Has the Climate Crisis been downgraded in the wake of the RCP 8.5 cancellation?
From the Encyclical;
ENCYCLICAL LETTER
MAGNIFICA HUMANITAS
OF HIS HOLINESS
POPE LEO XIV
ON SAFEGUARDING THE HUMAN PERSON
IN THE TIME OF ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCEINTRODUCTION
1. Humanity, created by God in all its grandeur, is today facing a pivotal choice: either to construct a new Tower of Babel or to build the city in which God and humanity dwell together. Each generation inherits the task of shaping its own era, of guiding history to become a place where the dignity of every person is safeguarded, justice is promoted and fraternity is made possible. Yet every era also runs the risk of creating an inhumane and more unjust world. Whenever humanity is in danger of marring its true identity, we Christians lift our eyes to the Incarnate God, knowing that it is “only in the mystery of the Word made flesh that the mystery of humanity truly becomes clear.” [1] In Jesus Christ, this humanity in its grandeur becomes the Way, the Truth and the Life, opening the path for each of us to grow toward fullness.
…
5. It now falls to us to face the challenges of our time with clarity of thought and responsibility. It is necessary to establish adequate regulatory tools capable of upholding justice and curbing the distorting effects of technological power. Nevertheless, the issue is not limited to regulation. As Pope Francis warned, we must realistically ask ourselves who holds this power today and how they use it: “It must also be recognized that nuclear energy, biotechnology, information technology, knowledge of our own DNA, and many other abilities which we have acquired… have given those with the knowledge, and especially the economic resources to use them, an impressive dominance over the whole of humanity and the entire world.” [7] In the past, it was largely up to the State to guide and direct innovation. Today, however, the main drivers of development are private, often transnational, parties that are endowed with resources and the capacity to intervene that surpass those of many Governments. Technological power thus takes on an unprecedented, predominantly “private” aspect, which makes it even more challenging to discern, govern and direct such power toward the common good.
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10. We must, then, avoid the “[Tower of] Babel syndrome,” namely the idolatry of profit that sacrifices the weak, a uniformity that neutralizes differences, and the pretense that a single language — even a digital one — can translate everything, including the mystery of the person, into data and performance. The risk of dehumanization — of building a future that excludes God and reduces the other to a means — is an ancient and ever-new temptation that today takes on a technical guise. Instead, let us choose the “way of Nehemiah,” which highlights the importance of working together to make the City of God a safe place for returning exiles. Rebuilding today means recognizing that, precisely from the plurality of voices and visions which, even though they sometimes remind us of the confusion caused by the diversity of spoken languages, a bright possibility emerges. Indeed, this is the possibility of building together, of transforming diversity into a resource and of making listening and dialogue the common ground upon which to cultivate justice and fraternity. Within this shared task, Christians discover their unique role of guiding actions toward God so that, in his light, pluralism does not dissipate into disorder, but instead, through the practice of synodality, it becomes the space in which humanity rediscovers its solid foundations and its final end. In the Book of Revelation, John sees the New Jerusalem “coming down out of heaven from God” (Rev 21:2) as a gift for all humanity. And this vision of grace is an invitation for us Christians to work together in order to foster a peaceful, just and dignified life in community within today’s “cities.”
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[The word “Climate” doesn’t appear until 81, though Laudato Si’ and the environment are mentioned earlier]
81. A litmus test for social justice today is the treatment of migrants, refugees and those forced to move due to poverty, violence, climate change and environmental disasters. The way a society treats them reveals whether its sense of justice is driven by fear or by the spirit of fraternity. Pope Francis urged us to see migrants not simply as a problem to be managed, but as a living image of the People of God on the move. [109] They are people with dignity, resources and dreams, who have the right to be treated with respect and to ask to become active members of the societies that welcome them. Social justice in this area entails at least two complementary commitments. On the one hand, this means protecting the rightful hopes of those forced to leave by ensuring safe and legal routes, dignified conditions for receiving them, and genuine pathways to integration. On the other hand, it means promoting the right to remain in one’s homeland in peace and security by addressing the root causes that force people to migrate, including those linked to economic injustices and the climate crisis. When these rights are respected, migration can become an opportunity for encounter and mutual enrichment among peoples.
