Is Pope Francis right on climate change?

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Karen107 said:
Everything I read says US is number one culprit who contributes to global warming and China a distant second.
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I suppose that is because you only read stuff written by un-American anti- Capitalists.

The truth is that China took the lead back in 2006 when their CO2 emissions surpassed those of the USA by 8%. This includes CO2 emissions from industrial processes (cement production). With this, China topped the list of CO2 emitting countries for the first time.
Besides that the US buys a lot of goods from China so are to blame for that as well. We drive the biggest cars (why I think most americans have at least 2 cars), we have the most cows adding methane gases to our atmosphere, on and on…
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It doesn’t matter what we buy and consume or what cars we drive. If you really believe that AGW is causing change…you should be forcing China’s version of the EPA to pass regulations severely limiting their industrial output. Otherwise you and your cadre of renowned climate scientists are nothing more than the anti-American losers who “Occupied” Wall Street.
 
Karen107 said:
The difference between the artic ice and antartica is that antartica is a land mass covered with snow and ice. So as the snow melts because the air temperature is climbing and winds hit it it creates avalanches which flows into the water creating ice shelves which are expanding outwards. These thin ice shelves are expanding past the land mass but are seen to be disintegrating as it hits the warmer water. That differs from the artic as the artic is made of ice. So it looks like the Antarctic is getting bigger but that’s a misconception of what is really happening.

What’s really happening is the snow and thaw cycles cause the snow and ice to expand outwards to the sea causing a shelf but the surrounding ice shelves are deteriorating due to the warmer southern ocean waters. By looking at what’s happening in the artic shows truly how the ice is melting because its depth and width are being measured giving a more accurate picture of how the glaciers are melting.

skepticalscience.com/increasing-Antarctic-Southern-sea-ice-intermediate.htm

theguardian.com/environment/2015/mar/26/collapse-antarcticas-glaciers-ice-melt-sooner-than-thought-scientists-warn
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That’s all very interesting but the truth is that an ice free Arctic would be a boon to shipping. Large container ships and super tankers could safely navigate the Northwest Passage saving time, fuel and energy. While increasing profits for corporate owners.

Not that it has not been done before…when the Arctic had less ice than today. Ships have been sailing the Northwest Passage since the 1850’s and probably before that.

Some years there is too much ice other years the Passage is open. The fact is that the Polar ice fluctuates for many reasons.

Since there was less ice at times when there was less AGW…obviously man made CO2 is not the problem…right?
 
Karen107 said:
By the way Zoltan the environment is not my religion. I’m a Catholic as it says on my profile, who believes that Jesus Christ is my Savior and as such I care for the poor and the suffering in the world and being good stewards of our planet. If that means raising awareness to the problem of AGW than so be it.
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That’s nice.

Environmentalism seems to be the religion of choice for urban atheists. Why do I say it’s a religion? Well, just look at the beliefs. If you look carefully, you see that environmentalism is in fact a perfect 21st century remapping of traditional Judeo-Christian beliefs.

There’s an initial Eden, a paradise, a state of grace and unity with nature, there’s a fall from grace into a state of **pollution **as a result of eating from the tree of knowledge, and as a result of our actions there is a judgment day coming for us all. We are all energy sinners, doomed to die, unless we seek salvation, which is now called sustainability. Sustainability is salvation in the church of the environment.

Eden, the fall of man, the loss of grace, the coming doomsday–these are deeply held beliefs. They are profoundly conservative beliefs. They may even be hard-wired in the brain, for all I know. I certainly don’t want to talk anybody out of them, as I don’t want to talk anybody out of a belief that Jesus Christ is the son of God who rose from the dead. But the reason I don’t want to talk anybody out of these beliefs is that I know that I can’t talk anybody out of them. These are not facts that can be argued. These are issues of faith.

And so it is, sadly, with environmentalism. Increasingly it seems facts aren’t necessary, because the tenets of environmentalism are all about belief. It’s about whether you are going to be a sinner, or saved. Whether you are going to be one of the people on the side of salvation, or on the side of doom. Whether you are going to be one of us, or one of them.
 
Zoltan_Cobalt said:
That’s nice.

