Slashdot Mirror
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."
He's not a climate scientist and his paper isn't peer reviewed.
This Pope is the best one we've had in MANY years! He seems genuinely concerned for the average person, and seems to apply the standards Jesus used, which is precisely what a pope should do!
May God bless him!
And may people who stubbornly believe it's OK to screw up the environment be sent to a very warm place, where there won't be any climate change, ever.
Acknowledging the scientific consensus is "environmental radicalism" now? Let's face it, the deniers are the ones engaging in radicalism.
Apparently listening to the world's scientists and acknowledging reality is now a "radical position".
Pretending that all is well with the climate, and that our only problem is that our entire scientific community is delusional, OTOH -- that's the reasonable and moderate position.
I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.
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!
Ha, haha, hahahaha.
Well this atheist wishes you both irrelevance, though if he's going to be relevant I'd prefer his brand.
On a side note why is it whenever I read posts like the above, when I click on them, I can be absolutely certain the poster is none other than Mr AC.
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.
And not just the church - look what he did to help the US and Cuba. A year ago that wasn't even on the radar.
I wonder what else he has up his sleeve.
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
-1 Downvote for quoting the Daily Mail on anything.
The leader of one very large religion joining forces with the very large religion of MMGW.
All MMGW religion is "settled science" with no need for the denying heretics to be heard
Facts be damned! - we "believe" in MMGW!
Belief has nothing to do with it. Belief implies taking something on faith, even in the absence of facts. The facts supporting the theory of MMGW are quite clear. Reason, not faith, dictates that this theory be given greater weight that those being put forth by those who benefit from ignoring the problem. I suspect that the Pope's message will be that, as the Xtian god has charged humanity with being stewards of their world, a carefully reasoned course of action is called for.
I *believe* you have that backwards. The evidence supports MMGW, you *believe* that to be a myth. If you have any facts by all means share them. I suspect what you have are some number of people whose specialty is not climatology saying they don't believe in MMGW.
"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."
Idiot. Pope Frank doesn't represent you. He represent GOD. You think Catholicism is a democracy?
The temperature has NOT risen since 1998. Fact.
That "fact" hasn't been true for years. Cherry picking 1998 worked for a while, because it was an unusual year, but not keeping up and picking a new cherry makes you look stupid. 2005 and 2010 were both warmer than 1998 and if you bother to look a the data, you'll see the upward trend is clear.
Climate change might be a non-issue, but ignoring the facts doesn't help make that decision. Is there a reason you want to stick to a false fact so hard? A lot of conservatives seem to think the only solution to climate change is communism, so they resist the facts at all costs. This is silly. The free market is the best way to solve this problem. We just need to figure out where there are externalized costs and fix that. We need conservatives to get on board and help make the right choices instead of covering their ears and saying "No, no, no, no, no no!"
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.)
That depends on what data you're looking at and how you slice it. For the moment, let us suppose that your conclusion is correct and that global temperatures are indeed not rising. That leads to one of two conclusions: 1) The original theory was wrong, CO2 doesn't trap additional solar energy despite the fact that it does so in all laboratory testing or 2) The extra energy is going somewhere else since the climate is a complex system, for example it could be dumping all the heat into the ocean where we don't have a lot of monitoring equipment. Given the rising trend of extreme weather events, melting of the ice caps, extended droughts and other symptoms possibility two seems much more likely.
The real question isn't whether CO2 emissions are trapping additional energy which can result in a variety of climate changes, it's how long will the changes take, and what's the cost/benefit tradeoff of either dealing with them or attempting to prevent them.
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.
Citation on actual sea levels rising and inundating any place on the globe, please.
Have a Day!
...boggles the mind. I mean, this is a tech website, you'd expect people here to be on average more intelligent or at least to have a better scientific culture than the average. And yet, whenever there's an article about climate change, there's always a bunch of morons spouting completely ignorant statements defeated by 10 seconds of googling. Where do all these people come from?
Someone has to look out for the Christians of the world.
