Can a Catholic disagree about Global Warming?

  • Thread starter Thread starter fish90
  • Start date Start date
Status
Not open for further replies.
Thumbs up for this post. 👍

Fossil fuels have been, and will continue to be our primary source of electrical energy until solar, wind, and fuel cell/Bloom energy becomes effective enough to be practical on a large scale.
It is unlikely that wind will ever be practical on a large scale (remember Rhode Island). It may be theoretically possible for solar to become efficient enough to be a practical alternative to (e.g.) a coal plant, but it’s not there by a long shot now. The estimate I’ve seen is that to replace our current electricity generating plants would require a 100 mile square field of solar panels. That doesn’t sound too imposing unless you recognize that that would be 10,000 square miles, or an area the size of Massachusetts.

Renewable sources are not viable alternatives to coal, oil, and natural gas. The only viable alternative today is nuclear.

Ender
 
Where in my post #3 did I say that global warming is part of the CCC? However, respect for God’s creation is a part of the CCC.

The Pope is the ruler of both the Vatican City State and the Holy See. The Holy See, as the supreme body of government of the Catholic Church, is a sovereign juridical entity under international law.

The document that I referenced was an official document deliveried by the Holy See (would have to be signed off by the Pope) to the UN addressing the Church’s opinion/position on global warming.

I know it’s not dogma, so a Catholic can disagree with it. My point was that the Catholic Church does have an opinion/position on global warming.

Peace,

Jean
Jean, I like you, and very many other Catholics, make extra effort to care for the gift of creation. This is as it should be. I see that societies or governments are not judged, as they will not fit in the judgment seat of Christ. So, you and I are responsible to God for how we cared for the greatest of creations, our fellow humans. We remain responsible, although to a lesser degree, for the rest of creation.

My problem with the current attention being paid to the earth - the climate in particular, is that the impetus for it comes from the secular world; a world which tends to view mankind as a threat. Mankind is not necessarily a threat, but human behaviors are. And so, changes in various laws will likely lead to changes in human behaviors. OK so far.

However, the secular climate movement, as well as most “green” movements, seems linked by DNA to the population control movement, which is distinctly anti-life. Prudential judgment is required here, as there are many ways of arriving at the same goal. Now, this argument assumes that climate is indeed changing, as opposed to fluctuating, and that human activity rather than natural occurrences, are the proximate cause of such change. This cannot be proven, but only given persuasive power through evidence.

And that is where all of the disagreement comes from. Evidence leads in different directions based upon the point of view of the examiner. This view is tainted also by the influence of money and power. Since an absolutely tremendous amount of money and power is at stake, all such considerations must be carefully vetted and the law of unintended consequences take into account. Sadly, much of the “green” in the green movement is from the money that promises to change hands. Since few government actions are tied directly to results, should we order full steam ahead?

Good intentions are fine, but the military definition of good intentions is “friendly fire”.

The Vatican certainly has an opinion on caring for the earth. It has a much stronger one on the sanctity of human life. Just some musings here, that’s all.
 
It is unlikely that wind will ever be practical on a large scale (remember Rhode Island). It may be theoretically possible for solar to become efficient enough to be a practical alternative to (e.g.) a coal plant, but it’s not there by a long shot now. The estimate I’ve seen is that to replace our current electricity generating plants would require a 100 mile square field of solar panels. That doesn’t sound too imposing unless you recognize that that would be 10,000 square miles, or an area the size of Massachusetts.

Renewable sources are not viable alternatives to coal, oil, and natural gas. The only viable alternative today is nuclear.

Ender
Well now here’s where I disagree with you. While wind power may not be practical on a state wide, or country wide scale, wind energy is already being used to power single cities, and solar panels are currently being used on homes as a primary source of electricity. We can’t say what the future holds for alternative energy, but there’s no reason to assume that new technology in this field won’t be able to push the boundaries of what can be expected from wind and solar.
 
Global Warming is a science issue.

Everyone should visit www.sepp.org and also subscribe to the weekly newsletter TWTW.

