Cardinal Pell: Be Prudent With Climate Claims
![pope-francis-environment-encyclical[1]](https://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2015/04/pope-francis-environment-encyclical1.jpg?quality=83)
When the Pope talks, people listen. But as Pope Francis wades into the climate-change debate, will he change any minds? Francis will host a summit Tuesday in the Vatican on climate change with United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon. He is also preparing an encyclical — one of the highest forms of a papal statement — on the subject, expected to be released as early as June. Cardinal Peter Turkson, who has helped draft the encyclical, has said the timing is meant to influence U.N. climate-change talks in Paris at the end of the year. –Jason Plautz, National Journal, 27 April 2015
Noah Toly, a Wheaton University professor who has studied religion and environmental politics, said it is likely that climate beliefs won’t be changed by the encyclical. “What’s more likely to happen is people who already think climate change is real, serious, and anthropogenic will say, This affects how we want to act, and people who don’t are likely to dismiss the teaching or take it piecemeal,” said Toly. “They’ll say, We need to help the poor or care for the planet, but it’s not the cause of man.” –Jason Plautz, National Journal, 27 April 2015
Today we see another set of meetings in Rome. One is that of the Pontifical Academy of Science, and the other the Heartland Institute. Both organisations are hoping to influence the widely heralded encyclical from Pope Francis that will include references to climate change. Given that the text of the encyclical has already been finalised, and is currently being translated, there may not be much that either party can do to affect its content. Despite the emphasis being put on climate change in the press, it’s unlikely that the central part of the document will concern itself with just that subject. –Cumbrian Lad, Bishop Hill, 28 April 2015
We can only attempt to identify the causes of climate change through science and these causes need to be clearly established after full debates, validated comprehensively, before expensive remedies are imposed on industries and communities. I first became interested in the question in the 1990s when studying the anti-human claims of the “deep greens”. Mine is not an appeal to the authority of any religious truth in the face of contrary scientific evidence. Neither is it even remotely tinged by a postmodernist hostility to rationality. My appeal is to reason and evidence, and in my view the evidence is insufficient to achieve practical certainty on many of these scientific issues. The immense financial costs true believers would impose on economies can be compared with the sacrifices offered traditionally in religion, and the sale of carbon credits with the pre-Reformation practice of selling indulgences. –Cardinal George Pell, 2011 Annual GWPF Lecture, Westminister Cathedral Hall, London 26 October 2011
For years, greens have presented themselves as merely the rational, reasoned defenders of science against gangs of charlatans, when in truth they were all about protecting an ideology: the ideology of no-growth, of anti-development, of anti-progress, of population control, of modern-day misanthropy, fortified with bits of science but really expressing an underlying, elitist, growing contempt for humanity and its achievements. Now, in their assaults on Bjorn Lomborg, their nakedly political censorship, their moral policing, their desire to deflect any criticism of their miserabilist, illiberal moral outlook, has been brilliantly exposed: they want to shut this man down, not because he denies scientific facts, but because he thinks differently to them. It is undiluted intolerance, and at a university too. Proof that the Western academy in the 21st century is giving the old heresy-hunting Church a run for its money in the bigotry-and-dogma stakes. –Brendan O’Neill, Spiked Online, 27 September 2015
FOR EMPHASIS as Anthony has written:
CARDINAL PELL SAYS:
My appeal is to reason and evidence, and in my view the evidence is insufficient to achieve practical certainty on many of these scientific issues. The immense financial costs true believers would impose on economies can be compared with the sacrifices offered traditionally in religion, and the sale of carbon credits with the pre-Reformation practice of selling indulgences. –Cardinal George Pell
Don’t anticipate that the Church is jumping on the Green Bandwagon.
Frankly, between the disturbing similarities between climate fanatacism and religious fanaticism, and the Pope’s transparently secular leftist agenda I find my religious faith under critical scrutiny. The Pope has no business pontificating for one side on politicized issues dressed up as science. Eugenics is disturbingly similar to the climate movement- the same self-appointed elites and academics pushed hard for eugenics. People who are anything but Christian in world view push hard for climate obsessed policies as their intellectual ancestors did for eugenics. The difference is that in the age of the eugenics popular madness the Church wisely stayed out and Catholic intellectuals like GK Chesterton pointed out the inhumane and Unchrsitian aspects of eugenics. Today the climate obsessed have co-opted nearly all aspects of society, much to our common loss.
He does but in way recommended by Cardinal Pell.
Its blasphemous to worship another God so the RC Church has role in denouncing anything that has strayed from the scientific method and is lauded as The Science.
Can’t resist: How many GCM supercomputers does the Pope have?
