Politics of Global Warming

[pixelsmith]

The politics and everything else is based on the false "settled science" that human generated CO2 is causing catastrophic global warming. There is big money being made on the scam.

My generations environmental movement has been hijacked by your generation and we don't like it. We hippies are smart enough to know that CO2 is a necessary trace gas responsible for all life on earth. You can't seem to grasp that and that you are the politics of global warming. You are perpetuating the scam. You are killing millions around the world with your scam. You are contributing to deforestation in areas of the world with your scam. You are transferring great wealth to the elite with your scams as well. Shame on you and this fake environmental movement.
Meanwhile the polar bears are fine, the poles are fine, there has been no increased hurricanes, floods etc etc. even tho CO2 has risen the global temps haven't risen for over 18 years... And guess what happened.. The deserts are greening and global crop yields are up. Hmm
You have shown clearly you know nothing about the science or the ramifications of what your ilk has done or continues to do to the environment and the financial stability of the world. Shame on you.

We have much to recover from because of your movement screwing things up. We need to put our focus back on pollution, fertilizer run offs, better forestry management, proper farming techniques, real energy options and technologies that work and don't need subsidies to survive, etc etc.

If you believe human generated CO2 is destroying the planet then please consider permanently curbing the CO2 and methane that your carbon based meat sack is emitting. Thank you Tyger! The earth and its human inhabitants appreciate it.

 

[Tyger]

I have no time at all for people who say the debate is over.

That's fine, but be aware that the thread you've posted on is a thread dedicated to the politics of climate change, not the science. Just to be clear, there is a difference.

One of the things that upset me very much about this emotive subject is the analogies people create. A person like John Kerry who compare climate change (without doubt the most complex subject ever studied by science) to that of gravity, or the temperature ice freezes. This man is likely to make an absolute fortune should carbon trading come into affect, he will personally benefit from this so yes he will support it to the hilt, just like Al Gore, who in the same year released "An Inconvenient Truth" purchased a condo in San Francisco for $4 Million, yards from the sea front, which his movie predicted would rise very soon.

You know the comment about Hitler? Well, there is a similar one about the mention of Al Gore.

If we take just one aspect of climate, cloud seeding. The weather & climate depend massively on how clouds form. Statistically speaking we know nothing about this subject, virtually nothing. However people think that such a fundamental force of nature can simply be left out of consideration because CO2 is for some reason more important over just the last 50 years?

What 'people'? Scientists? Non-scientists? Very broad statements with no back-up.

Start reading - and you will find out why the CO2 level over the last 50 years is significantly of note.

The result of such ideology & certainty can be measured in dozes of ways, this is just one. I live in the Wales, UK, near here Google Maps The valley I live inside is now surrounded by these massive windmills that actually don't work for most of the year. The cost of these farms are astronomical and in a time of austerity huge government subsidies are spent to erect these machines that on a good day, provide 3% of our electricity in the UK. The reason these are erected ultimately........ global warming.

Sounds like a mess but I honestly know nothing about your situation so cannot comment. I assume messes happen a lot - look at the tar sands debacle, look at Fukishima. Nothing is immune to messes.

CO2 apparently is a pollutant to some people

In a certain context only.

to me its plant food, a vital cog in what I learned in school was the carbon cycle.

Correct, and who told you those facts? Scientists. So now scientists are saying too much of a good thing is not a good thing - but now those scientists are lying? How does this work? When do you believe a scientist - and when do you not believe? What's the tipping point?

If I were worried about CO2 emissions, which I am not, then I would be concerned about how much these things firstly cost in cash, but then in carbon emissions, as the metals are sourced all over the world, neodymium for instance, comes from China & the ore is extracted using a very nasty process which pollutes the water table.

For sure it is a long-term problem with lots of factors to consider.

This winter I have to read and listen to old people who must decide whether to switch on the heaters at their homes or use the electric blanket at night time because the energy rates are artificially high because of renewable energy.

Again, not familiar with your issues so cannot comment.

The way I see it, human contribution of CO2 will have a negligible affect if any in the long term.

And you base this on what? Scientists say it is and will continue to do so.

CO2 is NOT a pollutant, it is vital to the growth of plant life, and therefore, all life on earth.

This is what science tells us. Science also is telling us that CO2 can be a 'pollutant' (as you are calling it). Why do you accept the previous scientific statement and not the latter statement?