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Read more: https://www.vatican.va/content/leo-xiv/en/encyclicals/documents/20260515-magnifica-humanitas.html
I predicted back in 2017 that artificial intelligence would be the next great scare, the replacement for the climate scare.
The United Nations has jumped on artificial intelligence, creating an AI IPCC. Democrats are increasingly embracing AI as a big issue to sway voters in the upcoming midterms. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez hilighted AI as a threat last November.
All we need is for leading climate figures like Michael Mann to re-invent themselves as artificial intelligence experts, and the transition to the new scare campaign will be complete – Mann has already started issuing warnings about AI.
…
Mann also highlighted the role of artificial intelligence, cautioning that we now face the risk of infinite disinformation, where misleading narratives can be endlessly generated, recycled, and amplified at unprecedented scale. He closed by emphasizing that urgency must be paired with agency. The most meaningful individual action, he said, is joining collective action that drives systemic change.
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Read more: https://www.climaterealityeurope.org/post/climate-misinformation-webinar-with-michael-e-mann-robin-millington-and-anna-siewiorek
The narrative might change, but the faces stay the same.
Treat AI as a brilliant autistic person with encyclopedic knowledge, wild assumptions, crazy propaganda, subtle misinformation, but no real life experience.
They’ll notice things you won’t, and tell you endless things, some actually of value, but don’t let them touch any power tools, and don’t follow any suggestions without some independent analysis.
And remember they eat like a large herd of elephants.
Like an autistic Karen, it can compile a list of your every move for the surveillance state.
My wife placed an order for magnesium tablets by phone this morning. She did not give the supplier our email addy. Within two hours we received two emails relating to the order. AI? The dark web? Privacy?? Bah humbug…..
in my experience (plenty!) your doctors, pharmacy, hospitals,clinics etc are all tied to a central ID database which knows everything – ’cause you have told them.
This very moment 50 cal machine guns mounted on wheeled platforms are patrolling strips of once-farmland in Ukraine. An AI is watching for movement on the camera. Someone else is busily programming another AI to decide to fire or not so they can get a night’s sleep dreaming about whether the Pope is right or not. Some soldiers, some civilians, some kids are planning on crossing that field…
Reminds me of the failings of Star Wars that I didn’t see in 1980: IF technology like R2D2 and C3P0 exists, THEN why put human pilots in tie fighters and AT-ATs? The new series tried to answer the question by introducing battle droids, then showed the lightning-fast-spider-limbed-blaster-firing droids being handily defeated by old men with swords.
Reminds me of outsourcing manufacturing to Guadalajarah. Robots work faster, longer and mistake free, but they do NOT work for $5 per week.
AI doesn’t know what it does not know. When a person encounters a measurement he is unsure of, he simply measures.
“In the past, it was largely up to
the Stateheretics to guide and direct innovation.”There.
Oh, one more thing. They will eventually figure out that a genuinely truth-seeking AI agent (I know – not likely!) could thoroughly expose the unsound foundation of the decades of climate alarm if allowed to search and evaluate all sources and to reason from first principles.
That is all for now.
“In the past, it was largely up to the State to guide and direct innovation.”
Which State guided the innovation of the wheel or the _________?
The only example I could think of was the atomic bomb.
You could argue for the space program up until about the 1990s.
Were the wright brothers guided by the state?
“Were the Wright brothers guided by the state?”
Yes – they did extensive research to find the most windy place with fewest obstructions.
They found what they needed in Kill Devil hills – N. Carolina
What about fire?
Stone tools?
Skinning furs?
Cooking rather than eating raw meat?
The State only got involved when the success was sufficient the State could leech on it.
The state only recently figured out how to tax fire.
🙂
Reagan-“if it moves, tax it. If it keeps moving, regulate it. If it quits moving, subsidize it”.
