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Pope Francis To Issue Encyclical On Global Warming
HughPickens.com writes The Guardian reports that following a visit in March to Tacloban, the Philippine city devastated in 2012 by typhoon Haiyan, Pope Francis plans to publish a rare encyclical on climate change and human ecology urging all Catholics to take action on moral and scientific grounds. "A papal encyclical is rare," says Bishop Marcelo Sorondo, chancellor of the Vatican's Pontifical Academy of Sciences who revealed the pope's plans when he delivered Cafod's annual Pope Paul VI lecture. "It is among the highest levels of a pope's authority. It will be 50 to 60 pages long; it's a big deal." The encyclical will be sent to the world's 5,000 Catholic bishops and 400,000 priests, who will distribute it to parishioners. Within Catholicism in recent times, an encyclical is generally used for significant issues, and is second in importance only to the highest ranking document now issued by popes, an Apostolic Constitution. "Just as humanity confronted revolutionary change in the 19th century at the time of industrialization, today we have changed the natural environment so much," says Sorondo. "If current trends continue, the century will witness unprecedented climate change and destruction of the ecosystem with tragic consequences."
Francis's environmental radicalism is likely to attract resistance from Vatican conservatives and in rightwing church circles, particularly in the US – where Catholic climate sceptics also include John Boehner, Republican leader of the House of Representatives and Rick Santorum, the former Republican presidential candidate. "There will always be 5-10% of people who will take offence. They are very vocal and have political clout," says Dan Misleh, director of the Catholic climate covenant. "This encyclical will threaten some people and bring joy to others. The arguments are around economics and science rather than morality." Francis will also be opposed by the powerful US evangelical movement, says Calvin Beisner, spokesman for the conservative Cornwall Alliance for the Stewardship of Creation, which has declared the US environmental movement to be "un-biblical" and a false religion. "The pope should back off," says Beisner. "The Catholic church is correct on the ethical principles but has been misled on the science. It follows that the policies the Vatican is promoting are incorrect. Our position reflects the views of millions of evangelical Christians in the US."
Francis's environmental radicalism is likely to attract resistance from Vatican conservatives and in rightwing church circles, particularly in the US – where Catholic climate sceptics also include John Boehner, Republican leader of the House of Representatives and Rick Santorum, the former Republican presidential candidate. "There will always be 5-10% of people who will take offence. They are very vocal and have political clout," says Dan Misleh, director of the Catholic climate covenant. "This encyclical will threaten some people and bring joy to others. The arguments are around economics and science rather than morality." Francis will also be opposed by the powerful US evangelical movement, says Calvin Beisner, spokesman for the conservative Cornwall Alliance for the Stewardship of Creation, which has declared the US environmental movement to be "un-biblical" and a false religion. "The pope should back off," says Beisner. "The Catholic church is correct on the ethical principles but has been misled on the science. It follows that the policies the Vatican is promoting are incorrect. Our position reflects the views of millions of evangelical Christians in the US."
Acknowledging the scientific consensus is "environmental radicalism" now? Let's face it, the deniers are the ones engaging in radicalism.
You liked the Popes that hushed up rampant pedophilia and hobnobbing with the powerful and rich?
What ever floats your ark.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
"his ridiculus support for evolution"
Um, every pope for eighty years has supported evolution. The catholic church has been officially supportive of evolution since the 1950 encyclical.
I know of them! I've been annoyed reading of them before. It's a conservative organisation that is defined as the exact opposite of the environmental movement. It is their belief that natural resources were created by God, for Man - and thus it is not only mankind's right to exploit them, but a divine duty to do so. They also reject the possibility of climate change on the grounds that God wouldn't create a world so fragile that humans could break it*, and regard the free market as the solution to pretty much everything. Their approach is that no-one would willingly damage land they personally own, so if all land is in private hands then it will be safe from environmental destruction.
Their main rhetorical device is to frame things as helping the poor. For example, on climate change, they'll point out that emisions reductions have a considerable economic cost, especially in developing countries - cheap energy is the great driver of economic growth and advancement. Therefore emissions reductions efforts frustrate the growth that would otherwise lift people and whole countries out of poverty. Throw in a picture of some starving children in Africa, and it turns into a story about how stupid liberals are killing children by denying them access to the wealth of oil and industrial agriculture. It's effective because it's arguably true to some extent - and it would be a perfectly valid argument, if they weren't ruling out any possibility of climate change causing far worse problems on grounds, not of scientific reasoning, but of theology: God wouldn't let that happen.