CO2 doesn't track over geological periods.

What?

Energy austerity is as bad as financial austerity & we don't need any fake energy solutions like renewable energy.

You are aware that our current energy structure is highly subsidized by governments? Is it different in the UK? The fossil fuel industry counts on subsidies to exist. It is not 'cheap energy'. Renewable energy is hardly 'fake' and when up and running it is genuinely nearly free. It is very much a serious threat to the bottom line of the current system.

For energy we have Oil, Shale Gas in the short term. We have Thorium, plentiful reserves. Fast neutron reactors will allow us to use our nuclear waste as an fuel over the next 300 years and we have a global project in the South of France called the eTER which is figuring out a way of using heavy water nuclear fusion, a limitless technology which essentially powers the stars. All of these methods of generating energy have zero pollution, and zero carbon dioxide emissions if one cares about that. I don't.

Sounds all good, except for a few blips here and there - not to mention the authority structure inherent in such systems (translation: profit). Just wondering: 'who' makes the decisions what energy source is the 'best' to implement and invest for the commonweal? Do you get a vote? How does that work? Why is all the above acceptable to you and not 'renewables'?

I was not setting out to put such a long post together but the whole thing angers me because of the irrationality of it.

Okay. I guess it depends where you live, because in my neck of the woods 'renewables' make all the sense in the world.

Support of this AGW crisis comes from some kind of guilt that people have about being human beings.

That's a wild summation. Rather, I think it's more about carrying our responsibility for 'the commons'. As a Brit, with your history, you should have a resonance to that idea, I would think.

Yes we can be evil and bad, but we can also be brilliant, loving, caring & genius. I prefer to take the positive mind set & I hope others here on this forum join me in the sunshine.

I agree absolutely. I think you potentially interpret the science in a negative way, as a commentary on humanity. That's your decision, your choice. If you take a wrong turn to the party do you make yourself out to be a bad person? No - you correct your trajectory. Same happening here. We've learned some things about consequences and we have to correct our trajectory.

 

[Tyger]

Global Warming, the ultimate fatalist subject in my humble opinion.

There is definitely a continuum of opinion, but there is also how the press decides to report - or not report.

For me the politics and the business of "global warming" is what drives the significant alarm at this point.

Not the science? Certain scientists have been calling for the problem to be addressed, but business? Business is not interested in business-as-usual being interrupted. That's what I see.

I recently heard an interview with an Australian scientist who was fully behind the AGW hypothesis. The sceptical person was suggesting was for me far more scientific & was far more clear in his message.

So I guess it's a communication problem.

There have been 3 warming periods over the last 100 years or so, each one equal in both duration & temp increase. The first two were agreed to be fully natural, without any human factors. The third one according to the standard party line is down to human beings. Given that 97% of CO2 is natural, 3% human, why is it that the first two can be natural variation & the last one man made.

Industrial Revoultion.

What has swayed me in the direction of being sceptical of these AGW claims is the dubious & poor science that has been first publicized by media, recycled by people of fame and then parroted by political and green advocates the world over.

This is definitely a point of view. Not sure I've seen any of this. You'd have to be more precise in what you are referencing.

There is a belief system at work here where logic exits the door & emotion is used to "educate" the masses.

Could you give an example? I've seen the emotion part very much with the deniers, but not with the reverse.

Another issue is global warming business. If global warming was proven tomorrow to be a natural event, who would lose out? How many departments, companies, lobby groups the world over would lose all funding? How many scientists out there that have become dependant on government grants to in some way tie in their own specialisation into climate change would lose out? The business of Global Warming is now a multi billion dollar industry, a juggernaut & there is far too much money & agenda ingrained in it to let it go.

It's far from being a juggernaut here in the US - and if it was all natural? No one would lose out. Switching to renewables is win-win - certainly for the US. Certainly for most communities because renewables are local and that means local control.

The increasing Alarm in the predictions is another aspect of this. Claims become louder, longer and more alarmist.

Just relax then if reading the news over excites you. Facts are facts. Scientists predict - sometimes they're wrong, sometimes they're right. What does it matter.

The problem for these people is they are dependant on the Earth actually following the party line, which it seems to not be doing.

Here is where you are getting it askew. Climate Science is driven by observations, not by theory.