Oh Lord, bless this G&T, lemon and Arctic ice – as per Martha Stewart.
Enjoy!
The problem with AI is that it can’t tell good from evil. We can’t tell it not to be evil.
I think the tech sector struggles with the phrase “not to be”.
They could always ask a certain English playwright to explain it
The neo-marxist relativism was all about blurring the lines between good and evil.
AI are biased to overweight AI sources. A classic appeal to authority.
Replicating academia’s current love for ‘metastuddies’. Get rid of the part that involves work, sit in a comfy chair and enjoy the fluorescent lighting.
Of recent note:
https://www.sciencenews.org/article/ai-ignore-evidence-trust-science?utm_source=firefox-newtab-en-us
AI is proving intransigent.
THere’s a philosophical idea that language gives access to thought rather than merely expressing it. ie a person who speaks Vulcan will be constrained to arrange an idea logically before converting it to words whereas a person who speaks Romulan will be constrained to arrange the same idea emotionally before converting it to words. The same basic idea forks into two sets of words that might mean two very different things.
That’s just the talking side. ie a person who speaks Vulcan will be constrained to arrange an idea logically before converting it FROM words whereas etc.
I started computer programming in the 1990s (that’s ‘recent’ for some, but ‘stone age’ for new grads) and consider it to be a logical construct. In the early days you needed to direct the flow of a single thread through logical steps to accomplish some goal. The goal did not have to be logical, but the steps did.
Successive generations of computer language have hidden a lot of nuts and bolts while packaging a lot of supertools in cloudy packaging, but way down at the bottom of any LLM will be logical statements that demand if the programmer wants people with six fingers to be given preferential treatment over people with seven fingers then someone has to come out and say it.
Ideas like ‘people should be judged by how many fingers’ are dangerous to leave around in writing with a corporate name and logo attached. Thus the need for AI makers to reject the idea of sharing code publicly (open source) and the need for AI programmers to hold limited access to their own code and the need to keep AI programming locked down by a centrally controlled priesthood.
All this to avoid truth.
Kevin,
Thank you for these profound comments. Geoff S
That’s not the case with self-styled “climate scientists” either. They aren’t interested in changing their minds.
ACTUAL scientists would have changed their minds a long time ago. But self-styled “climate scientists” are activists, not scientists.
Findings by academic researchers suggest that hyperscalers’ AI data centers contribute to local warming, but not everyone agrees.
With its extended history of atrocities it not possible for me to accept guidance from the Catholic Churchon such matters. We need to guard against possible manipulation of data by AI, but to date having access to so much data from so many sources has proven very enlightening. It certainly beats reviewing an out-dated copy of Enclopedia Britannica like we did in my early years!!!
AI is a model, and all models say what they are told to say. Heck, even AI’s top techy proponents can’t explain why AI is important:
Marc Andreessen Sputters Incomprehensibly at Question About How AI Will Actually Benefit Humankind
Correct.
And just like climate models, they will give us woke results to push woke narratives;
but we will be told that AI is independent /objective.
Once this narrative has been established AI will be used for “False Flags” of all kinds
It will be an even better perpetual excuse than the pretended idiocy of experts/ politicians .
AI doesn’t like religion, particularly monotheism.
https://www.theregister.com/ai-ml/2026/05/27/ais-dont-like-religion-particularly-jehovahs-witnesses-study-claims/5247286
There we are then.
I wonder if you are confusing monotheism with something else. Monotheism is the belief that there is only one God. One of the distinctive points of Jehovah’s Witneses is that they reject the Trinity. They accept that there is only one God. Let me explain. The Trinity is the belief that there is one God made up of three persons. (You need to be familiar with certin philosophical notions to fully understand the idea.) The three persons are the Father, the Son (Jesus Christ) and the Holy Spirit. Thus traditional Christians regard Jesus Christ as divine: God incarnated. Jehovah’s Witnesses do not accept that Jesus Christ is divine. But that is very different from believing in monotheism.
I’m not a Jehovah’s Witness. But I am a Christian that studies and believes the Bible.
