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,
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I think this Pope is a communist and should be de-throned (or whatever it’s called). His ideas endanger the third world and sentence the poor to a life of dependency on hand-outs from rich countries.
Mr. Pope: We rich countries would not be rich, would have no surplus to help anyone right now, if we had not first exploited our GOD GIVEN natural resources within a capitalist economic framework. Why are you denying them the same opportunity? Why do you want them to stay poor?
Ignoring the pope will not be enough. I’ve been seeing signs in Episcopal churched about planet stewardship for years. Pointing out that CAGW is about religion, not science, seems to be a feature rather than a bug.
Don’t know if this has already been provided above but here is a link to an excellent article on the subject from the Catholic World Report. http://www.catholicworldreport.com/Item/3600/Catholicism_and_Environmentalism.aspx
It is sad if he does not realize that the green movement folks are among those trying to destroy the religous freedom of the Church.
Excellent article Jim G. Thanks.The Greens are offspring of the “Club of Rome”. As we now know, the club of rome is a bunch of church-hating socialists who are out to undermine the RC Church. Environmentalism is just another wedge issue…. that Francis fell for.
Perhaps the Pope forgets simple Photosynthesis is how GOD balanced O2 and CO2, of humans inspirations; involving inhaling 02 and expiring CO2; and how God worked it out that plant life lived off CO2 that was expired by us humans. How the Sun factors into this as well.
Seems to me, this Pope has caved into the Globalists’ Cabal’s hogwash. It’s a Carbon Tax geared to cripple and subjugate the World’s Economies. Odd that this Pope would cave into Obama’s demands. I bet Obama is black mailing the Pope on info he’s gleaned, from his past. I am just speculating but why else would this Pope be so rash?
Note: The following post may offend some people because it includes the subjects of religion and politics.
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The old religious scare was ‘do as we say or you will go to hell’
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The new scare is ‘do as we say or the whole Earth will become (a climate) hell’
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Old scares, new scares, they don’t affect me at all.
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When people start predicting the future I plug my ears with my fingers and hum loudly!
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Claiming a catastrophe is coming is a centuries-old strategy used by religious and political leaders to gain power, control the masses, and get them to follow’ orders’ without question.
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Many leftists look at conventional religions and can see that strategy.
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But they fail to see the same strategy underpinning their own secular religion: Environmentalism,
with its bible (IPCC reports), and Pope (Al Gore), and scary predictions of the future,
unless everyone does as the leaders (environmentalists) say without question.
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Well, it looks like I just ‘promoted’ Al Gore to a ‘climate pope’, and now I’m feeling queasy — he only took two elementary science courses in college, and couldn’t manage to get an A or B in either of them … and now he’s the ‘climate pope’ .. and a really rich climate pope too. Life just isn’t fair.
The Pope is said to be the “Vicar of Christ” who speaks without error on matters of “Faith and Morals” when proclaiming truths in union with the Bible, historical Catholic Tradition and the ‘mind of the Church,’ that is with the Bishops, the religious leaders of the faithful. Speaking thus, “ex cathedra,” the Pope can instruct the people of God on spiritual belief and righteous behavior.
A general exhortation toward environmental responsibility is a right and proper subject for religious teaching. After all the deific magnificence of creation is to be respected, in particular our earthly habitat of man and beast. But environmental preachments relating to climate science in general and global warming in particular lay outside of the Church’s competence, in particular where complex technical issues are still in active discussion and development.
It remains to be seem whether Pope Francis pursues global warming preachment in reality, or whether this subject will ‘fade away’ as did the issue of his alleged maligning of capitalism. One of the principles of Tom Peters, writing “In Search of Excellence,” was to ‘stick to your knitting.’ Blessed if you do, not so if you don’t.
On Anthony’s ending comment, I add “HHP > DITTO !”
Gotta fix the garbled surname. HHP
Since the climate change dogma is based purely on belief, it is understandably close to Papa’s heart.
At least the Pope can be wrong with the tradition of century-long retraction. I don’t think the current crop of political bishops in the WH and State Dept. will make it through an AMO cooling phase.