Environmentalism seems to be the religion of choice for urban atheists. Why do I say it’s a religion? Well, just look at the beliefs. If you look carefully, you see that environmentalism is in fact a perfect 21st century remapping of traditional Judeo-Christian beliefs.

There’s an initial Eden, a paradise, a state of grace and unity with nature, there’s a fall from grace into a state of **pollution **as a result of eating from the tree of knowledge, and as a result of our actions there is a judgment day coming for us all. We are all energy sinners, doomed to die, unless we seek salvation, which is now called sustainability. Sustainability is salvation in the church of the environment.

Eden, the fall of man, the loss of grace, the coming doomsday–these are deeply held beliefs. They are profoundly conservative beliefs. They may even be hard-wired in the brain, for all I know. I certainly don’t want to talk anybody out of them, as I don’t want to talk anybody out of a belief that Jesus Christ is the son of God who rose from the dead. But the reason I don’t want to talk anybody out of these beliefs is that I know that I can’t talk anybody out of them. These are not facts that can be argued. These are issues of faith.

And so it is, sadly, with environmentalism. Increasingly it seems facts aren’t necessary, because the tenets of environmentalism are all about belief. It’s about whether you are going to be a sinner, or saved. Whether you are going to be one of the people on the side of salvation, or on the side of doom. Whether you are going to be one of us, or one of them.
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One of the most fascinating posts I have read in ages. It has giving me new insight into the absolute intransigence of global warming alarmists to even consider that the theory of AGW might be flawed Thanks!
 
estesbob said:
One of the most fascinating posts I have read in ages. It has giving me new insight into the absolute intransigence of global warming alarmists to even consider that the theory of AGW might be flawed Thanks!
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Yes, well said.
 
But what explains the Holy Father’s unquestioning trust in the climate science establishment led by the UN? I think we have, one way or another, demonstrated that such trust is unjustified. Not only that, it will end up hurting the poor and our common home.
 
ferdgoodfellow said:
But what explains the Holy Father’s unquestioning trust in the climate science establishment led by the UN? I think we have, one way or another, demonstrated that such trust is unjustified. Not only that, it will end up hurting the poor and our common home.
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I don’t know about South Americans (which Pope Francis is), but most of the Europeans I know consider the science settled in favor of anthropogenic global warming. Japanese too. We seem to be the only people questioning it.
 
Ender said:
The Brahman is the sacred cow of India and “Brahmans are intermediate in size among beef breeds found in the United States.” Beyond that, India has about 170 million cattle while the US count is just under 100m. Brazil has over 200m and China is around 80m. Do your homework; don’t just make stuff up…we get enough of that from the IPCC.

Ender
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I don’t know if she’s right about their flatulence but she is correct that the Brahman cows often look under-fed and malnourished (compared to American dairy cows).
 
tomarin said:
I don’t know about South Americans (which Pope Francis is), but most of the Europeans I know consider the science settled in favor of anthropogenic global warming. Japanese too. We seem to be the only people questioning it.
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Many different reasons have been attributed to this, and I can add no more other than to suggest that the open nature, of the sometimes energetic dialog in the United States retreats from no topic. In the end, it will be another example of Thomas Kuhn’s paradigm-ism, and I leave as an exercise for the reader to discern the outcome.
 
Just because many people are outspoken on a topic does not make them right. We can have a whole room of atheists who are outspoken in their beliefs who will talk it up till their blue in their face but that doesn’t make the one Catholic wrong…🤷 What it means is they haven’t seen the light yet to gain a clearer understanding from Gods perspective…😉 And you might say that’s also the reason why there are so many people that our actions can effect our environment in ways that we haven’t imagined… I believe in the symbiosis between man and our world and we can do much to affect it either in a positive or a negative way and that’s inline with Gods design. From a scientific perspective I look to Newsons law for every action there is a simple and opposite reaction… I belive this is simple science and something I’ve lived by and taught about as a lover of Gods creation, the earth and the creatures on it, including man. For the love of Pete I was a girl scout leader, for many years with a focus on nature and how to respect it. I’m a farmers daughter and a outdoorsy person. My dad used to teach us how precious life is and that wasn’t always human life, but all forms of life including nature. I see Bobs profile with a fetus on it and think why wouldn’t Bob do everything for our future children who will live on outside of the womb? My father would, he saved a lot of children and people who really had nothing and he didn’t profit off of that. Money was not the driver, love was to him and lived to share the mercy of God with others. I believe that is the Franciscan way and I fully understand the Holy Father’s drive to clean up the world for the sake of our children, the poor and vulnerable and our future. We can be as holy as we want to be but that takes action on our part. Faith in action! I suppose you all don’t see things as I see things but that doesn’t persuade me one bit…I see a bit of selfishness in capitalism even if you all don’t. And that doesn’t make me a bad person or a leftist, it makes me a compassionate person.

