Slashdot Mirror
Pope Attacked By Climate Change Skeptics
HughPickens.com writes: The Telegraph reports that as the Vatican forges an alliance with the UN to tackle climate change, skeptics accuse Pope Francis of being deeply ill-informed about global warming. The Pope discussed climate change with Ban Ki-Moon, the UN Secretary-General, who then opened a one-day Vatican conference called "The Moral Dimensions of Climate Change and Sustainable Development". Organized by the Pontifical Academy of Sciences, the Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences, SDSN and Religions for Peace, the goal of the conference is to help strengthen the global consensus on the importance of climate change in the context of sustainable development.
But a group of British and American skeptics say the Pope is being fed "mistaken" advice from the UN and that he should stick to speaking out on matters of morality and theology rather than getting involved in the climate change debate. "The Pope has great moral authority but he's not an authority on climate science. He's a learned man but the IPCC has got it wrong," says Jim Lakely of the Heartland Institute, a conservative American pressure group partly funded by billionaire industrialists who question climate change. "The Pope would make a grave mistake if he put his moral authority behind scientists saying that climate change is a threat to the world. Many scientists have concluded that human activity is a minor player. The Earth has been warming since the end of the last Ice Age."
It was the first time the Heartland Institute, which is based in Chicago and has been described by the New York Times as "the primary American organization pushing climate change skepticism," has traveled to Rome to try to influence a pope. "The sideshow envisioned by these organizations will not detract from the deep concern that Pope Francis has for the truth and how it relates to the environment," says Dr. Bernard Brady, Professor and Chair of the Theology Department at the University of St. Thomas. "Pope Francis will probably follow his predecessor, Benedict XVI, recognizing the interrelatedness of climate change with other moral issues and calling for persons, organizations, communities, nations, and indeed the global community, to reconsider established patterns of behavior."
But a group of British and American skeptics say the Pope is being fed "mistaken" advice from the UN and that he should stick to speaking out on matters of morality and theology rather than getting involved in the climate change debate. "The Pope has great moral authority but he's not an authority on climate science. He's a learned man but the IPCC has got it wrong," says Jim Lakely of the Heartland Institute, a conservative American pressure group partly funded by billionaire industrialists who question climate change. "The Pope would make a grave mistake if he put his moral authority behind scientists saying that climate change is a threat to the world. Many scientists have concluded that human activity is a minor player. The Earth has been warming since the end of the last Ice Age."
It was the first time the Heartland Institute, which is based in Chicago and has been described by the New York Times as "the primary American organization pushing climate change skepticism," has traveled to Rome to try to influence a pope. "The sideshow envisioned by these organizations will not detract from the deep concern that Pope Francis has for the truth and how it relates to the environment," says Dr. Bernard Brady, Professor and Chair of the Theology Department at the University of St. Thomas. "Pope Francis will probably follow his predecessor, Benedict XVI, recognizing the interrelatedness of climate change with other moral issues and calling for persons, organizations, communities, nations, and indeed the global community, to reconsider established patterns of behavior."
than the climate skeptics like. But maybe they are right, maybe he should just give them spiritual guidance to stop lying for money.
When the Pope is more progressive than you are then you might be an extremist.
Why don't they invest in green energy. Diesel from CO2 is the way? With this much energy they invest in denial, they might as well do something useful.
Patents Drive Free Software as Hurricanes Drive Construction Industry
Err, the church has always been learned, in fact most of the information that survived through the dark ages survived because of monks. If you're thinking of Galileo, the church knew he was correct but they didn't think that the populace should be exposed to it without preparation, that might have been very arrogant, but it hardly shows a lack of scientific knowledge by the Pope.
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
He worked as a Chemical Technologist (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chemical_technologist) part of his life, and global warming definitely seems like a moral issue to me.
If he can criticize the deaths caused by poverty or extremism, he can criticize global warming.
Not really, since if there is no man made climate change we at least need to clean up our environment anyway. If on the other hand the skeptics are wrong and they win the argument humanity is up shit creek and it's going to cost a ton of money and lives in the near future.
So, to be on the safe side isn't it better to deal with a possible man made climate change now regardless of it's true or not?
--- Reality doesn't care about your opinions, it happens anyway and if you are in the way you'll get squished.
"But a group of British and American skeptics say the Pope is being fed "mistaken" advice from the UN and that he should stick to speaking out on matters of morality and theology rather than getting involved in the climate change debate"
While I would have no reason to consider the pope's opinion on a scientific matter to be particularly interesting; doesn't climate change count as a glaringly obvious moral issue under all but the very, very, most optimistic models of its expected effects? I realize such statements are a polite way of saying 'go back to talking about financially irrelevant stuff like homosexuals and the slut menace, and let us do as we wish'; but if the imposition of negative externalities, on a substantial scale, isn't a moral issue, what would be?
