Laudato Si: Francis Gets A Well-Deserved Lecture

The entire article is here. 

I report below some of the most interesting comments. Emphases mine. 

Wealth enables people to afford better environmental stewardship. Pope Francis should champion economic development as a solution both to poverty and to environmental degradation. Unfortunately, at least as regards climate change, the leaked draft of the new encyclical does the opposite.”

“The Vatican’s partnering with the United Nations climate agenda is nothing short of an unholy alliance. The papal encyclical, no matter how nuanced it may read, will simply be used as a tool to support UN global warming ‘solutions’ that are at odds with most Catholic teachings on issues such as abortion, contraception, overpopulation, and helping the poor nations develop. The Vatican appears to be taking an unprecedented step by seemingly endorsing a specific UN climate treaty.

“The climate activists are no doubt getting a PR boost from the pope’s entry into the climate debate. But ultimately, the pope’s views on climate science will do little to alter the opinions of Catholics about global warming. ”

“Throughout the last two years, in preparation for the encyclical rollout, the Vatican has relied solely upon global warming alarmists in its rush to judgment to meet the UN 2015 Sustainable Development Goals’ timetable. Additionally, during this process, the Vatican consulted primarily with and continues to rely upon radical population control proponents who exploit discredited climate change science to justify their extremist population reduction policies under the nuanced UN ‘reproductive sexual health’ rubric.

“Instead of welcoming our heartfelt disapproval of papal experts who promote policies in direct contravention of Catholic moral teaching, the Vatican authorities mocked and scoffed at our serious and faithful objections, by calling us ‘Tea Partiers’ and ‘deniers.’ This callous and flippant response exposed the Vatican’s political agenda.”

“Over the past 18 years, the best measurements of Earth’s global temperatures (by NOAA and NASA satellites) show no warming whatsoever. The total warming since 1979 has been a fraction of that predicted by the IPCC, and of that tiny warming, most can be attributed to natural causes, such as volcanoes. That leaves room for, at most one- or two-tenths of a degree due to carbon dioxide, which projects to half a degree or less of warming by 2100. Half a degree is not noticeable by any human and can have no serious consequences. This mere half a degree is not a prediction from supercomputers, but a simple observation based on the best global data, and it shows that catastrophic, or even harmful, global warming is not a reality.

“In short, over the past two centuries humans have, through productive and beneficial endeavors, added one molecule of CO2 to each ten thousand molecules of air. The feared and forecast dire consequences of that molecule are not coming to pass. Attempts at curtailing those human endeavors to remove that molecule would be flawed policies that will fail to solve a non-existent problem.”

“Pope Francis’s goal of preserving God’s earthly kingdom for future generations is shared by every ‘skeptic’ of man-caused global warming. But he will not preserve it by putting his moral authority behind a UN agenda that considers it a sin for the poor to use affordable, ever-cleaner fossil fuels to power their lives. More than a billion of the poorest people in the world would remain in abject poverty for generations if they are to rely on windmills, solar panels, and other unreliable and expensive sources of energy.”

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What a shameful day, when a pope accepted to prostitute the prestige of an encyclical letter to promote his own popularity on fashionable political issues, of which he understands nothing anyway.

 M