Pope’s Negligent Rush To Flawed Judgment: ‘Laudato Si’ Based Solely On Alarmist Side

A reaction to the Pope’s encyclical has been published at climate science critical site: Die kalte Sonne.
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What does the pope know about our climate?

By Uli Weber
[Translated/edited by P Gosselin]

In his encyclical‚ Laudato si, Pope Francis worries about our “common home”, and fundamentally he is not incorrect here. Under Part I of his encyclical he addresses environmental pollution and climate change. Unfortunately the papal view on the climate question is restricted solely to the strictly alarmist position. Here we present a few excerpts:

20. … Technology, which, linked to business interests, is presented as the only way of solving these problems, in fact proves incapable of seeing the mysterious network of relations between things and so sometimes solves one problem only to create others.”

This statement not only applies to market economy technologies, but rather to a far greater extent to central planning mechanisms. The ecological efforts of using renewable energies for rescuing the climate are creating at the very moment great problems in the third world, and these are being completely ignored. On this point our ecological souls, namely rainforests, are being clear-cut to make way for bioethanol production for our “ecologically precious E10 fuel”. Here a clear position-statement from the Pope on the sale of eco-indulgences at the expense of the third world would have been most desirable. Instead such active environmental destruction is being booked under the alleged climate change, which supposedly will lead to the migration of climate refugees. Quote from the papal encyclical:

25. …this is how, for example, changes in climate, to which animals and plants cannot adapt, lead them to migrate; this in turn affects the livelihood of the poor, who are then forced to leave their homes, with great uncertainty for their future and that of their children…”

For the first time since the Middle Ages the scientific mainstream and the Catholic Church are once again unified. A quote from the encyclical:

23. …a number of scientific studies indicate that most global warming in recent decades is due to the great concentration of greenhouse gases (carbon dioxide, methane, nitrogen oxides and others) released mainly as a result of human activity. … The problem is aggravated by a model of development based on the intensive use of fossil fuels, which is at the heart of the worldwide energy system.…“,

… and both agree with the politics:

26. … Therefore it is urgently needed to develop political programs over the coming years which will serve to drastically reduce the emission of carbon dioxide and other strongly polluting gases, … There have been some investment in production methods and types of transportation that require less quantities of energy and raw materials, as well as types of construction or ways of building renovation that increase energy efficiency. However these good practices have by no means been put into practice everywhere.”

We already know the implicit demand to decarbonize the global energy supply from the G7 summit at Schloss Elmau, and from the “Contract for a Great Transformation“ by the German Advisory Council for Global Change (WBGU) of 2011. Precisely this WBGU reported on 17 June 2015 that Hans-Joachim Schellnhuber, Chairman of the WBGU and Director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, PIK, would introduce the encyclical “Laudato si” by the Pope together with Cardinal Turkson in Rome on June 18, 2015 . This encyclical on environment declared that man-made climate change is a scientific fact and that committed climate protection for mankind represented a religious and moral imperative. Is the Pope now announcing ‘ex cathedra’ climate science truths?

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Our reader Manfred Büchel points out another important point in the encyclical, which we find hidden at the very end of the first chapter:

61. On many concrete questions, the Church has no reason to offer a definitive opinion; she knows that honest debate must be encouraged among experts, while respecting divergent views.”