And up until now now Pope Francis had been doing so well: pious, popular, a scourge of incompetence and corruption, a champion of the poor….
But unfortunately, 2015 looks like the year he’s going to blow it all by casting his lot with the morally bankrupt, scientifically illiterate, world-poverty-inducing cause of environmentalism when he issues a papal encyclical on the subject of “global warming” – apparently with a view to influencing the next round of UN climate talks in Paris in September.
Of course, the Pope’s views on climate change will only be as good as the “expert” advice he gets. And unfortunately, on this score, the auguries do not bode well – as we learn by studying the list of delegates at a workshop staged by the Vatican in May 2014 with the grisly theme “Sustainable Humanity Sustainable Nature Our Responsibility.” (H/T Bishop Hill)
The event was a veritable Who’s Who of Climate Stupid. Delegates included:
Naomi Oreskes, the social scientist at the University of California, San Diego (ground zero for the faux-science of ecology), who assiduously promulgates the myth that climate scepticism is a form of industry-funded “denialism” akin to the belief that smoking doesn’t cause cancer.
Martin Rees, the astronomer who jumped on the global warming bandwagon and who, during his stint as President of the Royal Society, helped drag what was formerly Britain’s most distinguished scientific institution down to its current dismal level as a mouthpiece for the cause of global warming alarmism.
Joseph Stiglitz, the left-wing economist.
Hans-Jochim Schellnhuber, of the hard-left, deep-green Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, whose advice on environmental policy to Angela Merkel has been partly responsible for wiping out the German economy by driving up the cost of energy to unsupportable levels.
and, perhaps most comically and depressingly, Peter Wadhams – the Cambridge professor who for years has been telling anyone who will listen that the Arctic ice is on the verge of vanishing due to man-made global warming but whose doomsday predictions have been so repeatedly confounded by real world events that even the alarmists have now disowned him.
Among the people who weren’t invited to this festival of climate alarmism was one of the Pope’s own cardinals George Pell, former Archbishop of Sydney. But perhaps that’s because, unlike so many of his co-religionists – such as the lamentable Cafod, the Catholic development agency – he has yet to embrace the fashionable cause of Gaia-worship. On the contrary, Cardinal Pell believes that a doubling of CO2 would be good for the planet because “plants would love it” and once said:
“Radical environmentalists are more than up to the task of moralising their own agenda and imposing it on people through fear. They don’t need church leaders to help them with this, although it is a very effective way of further muting Christian witness.
“Church leaders in particular should be allergic to nonsense….. I am certainly sceptical about extravagant claims of impending man-made climatic catastrophes. Uncertainties on climate change abound … my task as a Christian leader is to engage with reality, to contribute to debate on important issues, to open people’s minds, and to point out when the emperor is wearing few or no clothes.”
How wonderful it would be if this erudite, informed, scientifically literate scholar were able to have a quiet word in the Pope’s ear before it’s too late…