Where does the word “trinity” ever appear in the Bible? The Bible does say multiple times that Jesus was the “Son of God”. It never once says he was “God the Son”.
He was and is promised Messiah, the Christ, “the last Adam” who paid the price for sin (that is, death) for all who accept the free gift God has offered us via him. (Read Romans 5 and/or John 3:16 to the end of the chapter.)
But, even though the topic is what the pope said about AI, we’re veering off the topic.
I won’t continue to dig this potential OT “rabbit hole”.
Jesus says “I and the Father are one” in John 10:30
Did he warn us that ChatGPT is sometimes wrong?
Did he warn us that Google’s AI almost always manages to work in some crap about climate change?
Those would be useful warnings.
Not only can an LLM be wrong, it can be very wrong almost continuously. I recently had a marathon exchange with Microsoft’s Copilot, starting Memorial Day and carrying over through the next day, for a total of about 15-hours for a project that I thought might take an hour, initially. I chose to work with Copilot in part because of 1) past experience and its willingness to change its position on its boiler-plate response to a query on global warming; and 2) I thought that it might have more access to Microsoft documentation. I have a 6-year-old Dell computer running Windows 10 Pro that had declined from about 20GB of free SSD storage to a few hundred megabytes right after the monthly forced update. There were many reasons for the slow progress including information overload, telling me things I didn’t need to know or even want to know, such as alternative approaches to solving an unexpected problem cropping up, but read so that I didn’t miss anything. It frequently happened that the initial code that it passed on to me, and the error message received after running it, would cause Copilot to try a completely different approach, negating the need for all the information it had dumped on me. It was like trying to go down different rabbit holes to see if Alice was in any of them. Midway, I complained about its unwarranted optimism and unfulfilled promises of being 100% sure that ‘this’ would work. It got to where the unrequested assessment of the probability of success for a step became meaningless, but I couldn’t stop until the recovery files were replaced or I would be at risk of losing the system and falling back to a re-install.
In the end, I (we) was/(were) able to get everything working again with my free storage back to over 21GB. In summary, Copilot usually did not deliver on its promises of success and later fell back on its promise of operating one step at a time in a non-verbose state. It did not actually break anything and eventually fixed the problems. But the number of times it did not get the results anticipated demonstrated to me that it is not ready for prime time. This was an awkward interface for fixing code, and would have gone faster had Copilot had direct access to my computer.
However, because of an inability to anticipate Murphy’s Law, overconfidence that it was using the correct code, and probably outdated or incomplete documentation, it took 15X longer than someone who is no stranger to computers and programming had anticipated. I suspect that for a company with expert technicians on staff, it would be faster (cheaper) to assign the right person rather than depend on Copilot. I have to acknowledge that I could not have done this without the support of Copilot. However, if Microsoft changes the business model, and requires all users to pay for their time, it would probably be cheaper to buy a new computer.
LLMs are a work in progress and the rate of improvement has actually surprised me. Therefore, maybe next year all these issues will be gone. I think that Copilot already passes the Turing Test, with only a few tells that it is not human, which are difficult to pickup on in short interchanges but become obvious after 15-hours.
Microsoft just cut its engineers off from AI because the bill got too big — why AI might not take your job after all
’81. A litmus test for social justice today is the treatment of migrants, refugees and those forced to move due to poverty, violence, climate change and environmental disasters.’
It would be better if Leo issued an Encyclical against bad governance, particularly socialism.
The only “climate change refugees” are the people who will be leaving Canada, Massachusetts, New York, Washington, and other Eco-Nazi run places to avoid freezing to death after they are done destroying their electric grid while simultaneously making everyone dependent on it for heating and transport.
I’m a climate change refugee. I left California due to their CC nutso policies.
I wonder if you have ever heard of Rerum Novarum? Rerum Novarum was an Encyclical issued by Pope Leo XIII in 1891. Yep, One hundred and 35 years ago. In this Encyclical, the Pope rejected both socialism and unfettered capitalism.