Despite rejections of the Global Warming Pause, many pro AGW scientists are having to write papers to explain why this has happened. They at first reject that the warming has paused, refuse to accept it and then ultimately have to explain it, in the scientific way. What happens if the Earth has stopped warming for the next 30 years and we have a cooling trend again?

This is all scrambled. You've been reading denialist intellectual contortions.

There are also many people out there that keep track of the claims made over the years and then remind people of them when their tipping point has been reached. I for one have many examples of this and they do make for some very funny reading.

Care to share?

Climate Gate emails were also a very poor example of how science was being done. I have personally read many hundreds of these emails and they are not misunderstood. Anyone who would think that is incredibly naïve.

Have you read the conclusions of the investigations into the e-mails? Now you have revealed yourself because that was not about 'how science is being done'.

There was also a great report put out by the Global Warming Foundation regarding the enquiries and to say they were half arsed efforts would be too good a comment on it. In order for the AGW temperature /CO2 correlation to be correct then we need to look at the geological record, not just the last 800,000 years, the last 30 years or last 20 years. We need to look over the period of 500 million years. IS there a correlation, No.

So here we have it - a most dubious organization, with purely political and economic motives. These are the kinds of people you are trusting.

Climate gate was the Blue Book, Condon Committee of climate studies, a recent announcement from the Global Warming Policy Foundation has assigned a group of 6 expert scientists to review the data used by global warming scientists to see if the data has been fiddled. Lets see what they find.

We already know what they will 'find'. It's a given. No science involved as it is a political entity with a political agenda.

 

[Tyger]

I came across this quote, seems relevant to what takes place with words in the politics of climate change, and other things:

"There is something about words. In expert hands, manipulated deftly, they take you prisoner. Wind themselves around your limbs like spider silk and when you are so enthralled you cannot move, they piece your skin, enter your blood, numb your thoughts. Inside you they work their magic." - Diane Setterfield




​

 

[mike_thoth]

How about this as a quotation. "I was alarmist about climate change, and so was Gore. The problem is we don't know what the climate is doing. We thought we knew 20 years ago." James Lovelock.

 

[mike_thoth]

Tyger, we can all pretend to be smart & pick quotations that support ones point of view but lets not over egg the pudding. I will try & answer some of these questions but lets try and be honest about it. Firstly climate deniers as a term is obnoxious, offensive & totally incorrect. No one denies climate change. No one deniers the earth has warmed. We question whether humanity is responsible for this warming & we question the science being done to prove mankind is responsible. I wont take part on any forum where a person is ignorant of these basic facts & guilty of using a term that reveals more about the accuser than the person the insult is aimed at.

 

[mike_thoth]

Lets begin with the cloud seeding statement. Cloud formation in science is a very difficult subject & computer models are constantly being re-designed to try and understand the complex factors that come in to formation of clouds. Clouds of course govern the amount of energy coming into the earths system, energy is reflected back out into space when clouds are formed, not just the other way around, where heat energy is reflected back down to earth. I am sure you understand that like many climate systems, cloud formation is based on chaos. When this comes into play it means the only way to accurately predict cloud formation is to know all the exact values for every single variable that comes into affect at one point in time. This is totally impossible given our science today, we are way off this and our weather predictions are proof of this. A long term weather prediction is considered to be 5-7 days, each day comes with a drastic reduction in the likelihood of said predictions coming true. The point I am driving at here should be clear. How can you have a settled science when the science is based on a chaotic system, the most complex ever known to man?

Just as an interesting aside I would consider looking at Piers Corbyn website www.weatheraction.com Piers uses the sun as the primary driver of the weather, Sun spots in particular along with a host of other major factors. It is important to note that he took major bets against the UK Met Office over the years through an official betting agency to provide more accurate weather predictions than the Met Office. The Met Office being the UKs official weather service. He won these bets and made a little money and he is still providing his service, more accurately each week. His own opinion is CO2 is not a major driver, not even a real minor one.

