The latest 17 June 2015 edition of Weltwoche from Switzerland has a commentary on the Vatican and its encyclical on climate titled: “A Matter of Faith“.
The commentary believes the Vatican is out of place with Its recent encyclical on climate science, reminding readers that the Vatican hardly has a stellar record when it comes telling Catholics what true science really is, and that today It is wrong with Its claim there is a consensus on the issue.
“Galileo is chuckling”
The Weltwoche article writes in its introduction:
With an encyclical the Pope is attempting to teach correct climate policy. The Catholic Church has long since always proven its sense for true science. Somewhere Galileo is chuckling.”
Weltwoche recounts the Church’s debacle surrounding Galileo, writing that it took the Catholic Church over 300 years to apologize for having falsely accused the 17th century physicist, who claimed the Church had been wrong in thinking the earth was the center of the universe.
“The Amen to the reporters of the IPCC”
Yet under Pope Francis the Church appears to have learned nothing from its long history of intellectual blunders, and Its Little Ice Age and bad-weather witch-hunts. Weltwoche writes:
Pope Francis is now sending the encyclical “Laudato Si” to his bishops, which reads as the Amen to the reporters of the IPCC and the capitalism critics, such as Naomi Klein.”
Weltwoche describes how Pope Francis claims there is a “scientific consensus” and that as a result “mankind has to change its lifestyle“.
A Hail Mary to reverse crumbling consensus?
Weltwoche also writes how major media outlets such as The Guardian and Reuters have cheered the Pope’s word on the issue, hoping it will finally tip the scales in favor of radical environmental change. But this reaction was expected, writes Weltwoche:
The jubilation can be explained because the consensus in the science has been crumbling: The temperature has not been rising in what will soon be 20 years and it remains below all prognoses as a result. With increasing desperation, instead of abandoning their refuted models and theories, the climate scientists offered more than 50 explanations.”
Stiff opposition
Weltwoche then describes a growing atmosphere of shrillness pervading among climate scientists and activists, but on the other hand emerging countries have been unimpressed by the ever more shrill alarms being sounded. A climate treaty faces stiff opposition from the US Congress, and for this reason Pope Francis plans to visit Washington in September, Weltwoche writes, adding that His Holiness plans to have a talk with Catholic and House Speaker John Boehner:
However the Holy Father will barely be able to teach him much, and not at all the Chinese, and certainly not the Indians, who will first bring their citizens out of poverty, just as the encyclical demands. And to do that they need affordable energy, foremost coal.”
A guest post by Joe Ronan on the Bishop Hill site (+the comments) offers interesting points about the Pope’s encyclical.
I seems more about confusion than climate. The “poor” and how the rest of folks respond to the needs of the poor seems to be the theme. The climate parts are used (poorly, I think) to support the agenda of responsibility for others.
Because of the needless confusion of the document, I suspect that by the end of next week it will have sunk beneath the surface. Occasional quotes by the usual suspects will resurface.
Next time the Pope ought to write his own encyclical rather than outsourcing the work to fringe activist scientists who have an agenda.
It must be quite an honour to have an Encyclical on your publication list.
It should be noted, that the encyclical was presented in the Vatican by the president of the Pontifical Council for Justice, Peter cardinal Turkson, and PIK Director Hans Joachim Schellnhuber, as reported by german newspaper FAZ. As the Pope gets advice by the latter, the release is hardly surpring .
I’m not sure much has changed…..except the climate.
Brian Fagan, Floods, Famines, and Emperors: El Niño and the Fate of Civilizations (Basic Books, 1999).
“In June 1644, a procession of three hundred people led by the Bishop of Geneva, Charles de Sales, made its way high in the Alps to “the place called Les Bois above the village where hangs, threatening it with total ruin, a great and terrible glacier come down from the top of the mountain.”
“The villagers had good reason to worry, for the Les Bois glacier was advancing “by over a musket shot [120 meters] every day, even in the month of August.” The bishop duly blessed the glacier and repeated his invocations at a whole ring of ice sheets, which hemmed in seven small villages. It was as well that his blessings worked and the glaciers retreated, for the Les Bois glacier had blocked the valley of Chamonix itself and threatened to transform it into a lake.”
“Still, the worthy bishop’s efforts had little immediate effect. Between 1640 and 1650, a decade with cool and extremely wet summers, glaciers throughout the European Alps advanced farther than at any time since the Ice Age. In desperation, the people again prayed for mercy. By September 1653, the Aletsch glacier threatened so much farmland that the local people asked the Jesuits for assistance.
Fathers Charpentier and Thomas preached reassurance to the
community’ for a week. Then a solemn procession walked for four hours, bareheaded in the rain, to the “snake-shaped” glacier. The supplicants heard mass and a short sermon, before the priests sprinkled the front of the glacier with holy water in the name of Saint Ignatius and recited “the most important exorcisms.”
Fagan’s The Little Ice Age (Basic Books, 2000):
“As climatic conditions deteriorated, a lethal mix of misfortunes descended on a growing European population. Crops failed and cattle perished by diseases caused by abnormal weather. Famine followed famine bringing epidemics in their train, bread riots and general disorder brought fear and distrust.
Witchcraft accusations soared, as people accused their neighbors of fabricating bad weather…. Sixty-three women were burned to death as witches in the small town of Wisensteig in Germany in 1563 at a time of intense debate over the authority of God over the weather.
Witch panics erupted periodically after the 1560s. Between 1580 and 1620, more than 1,000 people were burned to death for witchcraft in the Bern region alone. Witchcraft accusations reached a height in England and France in the severe weather years of 1587 and 1588.
Almost invariably, a frenzy of prosecutions coincided with the coldest and most difficult years of the Little Ice Age, when people demanded the eradication of the witches they held responsible for their misfortunes.”
Those ungrateful people just didn’t know how good they had it with the planet safe from Global Warming and all. Ah, freezing to death, how wonderful that must have been!
No more burning candles or incense?
I hope sceptics are also on the non-burning list.
Yeah – the last thing I want is any, erm, local warming, so to speak…
The Pope’s lack of science skill led to his being hoodwinked by mob-think.
Science proves that CO2 has no significant effect on climate. The proof and identification of the two factors that do cause reported climate change are at agwunveiled.blogspot.com (now with 5-year running-average smoothing of measured data, the near-perfect R^2 = 0.97+ since before 1900)
Pope Lenin of the Watermelon Church.
Schellnhuber and pope demand NWO in their encyclical, to save planet from utter destruction. Also, reduction in standard of living. The Hail Mary of the UN enviro campaign started in 1971 by Maurice Strong.
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-06-18/pope-francis-calls-new-global-political-authority-save-humanity
Notice: Schellnhuber and his co-author Pope demand A NEW POLITICAL AUTHORITY… (shouldn’t the current cesspools of corruption, UN and EU, not feel slightly rejected about this lack of love for them?)
[…] Lees verder hier. […]
Maybe an alternative encyclical is needed.
https://rclutz.wordpress.com/2015/06/18/dueling-encyclicals/