one of the problems with what Copernicus proposed (not circular orbits and they are around the centre of mass that’s not always in the Sun). The people of those times had a very limited amount of evidence to figure out what the universe was doing. The change in position of the planets and the stars with time was pretty much it.
Its interesting reading what the actual physical objections were. Some of Galileo’s reasoning were shown to be wrong but the biggest problem was that the stars appeared as disks in telescopes. They couldn’t be massive distances away from Earth or they would have to be very much bigger than the Sun. Not bad logic (the actual calculations) and nothing to do with the Bible.
To top it off, it took the RC 359 years to acknowledge that persecuting Galileo was wrong. I suspect that RC schools were teaching the heliocentric model for a long time before 1992.
Robert,
I think JPII’s apology was just good politics. It doesn’t mean anything to the persistent haters or those of us who read the Galileo trials. It is true that Galileo was also wrong. But we mustn’t mention that.
All of the Catholic Church, all of its murderous history, all of its fires burning people alive, all of is torture chambers, all of its lying books spreading ignorance, all of its pathetic attempts of re-writing history and justify its criminal actions, and all of its ill-gotten possessions and power over simple minds of those who cannot face the common human condition — aren’t worth a single hair on the head of Giordano Bruno.