Guest essay by Eric Worrall
Pope Francis seems upset that nations have not heeded his climate advice. But I am concerned the Pope’s increasingly pessimistic climate message may be doing greater harm to society than his holiness realises.
Pope warns climate change turning Earth into desert, garbage
…
Francis made the appeal at a Vatican conference marking the third anniversary of his landmark environmental encyclical “Praise Be.” The document, meant to spur action at the 2015 Paris climate conference, called for a paradigm shift in humanity’s relationship with Mother Nature.
In his remarks, Francis urged governments to honor their Paris commitments and said institutions like the IMF and World Bank had important roles to play in encouraging reforms promoting sustainable development.
“There is a real danger that we will leave future generations only rubble, deserts and refuse,” he warned.
…
Read more: https://apnews.com/2dc33645a7e140ffa63e9f5f3b8d2504
There is zero risk any imaginable release of anthropogenic CO2 will ruin the world. My evidence is the past geological ages of the Earth, like the age of the dinosaurs, the Cretaceous – 4C warmer than today, 1700ppm CO2. During the Cretaceous the Earth was bursting with an abundance of life.
But the Pope’s ridiculous statements on a subject he obviously doesn’t understand still have the potential to do great harm.
Consider the following:
… The tall, sharply dressed man said humans were a cancer on the Earth. He said that he resented his parents for raising him to be “super hedonistic, just monstrously gaining things.” He said he had grown nihilistic, that he wanted to take up chain smoking and die a slow death. When Schapira asked if he was angry at his family, the young man replied, “I love my family. It’s so hard to know that you only have five years left to love people.” …
Read more: https://nexusmedianews.com/uncovering-the-mental-health-crisis-of-climate-change-88cd35a1293c
People who think they are about to die don’t plan for the future. They don’t believe they have a future. Problems remain unsolved. Health issues which young people are particularly at risk from, such as sexual health or drug abuse, avoiding HIV and other deadly STDs, becomes a bad joke. Why worry about something which could kill you in ten years, when climate change will kill you in five?
Pope Francis to his credit has championed sexual health, including use of condoms. But telling people the world is about to end is in my opinion a bit of a mixed message.
The USA, like many countries, is currently facing a serious opioid abuse epidemic. I’m not saying that this is Pope Francis’ fault, overprescription of painkillers leading to vicious cycles of addiction seems a far more likely culprit.
But people who defeat opioid addiction or overcome their temptation towards other harmful patterns of behaviour have to believe in the possibility of a better future, otherwise why bother? One of the world’s leading religious figures going around telling everyone the future is “rubble, deserts and refuse” does not help people feel more positive about their future.
The Pope has the potential to do great good, his views are important to a large number of people. But a scientifically unsound message of climate pessimism is not a realisation of that potential for good.
Let us hope that the Pope broadens the range of advice he receives about climate science.
It sounds like the Pope does not believe in God.
This guy is as close to being the Anti-pope as one can get, imo.
When the horses are locked in the gate, waiting for the starter to push the “go” button, things get rather primitive. Or so I would imagine.
I believe in oats.
He’s a Jesuit.
They believe in Earthly treasures.
He sees himself as the Roman Caesar of the Holy Roman Empire.
The Bishop of Rome wants what is Caesar’s. The Climate Aid Fund is a start.
I think the reasons behind the Pope’s thinking and statements have nothing whatsoever to do with AGW per se, but rather with the “need” for massive transfers of wealth from developed to undeveloped countries.
With the Roman Catholic Church as one of several middlemen in the transfer. Skimming their take of course.
Has the Catholic Church ever transferred money to the poor?
They build churches, and run missions, but those are not charity as such.
Love your handle, as a fellow owe.
I’m sure the Vatican has been lobbied hard by the cardinals from the developing world to make a stink about the failure of the UN’s Climate Fund to send money to their countries. The cardinals also likely believe in catastrofic capitalistic climate change—all the world’s scientific societies have said it’s a threat, so that’s good enough for them. Because of that, they, and the pope, figure they needn’t listen to what skeptics say—the science is settled, and the skeptics are just mouthpieces for special interests, or unthinking, dull-witted dinosaurs.
In the future, the world’s scientific societies need to reform the way they select members on the committees that evaluate ideologically fraught issues like climate change, so they don’t mislead the world again.
China is not an undeveloped country. They have 45% of the world’s skyscrapers.
“we will leave future generations only rubble, deserts and refuse”
Just anothr version of “the planet of the apes”
This pope is an outright communist who believes in global communist government. Just listen to what he says, and who he surrounds himself with. Other communists like Naomi-klein, an author of the leap manifesto. A document to destroy the capitalist system and replace it with communism.