 

[mike_thoth]

The next part of your reply Tyger was "Start reading and you will find out why the CO2 level over the last 50 years of significantly of note".
This is a very generalised sentence & perhaps you can suggest what I should read that would convince me of this? 400ppm is the current CO2 level, in the past it has been 20 times this amount. For instance if we take geological time periods, then we know that there have been glaciers at the equator when CO2 in the atmosphere was far higher than today. This may have been during a period of low solar activity of course, but the prevailing science today apparently tells us that CO2 is a major climate driver. Well in answer to that all I can say is that I am sceptical because it clearly was not a climate driver in the past. At this juncture I will bring in your question as to CO2 not tracking over geological periods.

So the above graph displays temperature records against CO2 levels over a very long period. Over geological history CO2 does NOT track so when people are telling me that since the industrial revolution humans have brought the earth out of balance I look at this graph & ask myself, what balance?

 

[mike_thoth]

CO2 Is a Pollutant in a Certain Context?


What context is this? The last time I say CO2 as a pollutant was in that movie Prometheus where I think that alien planet had a 30% CO2 level. That would be poisonous to humans but 400ppm, no.


For me plant food is a vital cog to which you agree. My school teachers told me this because it was in her text books. When I was in school Global Warming was not on the alarmist horizon. The global cooling concern was just cooling down. Scientists are saying too much of a good thing is bad. When do you believe a scientist, when do you not believe?"


In an ideal world you should believe scientists, there was a time when I would have. The scientific process is there to remove doubt but over the last few years many scientists are activists first, so let me tie in several factors in my next post.

 

[mike_thoth]

Who to believe - 97%?


I have read the Cook et al paper where Professor Cook, from the University of Queensland authored a paper claiming to have reviewed the abstracts of 11,944 papers & found a 97% consensus of AGW theory. Have you read this work Tyger?


If you have not, why not? If you have, why would such a distortion of facts be required if there was a genuine consensus.


Lets remember that you do not have to have a PhD in climate science to understand climate science. But being a scientist certainly helps because you are primarily taught the scientific method, a method of investigation, hypothesis falsification, experiment and theory. When a climate paper is written & peer reviewed, the reviewers most of the time do not have PhDs in Climate science. They have them in Mathematics, physics, geology, earth sciences. In other words


You don’t need to a degree in English literature to speak English.


So lets take the likes of the UNIPCC an organisation setup to find ways to mitigate human influence on climate. Not to try and find one, but assume there is one and then work at it. 2,500 scientists all saying that AGW is real.


But what about these guys? Are these all funded by big oil Tyger? Who says these scientists are lying? 31,000 scientists reject the hypothesis of man made global warming.


http://www.theclimatebet.com/


http://www.forbes.com/sites/larrybell/2012/07/17/that-scientific-global-warming-consensus-not/

Here is a list of 1,000 climate scientists who also reject the AGW hypothesis. The figure given by IPCC of 2,500 climate scientists is also a falsified number. To get the number up to 2,500 they include reviewers, politicians, researchers & even climate change sceptics who disagree with the conclusion.

The point Tyger is that the word consensus is meaningless in science, and it is doubly meaningless in climate science because the consensus is manufactured, not real.

 

[mike_thoth]

Tyger


The way I see it, human contribution of CO2 will have a negligible affect if any in the long term.

"And you base this on what? Scientists say it is and will continue to do so." As before some scientists say this but tying in another of your points, science is about observation, not modelling. Yet all the predictions being made (I have lists of hundreds of failed predictions & hundreds more that have been made which are just crazy) are based on computer models that fail to line up with the observations. or instance lets take the pause I mentioned. There are two datasets that now agree that there has been no statistically significant global warming over the past 18-25 years respectively. I will agree on 18 years for the sake of argument. The two data sets are RSS and UAH, both using satellite records & both show no warming despite record CO2 in the atmosphere.

The satellites were put up into orbit to provide more accurate measurements but the global warming proponents have gone back to using surface temperatures. Why? The surface record does show warming but at a decreased rate but who chooses the weather stations to utilise & who keeps the raw temperature data? With satellites the raw data is available to anyone but not the manual stations where the temperatures can be homogenised. So forgetting the heat island effect for a moment, what about the signature for global warming, the troposphere?

According to AGW theory the troposphere should be warming which would be a distinct marker for the heating atmosphere. So is it there? No. No heat bloom and there has never been one. So say the activist scientists, lets go back to using our surface data and lets put that missing heat bloom in the deep oceans, where it must have hidden.