Seriously, the Church is growing in the poor areas of the world. I think there is a chance that this Pope will understand the war on the poor that catastrophic alarmism is. If not, he’ll get it someday, and then encyclical again. Hope springs eternal in the human beast.
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kim, I am pretty sure that the Pope gets his climate info from the same place as everyone else, The IPCC, NOAA, HAD CRU. So in effect he has the same number as Al Gore, Fred Singer, Tim Ball, James Hanson.
Yeah, Paul, it wasn’t really a very apt joke. But, couldn’t resist. I tried.
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CAGW though pretends to be based on science, but is based on a Big Lie instead. As such, it is inherently evil. Religions are openly about faith, not proof. Where religious institutions run into trouble is when they attempt to cross over into those realms such as science and politics they have no business meddling with., which is what the pope is doing.
Will he recognize evil when it stares him straight in the face? We’ll see, won’t we?
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Alternatively, this is an unsettled science. I pray he has the wisdom to realize that he can’t settle it with pronouncements from on high. If he hasn’t that wisdom, the more is the pity.
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This Pope is a traitor of his religion and human civilization.
Not yet….hold your fire on that….the media puts a lot of words in his mouth… wait till he issues the encyclical.
Lots of bishops in Africa and South America. Not so many in Russia, India or China but surely he’ll listen to the poor there, too. Now please, listen up, and good.
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Kim read the article… read Cardinal Pell’s remarks. Big Green is perceived as an enemy of the poor to many.
Yes, he may detect the stink of Malthusian despair all over it.
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Pell cares not for the poor.
Any dissention from orthodoxy of AGW presentation to the Pope is apparently being, uh, “gently dissuaded.” Galileo all over again? If this persists, expect the church to take one more step away from preaching truth and the Gospel.
Came across this article today: http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2015/04/28/vatican-heavies-silence-climate-heretics-at-un-papal-summit/
Excerpt: “Marc Morano, covering the Vatican climate conference for Climate Depot, asked Ban Ki-Moon whether he had a message for the Heartland Institute delegation of scientists who have flown to Rome to urge the Pope to reconsider his ill-advised position climate change.
“But before he could finish the conference hosts interrupted to ask which organisation he worked for, then directed the microphone to a more tame questioner, while a security guard came over to mutter in Morano’s ear “You have to control yourself or you will be escorted out of here.”
Monckton, Morano, and Delingpole are well-received by many within the Church. So don’t write off their influence. ie Cardinal Pell, as indicated by Anthony above in the article.
Believe me, Paul, I hope and pray that you are correct. I look forward to a thorough and objective analysis of the upcoming Encyclical. I do not for a moment expect such treatment from the media, whose selective “cherry-picking” is so well known and entrenched.
Yep, poor devil, he’s damned if he does and damned if he doesn’t. Any encyclical with teeth is going to get chewed on by pit bulls from either side.
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He’s either going to get that cheap energy is a boon to all and that warming to the extent man can effect it is a net benefit, or he won’t. It’s his loss if he doesn’t.
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Found this in my Financial Post section of my National Post newspaper this morning:
http://business.financialpost.com/fp-comment/a-message-for-pope-francis-energy-restrictions-based-on-climate-fears-threaten-the-poor
It’s too late the BBC are already spinning it in the favour of the ‘greens’ and dismissing Christopher Monckton et al as “a small group funded by a US climate contrarian body in Chicago” … “rallying against the Vatican’s climate drive.”
If you can access it this is their full story is here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-32487874
Thanks, Anthony. Good post.
I still hope for the best to have come out of the consultations, but I’m not optimistic.
I think this encyclical will be a loose-loose proposition for the Catholic Church.
All he has to do is snap to the fact that the BRIC resistance to restrictions on energy is the voice of the poor. If he chooses to let the Vatican drown those voices, it’s on him and his conscience.
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Having pondered my considered response I have this insight.
Let’s wait until the encyclical is actually published before guessing what it means.
What fun is that?
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Good point.
Faith, science and the end of the world… if we cant laugh at this what can we laugh at?
When the CAGW hypothesis crashes and burns in about 5~7 years, Pope Francis’ coming CAGW encyclical will bring much deserved ridicule and contempt upon the Catholic Church and the office of the Pope.
The Left gets a twofer out of the Papal encyclical: 1) they get an element of CAGW legitimacy from the Catholic Church prior to the Paris CAGW summit, which will provide some added leverage to negotiations, 2) after the CAGW hypothesis is eventually disconfirmed, the Church will be open to ridicule and distrust which is another long-term objective of the Left…
Yes, Samurai. It is the circumstantial evidence in this case that drives my pessimistic view.