The Pope is just the person we need to settle once and for all the correct interpretation of the scientific evidence. Thank goodness we'll be spared the downward spiral into nearly religious zealotry that climate change debate was headed.
I strongly suspect that you will find most American and British conservatives are Protestants. Excommunicating them from the Catholic church would be a non-concept for them.
www.wavefront-av.com
I don't see why it's a bad thing to consider the ramifications of our actions. Even if we ignore all the evidence of which personally I don't think it's enough to point the blame on us solely. I still don't see the harm in thinking of the future and ending our reliance on a fuel source that will in a generation or two (if we're lucky) be consumed completely.
If the Pope speaks about other social issues why not speak about environmental as well.
I am Bennett Haselton! I am Bennett Haselton!
Just because the Catholic Church has been taken some stupid, incorrect positions in some fields of science doesn't mean they don't care about the sciences in general.
The lines between communism/socialism and Catholicism/"conservative Christianity" have never been all that sharp to begin with: they both denounce competition and wealth, they both tend to be socially conservative in practice, and both believe that they know the road to salvation for all humanity and it's their job to impose it even on the unwilling. That is probably why those two ideologies hate each other so much.
One of those ideologies has taken over the Democrats, and the other has taken over the Republicans. They agree on the principle of compelling people against their will to do what they believe is good and moral, they simply disagree about who should be in charge and which irrational principles justify that. You and what you want is irrelevant to either of these groups; according to both of them, you are just a "stupid American voter" who needs to be tricked into doing the right thing for his own good (tricking people into doing the "right" thing is, again, a long-standing principle in both ideologies).
It's like members of the flat earth society getting top billing on all the news broadcasts.
Pope: "The Earth is round."
Skeptics: "How can you be sure? I paid $100 million to have bunch of people say it's flat!!"
Fixed the headline.
This is not just a nitpick. Skeptics are people who reserve judgement or attack bad evidence. Pretending the evidence is bad doesn't make you a skeptic, it makes you a denier. As in "holocaust denier" or "evolution denier" or "Sandy Hook shooting denier".
Sig
Appended to the end of comments you post. 120 chars
Skeptic implies the science isnt overwhelmingly concentric on the nature and cause of climate change as a science. What we mean when we say 'skeptic' is overpaid corporate shit-lord who learned grant funding for snake oil 'research' means trading your honda hatchback for a BMW and making your student loans disappear.
Climate change is real. We are causing it. When even the leader of a cult that believes you can eat and drink the body of your dead god comes to realize this, its probably time to pack up your dog and pony show.
Good people go to bed earlier.
"Attacked".
Really?
C'mon mods, downvote this comment to Hell, you know you want to.
Sounds like the Heartland Institute is getting a lot of Koch lately.
What is those Scientific questions may mean life or death for millions? Or prevent good stewardship of the planet, which is a biblical imperative?
putting the 'B' in LGBTQ+
Well, correct me if I am wrong, but doesn't the Bible say that Man has dominion over all living things, and even the Earth itself? If God commands us to be the stewards of the Earth, then it seems to be climate change is well within the purview of the Pope.
The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for it to be pitted against a slightly greater evil
.
However, the rate of warming has increased, with a correlation to the increase of the warming gases.
Is the correlation 100%? No. However, if we wait until the correlation is 100%, then it will be too late to do anything about the problem.
On the other hand, even if global warming were not caused by humans, shouldn't we be trying to mitigate its effects anyway? Should we be planning for the effects of rising sea waters, instead of (as the skeptics want) just do nothing and let the waters rise?
Not to mention that when asked to reconcile his Ideas to the Magisterium, he simply disregarded that and attempted to make private interpretation of scripture along with his explanations(a big no-no in Catholic doctrine).
Gotta admire Galileo tough. He decided that although not agreeing with the decision of the tribunal, he obeyed it nonetheless. Unlike many in his time who just became protestants.
I agree that a religious figure has no business opining on science issues
The pope doesn't opine on science issues. He takes it for a scientific fact, which is perfectly reasonable.
The pope opines on how people can improve their lifestyles so as to minimize the climate impact.
Possibly, but I would prefer if he used his resources to tell people about the importance of eating more fibre.
The overwhelming majority of climatologists are essentially paid by the taxpayers of their nations. Whether AGW is true or not, most of them would still be in related fields (atmospheric research, oceanography, geology, etc.) Climatologists have nothing to gain by AGW being demonstrated as happening, but the fossil fuel industry has an enormous amount to lose by it being generally accepted.