*According to their own website: "As the product of infinitely wise design, omnipotent creation, and faithful sustaining (Genesis 1:1–31; 8:21–22), Earth is robust, resilient, self-regulating, and self-correcting. Although Earth and its subsystems, including the climate system, are susceptible to some damage by ignorant or malicious human action, God’s wise design and faithful sustaining make these natural systems more likely—as confirmed by widespread scientific observation—to respond in ways that suppress and correct that damage than magnify it catastrophically."
While I admire many of Francis actions, he was not the first Pope to respect evolution. That honor goes to Pius XII, which is surprising considering most Popes named Pius were complete bastards who should not have been allowed to live much less given any authority. The Vatican accepts both "God made Man with magic" and "God used evolution to create Man" as valid possibilities. They do not say it was evolution, just that God can use whatever tool he damn well pleases because he's God for fucks sake.
Good job on being more conservative than the Vatican of half a century ago. It takes a lot of brain-damage to accomplish that feat.
Ah, that old it-hasn't-warmed-since-1998 argument. Here you go:
https://www.skepticalscience.com/global-warming-stopped-in-1998.htm
(I would have made the link actually link, but /. really ought to catch up and do that automatic as well as have a red envelope to see replies in the meantime. Hell, it doesn't even work on iOS devices when not logged in, can't changed what comment levels to see, it was better 15 years ago. What an antiquated site. My new year's resolution is to dump it for r/science and r/technology.)
I'm just going to come out and say it: you're a fucking idiot. That huge amount of scientists (i'd love a list of them, by the way) ends up being a handful of actual scientists in remotely connected fields who get a large portion of their income from oil companies; some scientists in completely non-related fields...also many of whom get money from oil companies; and then a bunch of idiots like you who have your head up your ass who are nothing more than whining, simpering idiots that are too damn stupid to even know what science is.
The problem is too many stupid idiots who want to remain as stupid as fucking possible, but then think their ignorant, full of shit opinion means something. Go out and be as stupid as you want to be... but don't expect anyone to think anything more of you than that you're a fucking idiot.
Fascism: An authoritarian and nationalistic right-wing system of government and social organization. See also: NAZI's
Kirribati Islands. The water supply is already compromised by sea water, they are in the process of moving the population to Fiji. http://www.nytimes.com/interac...
In most times, most places, by most people, liars are considered contemptible. - Ursula Le Guin
scientists ... who get a large portion of their income from oil companies
Any doubters should google about Clair Patterson, and failed attempts to bribe him to keep the public in the dark about environmental lead. He saved IQ points for all of us.
A modern wind turbine in typical European conditions generates enough energy to "repay" the costs of building and installing it in about six months. http://www.theguardian.com/env...
Backup can mostly be other renewable sources (solar, hydro, biomass) demand management and storage (pumped water at the moment). For the rare but real occasions when none of this covers the need, cheap gas turbines designed for a low duty cycles seem like the best option.
Absolutely. When you don't like the solution, it means the problem wasn't real anyway.
The facts involved in global warming are actually easily verified. You can do so in your basement if you like. All you need to do is to prove that CO2 absorbs IR energy of a certain spectrum. Then you will be able to calculate the temperature change for a doubling of CO2, as a straightforward result of the Stefan-Boltzmann Law. You can even test that if you like, with the same equipment. Coming up with a good estimate of global atmospheric carbon levels might be a little tricky, but probably doable. Verifying that there is a vacuum outside of Earth's atmosphere is hopefully not a big point of contention, because that one would be really challenging. You would probably have a hard time measuring incoming solar irradiance very precisely, but you might be able to rule out large changes in it. You would be able to test fairly easily that Earth re-radiates absorbed solar radiation in the IR range.
That CO2 absorbs IR energy is the crucial point, and the most easily verified. Knowing that the Earth is surrounded by vacuum lets you ignore non-radiative heat transfer to and from this place. With those two facts, if you raise the partial pressure of CO2, the temperature must rise, all other things being equal. Solar irradiance is the only factor to consider with regards to whether or not things are being held equal, and it varies less than .1% on all but the longest time scales. The atmosphere can be held constant because almost all of it is transparent in the IR (and visible, naturally) with the exception of H2O and CO2. Now, the H2O is a serious problem, but it's also not something we can do anything about. There are large deposits of the liquid form almost anywhere you'd care to look, and for most purposes we consider the atmosphere to be saturated with the stuff. That leaves our faithful friend carbon dioxide.