Here is an excerpt from the current issue of TWTW:

NOAA reports that the May sea surfaces were the second highest on record, the highest being in 1998. However, Roy Spencer reports on June 17 that sea surface temperatures as measured by satellites are plunging as the El Niño subsides. The satellite measurements by the AMSR-E instruments started in 2002. Just as it will be interesting to compare NASA GISS calculated data for the Arctic later this summer with the Danish instrument observations, it will be interesting to compare the NOAA announcements of sea surface temperature with the AMSR-E measurements. If both the NOAA and the satellite measurements show a fall with the subsidence of the El Niño, then the NOAA research will affirm the importance of El Niño events and the IPCC may be forced to consider El Niños as a natural cause of global warming (not likely).

Last week, we began a brief review of Roy Spencer’s new book, The Great Global Warming Blunder. Spencer describes how, using data from the new CERES satellite instruments and a home computer, he created a simple, one-equation climate model. Spencer thinks he has separated the feedback signal from the forcing signal in the data, and that the net feedback from carbon dioxide warming is negative. If so, the upper bound of warming from a doubling of carbon dioxide is no more than 1.1° C, (2° F) and Spencer thinks it may be as little as one-half that.

After estimating that feedbacks are negative, Spencer develops his thoughts that clouds are the primary cause of temperature change over the 20th Century. Clouds are virtually ignored by the IPCC reports and assumed to be constant except as a feedback of warming from CO2 forcing (warming causes fewer clouds). Anyone who has read HH Lamb may find the IPCC’s position of considering clouds a constant surprising, because Lamb presents contemporary evidence indicating that, in Europe at least, during the Little Ice Age the skies were generally overcast with low clouds having a cooling effect.

Spencer then develops his argument that the principal driver in changing cloud cover is the naturally changing Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO). He states that the PDO alone explains most of the temperature change for the 20th Century and 75% of the 20th Century warming. If so, the recent changes temperatures are a result of natural oscillation in the climate system itself.

Spencer’s work demands a hard look from climate researchers. The models used by the IPCC produce a wide range of results, in part because the varying models contain a wide range of feedback estimates. This wide range, in turn, indicates there is something wrong with the procedures used to estimate feedback. Thus, feedback remains a varying assumption in the models. Until the assumptions are fully tested, climate science as articulated by the IPCC remains a giant logical fallacy – Petitio Principii – that which must be proven is assumed (to be true).
 
The deliberate white washing and coverups and refusal to be open continues unabated.

AGW cannot be real if those pushing it cannot deal openly.

The alleged scientists electronically destroyed / “shredded” , in layman’s terms ] vital documents deliberately to foil FOIA requests.

These people should go to prison for mis-use of government money.

online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704075604575356611173414140.html

Excerpt:

Last November there was a world-wide outcry when a trove of emails were released suggesting some of the world’s leading climate scientists engaged in professional misconduct, data manipulation and jiggering of both the scientific literature and climatic data to paint what scientist Keith Briffa called “a nice, tidy story” of climate history. The scandal became known as Climategate.

Now a supposedly independent review of the evidence says, in effect, “nothing to see here.” Last week “The Independent Climate Change E-mails Review,” commissioned and paid for by the University of East Anglia, exonerated the University of East Anglia. The review committee was chaired by Sir Muir Russell, former vice chancellor at the University of Glasgow.
l

Mr. Russell took pains to present his committee, which consisted of four other academics, as independent. He told the Times of London that “Given the nature of the allegations it is right that someone who has no links to either the university or the climate science community looks at the evidence and makes recommendations based on what they find.”

No links? One of the panel’s four members, Prof. Geoffrey Boulton, was on the faculty of East Anglia’s School of Environmental Sciences for 18 years. At the beginning of his tenure, the Climatic Research Unit (CRU)—the source of the Climategate emails—was established in Mr. Boulton’s school at East Anglia. Last December, Mr. Boulton signed a petition declaring that the scientists who established the global climate records at East Anglia “adhere to the highest levels of professional integrity.”

This purportedly independent review comes on the heels of two others—one by the University of East Anglia itself and the other by Penn State University, both completed in the spring, concerning its own employee, Prof. Michael Mann.

Mr. Mann was one of the Climategate principals who proposed a plan, which was clearly laid out in emails whose veracity Mr. Mann has not challenged, to destroy a scientific journal that dared to publish three papers with which he and his East Anglia friends disagreed. These two reviews also saw no evil. For example, Penn State “determined that Dr. Michael E. Mann did not engage in, nor did he participate in, directly or indirectly, any actions that seriously deviated from accepted practices within the academic community.”