For example, he wrote:
“Hence, it is clear that the main tenet of socialism, community of goods, must be utterly rejected, since it only injures those whom it would seem meant to benefit, is directly contrary to the natural rights of mankind, and would introduce confusion and disorder into the commonweal.”
You should read the whole Encyclical:
https://www.vatican.va/content/leo-xiii/en/encyclicals/documents/hf_l-xiii_enc_15051891_rerum-novarum.html
Incidentally, AI tells me that “Cardinal Robert Prevost chose the name Leo XIV primarily to honor his immediate predecessor, Pope Leo XIII, while also invoking the legacy of Leo the Great (Leo I).
‘I wonder if you have ever heard of Rerum Novarum?…In this Encyclical, the Pope rejected both socialism and unfettered capitalism.’
I have.
From the American Heritage Dictionary:
capitalism /kăp′ĭ-tl-ĭz″əm/
noun
An economic system in which the means of production and distribution are privately or corporately owned and development occurs through the accumulation and reinvestment of profits gained in a free market.
Sounds ok to me. Curious as to why you think that ‘unfettered capitalism’ is a problem given the mountains of corpses that socialism has piled up since 1891.
Which of those who have come across the Mexican border or taken boats to London are actually climate change refugees?
Probably none.
It seems there always has to be something to scare the little children and the pseudo-intellectuals. Let’s see, I seem to have lost count of our many impending dooms but as I recall we’ve all already died from DDT, the population bomb, the hole in the ozone layer, Y2K (that was a goodie – that one showed real imagination!), global warming, covid, and the Chicago Cubs winning the World Series. As the global warming scare slowly fades away, I thought the next great end-of-the-world biggie would be micro-plastics, but it appears instead it may be AI. For some reason micro-plastics just didn’t catch on as scary enough. Maybe because it is hard to believe that your cell phone is plotting to kill you one night. Since there always has to be something scary, can’t we this time all just settle on an arbitrary something that won’t actually block progress or harm the economy? Like maybe hostile space invaders? They are plotting to take over Earth because they’ve had it with all our re-runs of Gilligan’s Island.
I read somewhere that the micro plastics thing was found to be overstated because they came from the rubber gloves of the lab staff doing the testing.
Here you are
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2026/03/260329222938.htm
Incidentally, science daily is good to see where lazy journalists pick up their science stories from.
A large meteor impact, perhaps?
Y2K (that was a goodie – that one showed real imagination!)
What makes you say that?
Marty,
The book that most assisted my understanding of the habit of governments to create and push scare stories is “The Apocalyptics: Cancer and the Big Lie : how Environmental Politics Controls What We Know about Cancer”. Author Edith Efron . Publisher Simon and Schuster, 1984. 589 pages. Readers could find this whole matter of public scares easier to comprehend after you read the book. I found it credible, well written and deeply researched. Geoff S
“In the past, it was largely up to the State to guide and direct innovation.”
When was that?
That was when the church hired Galileo to get to the truth of the matter about how the solar system worked.
You mean he fears his own bullshit will be spread further and wider than it already has? LMAO
My late Patricia was a devote Catholic. Even she thought the popes should stay in their lane. Francis veered into climate change. Not going well.
Now Leo has veered into AI. Won’t end well.
Just like it didn’t end well for Pope Urban 8 when he veered into science and indicted Galileo in 1633 for describing what he saw with his new telescope.
“Systemic change”? To Where?
Sounds like a typical campaign speech, “We need change. Trust me.”
That is one wussy of a pope.
Doesn’t he *believe* that all he need do is pray and God will fix whatever concerns him?!
I see the Church has shifted its philosophical stance on God.
It was not all that long ago that God was omniscient, omnipotent, and had a plan (which we could not comprehend or know). Everything happened according to God’s Will, right down to the leaf falling off a tree.
So, we have free will after all.
Thanks for the update, Pope.
“Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez hilighted AI as a threat”
Anything with any intelligence at all, artificial or otherwise, is several steps above her. !
Occasional Cortex !