Hint: Jesus was against Pharisees and Money Lenders. If you think he said for you to get rich and destroy the world, you're reading the wrong bible.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
Much of Christ's life was closer communism than to capitalism. Remember the loaves and fishes story? He didn't charge people for food. He didn't charge people to listen to him speak, he didn't charge people to cure them. Blessed are the poor of this world, for they shall inherit the kingdom of God...gee, Francis must be a communist!
We are supposed to share with our fellow man, not have the rich trickle down money to them.
We also aren't supposed to kill others, but turn the other cheek...but that doesn't have anything to do with capitalism or communism.
All that said, I rarely go to church, so I'll probably go to hell anyway, but I do cheer on this pope!
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
Adam & Eve - the executive version:
His boss, kicked "us" out of the executive lounge - where we had free finger food and funny games* all day - and there was nothing else to do, than to praise him and follow his rules - not to eat the apple from the special tree (tree of awareness).
We voilated his only rule and became aware due to eating the apple from the tree of awareness.
God realized that now at least four entities (god, adam, eve, satan a.k.a Snake Plisken) with awareness existed.
And so he said when people are aware of theirselves they don't need a caring god, they can live on their own with *any help* from daddy.
This is why HE/God/His boss can't/won't fix it. Because our sin is awareness so mankind is fully responsible for it's own actions
And as we are responsible for our actions, we should try to act accordingly.
And not hope, that the CO2 content conserved over hundreds of millions of years excavated and reintroduced into the atmosphere over a term of ~150yrs. will have really no effect on the climate.
*(adam & eve games)
*(in the start at some point in time god went arsonist on some olive trees)
The only "data" I see on that site is carefully cherry-picked to suit the domain name. There's no original data, no broad surveys, no methodology for his conclusions, certainly no peer review, and his claims are all easily falsified by looking for oneself at the rest of the data.
The only reason anyone would trust a site like that to think for them is to carefully avoid contact with genuine studies, in case they contradicted your belief system.
Why would anyone engrave "Elbereth"?
I remain mystified by how such a sane and decent person has risen so high within a large institution.
Believe there was a group of folks that occupied the area where the English channel is now. Sea levels rose, and inundated them. Can't find the evidence where they were driving SUVs though...
He represent[s] GOD.
I'm not so sure - he often sounds like a compassionate atheist.
Have you heard of this guy Paul who wrote most of the new testament? He said: "For the entire law is fulfilled in keeping this one command: "Love your neighbor as yourself."" (Galatians 5:14)
Some of your neighbors are gay. Paul ordered you to treat *all* your neighbors with love, and so did Jesus. Pope Francis is just following orders. If the Bible is your authority on truth, you should too.
Conservative Christians/Catholics grossly misunderstand their Biblical history. Compared to the conservative Jewish tradition of his day, Jesus was a FLAMING liberal. Eating with sinners and tax collectors! Breaking the law when it doesn't make sense! Forgiving sinners that were caught red-handed! These are part of why everyone was so pissed off at him: he was too liberal.
Conservative Christianity has been infected by hatred, judgmentalism, self-righteous pride, and disgusting selfishness. And you, Mr AC, are a fine example of exactly this.
You seriously need to have a heart-to-heart with your God before it is too late.
This year is likely the warmest year on record with the rate of Antarctic ice loss tripling in the last decade and Greenland's ice loss worse than predicted. But believe whatever you want to believe, no matter what the facts.
What a fool believes, he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.
If a US politician advocates for Israel does this mean they are allied to a foreign power? If a US politician takes campaign contributions from a multi-national corporation does that mean they are violating the foreign immoluments clause of the US Constitution?
putting the 'B' in LGBTQ+
perhaps you need an update of the real science - try this for a start. http://www.skepticalscience.co...
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.
You hypocrites are always making fun of religion, and calling catholics pedophiles and faggots.
That's bullshit and you know it ...
We would never call catholics 'faggots'.
Look where all this talking got us, baby.