AGW lives and is a net benefit. Catastrophism has already crashed and burned. Will he sense that catastrophism was an appeal to fear and guilt and one that was a Hell of a lot less based on reality than man’s original and built in capacity for error? We can hope.
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The increase in CO2 from 280 ppm to 400 ppm is the best thing that has happened to life on this planet in the last 150 years.
The modest increase in temperature of ~1 degree only adds to that benefit.
Can anybody name something that would have been better?
What if CO2 had, instead dropped lower from 280 ppm and the temperature had instead, dropped ~ 1 degree C during that same period? Widespread starvation, plants shutting down,(since 280 ppm CO2 is severely deficient) many animals suffering.
There should be universal agreement(by authentic, objective scientists) that what has actually happened is much better…………even compared to no change from 150 years ago.
The case being made by one group, is that 150 years ago, the planet was exactly at the perfect temperature and CO2 level and humans need to keep it there………..despite millions of years of natural cycles that dominated and caused extreme fluctuations.
Always keep in mind, too, that the irony (?) of the whole CAGW mess is that human activity only contributes a negligible amount of CO2 to CO2 emissions each year…something on the order of 3% to 5%.
The sun and the biome conspire to almost irreversibly sequester carbon. If man did not exist it would be useful to invent him.
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Yes, Mike. But even without the atmospheric CO2 drop, a 1°C global temperature drop would be very detrimental. And some geologists think an even bigger temperature drop is already overdue. Then the CO2 would drop.
When? How fast? These are the questions.
I grow weary of this Marxist Pope. Nothing good can come from mixing him with the UN and the warmunistas.
I don’t foresee any hope for changing the Pope’s mind:
1. The Pope has previously endorsed ‘Climate Change’.
2. “Given that the text of the encyclical has already been finalised, and is currently being translated, there may not be much that either party can do to affect its content.”
For the Pope to now come out and change his view would be admitting a grave mistake for his prior adherence. That won’t happen.
Kokoda sez:
Spot on.
How does the Catholic Church enter into an alliance with the neo-Malthusians among the Green Movement and the enthusiasm for population control?
The traditional moral argument is that the wealthy elites need to lead simpler lives so as to not greedily consume such a large fraction of the bounty of Creation, and they need to share their surplus with the poor. But a video on another thread around here offered a graph showing a lock-step relationship between the the upward-trending world population and fossil fuel consumption. No amount of simple living in the Western countries is going to change this.
Maybe there is nuanced change in the works, hinted at by the Holy Father expressing exasperation at a woman bearing her 8th child and requiring a C-section (not an unusually large family in the world in 20th century history, whether among where the Church guides the faithful and where it does not). Is family planning going to be actively encouraged, of course using means deemed licit rather than means deemed gravely sinful? Traditionally, sanctioned modes were offered to those “who must” among the Western world. Is instruction in NFP going to be actively promoted worldwide?
I would have thought that the Catholic Church would have stood behind optimism of population growth and technological progress being social goods as the only secular doctrine concordant with Church teaching? Was the late Julian Simon more Catholic than . . .
The temptation of the Pope. Grand works, here.
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Paul Milenkovic,
You are in good company with such a question. That is why I expect a “deeper magic” to the climate panel at the Vatican. The Pope may be playing chess when the media is playing Chinese checkers.
“Gotcha!”, “Boo!” and “Show me the money!” are the media’s favorite games.
Pope questions God’s design of the Earth’s control systems; should play well in Heaven.
Well there is one angel eating it all up and loving it.
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Yes, it clearly demonstrates a lack of trust doesn’t it.
I’ve read through the bible several times, and nowhere does it say the earth will end in a runaway greenhouse (or words to that effect). The bible clearly tells us how the earth will end; so what is the Pope basing his beliefs on? Advice from man?
We should all listen to the pope very carefully. It’s a well known fact that the church has always been at the forefront of scientific reasoning and discovery and open to new ideas. Why should it be any different now?
Already we are in trouble, when the Church weighs in on science, because this august body does not and should not compete in that division.
As Paul W notes above, Galileo is frequently trotted out as an example of the Church’s scientific failures, but a close reading of the CE article on the subject, for example, casts a different light on the story, at least as I recall it. The entire episode was probably as much due to the famed astronomer’s intransigence, as it was to anything else.
Whatever the case, Galileo is recognized today as one of the towering figures in astronomy and science His discoveries one of the foundations of our knowledge of the Solar System, and beyond, such as it is. Whatever attempts the Church may have made to conceal Galileo’s discoveries, one must acknowledge that they were not successful.
In fact, I think it can be argued that it is Christian values led by Rome that have formed one of the pillars of Western Civilization.
Now, there must be a million christian faiths of just about every flavor imaginable, all convinced that their particular interpretation of the Holy Book is the correct one. As I’ve said, it’s a mixed blessing.