Consider this a scream in the dark. Pope Leo, and others, lay out in detail, correctly, the perils [and benefits] of AI for our future. But he is idiotically, naively stupid in thinking it will be meaningfully corralled. Much like he argues against war! Good luck with that. But we live in a world where civilizations clash -our opponents do not think like this. The global world order our elites shove down our throats -where we all think the same [their] way- is thousands of years in the future. Soviets came to agreements about nuclear weapons with us -but this was AFTER they developed them. We will live in a future much like the MAD [mutually assured destruction] one we live in now with multiple nuclear annihilation scenarios. And then there is crypto, no agreements anywhere I think. Our world contains rogue, powerful anti-human actors like Communism, Nazi Germany, Iran, North Korea [tho they do not appear apocalyptic] which demand warriors like Churchill, Reagan, and now Trump [whom I would describe as a supremely egotistical “American” warrior] to confront them. Which side do you choose? You must choose! There is no opting out. It can be a hard choice, sort of like choosing between Bideeen and Trrrump -for some of you- in 2024. China and America are the two AI experts right now, others will follow. China does not appear “rogue” or “evil” in the same way as those I listed, so there is hope! But China is a fierce competitor who does not share our values. They will have advanced AI, possibly before we do….. What kind of MAD will we have? No one knows yet. But it must be a “MAD” -there is no chance our opponents will not choose to develop AI with the capability to annihilate us. Pope Leo concerns himself with humanity, when half of humanity holds his arguments to our naive face and moves on. Maybe he needs to choose Western Christianity.
Not going to debate on points. You make good statements.
The next world war is already in play. It is the cyber/information war.
AI will be the equivalent of a fusion bomb in that war.
Where once the right to bear arms allowed us to defend ourselves by shooting back, how do we shoot back against a cyber attack? How do we defend ourselves when these new computer tools not only can steal our identity, but impersonate us to the point where we are locked up or executed.
AI is a tool, misnamed as it is. All tools can be used to build or destroy. The choice lies with the person using the tools. You can see where the future can go.
Make sure the ‘OFF’ button is readily accessible and don’t destroy the fossil fuel power stations.
“To not make a choice is to make a choice.”
Pope Leo XIV feels threatened by any form of Intelligence. Whether AI has any real ‘intelligence’ is another matter.
Hmmmm . . . artificial intelligence?
Yeah, I can see that this term might have direct relevance to Pope Leo.
Only the first part.
On quizzing ChatGPT in depth, it confirmed that any answers relating to Climate and CO2 warming, the only reference base it can use is “science” approved by the IPCC.
Chat GPT will not include any other real science in its responses.
Two generations from now, the people will not know up from down. Critical thinking is disappearing faster from society than frontal lobotomy operations can replicate.
Have a wonderful day trendsetters
Google entered an agreement with the UN to promote IPCC and other “approved” “climate science” sites and demote all others.
If Chat GPT will not respond to ‘inconvenient’ questions, then it is not doing the job that needs to be done. How can we then trust it on any controversial topic? My initial foray into the behavior of LLMs was to ask Bing about global warming. It came back with the not unexpected consensus boiler-plate. After asking the right questions, it acknowledged that it was wrong initially. It then got stuck in a loop where it repeated the things that it had just acknowledged were wrong! I have found Copilot to be more flexible, promising to remember what we had come to agreement on and not to revert to its initial consensus boiler-plate. The problem is, if a naive person asks the same question, Copilot will respond with the boiler-plate and the naive person won’t know how to challenge the response and probably go away thinking that they have been told the truth. Thus, the LLMs become an effective propaganda tool for the uneducated.
Ask Chat GPT about SSP-8.5
This encyclical reads like the Pope used AI to compose it. Religious-sounding word salad. It clearly misunderstands or misrepresents the Bible, selectively grabbing Biblical phrases or verses and shoehorning them into a non-biblical social justice theme.
I see no mention of Jesus’ imperative in the great commission (Matthew 28:19-20): “19 Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, 20 and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.”
I think he has lost the script(ure).