Note here that in the climatological community, the number of skeptics is probably around the same as the number of skeptics of evolution to be found in the biology community. There is very little controversy over AGW, no matter how much fossil fuel-funded propaganda outfits like Heartland claim there is.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Most of the ancient culture was destroyed by purpose in the Middle Ages by the Church, at which time the monks, most of whom where illiterate, would just copy ecclesiastical material. A few of the most learned church high brass kbnew that Galileo was right, but they were afraid the populace would lose their unrelenting faith in the Church was it to admit it was wrong and Galieo was right. They never gave a d**n about scientific learning of the masses, they've always only protected their own wealth and power. And the best way to do so it keeping the people in subjugation, ignorance and superstition.
The Pope himself takes no position on scientific matters. The Pontificial Academy of Sciences does.
For chrissakes, that was four hundred years ago. Jesus christ, is that the best defense of the lying sociopaths at the Heartland Institute, that one of the Pope's predecessors, centuries ago, screwed over an astronomer?
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Except a few thousand... of *my* choice!
"Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind."
Science without religion is science. Religion is blind.
The cesspool just got a check and balance.
Surely, the church has always had a remarkable scientific establishment. They didn't lock up and suppress Galileo because of his science, they were just hostile to free thought and the free exchange of ideas more generally. :)
Don't blame me, I voted for Baltar.
Of course the Earth has been warming since the last Ice Age, that's why we call it the Ice Age. duh...
That phase ended about 8000 years ago.
On the other hand, even if global warming were not caused by humans, shouldn't we be trying to mitigate its effects anyway? Should we be planning for the effects of rising sea waters, instead of (as the skeptics want) just do nothing and let the waters rise?
Is that their claim? The seas have risen by something like 200m in the past 13000 years.
I thought their claim was that human-produced CO2 is a minor contributor and that the vapor feedback cycle is limiting, so humans should focus on adaptation to change rather than trying to prevent it since they can't.
Is this a misrepresentation of the claims?
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
First they denied climate change. Next they denied human influence on the climate. Now they are denying man-made climate change will have some adverse effects. Deniers will always deny, until it's too late. The whole article is wrong. The debate is not about whether it is dangerous or not. Of course it is not dangerous. Life on earth isn't threatened by climate change. The debate is whether the costs of doing nothing outweigh the costs of acting now to reduce CO2 emissions. And most current evidence points us to answer positively, although we will never be 100% sure. The other debate is how to reduce emissions and who should reduce them. With most countries obviously arguing so that all others make the effort but not them. The developed countries are especially to blame, because they want to continue to pollute a lot more, per capita, than developing countries.
They were telling kids not to jack off when I was a kid, dude.
HBI's Law: Frequency of calling others Nazis is directly correlated with the likelihood of the accuser being Communist.
Good thing we don't have to go to Soros for information on AGW.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
The Pope has always had access to excellent advice from more-or-less anyone he wants (invitations to join the Pontifical Academy of Sciences are rarely turned down, and are by no means restricted to Catholic men). I may or may not agree with him, but I would never assume that he is being mislead by, or even has to rely on, outside advisors.
What to do or not do about climate change is a moral issue, and therefore a religious issue. Science doesn't dictate human actions; it only describes consequences of actions. But obviously consequences should affect decisions.
If there are moral decisions to made over climate change, then religious leaders are obligated to look into the science behind it to make sure they have the base facts correct.
Table-ized A.I.
Politics is a popular topic on /.
. However, if we wait until the correlation is 100%, then it will be too late to do anything about the problem.
How do you know? Did you read it on the internet?
Reducing our CO2 output to zero at this time would be costly with today's technology, if it's even possible.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
Bring back Pope Benedict. At least he was rational. And while we're at it, arm him, and give him troops so he can do something about persecutions of Christians in the Middle East.
You want the pedophile shuffler back? Really?
His resignation was timed to deflect attention from that issue, coming as it was the very week HBO's documentary linking him (and his soon-to-be-sainted predecessor) directly to the pedophile scandals in the US, Ireland, and elsewhere came out.
And it worked. Instead of public outcry at the documented link between the then-reigning popes and the pedophile coverup, everyone was wetting their pants over a shiny new pope who wasn't to the right of Genghis Khan.
That said, it takes a really hardcore right-wingnut to want Ratzinger back.
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
He is in charge of his followers' spiritual well-being, which would be tested to the extreme should they be subjected to famine, loss of their homes, pestilence, and so on. The fact he's on the side of science and attempting to help billions of people should be applauded, not condemned.
The four most populous countries use the death penalty and in total over 50% of the world population lives in nations where state aurhorized executions occur. Capital punishment is not unusual even among the worlds economic leaders. There are many good arguments against capital punishment but this isn't one. Instead cite 4% of those executed being innocent or the higher cost relative to incarceration.
refactor the law, its bloated, confusing and unmaintainable.
And Jesuits have done more than a little bit to advance scientific understanding, especially in the earth sciences, but also in just about every field you can imagine. It's surprising, the scientific disciplines where you find Jesuits doing important work.
You are welcome on my lawn.