This is our Church… Have any of you taken the pledge? You can sign up anytime! You’ll probably even find a pledge card in your parish as I did in mine…🙂

catholicclimatecovenant.org/pledge

We’re going to leave a legacy. It can be a negative legacy, or it can be a positive legacy.
It’s all about the choices we make."
— Bob Abbey, former Director of the BLM and Nevada State Director

This is happening friends!
 
I will have to admit that in my over a decade in CAF I have seen many threads derailed in many interesting ways but this is the first time I have seen one digress into a discussion of cow farts.
 
tomarin said:
Brahman cows often look under-fed and malnourished (compared to American dairy cows).
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It is hardly surprising that cows not raised for any particular purpose or by a particular owner would be less well maintained than cows being raised for a specific objective. The country has three dozen native varieties of cow and they are used as draft animals as well as milk producers; there are cows everywhere. I will certainly grant that Indian cows are not as well cared for or as large as American cows. I just won’t grant that their numbers can be dismissed by generically classifying them as scrawny.

Ender
 
tomarin said:
Such as? Just curious.
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Reasons that people in the United States are more skeptical, or unwilling to be convinced by the IPCC, other than historical lively debating? The popular notion is that the public is not well enough educated with the proper facts, which would explain the consensus messaging blitz for the past 10 years or so. Dan Kahan thinks it is a risk perception issue that prevents many from committing to the idea:

papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1871503&http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1871503

Kahan has a webpage:

culturalcognition.net/

where he explores this and other societal risk perception issues. He does not think that consensus messaging is working any longer, mostly due to polarization issues, but still believes the skeptics are misinformed or affected by cultural bias. Which is similar to saying the sun is hot or water is wet. I suppose that leaves which cultural bias is now acceptable for risk perception, but does not explain how I or others like me, with science and engineering backgrounds, wont commit to it either. A conundrum for some, a crusade for others, or just another day at the office.
 
estesbob said:
I will have to admit that in my over a decade in CAF I have seen many threads derailed in many interesting ways but this is the first time I have seen one digress into a discussion of cow farts.
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I was thinking the same thing! There should really be a prize for this.
 
Theo520 said:
And cow farts don’t hold a candle to how much methane the earth is farting,

Scientists discover vast methane plumes escaping from Arctic seafloor

WE’RE ALL DOOMED!
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I would have agreed and I still do to an extent, tempered by writings of a friend and top climate scientist specializing in GHGs at U of Chicago, David Archer, who doesn’t think much of the methane shotgun hypothesis (see en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clathrate_gun_hypothesis), and still considers CO2 the much more important factor for its much longer term residence in the atmosphere – a portion of our CO2 emissions, which could be up there for up to 100,000 years. Which also jives with the end-Permian great warming and extinction, which they say lasted for about 200,000 years.

OTOH CH4 does degrade into CO2…

Here are some posts by David re methane hydrates (a lot of this type of info is in his articles and books, but more easily accessible here):
 
Karen107 said:
Just because many people are outspoken on a topic does not make them right. We can have a whole room of atheists who are outspoken in their beliefs who will talk it up till their blue in their face but that doesn’t make the one Catholic wrong…🤷 What it means is they haven’t seen the light yet to gain a clearer understanding from Gods perspective…😉 …
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'Tis true that outspokenness does not make one right. But just ponder for a moment what might make a person, such as myself, be an outspoken critic of the climate science establishment led by the IPCC. Do any of the reasons I have given for my skepticism resonate at all with you?

I have checked out the Catholic Climate Covenant website. I won’t take the pledge, but I will try and be a careful steward. Also, as a child of the northern (mostly treeless) plains, I do plant a lot of trees.
 
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