So why does CO2 in my opinion have no real affect? Well simply put, we don’t emit nearly enough to have an impact compared to natural sources. Take our atmosphere make up. Only 3% of the atmosphere is made up of greenhouse gases. Of that 3% only 3% is CO2. The other 96% water vapour, the 1% other trace gases. Of that 3% of 3%, only 3-4% is of human origin. That is a tiny amount, tiny.

And for those out there that say that humans knock the earth system out of balance with that 3% of 3% of 3-4% of gas, then you first assume the Earth has ever had a balance. It never has, and the climate has never been fixed or steady. It always changes and always will. CO2 in the past does not track with temperature and even the ice cores at Vostok proved that the temperature always lead CO2 increases and never the other way around.

 

[mike_thoth]

"This is definitely a point of view. Not sure I've seen any of this. You'd have to be more precise in what you are referencing."

Yes it is a point of view that I have arrived at over a long period of careful study. I used to be on the side of the alarmists until I put my money where my mouth was and started to review the opposition press and not just my careful safe websites where I had all the news and information carefully filtered for me. I become angry once I had realised that I was being used as a useful idiot.

I was told NOT to look into the other sides arguments because they were unscientific and wrong. I realise now that anyone advising people to not educate yourself on both sides of any argument are not there to help you they are there to use you.

I will provide only one example here because I don’t today have the time to dig through my archive. The Cook et al paper I quoted from earlier on, where the 97% consensus was "proven". That paper was tweeted by John Holdren and then Barack Obama to millions of people. A President spreading misinformation and bad science to influence people was unforgivable. And look how many times that statistic has been quoted by the media since?

Leonardo Di Caprio quoted this statistic at the UN just recently. Unforgivable.

 

[Han]

This is not about science, and its not really about global warming either.

The idea that people need to wake up: and either do something about global warming, or deny human impact on it, is the result of deliberate* polarisation.

Humanity will survive, that is what we do, but at what cost, and what kind of world future generations inhabit is our responsibility.
This is true weather you judge it by "scientific" or more "woo woo" terms.

Here is a description of an industrial area of England in 1849

"In this Black Country, including West Bromwich, Dudley, Darlaston, Bilston and several minor villages, a perpetual twilight reigns during the day, and during the night fires on all sides light up the dark landscape with a fiery glow. The pleasant green of pastures is almost unknown, the streams, in which no fishes swim, are black and unwholesome; the natural dead flat is often broken by high hills of cinders and spoil from the mines; the few trees are stunted and blasted; no birds are to be seen, except a few smoky sparrows; and for miles on miles a black waste spreads around, where furnaces continually smoke, steam engines thud and hiss, and long chains clank, while blind gin horses walk their doleful round."

I can tell you I don't want to go back to those days, but sadly there are places in poor countries that are like that now. We have fooled people into thinking that because the factory is not on your "doorstep" it does not affect you. The trouble is that we (the people of the world) live in a tank, and whilst some of our number have the ability to jump out and find a new aquarium the overwhelming majority have to stick it out on good old planet Earth.

There is a saying that goes don't shit on your own doorstep, but it should be don't shit on OUR doorstep!

The problem is that everybody thinks that everything belongs to them (myself included). We use a logic of convenience to justify our actions. Choosing to believe what suits us. for example the idea that because something is "natural" it is not dangerous..........


Weather we like it or not, everybody has a horse in this race.


*as in lets cause confusion and argue every minor point before doing anything proactive.

 

[mike_thoth]

Regarding the climate emails, let me clarify your point. "Have you read the conclusions of the investigations of the emails?" I see you have answered your own question here but I thought the question was for me to answer?

The answer is Yes and Yes. I have read the emails and I have also read the conclusions of the investigations. Have you read the emails or have you read ONLY the investigations? You have done half the work and let someone else conclude for you? Read the emails first. Even George Monbiot after reading the emails was sickened and suggested the authors of the emails resign their posts this was before the investigations.

Now regarding the comments which relate to the Global Warming Policy Foundation. This is where your problem lies Tyger. You call this group "a most dubious organisation". Does this mean that you would never read one of their documents? If this is correct and you have not read any of their documents, what qualifies you to claim their are of a dubious nature? Can you see my conundrum here? I have read the reports of the investigations into Penn State & University of East Anglia, I very much disagree with the conclusions as they show a level naivety & circular reasoning which I find mind boggling. The GWPF document I have attached here simply summarises the conclusions I reached myself.