Readers of both earlier reports need to know that both institutions receive tens of millions in federal global warming research funding (which can be confirmed by perusing the grant histories of Messrs. Jones or Mann, compiled from public sources, that are available online at freerepublic.com). Any admission of substantial scientific misbehavior would likely result in a significant loss of funding.

It’s impossible to find anything wrong if you really aren’t looking. In a famous email of May 29, 2008, Phil Jones, director of East Anglia’s CRU, wrote to Mr. Mann, under the subject line “IPCC & FOI,” “Can you delete any emails you may have had with Keith [Briffa] re AR4 [the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report]? Keith will do likewise . . . can you also email Gene [Wahl, an employee of the U.S. Department of Commerce] to do the same . . . We will be getting Caspar [Amman, of the U.S. National Center for Atmospheric Research] to do likewise.”

Mr. Jones emailed later that he had “deleted loads of emails” so that anyone who might bring a Freedom of Information Act request would get very little. According to New Scientist writer Fred Pearce, “Russell and his team never asked Jones or his colleagues whether they had actually done this.”
 
Just as the Sabbath was made for man and not man for the Sabbath; the earth was made for man and not man for the earth. This does not mean that we are free to be irresponsible but it also does not mean that we should place the earth above ourselves.
👍👍

What’s been bothering me more and more as I watch observe the the reaction to AGW is that more pressing (as in immediate) problems are not being addressed as being more important than AGW.

I especially get concerned about the lack of clean water for so many people. Send money to dig wells and purify water rather than focusing on carbon.
Let’s fight pollution of all kinds. I feel governments are being led astray into focusing on a single issue.
 
Email today from a friend:

I was working with the Weather Channel glossary when I came on this:

“TERRESTRIAL RADIATION
Long wave radiation that is emitted by the earth back into the atmosphere. Most of it is absorbed by the water vapor in the atmosphere, while less than ten percent is radiated directly into space.”

Does the IPCC radiation model have 90% of outbound radiation absorbed by water vapor? That is not how I remember it.
 
Is disagreeing about Global Warming the same as disagreeing about the Iraq War?
You can agree or disagree with either issue. Neither is an Intrinsic Evil, but issues of Prudential Judgement in which many opinions may be held.
 
A Catholic MUST disagree about Global Warming … [until Al Gore recants].
 

the simple answer is, science is out.just because one group of scientest says “we have the answer” doesnt mean they do, there could be another group of scientist, with the exact same degrees, from the same universities with the same GPA that have very distinct and differing positions.​

however, for lack of better terminology, we are not allowed to rape and pillage the earth. God gave it to us for us to care for it. and for simple comparisons, God gave some of us children to care for… so if you wouldnt rape your child, dont rape your earth.

my personal veiws as far as land usage are- minus the spiritual aspects- in line with the native american approach… take only what i need, use what i take, etc. there needs to be a balance some where… Im not anti mining, but I dont want to blast away all the mountain tops either…of course im rather libertarian, so im not quite sure the govt should regulate it… I think the ppl should simply stop buying their products is how you fix it. if they werent making money, they wouldnt be doing it period.
 
Most conservatives in here will quickly dismiss what the Church is saying about GW because it’s part of the conservative manifesto to look at the environment as a bottom line for $$$ and from the cornucopian perspective that God put us here to level it into a Wal Mart. Most tea partiers are anti-environment and anti-GW seeing it as a hoax. The Church’s teachings on GW, illegal immigration, universal health care, etc. are ignored by conservatives because it doesn’t fit their political ideaology. Funny how that works. I wonder sometimes for both liberals and conservatives which comes first in their ethos–religion or politics? Empty-headed liberals see abortion as a right, a part of “health care” and a women’s justice issue. That’s a political view. Then they carry that baggage to church with them and it informs the rest of their thinking. The Church should inform our morals, not politics. I hear the charge of being a “cafeteria Catholic” in here a lot but extreme liberals and conservatives are some splendid examples of such in that their politics comes before their faith. Weird…A Tea-Partier will rant and rave about abortion (as they should) being sinful and it ought to be banned but boy when you tell them the Church also teaches a liberal immigration policy, universal health care, that the Iraq War was possibly unjust, and all that jazz, it’s amazing how the appeal vaporizes to use the Church as their compass. Same with libs. They jump for joy at the Church’s social justice gospel then they have an accident in their shorts when they see the Church’s (excellent) views on women’s ordination, gay ‘marriage’ and abortion. Religion first, politics second…👍
 
No, one may not believe lies like the one that says man is causing global warming.
 