As far as I'm aware he brought many of his troubles more or less on himself due to his unfortunate habit of insulting a medieval absolute monarch.
You need to go back read a little history on why Galileo was punished.
Yes, the church has been on the wrong side of a whole lot of science, but Galileo's predicament was largely his own fault, and had little to do with science. Giordano Bruno might have been a better choice for an example, although his BBQ wasn't entirely about his stance in science.
That said, the church also accepts natural selection, and when it's been faced with evidence of it's incorrectness, it does come around (eventually). The ones here on the wrong side are the ones who are being bought and paid for mouthpieces for industries that stand to lose lots of money should humanity start taking corrective action. As we've seen, the scientists who populate that side tend to have minimally connected area's of study at best, and at worst are nothing more than common people with no education in any field at all, but they just want their uneducated and ignorant opinion to be heard as loud as possible.
Fascism: An authoritarian and nationalistic right-wing system of government and social organization. See also: NAZI's
and we clean things up, we've depleted some money and gained a cleaner environment. If the deniers are wrong and we let things go past a tipping point, we've saved money and depleted the environment. Last I checked it was easier to create wealth than it was to create water, air and life.
"Win treats sysadmins better than users. Mac treats users better than sysadmins. Linux treats everyone like sysadmins."
I strongly suspect that you will find most American and British conservatives are Protestants. Excommunicating them from the Catholic church would be a non-concept for them.
Well, maybe. Of the Republicans running or widely considered to be possibly running for President, Jeb Bush, Chris Christie, Ted Cruz, Bobby Jindal
Marco Rubio and Rick Santorum are all Catholic. That's a pretty good chunk of the people considered to be actual contenders.
I find it hilarious that the one "leading climate change skeptic" they name is Christopher Monckton who is basically a climate change denial kook. The Telegraph seems to have an obsession for climate change denial and hosts columns from two other prominent denialists - James Delingpole and Christopher Booker.
âoeThe word God is for me nothing more than the expression and product of human weakness, the Bible a collection of honorable, but still purely primitive, legends which are nevertheless pretty childish. No interpretation, no matter how subtle, can change this for me.â
Some Einstein guy said that about a year before he died, back in 1954.
http://www.lettersofnote.com/2...
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
"...the Earth has been warming since the end of the last Ice Age."
I should set a climate denialist's house on fire at midday and tell them that it's not my fault, it's been warming since sunrise!
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
Rhetoric is not some magical thing owned by only one group. The same types of arguments to sway emotion and ignore information harming your argument have been around for at least 2,600 years. Socrates hated the Sophists because they were masters of manipulation, and cared nothing for truth and honesty.
Why do you think that we have named fallacies, which very few people learn? Oh.. because if people know to look for them the Sophistry begins to fail.
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
Aren't we tiring of the over-sensationalistic verbiage yet? Did they mob they guy and hit him with clubs and kick him ? Beat him up? Isn't "attacked" over the top? ..or of course, that's the point. Everything these days is an "attack"; we see headlines like "Bush *slams* Obama, or "Obama *destroys* Boehner", when it was really nothing like that.. it's really getting kind of 3rd grade mentality, yellow journalism is enjoying quite the resurgence.
Look back up at my post, now look back down, you're on the Internet. Now look back up. I'm a signature.
Climate has 'changed' since before humans were on this planet and will continue to change regardless of what we do with our current level of technology.
People have died since the beginning of time as well, does that mean we can no longer investigate murders and accidents? I wonder why you can not see how idiotic your argument is..
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
Yelling at each other over dumb shit is a popular topic on Slashdot.
in fact most of the information that survived through the dark ages survived because of monks
Much survived because of monks, but if my history is right (and it's probably not) the enlightenment came from knowledge that survived via the Arabs. Hence we have names like Algebra (from Al-Jabr), for example.
I am seem to recall that during the dark ages the Romans/Italians had around 2-5% literacy rate. Not much knowledge survived there.
There was progression by monks during the middle ages, notably time-keeping and eyeglasses. But I am not sure how much historical knowledge was retained by them. It might be lots - but I've just not seen any historical books to that effect (though I would enjoy reading knowing more).
You take a liquid that is under the surface, burn that liquid and the by product is heat. You store that heat in the atmosphere. And that heat does not rise the temperature of the atmosphere.
So, it is a fire that generate heat that does not increase the temperature of anything. I see a math and physics evidence there.
Get my e-mail after a captcha test in: http://tinymailt
... the day you make it illegal for billionaires to use air conditioning.
"The Pope has great moral authority but he's not an authority on climate science."
Isn't he -- for Catholics -- the authority on literally everything?
"We need our opiate to manipulate the masses! It is hard enough to get ordinary people to accept self-destructive falsehoods when we package them with a message that the left is anti-religion. How can we sell our bullshit if we lose the church?!?" - Heartland Institute
Stop-Prism.org: Opt Out of Surveillance
The World Meteorological Organisation seems to disagree with your non-backed claim. http://uk.reuters.com/article/...