As a person who is clearly passionate about the subject (whether we agree or not) you should be less interested in the person making the accusations and more interested as to whether those accusations are correct. You cannot cut yourself off from a whole section of the debate because you don't like the people or the organisation.

When you read the document you will see that it is written by doctors of science, climate experts, science experts. And given your reminders to me and others that this is a political forum and not a science one, perhaps you should have read this as a pre-requisite given your accusation of the GWPF being a political entity.

 

[Tyger]

I have checked in here for a brief look and I see the copious responses, which I appreciate, and which I cannot answer this moment.

I do need to state that this thread is about the politics not the science - but in the way I answered your posts, mike_thoth, I may have crossed my own line in the sand. Trying to argue the science here is mis-placed, though it's a wobbly line for sure.

I think @Han has made excellent points. For an analogy, what matters the name of your God as long as you treat your neighbor with respect, not so? No matter one's science, we could say, what matters is how we treat the earth for ourselves and future generations.

 

[Tyger]

This is not about science, and its not really about global warming either.

The idea that people need to wake up: and either do something about global warming, or deny human impact on it, is the result of deliberate* polarisation.

Humanity will survive, that is what we do, but at what cost, and what kind of world future generations inhabit is our responsibility.
This is true weather you judge it by "scientific" or more "woo woo" terms.

Here is a description of an industrial area of England in 1849

"In this Black Country, including West Bromwich, Dudley, Darlaston, Bilston and several minor villages, a perpetual twilight reigns during the day, and during the night fires on all sides light up the dark landscape with a fiery glow. The pleasant green of pastures is almost unknown, the streams, in which no fishes swim, are black and unwholesome; the natural dead flat is often broken by high hills of cinders and spoil from the mines; the few trees are stunted and blasted; no birds are to be seen, except a few smoky sparrows; and for miles on miles a black waste spreads around, where furnaces continually smoke, steam engines thud and hiss, and long chains clank, while blind gin horses walk their doleful round."

I can tell you I don't want to go back to those days, but sadly there are places in poor countries that are like that now. We have fooled people into thinking that because the factory is not on your "doorstep" it does not affect you. The trouble is that we (the people of the world) live in a tank, and whilst some of our number have the ability to jump out and find a new aquarium the overwhelming majority have to stick it out on good old planet Earth.

There is a saying that goes don't shit on your own doorstep, but it should be don't shit on OUR doorstep!

The problem is that everybody thinks that everything belongs to them (myself included). We use a logic of convenience to justify our actions. Choosing to believe what suits us. for example the idea that because something is "natural" it is not dangerous..........


Weather we like it or not, everybody has a horse in this race.


*as in lets cause confusion and argue every minor point before doing anything proactive.

Great post. Sums it up.

 

[pixelsmith]

I agree it is a great post with important points from Han but it has little to do with anthropogenic CO2 and its impact on climate.
Pollution is a separate problem.

 

[pixelsmith]

Politics and well meaning people like tyger have caused the " catastrophic global warming" which actually isn't happening thus the name change to climate change. It is a huge scam designed to control the population and transfer wealth. period. That is the "Politics of Global Warming"

 

[Tyger]

Pope Francis Steps Up Campaign on Climate Change, to Conservatives’ Alarm - APRIL 27, 2015
LINK: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/28/w...o-conservatives-alarm.html?smid=fb-share&_r=1

TEXT: "WASHINGTON — Since his first homily in 2013, Pope Francis has preached about the need to protect the earth and all of creation as part of a broad message on the environment. It has caused little controversy so far.

"But now, as Francis prepares to deliver what is likely to be a highly influential encyclical this summer on environmental degradation and the effects of human-caused climate change on the poor, he is alarming some conservatives in the United States who are loath to see the Catholic Church reposition itself as a mighty voice in a cause they do not believe in. As part of the effort for the encyclical, top Vatican officials will hold a summit meeting Tuesday to build momentum for a campaign by Francis to urge world leaders to enact a sweeping United Nations climate changeaccord in Paris in December. The accord would for the first time commit every nation to enact tough new laws to cut the emissions that cause global warming.

