Putting papal authority behind yet another failed scientific paradigm
Guest post by Alec Rawls
As Galileo insisted about the perversity of his persecution by the Catholic Church: “[I]t is impossible for a conclusion to be declared heretical while we remain in doubt as to its truth.”
Now 400 years later, with the Pope’s new Laudato Si’ encyclical, Dr. Soon notes that the Vatican is again engaged in this same error, lending papal authority to highly uncertain scientific views that lie well outside of the Church’s sphere of moral authority.
Willie’s op-ed can be found at the Breitbart News website. I’ll just post a trio of fair-use excerpts here:
The verdict is clear: Any attempt to stop the use of available fossil fuels for life and all human activities will cause far more harm and lead to more deaths than the theological belief in future catastrophic disasters endorsed by the encyclical. Even worse, the church knows that many of the predicted catastrophic disasters from the rise of atmospheric carbon dioxide are highly exaggerated if not outright fraudulent. Yet Laudato Si’ gives credence and praise to these predictions by relying on climate models scenarios that have been proven to be false.
Plus:
I fear that this encyclical is driven not by science, but by social motivations and political yearnings.
And again from Galileo:
“[C]ertainly no one doubts that the Supreme Pontiff has always an absolute power to approve or condemn; but it is not in the power: of any created being to make things true or false, for this belongs to their own nature and to the fact.”
The Vatican’s science advisor is an atheist who believes in Gaia?
https://stream.org/scientific-pantheist-who-advises-pope-francis/
Thanks, Steve. The article by William M. Briggs is very good.
Yes, it appears like Schellnhuber believes in Gaia, actually, more like a principal in that cult.
Who can argue with a consensus of the global warming religion and one Pope?
I was wondering the same thing, 97% consensus and a Pope? , would that not make it 99% (only one more guy needed and it ain’t Gore although the first 2 letters are close).
The Catholic Church has considerable wealth in the Vatican bank, property, and art. Perhaps they could liquidate their holdings and donate the proceeds to the cause of stopping the rise of the seas. That would be a great example for the countries around the world that are being asked to sacrifice. It wouldn’t stop the rise of the seas, of course…
What the Catholic Church needs is a good RICO prosecution. They have no moral or scientific credibility to lecture anyone on global warming or anything else.
Some of that wealth was gained from collaboration with the Nazis during WWII (stolen from Jews shipped to Auschwitz and other death camps to be killed in the gas chambers). And then payment to catholic priests for facilitating the escape of Nazi fugitives via the rat-line to South America after the war.
And the Catholic Church actually provided shelter/sanctuary to Kurt Werner Lischka as late as 1980 in churches/convents in France. He was arrested living in a Catholic convent! How many other Nazis did the Catholic Church protect? Lischka was responsible for the largest mass deportation of Jews to Auschwitz – 80,000+.
What about Catholic Priests’ depraved, sick sex crimes against children? Pedophilia enablers. The ex Catholic Bishop of Boston is on the lamp in Vatican City. He covered for those sick priests and was promoted at the Vatican.
My coffee mug suggestion:
http://www.fidelitybooks.com.au/Hugh/GalileoMug.jpg
You better get a copyright on that one!
Some how I think this is the churches attempt to appeal to people who generally dislike religion in hopes to gain more members and make more money themselves.
camel … straw … the alarmists must be having a field day when “the world’s most viewed site on global warming and climate change” lets the white sheet show
over and out
It’s nice of the Pope to allow us to use fossil fuels, “the lesser of two evils,” until greater progress is made in developing renewable energy. But has it ever occurred to him that fossil fuels are a gift from God and put here for us to use? Where does the Pope come off calling a gift from God evil? Does he think fossil fuels are a curse from God?
Even if you believe, like the Pope, that fossil fuels should only be used to transition to renewables, how could that transition ever take place without them? Where would we be without the industrial age, the manufacturing, and the science and education that were made possible by the use of fossil fuels? We should be ever grateful for them. The Pope implores us to recognize that “the world is God’s loving gift.” Aren’t fossil fuels part of the world and therefore part of that loving gift? Why not then express thankfulness to God for his gift of fossil fuels instead of treating them like a bane or a curse on humanity?