[font size=0.001]Character of[/font] Pope Assassinated by Climate Change Deniers!
"Attacked" in a headline implies battery or at least assault. Maybe some verbal $&%# spewing. Not a polite "we believe the pope is mistaken".
Yes, there needs to be a separation of climate-change-deniers from climate-change-root-cause-skeptics. (Does this distinction exist?) The latter group can still work on answers to the question, "Now what do we do?"
"After killing his parents, the son asked for leniency on account that he is an orphan."
"Isn't. And wasn't for quite a while in history. Actually, the church has been pretty progressive for a lot of its existence. It was only after the medieval times when they became synonymous for backwards, ultra-conservative, anti-science and anti-progress. Maybe part of it is due to Luther and the protestant movement when the RCC noticed that it is losing its monopoly on Christianity and wanted to retain it with all its might.
Monasteries are what kept literature in existence by copying it. For the longest time, well until the Medieval ages, it was only the clergy that could read and write. We owe a lot of our knowledge of these times to the people who did actually note down the things that happened (and we also owe a lot of information we have about times prior to this to the Arabs whose knowledge of sciences, especially in the fields of mathematics and medicine, surpassed our "western" knowledge for the better half of the last two millennia).
The Inquisition is usually cited as the example for terror and arbitrary accusations and harebrained verdicts. And while true for the Spanish inquisition, which was really little more than a tool for oppression, the Roman Inquisition was a true step ahead in the justice system. Yes, accuser and judge were still rolled into one, but you already had the right to a defender and if you could not pay for one, you'd get one appointed. Sounds familiar? Also by far not all (actually, a rather small percentage) of the verdicts was a death penalty. The goal of the Roman Inquisition was repentance. Their (granted, quite idealistic) goal was not to instill fear but to show the "culprit" their errors and guide him back. Yes, it was abused time and again (and one will notice that most of the prominent Inquisition trials were very politically charged... again, sounds familiar?), but compared to the formerly usual trial by ordeal it was not a step but a LEAP ahead in justice and sensibility.
Simply calling the RCC anti-science is not doing it justice. It has made mistakes. Grave ones. From Jeanne d'Arc to Galileo, from Jan Hus to the questionable role Pope Pius XII played in WW2. They're human, after all.
Yes, there's that dogma of infallibility of the Pope. If you needed any proof that the Pope is fallible, there it is!
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
https://youtu.be/uqZAh9vEdY4?t...
As far as scientific knowledge goes, you are dead wrong. Barbarians razing things tended to do that.
Or if you think it was common when Galileo was arrested, you'd still be wrong.
You apparently have never heard an oxymoron then lol.
They weren't against free thought or free exchange in general. They were against free thought and free exchange when it dealt with theological matters. The early colleges and universities were started by them. Those institutions allowed the free flow of knowledge in Europe.
Well first, you need to understand that monks copied or translated works. They didn't write history books, etc; so you're probably not going to find books penned by monks. Partly for the whole humility thing. So, for example while not exactly a history book, Beowulf. We have Beowulf because monks copied and preserved the story or wrote down the oral tale. That literacy rate you're talking about while harmful didn't stop the monks. The clergy was the literate of the "dark ages" (a misnomer but I'll still use it for our purposes here); they could read and write.
Your history is slightly off too. The Renaissance came about because of the works coming out of the Arab world at that time. The Crusades ironically are what kick started this. Prior to the Crusades, Arab works trickled into Europe.
Ah yes, the peer review conspiracy theory. Perhaps Ben Stein can do a sequel to Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed.
Seriously, is it the intent of psuedo-skeptics like yourself to invoke every bullshit claim that the Creationist crowd developed? Is that the company you wish to keep?
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Science can purify religion from error and superstition; religion can purify science from idolatry and false absolutes. Each can draw the other into a wider world, a world in which both can flourish.
Pope John Paul II
I fail to see how being a religious figure and a scientific figure are mutually exclusive. I think George Lemaitre would disagree.
I get GPs point, but believe they asked the wrong question. The question should have been, "What do Democrats DO differently than Republicans?" The answer to that is where people say "nothing" and see that there is no difference between the parties.
Example: Barack Obama claiming "I want peace in the Middle East" is not the same thing as him continuing and extending bombing, drone campaigns, funding and arming rebels, and toppling governments that "The US does not like"
His _actions_ are not different from GW Bush in terms of actual "peace". I don't count any politicians speeches as their actions, I count their actions as their actions.
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
Ask the people who got kicked out or got sick of the establishment because of this how they feel. More than one has left already. I'm sick and tired of these pseudo-arguments.
You people cannot convince us because your arguments are not convincing. Period.
