Vatican envoy: 'no further room for denial' on climate change [CC]

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LeafByNiggle said:
If that is the position you are taking then I submit that the posters on CAF (like you and I) are “just men” or “just women”, and are also easily manipulated. And that manipulation can come from special interest propagandists like the Heartland Institute that spread misinformation about global warming using pseudo-science. What makes you think you are immune from such manipulation when even our bishops are not?
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It doesn’t take a scientist to realize that CO2 is increasing and the temperature is not .
 
LeafByNiggle said:
If it is that obvious, how come our bishops don’t seem to “get it”?
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“Our bishops”? I haven’t yet seen the poll of all of them. One bishop does not constitute “our bishops”. Some bishop or other might believe the pyramids were built by extraterrestrials, but that doesn’t mean “our bishops” believe the same thing, or that I should.
 
Ridgerunner said:
Sometimes some of them are. They’re just men. As I mentioned previously in this thread (I think in this thread) I recall some USCCB bishop endorsing Obama’s gun control plan before Obama had even formulated it himself. Wrote a letter to congressmen supporting it before congressmen even knew what Obama was going to propose. As a Catholic, I found it both jaw-dropping and embarrassing.
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There are some technically competent bishops out there, but my observations are that as in secular society, political savvy and technical competence do not usually happen together; higher office usually favors the politically astute and technically deficient.

The common assumption that many make is that all you need is to be a good “manager,” and that will lead to good decisions, such as choosing good advisers, and hiring the people with the necessary technical background, (be it typing, designing amplifiers or biomedical research) and even hiring people smarter than you. Sadly, this is not the common solution. People usually hire people who think like they do, and are therefore politically reliable. This is an excellent strategy to use to keep your job, but not necessarily one that gets the job done.

So, in general, I would say that bishops are more vulnerable to misdirection due to an incomplete understanding of complex technical issues. This can be exacerbated if they have idealistic leanings or are sympathetic towards people who are supplying the information. It is then possible to cross over the boundary from having ideals, to becoming an ideologue.

How do you sort this out? One way would be to listen carefully for the words “denier,” ”shill,” or the phrase “the debate is over.” No thoughtful and competent leader of men would say these things, at least not one I would wish to follow. The other way is to learn the material yourself, but most do not wish to do this because it is time consuming. They would rather pick someone who is saying something that they like to hear than to go to the bother of learning something new. Now we have come full circle.
 
sps49 said:
There are some technically competent bishops out there, but my observations are that as in secular society, political savvy and technical competence do not usually happen together; higher office usually favors the politically astute and technically deficient.

The common assumption that many make is that all you need is to be a good “manager,” and that will lead to good decisions, such as choosing good advisers, and hiring the people with the necessary technical background, (be it typing, designing amplifiers or biomedical research) and even hiring people smarter than you. Sadly, this is not the common solution. People usually hire people who think like they do, and are therefore politically reliable. This is an excellent strategy to use to keep your job, but not necessarily one that gets the job done.

So, in general, I would say that bishops are more vulnerable to misdirection due to an incomplete understanding of complex technical issues. This can be exacerbated if they have idealistic leanings or are sympathetic towards people who are supplying the information. It is then possible to cross over the boundary from having ideals, to becoming an ideologue.

How do you sort this out? One way would be to listen carefully for the words “denier,” ”shill,” or the phrase “the debate is over.” No thoughtful and competent leader of men would say these things, at least not one I would wish to follow. The other way is to learn the material yourself, but most do not wish to do this because it is time consuming. They would rather pick someone who is saying something that they like to hear than to go to the bother of learning something new. Now we have come full circle.
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And of course the problem comes when many Catholics claim there is a moral equivalence between the churches condemnation of abortion and homosexuality and comments from the church hierarchy on AGW
 
Ridgerunner said:
“Our bishops”? I haven’t yet seen the poll of all of them. One bishop does not constitute “our bishops”. Some bishop or other might believe the pyramids were built by extraterrestrials, but that doesn’t mean “our bishops” believe the same thing, or that I should.
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Archbishop Silvano Tomasi, when acting as an envoy from the Vatican, is not just some rogue bishop acting on his own personal theories. The word “envoy” means someone who is sent. If he were acting on his own and misrepresenting the sense those who sent him, he would have been recalled and chastised at once. It is clear that the “obvious” fact given by estesbob, that is doesn’t take a scientist to understand, is not so obvious after all. The other bishops may have their doubts about global warming, but they clearly don’t see things as simply as estesbob does.
 
estesbob said:
And of course the problem comes when many Catholics claim there is a moral equivalence between the churches condemnation of abortion and homosexuality and comments from the church hierarchy on AGW
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And what is your solution to this problem? That the Church not speak out on any subject other than abortion and homosexuality? Or do you have a more nuanced solution?
 
sps49 said:
There are some technically competent bishops out there, but my observations are that as in secular society, political savvy and technical competence do not usually happen together; higher office usually favors the politically astute and technically deficient.
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So a layperson should ignore the Church on this issue and listen to the Heartland Institute on this issue? Why?
 