Remember, this is the same bunch of monkeys who said the sun revolves around the earth. Nicholas Copernicus was run out the church because he theorized the opposite.
David,
Where on earth do you get your history from? Nicholas Copernicus run out of the Church? Maybe you meant Galileo but he wasn’t ‘run out of the Church’ either. He remained a member of the Church to the day he died. If by ‘run out of the church’ you mean ‘excommunicated’ then neither of the these two men were excommunicated.
‘Bunch of monkeys’. Do you really think that that kind of language is appropriate. If you shouted something similar at a black football player in the UK you would be arrested. as somebody once said, politeness costs nothing.
David. Nicolas Copernicus was not run out of the Church. In fact, he was one of the “monkeys” as you put it. He was a cleric in the Church. So, an RC cleric, named Copernicus, wrote a book about the earth going around the sun, and the Church embraced it. That is the complete opposite of what you wrote. See, we can read what you wrote, and it is all wacky wrong nonsense.
Well given the history of The Church I think they were due for another mistake.
It fits well with the earlier communique about redistributing wealth. They are the same message in fact with different headlines.
Being another Catholic myself, I highly disapporove of any Pope jumping the purported mainstream bandwagon. We had a couple of those during the 2nd half of the 20th century but Benedict XVI tried his best to repair the damage they have done; it was his fading health that kept him from finishing the job inside the Vatican, where all kinds of (to say the least) worldly impostors had taken over, quite unblushingly preaching “laissez-faire” and “anything goes”.
Picking up Benedict’s threads would be what Pope Francis should turn his mind to, coming home to the Bible as the pivot of Christianity. The Greens are insidious allies, sure to take advantage of him — and treat him as something the cat brought in, should he dare to start thinking twice.
Gruber Consulting Inc. is available if those services become necessary.
Mr Gruber had other revolting things to say as well as what he had to say about Obamcare:
http://www.firstthings.com/web-exclusives/2014/12/to-defend-the-disposable
Let’s see; Islam is the religion of peace, and now Catholicism is the religion of CAGW. Cool.
I was raised a Unitarian – not even sure that is Christian – but believe in one God.
Lived in Saudi Arabia for awhile and met the chief Imam of the Ballad – the old city of Jeddah where some believe that Eve is buried and I visited the grave. The Imam asked me about my belief and I told him, along with that faith’s belief that Christ was a prophet, but not the son of God. He said, “My goodness. You could be a Muslim”. Fascinating fellow – he’d done a Masters of Divinity at Oxford.
To the topic: my absolute favorite TV show in KSA was the Friday night “Ask the Imam”. People would call in and ask daily life dilemma queries that weren’t clear from the Koran and other writings and four or five Imams would debate what they thought Mohammed must have believed or would believe now (in itself interesting to contemplate the updated word of God). Could get pretty heated.
Were I there now, I’d call in and ask about Muslim belief in Global Warming. Not sure they’d take my call.
Yes they would take your call. And, I’d give you two to one odds that they would believe in CAGW, and they’d believe it was the fault of the infidel West. bin Laden had greater support among members of the Saudi royal family (and the Pakistan IS) then it’s comfortable in polite circles to admit. And, bin Laden did indeed believe in CAGW and blamed the U.S. for it (of course). Religions and the CAGW crowd pay each other under the table with their philosophical remunerations.
Religion it is. Left catholic church decades ago and never looked back.
As a Catholic, I’m also disappointed and embarrassed by this story. There are plenty of other non-imaginary problems that could be addressed.
Andrew
Given their past history of talking the sciences, I don’t think the pope should be taken seriously. Next thing he will be dressed as a bloody Koala & hassling hapless denizens of Melbourne for greenie donations.
Please remove the word “Calculus” from the title. Combining it with the word “moral” is demeaning to all branches of science and mathematics.