Pope Francis recruits Naomi Klein in climate change battle
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/jun/28/pope-climate-change-naomi-klein
Naomi Klein is a spoiled rich kid who got bored hanging around shopping malls during her early years, and needed a cause to make her life interesting. There are oodles of rich commies with a similar pedigree: Friedrich Engels, Che Guevara, the Castro Bros., Chairman Mao, and many others. It runs, sort of, “Gee, my life is a drag, but now I’ve got a swell idea: stick my nose in everyone else’s business and run their lives instead.” Another version of Hillary’s “politics of meaning.”
The crocodile tears for “the working people” is just a sales pitch. They couldn’t care less about bricklayers and nurses than any garden-variety kleptocrat. Commies’ driving motive is the will to power, and a craving to feel important. Trying to take away the peasants’ carbon is a such a massive and unfulfillable assignment, it’ll keep power mongers busy for centuries, unless the peasants get wise.
For the psychology behind fanaticism, read Eric Hoffer’s, “The True Believer.”
It is the Papacy that is suicidal because of its espousal of Socialism and the latter’s false pretense of social justice. The hubris evident when the Church declared itself infallible (even in the narrowest sense), is now resurfacing in its death throes. There can never be a healthy accord between Catholicism and the quasi-religious, Socialist superstate. Hitler played Pius XII and the German church for fools. Francis has, in essence, sold out to a competing creed, the Fifth Horseman, and this will end badly.
… more like the Fourth Horseman of the Apocalypse …
Part of the reason I started researching AGW was the anxiety I was feeling about the ‘problem’, primarily because I’m a parent. My children were saying really cynical things about their future, courtesy of the messages they receive from the media and school. I now believe it is a nihilist cult. No wonder there is so much depression and anxiety. I was alarmed to see commenters on the Guardian (who generally seem to be misanthropes anyway) saying ugly and violent things such as ‘deniers’ should be executed! Discovering the reality of the magical thinking involved in the AGW theory, its ideological basis, and the scandalous corruption, was life-changing. Shocking but freeing. I am really angry at the way they are still scaremongering and frightening everybody, particularly the young. It’s nothing short of evil, and particularly galling given that the most vocal usually do the least in terms of their own lifestyles. What is truly depressing is the money and brain power that could have been used to solve REAL environmental and social problems.
Sylvia, As you can see, anybody can comment on this site. Glad to see you did a little research. We skeptics are outnumbered but the polls of the general population are starting to inch past 1/3 who do not believe in AGW. For sure CAGW is impossible. Even if AGW is real, the effects are so small that no one needs to worry. We are all against pollution but CO2 is NOT a pollutant.
It’s the opposite of a pollutant. It’s plant food in the air, a vital trace gas, essential to the photosynthesis which supports most life on land.
Sylvia,
Welcome! Facts and logic have a way of dispelling fears and fear mongering. There are many on this site with extensive educations and experiences in an amazing number of technical fields. Ask questions and chime in!
Thank you, I will! The key point that is always made is that the temperature has risen 1 degree C in 140 years, and the rate of temperature increase is unprecedented. I am unclear whether that is not true, because the rise is due to data fiddling. Or it is true, but one can’t conclude that a) it will continue at that rate b) that it would be bad if it did continue at that rate or c) that humans caused it. Logic makes me think about time scales and what references we have to compare rates of change. Is it possible to get down to 140 year time scales when trying to determine rises and falls of temperature during longer upward and downward trajectories? Surely not…
“What is truly depressing is the money and brain power that could have been used to solve REAL environmental and social problems.”
A sentiment I have expressed here many times. The world will reflect on this time, eventually, and wonder what went wrong.
Speaking of rubble and such, …http://www.foxnews.com/world/2018/07/08/u-s-embassy-in-haiti-warns-americans-to-shelter-in-place-as-violent-protests-escalate.html
An excerpt from the above “…The Haitian government on Saturday halted a planned fuel price hike after tension and fighting escalated late last week. Haiti Prime Minister Jack Guy Lafontant had previously declared that fuel prices needed to be raised to balance the budget and announced a 38 percent increase for gasoline, diesel and kerosene. ..”.
The government shouldnt be setting the prices. Fuel should be a commodity bought and sold in the marketplace. If Haiti continues to ignore Economics 101, they will never get out of the mess they are in.
“we will leave future generations only rubble, deserts and refuse”
And abused children. Many murdered and dumped into mass graves.