I see it all as the Giant Book of Fairy Tales for Adults, Volumes I & II. My current understanding is that the NT was cobbled together at Nicaea in 325, from a hodgepodge of ancient scriptures and myths, most of which were filtered through the earlier deification of Julius Caesar by the Romans.
I had an uneasy relationship with Catholicism from the get-go. Without going into the details of my own experiences, let me just say that the hypocrisy of the Roman Catholic clergy was tangible. I also had big problems with the so-called Original Sin, and other issues that arose during the good Father’s daily catechism visits, so that by the 7th grade, I had been dubbed “the astronomer.”
These days, I continue my spiritual investigations, which are inconclusive, and so I am agnostic, which has the great virtue of accommodating my open mind.
For a better example of the moral and spiritual failure by the Pope and the Roman Catholic with respect to climate, I direct the attention of the curious to the exploits of Pope Innocent VIII during the Little Ice Age, when thousands upon thousands of innocents were burned alive at the stake, with the Pope playing a leading role in this enormous h o l o c a u s t. whose human cost makes Galileo’s discomforts register as a pittance.
You really need to stick to something other than Biblical History. The NT wasn’t “cobbled together”. All of the major books were around for centuries. The only question in the year 325 dealt with which books were considered inspired by God and were part of his revelation to His Church.
As far as Galileo was concerned, the Church back then didn’t separate theology, philosophy from the “hard sciences” (neither did the Greeks). Whether the Church was right or wrong, it dealt with everything from a theological point of view. Ergo, the Vatican was the umpire in all disputes theological or physical. It was during the debates concerning Galileo’s discoveries that things went wrong. Galileo didn’t follow established protocol and got himself in trouble with the Pope – not because he was wrong, but because of his pride and his rudeness.
JP April 30, 2015 at 1:42 pm
You really need to stick to something other than Biblical History. The NT wasn’t “cobbled together”. All of the major books were around for centuries.
Ah so. You claim I’m wrong, and then more-or-less repeat what I wrote:
Steve P April 28, 2015 at 10:10 am
I can provide extensive documentation of this fact, but I doubt you’d be interested or convinced. Note please, that I should have said “
mostmany of which were filtered…” , but please read these short excerpts, link below, for a different take on “Biblical History”:(my editing & emphasis)
http://www.bibliotecapleyades.net/biblianazar/esp_biblianazar_40.htm
At any rate, the oldest extant copy of the NT is the Codex Sinaiticus, or Sinai Bible, dating from about 400, which contains no mention of the resurrection, or many of the other major tenants of Christianity, but it does contain evidence of numerous alterations, amounting to about 14000 such edits, if memory serves.
It is a fact of Christian history that the earliest Gospels did not record a resurrection of Jesus Christ, and that claim is supported in the oldest known complete Bible available to mankind today. […] The discovery of the Sinai Bible provided biblical scholars with irrefutable evidence of wilful falsifications in all modern-day Gospels, and a comparison identified a staggering 14,800 later editorial alterations in modern Bibles.
http://www.vatileaks.com/_blog/Vati_Leaks/post/A_glaring_omission_in_World%E2%80%99s_oldest_Bible/
–sp–
The Pope has no business dealing in this lie called Global Warming. He should concentrate on his job, not the lies of what has become a cult of deceit.
It´s ok with me that the pope engage in beliefs. 🙂
It’s beautiful that religions can come together in this age.
Paul,… The time you took to direct me to information regarding the history of Galileo and his struggles is highly appreciated. I get short with people who do not have the discipline to putting in the time that it really takes to do research. A long time ago I learned to take everything for checking, after witnessing a Ph.D. chemist falsify data right in front of my eyes.
That is why I find the websites like “WUWT” to be such a blessing. People have no idea what kind of work it takes to do the analysis that shows up on this site and are clueless what it takes to practice science as it was meant to be conducted. Then again staying in a state of endless “I wonder what is really going on here?”_
is not everyone’s cup of tea.
Realizing that I will never know everything, nor will I ever know for sure that the “reason and explanations”
I think something happens is actually true. Life has taught me these lessons time and time again, sometimes to my delight and sometimes to my shame and embarrassment. And still paying attention to experimental results or the “fruits of the tree” that I am studying always in the end pays off.
Thank you
Because the Catholic Church has had such stunning success in the past when it gets involved in science …
I take it that you are referring to Gregor Mendel (www.scientus.org/Mendel-Darwin.html) but it had its successes even during Galileo’s day (www.scientus.org/Galileo-Contemporaries.html).
This is turning into a modern-day declaration by the same church that the Earth is the center of the universe moment – Galileo must be smiling.