Most conservatives in here will quickly dismiss what the Church is saying about GW because it’s part of the conservative manifesto to look at the environment as a bottom line for $$$ and from the cornucopian perspective that God put us here to level it into a Wal Mart. Most tea partiers are anti-environment and anti-GW seeing it as a hoax. The Church’s teachings on GW, illegal immigration, universal health care, etc. are ignored by conservatives because it doesn’t fit their political ideaology. Funny how that works. I wonder sometimes for both liberals and conservatives which comes first in their ethos–religion or politics? Empty-headed liberals see abortion as a right, a part of “health care” and a women’s justice issue. That’s a political view. Then they carry that baggage to church with them and it informs the rest of their thinking. The Church should inform our morals, not politics. I hear the charge of being a “cafeteria Catholic” in here a lot but extreme liberals and conservatives are some splendid examples of such in that their politics comes before their faith. Weird…A Tea-Partier will rant and rave about abortion (as they should) being sinful and it ought to be banned but boy when you tell them the Church also teaches a liberal immigration policy, universal health care, that the Iraq War was possibly unjust, and all that jazz, it’s amazing how the appeal vaporizes to use the Church as their compass. Same with libs. They jump for joy at the Church’s social justice gospel then they have an accident in their shorts when they see the Church’s (excellent) views on women’s ordination, gay ‘marriage’ and abortion. Religion first, politics second…👍
The Church opposed Obamacare
The Church teaches countries are allowed to secure their bordrers
 
This article refers to “Canada’s Dore University”.
I’ve never heard of such a place so I did a quick search on the web. It appears to be fictitious. :eek:
Dore of Dore University sounds fishy. It does appear in a bunch of news reports.

However, I kept checking around and it may be Dore of Brock University.

discardedlies.com/entry/?54589_sob-the-island-is-drowning-from-agw-whoops-i-lied-againgoracle-

Here is Prof. Dore’s university Web site:

spartan.ac.brocku.ca/~dore/
 
Most tea partiers are anti-environment and anti-GW seeing it as a hoax.
Wow, talk about a generalization. I always hear this being thrown around a lot that tea partiers are “anti-environment.” However, all we want is for the science to be sound and sensible solutions. Allowing the government to take over more aspects of our lives in the name of the environment because Al Gore (or any other politician) says so is not sound sience nor is it sound policy. Saying that the United States must cut back our industry but allowing other countries to slide (like India and China) is not sound policy nor does it ultimately help the environment. Creating arbitrary markets to transfer wealth (carbon trading) is not sound policy.

So how is saying, “Stop, wait! Let’s think about this first before we go down an irreversible path” somehow anti-environment? Everyone, tea partiers included, wants sound environment policy. But that doesn’t mean that a plan that could destroy industries and jobs and gives government more authority over people’s lives is the best way to go about it. Saying, “this doesn’t make any sense” does not mean we hate the environment. We just want a better way.
 
Wow, talk about a generalization. I always hear this being thrown around a lot that tea partiers are “anti-environment.” However, all we want is for the science to be sound and sensible solutions. Allowing the government to take over more aspects of our lives in the name of the environment because Al Gore (or any other politician) says so is not sound sience nor is it sound policy. Saying that the United States must cut back our industry but allowing other countries to slide (like India and China) is not sound policy nor does it ultimately help the environment. Creating arbitrary markets to transfer wealth (carbon trading) is not sound policy.

So how is saying, “Stop, wait! Let’s think about this first before we go down an irreversible path” somehow anti-environment? Everyone, tea partiers included, wants sound environment policy. But that doesn’t mean that a plan that could destroy industries and jobs and gives government more authority over people’s lives is the best way to go about it. Saying, “this doesn’t make any sense” does not mean we hate the environment. We just want a better way.
Science is all about looking at the details and examining them and re-examining them.

Yet the “pro-global warming” people seem absolutely terrified at the very idea of looking at the details.

Why are they so terrified?
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top