I'm a scientist in a different field and I publish articles. If you don't think people's opinions on what's important can't sometimes border on the religious level and articles get rejected, even if well grounded and relevant, just because they don't promote the prevailing party line and quote them to increase their h-index you got another thing coming.
As someone once said science advances one funeral at a time.
This has the ring of deliberate lies.
Get bent.
Forget diamonds, copyright is forever.
Might want to check that list...
Ted Cruz is southern baptist
"Nimis exaltatus rex sedet in vertice - caveat ruinam!"
Because we've already started a US presidential campaign even though the vote is over a year away. Both sides are trying to prepare the ideological battlefield already.
Translation: Prepare for a year and a half of stupid from all sides.
As I said, freethought and free exchange of ideas. Note also that his "insult," substantively, was attempting to publish his works.
Don't blame me, I voted for Baltar.
There's obviously going to be some conflict over "theological matters" when the Universities you found are uniformly staffed with clerics in all departments. Note many of these "scientific" or philosophical conflicts tended to arrogate with theology. All of the science faculty at the University of Paris were trained scholastics and din't for second see any conflict with science and, say, Thomist natural theology, which is in fundamental opposition to the scientific method and the interpretation of empirical knowledge.
It could also be difficult to have any political argument in these places, since the Church was not just a Church but also a state, in alliance with many of the countries of Europe against others, either due to the schism or the Reformation, and voicing a political opinion not in accord with Vatican policy on, say, the excommunication of Urban VI by Clement VII could get you kicked out of your job, or worse.
Don't blame me, I voted for Baltar.
Personal experience of an author trying to publish something going against established opinion:
http://www.realclimate.org/ind...
Hmmm...CO2 and Methane are greenhouse gases. Pump lots of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. Watch temperature increase. Reference: see Venus. Let's know how the trip went.
Bruno was a mystic who thought the stars and planets had souls, and wrote books on magic. He was right about the infinite nature of the universe the way a broken clock is right twice a day.
No one should be persecuted for their religious beliefs. But, to hold Bruno up as an example of the Church's "anti-science attitude" (if you believe it has one) is false, as while yes he was persecuted, he was persecuted for his religious ideas (like denying the divinity of Christ, magic, etc) and not his scientific ideas.
His ideas were also not particularly scientific, as they derived from reason, not observation and experiment. More Aristotle than Democritus.
We don't have a state-run media we have a media-run state.
To wit, New Pope is a Jesuit and worked as a chemical engineer.
Don't blame me, I voted for Baltar.
>> And as to Catholics outside of south america... most of them are lapse Catholics that don't especially care what the pope says either.
I understand he's very important in The Congo.
Yes 'eventually' you get it published allright. Just not in the publishing forums controlled by the incumbents. Which may be the ones that have the highest probability of being read and quoted.
It was corporate interests that sold Americans on the idea that Capitalism went hand in hand with Christianity. I love the irony of Christianity arguing back. (It isn't just the pope, there have been some fundamentalist groups making the same basic argument recently).
Ideology: A tool used primarily to avoid the bother of thinking.
You know that the planet could be warming because of man-made CO2 emissions while at the same time cooling because of natural causes, which could result in flat temperatures for 18 years, right? 2014 is the warmest year ever recorded.
And this is not a 'conspiracy' like some retards claim. Its just human nature.
Boy, the psuedo-skeptics with mod points are out in force today. Imagine how low I'd get moderated if I attacked Libertarianism. It's fascinating to see the number of people who truly believe the Universe owes humanity some sort of consequence-free existence.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Might want to check that list...
Ted Cruz is southern baptist
You're right, although he grew up Catholic, so I expect he gets the concept.
Also it is true that 1998 was a hot year. If the temperatures were not rising, we should expect lower temperatures after the outlier 1998, isn't it? But the record of 1998 was beaten in 2005, 2010 and 2014. So it's not true that there hasn't been any warming since then.
It's a sad day when scientists are once again condemned for working on theories that butt up against prejudices and corporate interests, and accused of "groupthink" by cowards and ignoramuses.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Then is he ready to bless our new reactor fleet?
He pretty much called the pope a moron: http://io9.com/5839933/did-gal...
There is that whole bit about "I give this world to you, with stewardship and dominion over it", etc etc.
Would be rather rude to trash God's gift of creation.
The guy who said the election was rigged won the presidency with the second-most votes.
The "ring of deliberate lies"? Is that some kind of divination skill you're practicing? Or are you just employing *feeelings* instead of science?
Let's be clear, the OP stated 3 facts stated above:
1) Climate has never not been changing since the formation of the Earth. TRUE
2) The data for anthropogenic warming is weak. TRUE
3) Those who disagree with it are ex-communicated from the scientific community. TRUE
Please tell us exactly which one of those has said mystical "ring" of deliberate lies, and why.