The poor pope de jour is a puppet for:
1. The application of scientific methods to social and political modeling
2. Science is the absolute and only access to truth and reality about man and the universe
3. Scientism is specifically opposed to the Holy Bible as truth
4. Scientism upholds Atheism – there is no God
5. Scientism purports to be predictive, able to foretell the future
6. Scientism rejects any opposing inquiry
7. Scientism demands acceptance by non-scientists
and the new order is:
1. The Technetronic Era
2. A controlled society in which the Elite rule
3. Primary actors and planners of economic life will be global banks and multi-national corporations.
4. A continuous surveillance of every citizen
5. Files containing all information about every citizen will be instantaneously available to authorities
There’s a hilarious blog post today by Colby Cosh, showing how the Pope’s and the Unabomber’s rants are pretty much indistinguishable.
http://news.nationalpost.com/full-comment/colby-cosh-popes-encyclical-on-climate-change-reads-like-the-unabomber-manifesto
Colby writes that once the Pope strays from the topic of Climate Change, he becomes unscientific. In other words, no make that in his words :
“Non-Catholics responded positively to the Pope’s tweetstorm because he seemed to be taking a firm position on climate change, and the letter certainly does that.”
also
“…and, yes, we are wandering pretty far now from atmosphere physics. ” , meaning Colby thinks that the Popes view on Climate Change is highly accurate and scientific, but all the rest of the stuff the Pope wrote about is unscientific junk science.
I posted this on Facebook yesterday. Willie seems to have missed the other parallel- that of model fiddling to fit reality of the Ptolemy music of the spheres and today’s model/data fiddling to fit reality. Neither were correct.
The Earth is firmly fixed; it shall not be moved – Psalms 104:5.
That was the verse used by the Roman Catholic Church as evidence against Galileo Galilei (1564-1642) who believed in Copernicus’ heliocentric theory. Galileo reluctantly recanted the theory on 22 June 1633 under the threat of torture.
Well… Psalms 104:5 was certainly wrong, and Galileo’s belief in Copernicus’ heliocentric theory, later confirmed by the great Sir Isaac Newton in 1687, was certainly right.
In 1992, 350 years after Galileo^s death, the Roman Catholic Church finally repealed the ruling of the Inquisition against Galileo and admitted that the heliocentric theory was correct. That’s right . . . in 1992!!!!!!
This Pope has failed to learn its lesson. It’s a ghastly error of judgement by the Pope to get himself and the Church embroiled in such a highly controversial political issue as catastrophic man-made global warming, and to dabble with the arrogant, ambitious, unscrupulous and dangerous ideology of environmentalism.
Both cases rooted in the negative view of humans that underlies the religion defined by Saint Augustine circa 400AD, the “born sinner” one..
johnmarshal, you are exactly right, fiddling with the data and models does parallel the Ptolemaic use of epicycles upon epicycles to increase accuracy of observation and preserve geocentrism. I also think a common trait is to minimize free will, leaders want to make other people’s decisions, Galileo was forced to recant and Global Warming is being used to force people to change the way they live.
The understanding of the events surrounding the Galileo affair is so poor that it is far worse than the actual position of the Pope at the time when the reasoning for the Earth’s motion and position in space emerged at the time of Copernicus. The objection of the Pope was whether the astronomical facility which predicts astronomical events such as eclipses ,transits, ect could also be used to prove the Earth turns and moves through space. The short answer is that the predictive side of astronomy which uses the 365/366 day calendar framework cannot be used to prove the Earth moves hence the Pop was correct in positing objections as they were understood in that era .
The 21st century is even worse that the 16th and 17th centuries as there is nobody around to restrain those who hijacked the predictive side of astronomy and turned it into a speculative free-for-all including these meaning dire predictions based on planetary temperatures.
There are only brief glimpses of the technical issue which surround the Galileo affair and nothing whatsoever regarding the resolution which could only be achieved using modern imaging and techniques . All that exists is a bunch of uninteresting charlatans trying desperately to sound different from each other which so much productive and creative work is being drowned out.
The following description is close enough without subscribing in a majority way with its views –
“Here lurked the danger of serious misunderstanding. Maffeo Barberini, while he was a Cardinal, had counselled Galileo to treat Copernicanism as a hypothesis, not as a confirmed truth. But ‘hypothesis’ meant two very different things. On the one hand, astronomers were assumed to deal only with hypotheses, i.e. accounts of the observed motions of the stars and planets that were not claimed to be true. Astronomical theories were mere instruments for calculation and prediction, a view that is often called ‘instrumentalism’. On the other hand, a hypothesis could also be understood as a theory that was not yet proved but was open to eventual confirmation. This was a ‘realist’ position. Galileo thought that Copernicanism was true, and presented it as a hypothesis, i.e. as a provisional idea that was potentially physically true, and he discussed the pros and cons, leaving the issue undecided. This did not correspond to the instrumentalist view of Copernicanism that was held by Maffeo Barberini and others. They thought that Copernicus’ system was a purely instrumental device, and Maffeo Barberini was convinced that it could never be proved. This ambiguity pervaded the whole Galileo Affair.”
http://www.unav.es/cryf/english/newlightistanbul.html
The issue needs men of common sense and integrity.
