[shurwouldluv_a_smallergov]

Again I have to admit I have read very little of the encyclical. I will gladly take your word that it contains things disturbing to those who believe that less government is better than more.

I certainly don't want to sound argumentative nor in denial, but...

where exactly Pope Francis says AGW is a fact?

I see things like number 23 where he says "A very solid scientific consensus indicates that we are presently witnessing a disturbing warming of the climatic system"

and

"a number of scientific studies indicate that most global warming in recent decades is due to the great concentration of greenhouse gases".

Maybe I'm parsing too much? At least he didn't say "the science is settled"!

[Mrs. Don-o]

Yes,I would have cited the two quotes you pulled out from (23). The problem is that throughout the encyclical, he simply assumes this as a fact.

Look at (24): the entire paragraph is based on the assumption that CO₂ is pollution. "Carbon dioxide pollution" is named in the 5th sentence, and in (25) is singled out again: "here is an urgent seen that... the emision of carbon dioxide be drastically reduced..." In (51) the encyclical deplores "gas residues which have been accumulating for two centuries" -- from the context, that must be combustion products of fuels that have been burned since the dawn of the Industrial Revolution, from around 1800 with the conversion from charcoal to coke/coal and the use of steam engines.

So yeah, this is a lament against all the fossil fuels that have powered industrial progress for the last 200 years, and lifted vast numbers of people from destitution.

From a practical point of view, one of the essentials needed for poor people to achieve a dignified life with adequate food and fuel year-round, is cheap energy. That's fossil fuels or nuclear. There's simply no way around it.

[Mrs. Don-o]

And as for the overall issue of AGW: once again, he states it a few times (it's explicitly discussed in, I think, just 4 paragraphs out of the 246) but he assumes it everwhere. Ithink it accounts for the overall pessimistic "crisis" tone concerning our depleting all the resources and ruining the systems of "fragile" world. (Why does he never note that resources are becoming more and more plentiful? Why does he never refer to a "sturdy, self-renewing world"?)

Pope Francis doesn't seem to know that Julian Simon won the famous Ehrlich-Simon wager. Nor does he, apparently, understand why.

[Mrs. Don-o]

As Laudato Si puts it in paragraph 165:

"We know that technology based on the use of highly polluting fossil fuels — especially coal, but also oil and, to a lesser degree, gas — needs to be progressively replaced without delay. Until greater progress is made in developing widely accessible sources of renewable energy, it is legitimate to choose the lesser of two evils or to find short-term solutions."<> We do not know this. It is an assumption of a certain hypothesis, one whose evidence is failing, but which is simply stated as fact as a (non-Magisterial) judgment in the encyclical.