LeafByNiggle said:
Archbishop Silvano Tomasi, when acting as an envoy from the Vatican, is not just some rogue bishop acting on his own personal theories. The word “envoy” means someone who is sent. If he were acting on his own and misrepresenting the sense those who sent him, he would have been recalled and chastised at once. It is clear that the “obvious” fact given by estesbob, that is doesn’t take a scientist to understand, is not so obvious after all. The other bishops may have their doubts about global warming, but they clearly don’t see things as simply as estesbob does.
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We can speculate about what Tomasi was trying to accomplish or who directed him to do or say what, if anyone. But the reality is, we don’t know. Nor do we know what other bishops think about MMGW. And as of this moment, we don’t know what the Pope thinks about it or why.

I recall a thread in which it was asserted that Cdl Turkson was endorsing MMGW when all he was talking about in the asserted endorsement article was the “environment” in a general way. Turns out that his home country, Ghana, is terribly polluted by mining, and poor agricultural practices have led to the desertification of 1/3 of his country.

One has to ask, then, whether Cdl Turkson, by way of example, a) believes in global warming at all, b) whether it’s manmade, c) whether caused by fossil fuels and d) believes MMGW poses a serious threat to humanity. Quite possibly, in his list of environmental worries, MMGW isn’t there at all or, if it is, is well down the list from heavy metal pollution.

What I find problematic, inter alia, in these discussions is the fact that people find some statement by some bishop or other, then assert that it’s the opinion of “the bishops” when they know no such thing, and conflate it with Catholic moral teaching. The media, of course, delights in it, along with assertions, e.g., that the Pope is on the cusp of validating homosexual “marriage” or abortion when he only asks for charity toward those who have engaged in it.
 
Ridgerunner said:
We can speculate about what Tomasi was trying to accomplish or who directed him to do or say what, if anyone. But the reality is, we don’t know. Nor do we know what other bishops think about MMGW. And as of this moment, we don’t know what the Pope thinks about it or why.
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In my posting I was not speculating on what they believe - I was just asserting what they most certainly do not believe. And that is that MMGW is obviously false because, as estesbob said, “It doesn’t take a scientist to realize that CO2 is increasing and the temperature is not.”
 
One notes in passing that Abp Tomasi once spoke out for worldwide establishment of means for children to report abuse or violence to “national or international” authorities.

Sounds good, but what in the world does that mean? Did he really want my kid to be able to call the UN and bring Interpol down on my neck if he’s spanked? Some might take it that way.

He also spoke at the UN against “autonomous weapons” like drones because they “remove the element of human judgment”. Possibly he didn’t realize drones are remotely piloted by operators who can see as well as a pilot would, and could exercise judgment as good or as bad as a human pilot in the plane would. Or maybe he did know and didn’t think the optics were all that good.🤷

But, of course, nothing has less judgment than an artillery shell once fired.
 
LeafByNiggle said:
In my posting I was not speculating on what they believe - I was just asserting what they most certainly do not believe. And that is that MMGW is obviously false because, as estesbob said, “It doesn’t take a scientist to realize that CO2 is increasing and the temperature is not.”
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Quite possibly any number of bishops do, indeed, believe exactly what Estesbob said. Lots of people do, and bishops are people. In the absence of actually knowing, anything is possible.
 
Ridgerunner said:
One notes in passing that Abp Tomasi once spoke out for worldwide establishment of means for children to report abuse or violence to “national or international” authorities.

Sounds good, but what in the world does that mean? Did he really want my kid to be able to call the UN and bring Interpol down on my neck if he’s spanked? Some might take it that way.
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Then it would be a mistake on their part, not the fault of Tomasi. But let’s stop with the ad hominems.
 
Ridgerunner said:
Quite possibly any number of bishops do, indeed, believe exactly what Estesbob said. Lots of people do, and bishops are people. In the absence of actually knowing, anything is possible.
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That would be quite astounding to think the hierarchy of the Church is in such disarray. Wouldn’t the most reasonable assumption be that they would not send an envoy who so thoroughly misunderstood what most of them saw as “obvious”?
 
LeafByNiggle said:
That would be quite astounding to think the hierarchy of the Church is in such disarray. Wouldn’t the most reasonable assumption be that they would not send an envoy who so thoroughly misunderstood what most of them saw as “obvious”?
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Most of whom? If you’re saying Tomasi somehow got his instructions from the bishops worldwide, one would certainly think someone would cite the percentage of ballots in favor or in opposition to “obvious”. Truth is, we don’t know why he thought it “non-obvious” or didn’t. We don’t know what one single additional person in the world thinks about it. We just know he said it.

And, by the way, I was not casting “ad hominems”. My point in citing his previous assertions was simply to point out that sometimes such utterances on the part of a churchman are inexplicable, can reasonably be questioned, might be in the wrong context as cited, and might not represent anything more than the utterer’s own views.
 
LeafByNiggle said:
So a layperson should ignore the Church on this issue and listen to the Heartland Institute on this issue? Why?
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The Church has said we should care for the environment. That does translate into supporting AGW and even if one supports AGW it does not follow they have to buy into the massive tax and regulation schemes proposed to solve the problem.
 
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