This is undergraduate stuff. Hell, it's after-dinner conversation in my house. Calling it religion is labeling yourself as either a liar or someone dumber than his nick would suggest. AGW is comprehensible and provable by anyone with a first-world education.
You haven't bothered to research any cost-neutral schemes, nor paid any attention to actual projections of carbon taxes. If you make up the numbers I am sure they are pretty shocking. There isn't a "scientific" cure, that doesn't mean you can ignore the problem. We're somewhat worried about sea level rises, but the temperatures are the bigger issue. The rate at which we're dumping carbon into the atmosphere is completely unprecedented in human history, and on track to equal the largest outgassings in the planet's history. That's what's so special about it, "dumass". Food production areas don't shift easily, Siberia is not going to be farmable even if it melts. You melt permafrost, you get a bog, and it will stay a bog for hundreds or thousands of years. Fertile topsoil is not just dirt and not something that just happens, it's a complex ecosystem of its own that takes geologic time to develop. Farming there is slightly more viable than trying to fertilize the desert, or using hydroponics exlusively, but not that much more viable, and whatever happens you will still have to deal with a short growing season; the length of the day won't change. It's not "shifting the food production areas", it's getting rid of the existing food production areas and hoping that the rest of the ecosystem changes will be in our favor. The odds are not good.
How about instead of being part of the problem, we start working towards a European lifestyle. We could halve our emissions per capita without dipping below their living standards. This shit isn't that hard. Stop acting like you have a God-given right to pollute the planet. In point of fact, you have a God-given responsibility not to, as the Pope will no doubt point out. You know all that whining about entitlement that you've been doing? Look in a mirror.
Sure they can - generating heat is always roughly 100% efficient, so as long as the wind turbines are generating the same amount of energy as the coal that would otherwise be burned for heat, you're good to go.
For the immediate future though, yes, any sort of metalwork is probably going to be fueled by fossil fuels, simply because they are cheap, and 2-3x as efficient when producing heat is the *goal* rather than an intermediate step. Using electricity to generate heat is phenomenally wasteful unless 100% of the total electricity is produced sustainably - in a rational world heating applications should be the *last* thing converted away from fossil fuels (nuclear could also be a viable option, but not until someone starts building nuclear reactors designed to operate at iron-smelting temperatures). Until we reach that point it makes far more sense to use the electricity for things that need non-thermal energy, and fossil fuels for things that need heat.
That in no way detracts from the benefit of deploying renewable energy sources - without such deployment that same "dirty energy" would instead be invested in producing more "dirty energy" generating facilities - demand is constantly increasing, and old generating facilities are constantly being updated or replaced.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
>. Coal is one of the most dense and cheapest forms of energy on the planet, so it involves much less harm to the environment
Well, except for the fact that it's the #1 source of radioactive pollution, hideously toxic and unregulated under grandfathered environmental exemptions, and the undisputed #1 source of CO2 per watt: which at current rates of usage increase will almost certainly rapidly alter planetary temperatures to something resembling the Cambrian Period in only a few centuries, devastating virtually all existing ecosystems in the process.
I agree invoking "biomass" is not a magic bullet - but done intelligently you can efficiently convert farm waste, etc. to energy, and even optionally produce biochar (at a loss of energy) - an extremely old and ecologically beneficial form of carbon sequestration.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
The Florida Keys are experiencing the effects of sea level rise.
What a fool believes, he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.
It's not even a matter of whether a particular substance is a "pollutant" or "toxic". Many necessary substances can be harmful if present in high concentrations. You can die just by drinking too much water. That doesn't mean that water's a pollutant, even though too much can kill you. The argument that carbon dioxide is not a pollutant because plants need it is similarly confused -- too much of a good thing can be harmful.
To get to the heart of the matter, the EPA considers any harmful emission to be a pollutant, even if the substance emitted is necessary for life.
What a fool believes, he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.
Never thought I would see the day when the head of the the Catholic church represents a beacon of scientific rationalism dragging the rest of the first world into the modern era.
Well, for most of the past 1000 years, the Catholic Church has been a leading force in scientific advancements of knowledge -- numerous scientific discoveries and theories came from priests, monks, and other church affiliates, and the church played a major role in the dissemination of knowledge. It's really only in the past 150 years or so that the church's role in science has significantly decreased. For every Galileo affair (which, though inexcusable, was more about politics and freedom of speech than scientific progress), there are dozens of other examples of significant scientists or ideas coming from Catholic sources.
(Full disclosure: I'm not a Catholic, but I have done significant research on the history of science. Want more info? Start here.)