Who knows how many kids were/are subject to this disgusting regime?
I think you will find he is the first pope to actually do something about that issue.
You’re sorely mistaken. Frank defended the Chilean bishop who covered for the worst pedophile in the Southern Hemisphere, until forced, dragged kicking and screaming, to remove the offending prelate.
Only mass public outrage, to include from among the most prominent devout Catholics in Chile and Argentina, among them acquaintances of Frank, forced the pedophile-harboring scumbag to relent.
Simon
You persist in presenting yourself as a gullible, idealistic fool.
This pope is become increasingly irrevelant to Catholics and believers. How about delivering messages about hope, faith, family and hardwork? We need to hear more of those than peddling global warming propaganda
He’s worried about this from his position of extreme wealth and tight protection from the masses? He should be more worried about the possible effects of being promised something and the not having it delivered. Example; Govn’t raises petrol/gas in Haiti to $7 per litre.
I’ve done a site survey of church property with thunderstorms nearby.
I would be lying if I said I wasn’t a little concerned about the irioning of a lightning strike.
Must have been the angels.
“The Pope has the potential to do great good, his views are important to a large number of people. But a scientifically unsound message of climate pessimism is not a realisation of that potential for good.”
Except his view is backed by the scientific community… where as yours… is not.
If you believe voting for scientific truth is the way to go and that scientists are all saints that never lie, cheat or alter data, sure.
“backed by the scientific community”
Are you a believer in the 97%?
Total bs. See Richard Lindzen and many others.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Lindzen#Articles
Versus:
See: Ice-free Arctic in two years (or 3, or, 4, …) Professor Peter Wadhams
Seems that some people have never spent much time around some universities where cheating, stealing others work and lying does occur.
Have been asked by professors to watch their work while they were away.
Which IPCC report predicts the world will be reduced to “rubble, deserts and refuse” Simon?
A scientific community that developed computer climate models that pedalled a CAGW meme and that never had any accurate predictions.
A scientific community that took over all the atmospheric science faculties the world over and turned them into faculties of global warming.
A scientific community that predicted we would all be drowned by now or all burned from forest fires started by global warming.
A scientific community that was caught through their own emails of trying to hide the decline in temperatures.
A scientific community that was caught through their own emails of fudging data with tricks.
A scientific community that refused to release their data so that others could try to replicate it.
A scientific community that took over all the major journals in relation to any topic remotely associated with climate change and refused to publish contrary studies to global warming.
A scientific community that kept on spouting a fake 97% consensus.
A scientific community that turned peer review into pal review and thus is corrupting all of science.
A scientific community that refuses to debate the issue because they say the science is settled but on NASA’s own web site it says the IRIS effect has not been proven or disproven. That one effect if true could destroy any capability of CO2 affecting the climate at all.
A scientific community that rallies around any study that purports to debunk any contrarian study on global warming making sure that the skeptic scientists are drowned out.
A scientific community that has as yet to publish any definitive physics on how the greenhouse effect actually happens.
A scientific community that supports a scientist like Michael Mann who has tried to erase history vis a vis the mediaeval warming period and who even Dr Richard Muller of Berkeley a famed alarmist has said he will never read another paper by Michael Mann again nor read the journal that published Mann’s paper ever again.
A scientific community that took over all the government agencies that had anything to do with climate and that have produced fake graphs and altered temperature data.
A scientific community that punishes any scientist by demotion,firing, …etc who dares to object to any aspect of global warming.
A scientific community that frightens little kids around the world with predictions of disaster that are impossible.
A scientific community that sees almost every retired scientist come out against the global warming meme, because at last they have nothing to lose.
A scientific community that threatens and hurls insults including words such as harlot at scientists who go over to the skeptic side.
A scientific community that publishes fake debunk studies.
A scientific community that defends the computer models which are actually junk science.
A scientific community that admires its own and despises anybody who disagrees.
THAT IS NOT SCIENCE
Alan Tomalty
A scientific community which sought to pervert the RICO principles to have sceptics prosecuted and imprisoned.
Did any actual climate scientists say that?
Alan Tomalty
Define ‘climate scientist’
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2015/09/29/the-rico-20-letter-to-obama-asking-for-prosecution-of-climate-skeptics-disappears-from-shuklas-iges-website-amid-financial-concerns/
An expert (an old drip under pressure).
He is not wrong about garbage. Go anywhere else than a handful of Northern Europe countries, Canada and USA and it is garbage everywhere, especially in developing countries. With consumerism, no instructions are provided on garbage disposal, recycling or just plain old decency to put your bloody garbage in a garbage can. The ground there is as good.