The pope is nothing compared to liberals. Liberals have ALL the answers to life's problems. They also have a cohesive set of beliefs and standards that will create a perfect society if only the unwashed would listen to them, and follow their tenants religiously. In this sense Liberals ARE GOD, and are much much more important that some faggy as pedo called the pope. Don't believe me, just ask a liberal. She or he will tell you that in fact she is Perfect, and then wage a sin tax on you for being white.
All must bow to the magnificence of liberal thought.
I christen thee Stupidest Post of 2014
Look where all this talking got us, baby.
Communism in some form is the future, denying it is to deny what you can see evolving before you. I'm not saying Marxism is what it will be, but capitalism is on the way out and it only takes a little research on the subject to see that. Really if you are a somewhat decent nerd you would know this too.
For many years the Catholic Church has maintained that global warming is a real problem and that people should act accordingly, -as stewards of God's earth. Pope Francis has taken it a step farther but it's not a sudden change in position.
I was raised Catholic but no longer consider myself one. I still have a fascination for the Church's history and how it functions. I also share some of its values. To those that consider it an ultra-conservative organization, that's only partially true. It often isn't, at least not in the US political sense of the word "conservative". It's also a very large organization that exists within many countries and cultures. Though there is only one set of beliefs and teachings, the emphasis placed on those different teachings varies from place to place. For example, many Catholics in the US practice birth control even though the official teaching of the Church is that it's a sin (aside from "Natural Family Planning"). Few US priests (at least in my part of the country) are going to attempt to lecture their congregations on it.
So even though the Pope has put more teeth behind the Church's official stance on global warming, that doesn't mean that Catholic climate change skeptics are going to suddenly tow the party line. It will hopefully mean that the larger organization will make funds available to its churches to make them "greener" but I doubt it. Money tends to flow only in one direction within the Church.
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.
Francis's environmental radicalism is likely to attract resistance from Vatican conservatives and in rightwing church circles...
Isn't it strange that accepting what for all practical purposes must be called the scientific consensus is described as 'radical'? And stop calling deniers 'conservative' - a conservative is somebody who, after giving the matter some thought, feels that the old ways are best - whereas the deniers are people that refuse to apply their intellect at all, if there is a risk they might have to change their minds. I have a lot of respect for conservatives; rather less for deniers.
The temperature has not risen in the past decade or so
Which means absolutely nothing for the trend. When the yearly statistical noise is about equal to a decade's worth of trend, you'll find that the decade long "pauses" are nothing special. This graph should enlighten you: http://www.woodfortrees.org/pl...
Note that it has the raw data in red, and two trend lines. One calculated over 1970-2000 and the other from 1970 to current. As you can see, the two trend lines are in complete agreement.
You liked the Popes that hushed up rampant pedophilia and hobnobbing with the powerful and rich?
Sorry, but it sounds like Pope Francis has published a list of all the child molesters they know they've relocated. Can you drop a link, please?
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
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.
Regarding CO2 the earth is a closed system.
Except for solar radiation the earth is a closed system!
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
We've already heard from some preposterous stuff from deep-green environmentalists (aka back to the wonderful Stone Age world of peace with Mother Earth) that AGW is a moral imperative, and sure enough, religious people are trying to join as well.
Straw man. The Pope and the mainstream environmental movements are not arguing for that, so using it to criticise him is not a valid argument.
I am old enough to mistrust any politician or religionist who talks about anything as a "moral imperative" because it usually implies mob justice and the crushing of civil liberties. Look at the history of the World. Look at ISIS right now whose highest priority is the moral imperative of submission to Islam. Tell me I'm wrong.
Wow, you really like these straw men, huh. When I think of moral imperatives, I think of things like equal rights for black people and the end of slavery, equality for homosexuals, not polluting the world or hunting species into extinction, that sort of thing. ISIS isn't really representative of the Pope's views or what he means by "moral imperative", so I'm happy to say you are wrong.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
Whispered under breath:
Eppure si raffredda.
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