This is indeed embarrassing for the Roman Catholic church. However, the comparison with Galileo is much more interesting and nuanced than the stereotype repeated by Anthony. See, for example http://www.firstthings.com/blogs/firstthoughts/2011/09/the-myth-of-galileo-a-story-with-a-mostly-valuable-lesson-for-today
It turns out that the true story of Galileo was the way he attacked the church, not so much the other way around. For example
“In his efforts to cram Copernicanism down the throats of his fellow scientists, Galileo managed only to squander the goodwill he had established within the Church. He was attempting to force them to accept a theory that, at the time, was still unproven. The Church graciously offered to consider Copernicanism a reasonable hypothesis, albeit a superior one to the Ptolemaic system, until further proof could be gathered. Galileo, however, never came up with more evidence to support the theory. Instead, he continued to pick fights with his fellow scientists even though many of his conclusions were being proven wrong (i.e., that the planets orbit the sun in perfect circles).
Galileo’s primary mistake was to move the fight out of the realm of science and into the field of biblical interpretation. In a fit of hubris, he wrote the Letter to Castelli in order to explain how his theory was not incompatible with proper biblical exegesis. With the Protestant Reformation still fresh on their minds, the Church authorities were in no mood to put up with another troublemaker trying to interpret Scripture on his own.
But, to their credit, they didn’t overreact. The Letter to Castelli was twice presented to the Inquisition as an example of the astronomer’s heresy and twice the charges were dismissed. Galileo, however, wasn’t satisfied and continued his efforts to force the Church to concede that the Copernican system was an issue of irrefutable truth.”
Cardinal George Pell from Australia is now a senior figure in the Vatican as well as being a prominent CAGW sceptic. It’s time for Cardinal Pell to take the Pope aside and inform him on this issue, unless of course he fears persecution.
Letter of Galileo to Grand Duchess of Tuscany
“Some years ago, as Your Serene Highness well knows, I discovered in the heavens many things that had not been seen before in our own age. The novelty of these things, as well as some consequences which followed from them in contradiction to the physical notions commonly held among academic philosophers, stirred up against me no small number of professors — as if I had placed these things in the sky with my own hands in order to upset nature and overturn the sciences. They seemed to forget that the increase of known truths stimulates the investigation, establishment, and growth of the arts; not their diminution or destruction.
http://milestotravel.files.wordpress.com/2012/08/galileo.jpg
Showing a greater fondness for their own opinions than for truth they sought to deny and disprove the new things which, if they had cared to look for themselves, their own senses would have demonstrated to them. To this end they hurled various charges and published numerous writings filled with vain arguments, and they made the grave mistake of sprinkling these with passages taken from places in the Bible which they had failed to understand properly, and which were ill-suited to their purposes.
These men would perhaps not have fallen into such error had they but paid attention to a most useful doctrine of St Augustine’s, relative to our making positive statements about things which are obscure and hard to understand by means of reason alone. Speaking of a certain physical conclusions about heavenly bodies, he wrote: “Now keeping always our respect for moderation in grave piety, we ought not to believe anything inadvisedly on a dubious point, lest in favor to our error we conceive a prejudice against something that truth hereafter may reveal to be not contrary in any way to the sacred books of either the Old or the New Testaments.”…
Persisting in their original resolve to destroy me and everything mine by any means they can think of, these men are aware of my views in astronomy and philosophy. They know that as to the arrangement of the pars of the universe, I hold the sun to be situated motionless in the center of the revolution of the celestial orbs while the earth rotates on its axis and revolves about the sun. They know also that I support this position not only by refuting the arguments of Ptolemy and Aristotle, but by producing many counter-arguments; in particular, some which relate to physical effects whose causes can perhaps be assigned in no other way. In addition there are astronomical arguments derived from many things in my new celestial discoveries that plainly confute the Ptolemaic system while admirably agreeing with and confirming the contrary hypothesis. Possibly because they are disturbed by the known truth of other propositions of mine which differ from those commonly held, and therefore mistrusting their defense so long as they confine themselves to the field of philosophy, these men have resolved themselves to fabricate a shield for their fallacies out of the mantle of pretended religion and the authority of the Bible. These they apply, with little judgment, to the refutation of arguments that they do not understand and have not even listened to.”
The Roman Church upheld Aristotle and Ptolemy, as well as other Greek philosophers, as the standard of all scholastic work and knowledge for centuries. Francis Bacon discussed it, Galileo described it, and so did Leonardo Da Vinci in his Notebooks.