Obviously there are issues where the Catholic Church seems "backward," but -- in contrast with many other conservative religious groups -- it has embraced things like evolution, the Big Bang theory was actually first proposed by a Belgian priest, etc. So while this may be a great announcement from the Pope, it isn't really a significant change from most Catholic roles in science. The idea that somehow the Catholic Church is opposed to science was created by radical revisionist historians in the 19th century. But it's not really accurate.
As an atheist, I have to say that I respect this Pope for trying to drag the church, with many kicking and screaming, into the 21st century.
Actually you are off by a century (maybe more). In the 1920s a Catholic priest at a Catholic university proposed the currently accepted theory regarding the origin of the universe, the big bang. In the 1960s (or earlier ?) the Catholic church accepted the biological evolution of life including man. The church stated last century that the language of Genesis is figurative not literal. It also stated last century that scientific discovery is not in conflict with faith.
If you want to look at earlier centuries much early research was done by members of the clergy, ex genetics. And various bishops were key in establishing the modern western tradition of the scientific method in Europe.
Are you a practicing climate scientist who has personally checked all those facts? Not many people who would agree with you are. But they are looking at something written down that they- perhaps even you can never check or verify other then asking someone else if it is correct. But it's your version, it's real and factual, just like the faith Jews or Christians, or Muslims have.
Bullshit. First, there are degrees of wrong. Plus, you know, science works.
I am actually a published, practicing scientist. I can do the basic smell test on the papers, if not understand the tiny details.
To come to the conclusion that "the concensus is probably right and that in any case, I have no compelling reson to doubt the conclusions" the only "faith" I need to have is to discount the preposterous notion that the world's climate scientists are engaged in a vast conspiracy to defraud us all.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
Obviously there is, hence the name carbon cycle. Plants use solar energy and CO2 to produce biomass, and pretty much everything else then oxidizes that biomass for energy, releasing the original amount of CO2 in the process. A nice closed loop that keeps recycling the same carbon over and over again.
The problem is that when we burn fossil fuels we're releasing *geologic* carbon from the rock - carbon that mostly hasn't been part of the ecological carbon cycle for hundreds of millions of years - and there's not really any natural process to return that carbon to the rock at anything remotely like the rate at which we're releasing it* - which means the total amount of carbon in the ecosystem is increasing. And since carbon isn't the limiting factor on the amount of biomass on the planet, that pretty much means that the atmosphere and oceans have to absorb all that extra CO2 - there's nowhere else for it to go.
* You may ask, so then how did all that fossil fuel build up in the first place? The answer is varied, but for coal there was a period of ~60 million years (the Carboniferous Period, 359-299mya) during which plants had evolved cellulose to give them rigidity, but nothing had yet evolved a way to digest it. So you have 60 million years of the carbon rich cell-walls of plants building up and compacting instead of rotting away and being recycled - add another 300 million years of slow chemical and biological degradation underground and coal is what's left.
As it happened that process dramatically reversed a slow but implacable greenhouse effect caused by the gradual decay of carbon-bearing rocks - the same basic process that made Venus what it is today. Without those 60 million years worth of rapid global carbon sequestration it is questionable whether complex life would still be able to survive on this planet. You'll excuse me for not wanting to find out what happens if we bring it all back.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
Skeptical Science is neither. It is a propaganda website, run by the innermost clique of fraudsters accused of manipulating data, "hiding the decline", and suppressing all dissenting evidence.
Actually, that's just wrong. Skeptical science was started by a cartoonist, and the people involved there are mostly not climate scientists, so your first claim is obviously false.
Of course they publish work that supports their own opinions.
The link from above is merely an explanation of why the claim that warming stopped in 1998 is wrong with actual links to the peer reviewed science to back up the facts used in the explanation.
Those idiots actually still support Mann's Hockey Stick - what may be one of the most thoroughly disproven claims in modern science.
Actually, it may surprise you but is has not been disproven at all. In fact, "[m]ore than two dozen reconstructions, using various statistical methods and combinations of proxy records, have supported the broad consensus shown in the original 1998 hockey-stick graph".
It's be more remarkable if Skeptical Science ever admitted to error, or allowed dissent.
If have seen both, what they don't allow is people to post demonstrably false information, go off topic or dip into personal insults.
The fact is that every single climate model predicted major increases in temperature that have not occurred. Yet somehow these models are still supposed to be correct?
That's a claim, not a fact, and Skeptical Science has a debunking of that claim too.
Fanatically anti-fanatical