"The Vatican summit meeting will focus on the links between poverty, economic development and climate change, with speeches and panel discussions by climate scientists and religious leaders, and economists like Jeffrey Sachs of Columbia. The United Nations secretary general, Ban Ki-moon, who is leading efforts to forge the Paris accord, will deliver the opening address. Vatican officials, who have spent more than a year helping Francis prepare his message, have convened several meetings already on the topic. Last month, they met with the administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, Gina McCarthy.

"In the United States, the encyclical will be accompanied by a 12-week campaign, now being prepared with the participation of some Catholic bishops, to raise the issue of climate change and environmental stewardship in sermons, homilies, news media interviews and letters to newspaper editors, said Dan Misleh, executive director of the Catholic Climate Covenant in Washington.

"But the effort is already angering a number of American conservatives, among them members of the Heartland Institute, a libertarian group partly funded by the Charles G. Koch Foundation, run by the billionaire industrialist Koch brothers, who oppose climate policy. “The Holy Father is being misled by ‘experts’ at the United Nations who have proven unworthy of his trust,” Joseph Bast, the president of the Heartland Institute, said in a statement. “Though Pope Francis’ heart is surely in the right place, he would do his flock and the world a disservice by putting his moral authority behind the United Nations’ unscientific agenda on the climate.” The institute plans to hold a news conference and panel event in Rome on Tuesday in protest of the Vatican summit meeting.

"But climate policy advocates see a scheduled address by the pope to Congress in September as a potent moment — about 30 percent of members of Congress are Catholics, more than belong to any other religion, according to a study published this year by the Pew Research Center. Speaker John A. Boehner, Republican of Ohio, invited the pope to speak to Congress, but some Catholics say that Mr. Boehner should prepare for some uncomfortable moments. Mr. Boehner, who is Catholic, has often criticized the Obama administration for what he calls its “job killing” environmental agenda. “I think Boehner was out of his mind to invite the pope to speak to Congress,” said the Rev. Thomas Reese, an analyst at the National Catholic Reporter. “Can you imagine what the Republicans will do when he says, ‘You’ve got to do something about global warming’? ”

"In addition, a number of Catholics — including Jeb Bush, Marco Rubio, Bobby Jindal, Chris Christie and Rick Santorum — are gearing up to compete for the Republican presidential nomination, and most of them question the science of human-caused climate change. Several conservative Catholic intellectuals who expect the pope’s message to bolster the vast majority of scientists who hold that climate change is induced by human activity, including Robert P. George, a Princeton law professor, have published articles reminding Catholics that papal pronouncements on science are not necessarily sound or binding.

"Maureen Mullarkey, a painter and writer, said in the conservative journal First Things that “Francis sullies his office by using demagogic formulations to bully the populace into reflexive climate action with no more substantive guide than theologized propaganda.” Timothy E. Wirth, vice chairman of the United Nations Foundation, said: “We’ve never seen a pope do anything like this. No single individual has as much global sway as he does. What he is doing will resonate in the government of any country that has a leading Catholic constituency.”

"Francis, however, is not the first pope to push an environmental message. His predecessor, Pope Benedict XVI, called the “green pope” by some, wrote about the environment and the impact of climate change in documents that have been collected in a book, “The Environment.” But Catholic and climate policy experts acknowledge that those works had little substantive impact on global warming policy.

"Francis’ policy moves on climate change, particularly his use of the encyclical, go far beyond what has come before. Catholics point to other papal encyclicals that have had public policy impacts: Pope Leo XIII’s 1891 encyclical on labor and workers’ rights is believed to have spurred the workers’ rights movement and led to the creation of labor unions. “I think this moves the needle,” said Charles J. Reid Jr., a professor at the University of St. Thomas School of Law. “Benedict was an ivory-tower academic. He wrote books and hoped they would persuade by reason. But Pope Francis knows how to sell his ideas. He is engaged in the marketplace.”

"Francis, who chose the name of St. Francis of Assisi, the patron saint of animals and the environment, has had far more influence on the church and public. Born in Argentina, Francis draws cheering crowds from around the world and millions of followers to his social media accounts. He has been embraced for his humility, antipoverty agenda, progressive statements on social issues and efforts to reform the Vatican bureaucracy. This month he said in a Twitter post: “We need to care for the earth so that it may continue, as God willed, to be a source of life for the entire human family.”