It took USA folks a long time to learn to take care of waste.
Do you remember outhouses over streams, potato peelings dumped into waterways?
What about Chicago wallowing in its own waste.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raising_of_Chicago
“He” wants the US and Europe to pay for the rest of the world to clean up.
Hang on a second, much of the waste originates in developed countries. E-waste for instance, from US and EU, ends up in Africa. China has recently stopped importing plastic waste.
Patrick MJD
https://www.thegwpf.org/content/uploads/2018/06/Save-the-oceans.pdf?utm_source=Media&utm_campaign=060bbcd475-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2018_06_28_07_59&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_8f98a37810-060bbcd475-20196673
The Pope refers to Brazil’ Sao Paolo slums – beyond belief. He does not refer to any creative human way to change that.
For some reason this Pope is very worldly. He rarely mentions God, I don’t recall seeing him praying, he rides around in his little “popemobile”, etc and preaches politics. Somehow, I miss the last Pope who actually acted like what a Pope is expected to. All of this politicking and negativity is just harming the Catholic church. You would think he would care.
I really don’t care one way or the other, but ya gotta choose a side.
Sounds like you are on a fence ?
Sheri, the only pope I have ever liked or respected was Benedict.
And Chambers of Planned Lives sacrificed in the Aztec tradition of social progress.
This degenerate pope-dope-should-be-on-a-rope is desperate to leave the world in famine, despair and death. This is a priest of absolute evil.
Too many of the environmentalist persuasion are stuck with the mindset that the world was some kind of Garden of Eden before man came along with his technology.
The truth is that we all constantly rely on this technology to protect us from the natural environment. Mother nature will kill you pretty rapidly without the technology we have spent so long developing.
Who remembers that Star Trek episode “The Way to Eden”? Hippies haven’t changed.
https://twitter.com/chaamjamal/status/1015980522059718656?s=19
When, a few years ago, I read his encyclical “Laudate Si” I became embarrassed for my church– when he talked about some unwelcome weather events, probably due to climate change– then said, well, we can’t prove it’s all climate change– then went on about climate change. It hasn’t improved since then!
Written by Dr. John Schellnhuber awarded a CBE personally by the Queen at the Berlin Embassy in 2004 for his radical depopulation agenda. The very same Johnny boy who nudged Merkel to go green.
The Pope is an idiot.
Please don’t waste my time.
Who will rid the world of this disgusting cleric?
Frank seized power in a Communist palace coup. The only way to free the world from his baleful influence will be by a counter-coup, to restore Christianity.
The pope is not Catholic, but Communist.
There is opposition, but it’s ruthlessly suppressed:
https://cruxnow.com/vatican/2017/02/04/rome-wakes-find-city-full-anti-pope-francis-posters/
Gotta put the fear of GOD into people, or who knows what we’d get up to.
The Galileo fiasco never really taught popes to keep their noses out of science. They should stick to concepts from “the other world” where they perhaps can claim some expertise.
Do works of alleged magic count as expertise?
To his credit, Pope John Paul II did formally apologize to Galileo in 1992.
Fat lot of good it did the great scientist, but I guess better late than never.
The apology did not make Galileo a scientist – he never was. The entire theater was a farce.
Pretty much the way he will leave the Catholic Church.
This revolting hypocrite wants to deprive ordinary humans of air conditioning, but enjoys it himself.
He wants to tear down walls on all borders, but hides behind walls and Swiss guards armed not just with halberds but MP-5 submachine guns.
The shameless charlatan trots the globe by jet, yet denounced fossil fuel use.
Don’t hold back, man.
There is only one person in the world I’m that mad at, he took his best shot at a dear friend.
He’s keeping his head down for now…..
My first full time job was killing Communists. My place of work was a muddy hole in the ground in SE Asia.
Then, for the next 20 years, my part time job was helping to keep them from taking over Western Europe, Africa and Latin America.
So, yeah, it rankles me to see the Vatican taken over by Communist enemies of humanity.
Good Heavens, rose tinted glasses! – Charlie is everywhere….
Still the Vatican has huge problem with Confucian Beijing bishop appointments – and they do have major environmental problems. Not rocket science to see the motive.
Francis urged governments to honor their Paris commitments
============
His holiness is not talking about CO2. It is clear his concern is the $100 billion a year climate fund. He immediately goes on to mention the IMF and World Bank.
The Church wants it cut. From the Green Fund to the collection plate. The holy huckster is carrying on the proud tradition of global extortion. Give us your money or burn in hell.