It is best to call the products of the IPCC’s global warming computer models “projections” rather than “predictions” as they lack truth-values; thus they lack falsifiability. Predictions differ from projections in having truth-values; thus they have falsifiability.
Of course, though it is undeniable that The Pope is at heart a socialist, and some say communist, it is more significant that he is a member of The Society of Jesus (Jesuits). Whilst he was a mere Cardinal, before being elevated to his current exalted position, it is notable that he hardly ever, if at all mentioned “climate change” or blaming CO2 for the vagaries of climate. His main concern has always been for the Poor.
How then did he become an advocate for the shenanigans of the controlling bureaucrats of the EU, UN, and proponents of the hated and despised “Agenda 21” ? This is really no mystery, and the blame may be laid at the door of a group of subverters, who have infiltrated the Pontifical Academy of Science.
Chiefly Hans Joachim Schellnhuber of the Potsdam Institute, is the principal disinformation agent, though there are others involved. For more than ten years Schellnhuber, has tried to inveigle his way into the Vatican, though he didn’t succeed under Benedict XVI. When Bergoglio was elected, he couldn’t wait to book his flight to Rome to make representations. Recently Schellnhuber has now been inducted into the PAS itself, and was the principal author of the recent Encyclical, so far as the Climate change issue is concerned.
I do not believe that The Pope, despite all his failings when dealing with the content this document, is actually as corrupt as some people imagine. Let’s look at his track record, in recent years before he was exalted to the highest office in The Catholic Church.
In this blog, dedicated to the to the speeches and writings of prominent Jesuits, we find an entry related to a report on the Catechesis of “His Eminence Jorge Mario Cardinal Bergoglio, SJ”, at the 49th International Eucharistic Congress in Quebec. This is striking because of the lack of ANY reference to the issue of climate change at all.
See the report at the “Ad Majorem Dei Gloriam” Blogspot :
http://jmgarciaiii.blogspot.co.uk/2008_09_01_archive.html
Of even more significance perhaps is the fact that during this 49th International Eucharistic Congress in Quebec, a number of Cardinals present did compose a letter to “World Leaders”, urging action on “Climate Change”, but neither Cardinal Bergoglio, nor Pope Benedict XVI signed, or approved of this missive, The letter is more significant because of who did sign it, and how are they now involved in this shoddy process of corrupting the Office of Pope Francis,
See a copy of this craven epistle for yourselves. Though this copy was received by Stephen Harper, the Canadian Premier, other “World Leaders” received essentially the same document. At least one of the Cardinals who did sign the letter has now resigned in disgrace it would appear.
http://www.cccb.ca/site/images/stories/pdf/harper_g8-eng_june_08.pdf
Can we lay the blame for this episode where it truly lies, and can we expect Pope Francis to realize and understand that the results of supporting the Agenda 21, and depopulation strategy of The Malthusian Potsdam Institute, and it’s Atheist, Communist figurehead, Hans Joachim Schellnhuber, has no business interfering in the PAS, and indeed ought to be expelled from the PAS, and permanently debarred from entering the Vatican.
We look to Pope Francis to return to the principles of his ministry when he was Archbishop, and later Cardinal, of Buenos Aires, and to care for the Poor, and not put moneys into the coffers of the UN & EU Bureaucratic Elites, World Bank, and scientifically ignorant Billionaires, like Bill Gates, Maurice Strong, and George Soros. Will he over-rule his own Encyclical in that respect, and make a case for dismantling the cursed CO2 house of cards, in Paris or before. We urge all of you, Cathoiic or not, to write to The Vatican, and beseech The Pope to change his view.
Pope Francis does not have a public email address.
If you wish to write to the Pope, you may do so at the
following address :
His Holiness, Pope Francis
Apostolic Palace
00120 Vatican City
Do include your telephone number, because he might just call you back. Pope Francis has already charmed the masses with his informal style, and a handful of strangers have gotten the treatment up close, receiving papal phone calls out of the blue after writing him.