Well let's see here, California mountain snowpack is 5% of normal levels (where much of the drinking water comes from besides. Some argue, ITS ALL POLITICS! Oh c'mon you guys (or "alpha hotels"), in a perfect world we'd be debating how to mitigate this situation. There are other places in the world that are undergoing climate change and like California we are seeing it in person. Why are there deniers? We can debate if it is human caused (I think so as CO2 levels are much higher that can tip climatic balance). I wonder if Mayans debated politics including human sacrifices rather than organize a migration or deal with crops needing less water?
mfwright@batnet.com
The theories are fine. It's their feelings of infallibility and, much worse, of trying to push inane policies on us based on this trite that I cannot accept.
Your strawman is unimaginative.
Law is a human idea, and is by definition mutable. It's a whim and nothing more.
The reality is the bullet, bludgeons, bars, and bindings. They don't care what you believe. Law is just an idea of when it's acceptable to inflict those pieces of reality.
In the same way, the climate doesn't care what anybody thinks. It just reacts to the physical realities of energy flux.
-- Sometimes you have to turn the lights off in order to see.
The researchers have no such powers. It is governments that make laws and policy.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Yes, but an excommunication will mean nothing because he has already left the flock.
www.wavefront-av.com
There are a lot of "skeptics" who are really motivated by their own special interests, like not wanting reduction in coal mining to impact their home state's economy. They are set up to be biased. But a lot of skeptics are true believers that climate science is some kind of grand conspiracy. Now with those people, I don't really know what their motivation is for being skeptics, because they're not scientists. They just repeat some stuff they've been told by other people that sounds plausible to them. But anyhow, this is the problem we face. Most of the skeptics are not "lying." They are simply misinformed.
Luther just told everyone still Catholic to suck It.
And the reason that the church gave you for avoiding masturbation is because it will make you blind? Which pope said that?
I can't even find a reference for how that myth started, other than "Victorian era".
"Our two-party system is like a bowl of shit looking at itself in a mirror." - Lewis Black
All the CO2 readings are taken on top of Mt Mauna Loa in Hawaii. An Active Volcano!
If weather != Climate change then the CO2 readings from a single source != the whole climate CO2 reading.
I've seen quite a number of desperate last-ditch refutations of the obvious on /., but this one takes the biscuit.
| In the whole recorded history of the planet, CO2 *follows* the heat patterns
Except for the very important exception of now, when humans have dug up fossil fuels and burnt them in a mechanism never previously active in geological history. We have CO2 first, and now the heat's coming.
If something different is happening now, the results may be different.
The causal mechanism from CO2 to temperature is not derived from historical correlations but direct quantitative observation and physical experiments. The importance of the paleoclimate is that there may be natural feedforwards in which extra heat releases additional CO2 which would increase heat more still.
Exactly! And just as predicted by those pesky laws of physics, the climate was, until modern period, slowly cooling from about 6000 BC to now as the Milankovitch cycle of orbital forcing proceeds on its predicted path. It takes a Milankovitch peak to get out of the Ice Age.
Until humans started releasing greenhouse gases in mass, and that is now causing much more rapid warming.
http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/paleo/globalwarming/holocene.html
I totally don't dispute that.
Don't blame me, I voted for Baltar.
Christ, the same tires fucking whining that pseudo scientists have been invoking for decades. "We're the victims of the cabal.'
It was much a lie when Michael Behe was claiming it as it is a lie now.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
First they denied climate change, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a climatologist.
Then they denied human influence on the climate, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not an anthropologist.
Then they denied that man-made climate change will have adverse effects, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not an economist.
Then they denied saying all these things—and it was too late to take action.
"The Pope has great moral authority but he's not an authority on climate science."
Ok, but you as the Heartland Institute purposefully ignore all the authorities on climate science to push a financial agenda over a global one, so, what's your point again?
..attack the Pope and look more foolish then ever.
I think we should just call the 'Heretics', because then we could just burn them. Because that is what you do with heretics, right?
Of course, that would be a bad idea in practice, as it would just release more greenhouse gasses...
HA! I just wasted some of your bandwidth with a frivolous sig!
The pope is a Jesuit, an organization that contains a large number of scientists, scholars, professors, and so forth.
Please tell us who exactly who was "pumping" all that CO2 and Methane into Earth's atmosphere back when CO2 levels were higher and temperatures were much warmer?
Volcanoes
And as soon as the interest in climate change science dies down either because a solution is found or it's show to be all hype a very large portion of those same tax based scientists who tagged "climate change" to their end of their research projects will suddenly find themselves out of a job.
Public researchers rely on public funding to keep their jobs and public funding relies on public interest. Public interest relies on someone showing that the research can have real world affects but as soon as the public no longer believes the field of study to be that important than the money goes away and so do the jobs.