But what we suffer is the misrepresentation of history, for now it is the Greeks who are given credit for the foundations of the sciences. In fact, as even B. Russell admits, anyone who has ever discovered anything, has had to overturn some Aristotlean doctrine. Not to mention Ptolemy and Galen.
And not to mention Porphyry, whose work in Latin translation was the standard textbook on logic throughout the Middle Ages. By the way, he also wrote Philosophy from Oracles and Against the Christians. From that work we know that the Greeks knew that the three religions that believed in one God were Judaism, Christianity, and Zoroastrianism.
Zeke,
The Church did not conclusively take any position on the science. Before Galileo they were financing inquiry into Copernican mechanics. At that time it was not regarded as fact amongst scientists, let alone the church. It was a new idea and had many advocates and detractors. The Church took a very decisive position on its teaching authority. The Church encouraged scientific inquiry. It always has and continues to this day. The problem was that Galileo was advancing an idea (half wrong) without a proof and then said that it had implications to scripture. Galileo had no business mucking around with the Churches teaching authority Incidentally Galileo proposed a Copernican model with a fixed sun. At the trial, the Church asked Galileo if he could prove his model, no different than a modern thesis defense. He relented and admitted he could not prove it. He NEVER said “yet it moves”. That is a fabrication. Galileo was not admonished for his science. He was admonished for jumping out of his area of expertise, mechanics, and delving into the implications his unproven idea had on scripture. He was admittedly wrong for doing that. For a time the Church was leaning towards Kepler’s ideas, and Copernicus’ and the theory was in high flux. What happened was that when Galileo “went public” with his half-wrong unproven theory and its implication on scripture, a public fight broke out. Not unlike that of the Solvay Conference in 1927, where Einstein was proven wrong. He eventually admitted that he could not, nor could anyone else prove that the earth moved around a fixed sun. His so-called imprisonment was a luxurious apartment in the Holy Office, with the Pope for 22 days. Galileo died a believer and a Catholic and his daughter was even a nun.
For the record, Galileo did not invent the telescope. He copied, then slightly improved the one invented by Hans Lippershay, who also used it to look at the moon, whereupon Lippershay sketched the craters for the first time. Galileo invented a thermometer that failed to work. His model of the planetary system is now known to be wrong, He was correct about the pendulum and falling bodies.
Very few people who like to blurt out “Galileo” don’t know what was at issue. You see it is popular to make Galileo a scapegoat, but the facts simply don’t support the common notion of the issue.
So Galileo was not imprisoned for speaking the truth. He was held in luxury for saying that his 1/2 wrong idea had religious implications.
Worth noting is that Copernicus who published a book saying much of what Galileo repeated never ran afoul of the Church because he never attempted to usurp the teaching authority of the Church. Copernicus stuck with the science.
Put your hands on the sluice gates…”
I wonder if 350 years from now there will be stories of how the Catholic Church took a side in the coming great debate between CAGWers and the skeptical perspective ?
Remark: “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).”
Galileo on Copernicus’ work with the Roman Church in correcting the calendar:
“In order to facilitate their designs, they seek so far as possible (at least with the common people) to make this opinion seem new and to belong to me alone. They pretend not to know that its author, or rather its restorer and confirmer, was Nicholas Copernicus; and that he was not only a Catholic, but a priest and a canon. He was in fact so esteemed by the church that when the Lateran Council under Leo X took up the correction of the church calendar, Copernicus was called to Rome from the most remote parts of Germany to undertake its reform. At that time the calendar was defective because the true measures of the year and of the lunar month were not exactly known. The Bishop of Fossombrone, then in charge of this matter, assigned Copernicus to seek more light and greater certainty concerning the celestial motions by means of constant study and labor. With Herculean toil he set his admirable mind to this task, and he made such great progress in this science and brought our knowledge of the heavenly motions to such precision that he became celebrated as an astronomer. Since that time not only has the calendar been regulated by his teachings, but tables of all the motions of the plantets have been calculated as well.“