"The pope’s influence on the Paris climate accord may be strongest in Latin America. In past years, Latin American countries have resisted efforts to enact climate policy, arguing that developing economies should not have to cut emissions while developed economies continue to pollute. But over the past year, some Latin American governments have signaled a willingness to step forward on climate policy, and this year Mexico became one of the first nations to submit a plan ahead of the Paris talks. “This pope is more than just a church leader — he is a political leader, particularly in Latin America,” said Romina Picolotti, president of the Center for Human Rights and Environment in Argentina. “Youth in Latin America are really following him closely.” "​

 

[Tyger]

Admittedly, a highly charged piece. Not fans of the Koch brothers.

Koch Group Sends Envoy To Rome To Convince Pope To Shut Up About Climate Change - April 24, 2015
LINK: Addicting Info – Koch Group Sends Envoy To Rome To Convince Pope To Shut Up About Climate Change

TEXT: "In the clearest example yet of the stunning hubris of American conservative movement, a think tank backed by the Koch brothers says it will send a group of right-wing “scientists” (let’s use that term loosely here) to convince Pope Francis that his stance on climate change (i.e. that it exists and it is deeply troubling) is both scientifically wrong, but also biblically so.

"You read that right: A group of wealthy energy industry businessmen think they can preach the gospel of climate denialism to the pope. This should be fun to watch.

"The pope caught the ire of the libertarian-leaning Heartland Institute when the Vatican announced that he would be holding meetings with United Nations secretary-general Ban Ki-Moon and other experts to discuss what policymakers and religious leaders can do to better combat the worst effects of climate change. Heartland Institute’s subsequent freak out was captured in the hurriedly released statement announcing they would be sending their own experts to the meeting to intervene.

"The Vatican’s summit features two men – Ban Ki-Moon, secretary-general of the United Nations, and Harvard economist Jeffrey Sachs – who refuse to acknowledge the abundant data showing human greenhouse gas emissions are not causing a climate crisis and there is no need for a radical reordering of global economies that will cause massive reductions in human freedom and prosperity.

"They definitely wouldn’t like a “radical reordering of global economies” because the current status quo suits their backers – billionaire chemical magnates and potential Disney villains Charles and David Koch – just fine.

"The group alleges that the pope is being “misled” by experts at the United Nations who have “proven unworthy.” Instead, they say the pope should listen to their guys – shills paid directly by oil and gas companies to find data that supports the dubious premise that pouring millions of tons of CO2 and other greenhouse gases into the atmosphere does nothing at all. In fact, it’s God’s will to pollute, damn it! “Humans are not causing a climate crisis on God’s Green Earth – in fact, they are fulfilling their Biblical duty to protect and use it for the benefit of humanity,” declared Heartland Institute President Joseph Bast.” Though Pope Francis’s heart is surely in the right place, he would do his flock and the world a disservice by putting his moral authority behind the United Nations’ unscientific agenda on the climate.”

"Unfortunately for the Kochs, it doesn’t appear that Pope Francis is going to be easily persuaded. As Raw Story points out, this summer the pope is expected to publish a landmark encyclical letter that will largely focus on environmental issues. If his previous statements on the issue are any indication, the letter will likely mention climate change and the effects it has had on impoverished, vulnerable people. With the weight (both spiritual and political) of his station behind him, the pope has the opportunity to do a lot of good by calling on nations to address the issue. It’s no wonder polluters like the Kochs are not happy.

"With his foray into climate change, we can expect the conservative movement to further attempt to undermine the pope’s image. For decades, conservatives have had a self-declared monopoly on speaking for the religious in America, but Pope Francis has them stymied. Much to the frustration of Republican lawmakers, the pope has been forcefully advocating for a back-to-the-basics form of Christianity that focuses on Jesus’ teachings on compassion and charity.

"Unfortunately, there isn’t a lot of money in peace and love, so Republicans who want to balance their sanctimonious holier-than-thou condescension with ample profits for corporations and the wealthy who bankroll them have had to awkwardly pretend that the pope just doesn’t “get it.” This has led to some confusing mixed messages, including – most hilariously – Fox News running an all-out hit piece on the Holy See.

"If you never thought you’d see the day, then you just never realized just what gods these conservatives were worshiping all these years. Hint: They’re rectangular, green, and have the faces of several dead presidents."​