Fossil fuel companies won't really lose all that much as the transition to a less fossil fuel reliant system comes into place because, surprise, they are also heavily invested in alternative energy sources. The last numbers I saw had them at about 65% of US business investments in new energy systems.
So who really has more invested in AGW, companies who will make millions either way (and profit margins on oil aren't all that great compared to a lot of other fields) or researchers whose very livelihoods rely on keeping AGW on top of the news cycle.
Of course that's just my opinion...... you could be wrong!
Nothing could be better for Pope Francis's credibility and demonstrate better that he is raising valid points than being attacked by climate change so-called skeptics.
Seriously? At this point in time, you are going against all current peer reviewed science on this? You aren't a skeptic. You're a denier. And/or paid shills and/or liars.
I strongly suspect that you will find most American and British conservatives are Protestants.
Denying Climate Change requires you to lie, to perpetuate lies, to frame lies in such a way that the truth is obscured, to slander others and bear false witness. This is incompatible with Protestant theology.
Considering that at the root, abortion is murder, I would have no problem with him doing that.
APK likes to ask for responses to the same things over and over. Maybe he just likes the responses?
| Please tell us exactly which one of those has said mystical "ring" of deliberate lies, and why.
| 2) The data for anthropogenic warming is weak. TRUE
This one. It's a deliberate lie.
There has been a very large increase in greenhouse gases in the industrial period. It is from fossil fuel mining and burning. This has caused changes infrared emissivity in the atmosphere---this is a measured fact, that the atmosphere is shining more in infrared. It is physically impossible for the climate not to warm.
Extensive data, geological and biological, show this is what has happened.
All other plausible non-anthropogenic mechanisms have been investigated and do not explain the observed data. Every aspect has been investigated every which way for decades.
| 3) Those who disagree with it are ex-communicated from the scientific community. TRUE
At some point, which is about now, they don't have good arguments or data. When they try, their arguments are quickly refuted. It now appears that they are willfully incompetent and motivated by achieving a non-result instead of actual scientific inquiry.
Particle physicists who disagree with conservation of relativistic momentum are similarly "ex-communicated" as they have nothing productive to add.
In other news, "Climate Change Skeptics Reveal Selves As Opportunistic Self Promoting Media Grubbing Asshats".
The Pope has great moral Authority? Says who? Just because he's old, rich, and prays doesn't mean he knows right from wrong.
So who started this global warming cycle 10,000 years ago? Those cavemen must have lit huge bon fires to melt the glaciers.
If you cared to actually do a little research on the subject you would understand that the warming started around 25,000 years ago and ended 6,000-8,000 years ago and that changes in the Earth's orbital parameters (collectively known as Milankovitch Cycles are what drives the changes. Instead you just display your ignorance.
Just ask them how they feel about Elon Musk - his companies are manufacturing and installing solar panels, batteries, and electric cars, and he's worth billions personally.
Well-said and I agree completely. I wish that I had mod points to award you.
All other plausible non-anthropogenic mechanisms have been investigated and do not explain the observed data. Every aspect has been investigated every which way for decades.
Claiming data and mechanisms are not the same as providing data and mechanism.
You have just claimed, not provided, thus hinting that you are wrong.
I think that is the first sensible AC comment I read here. Maybe it was the right decision not to surf at +2 after all...
I'm still not convinced they're different enough for me. I'm used to a political spectrum that reaches from the far right (think Rep, but more Ayn Rand and less compassionate conservativism) to infra-red leftism that makes anarchy look like a fascist ideal.
But yes, I can see the difference between your two parties now.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
You might like to read this article about think tanks and science.
http://www.ssrc.org/publicatio...
Translation: "I don't know how this stuff works, but as I don't like the idea of me and those like me being responsible for the rise in temperatures (which I will pretend didn't happen), I will deny the evidence, and spout the same old tired nonsense as thousands before me have, hoping that this time it'll work".
You are embarrassing yourself.
Like Ted Cruz threatened (yes, thinly veiled) NASA Director Charles Bolden.
Tedder called Maj-Gen (RET) Bolden with replacement for directing entirely too much of NASA's science work TOWARD EARTH instead of Outer Space.
C'mon! Threaten the Pope! Tell Francis I he can be replaced with a more pliant Archbishop!
danbob999 will reply that the dog ate his homework... or not.
Presumably, you mean "Climate-Change Heathens".
If you believe that some thinking being actively and purposefully constructed the Earth, it isn't that much of a real leap to presume they might not like us trashing the place...
Also he could really just play the Pope card. He is the voice of God on Earth right?
"I was recently talking to God just the other day and he mentioned to me that as it turns out Climate Change is real, and that we are the ones causing it! So there!"
Is it a coincidence that Chicago is among the farthest from any coastal shoreline? If you're a member of the Heartland Institute and you aren't filled with self-loathing you're a !@#$ing sociopath.