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"Oh Heavens" !!??!!
Posted on 02/19/2007 4:59:22 PM PST by Teófilo
Folks, with all the hoopla surrounding the issue of global warming and the overwhelming, undeniable scientific proof that will soon be coming, dissident voices are being raised.
One comes from an unexpected quarter. Australian Cardinal George Pell is one of them. In a recent column, he wrote:
We have been subjected to a lot of nonsense about climate disasters as some zealots have been painting extreme scenarios to frighten us. They claim ocean levels are about to rise spectacularly, that there could be the occasional tsunami as high as an eight story building, the Amazon basin could be destroyed as the ice cap in the Arctic and in Greenland melts.Please, read the whole piece here.An overseas magazine called for Nuremberg-style trials for global warming skeptics while a U.S.A. television correspondent compared skeptics to “holocaust deniers”.
A local newspaper editorial’s complaint about the doomsdayers’ religious enthusiasm is unfair to mainstream Christianity. Christians don’t go against reason although we sometimes go beyond it in faith to embrace probabilities. What we were seeing from the doomsdayers was an induced dose of mild hysteria, semi-religious if you like, but dangerously close to superstition.
I am deeply skeptical about man-made catastrophic global warming, but still open to further evidence. I would be surprised if industrial pollution, and carbon emissions, had no ill effect at all. But enough is enough.
Thinker Thomas Sowell has written not one, but three columns so far on the issue of global warming: Global Hot Air I, II, and III. This is a quote:
The political left's favorite argument is that there is no argument. Their current crusade is to turn "global warming" into one of those things that supposedly no honest and decent person can disagree about, as they have already done with "diversity" and "open space."And he's right.The name of "science" is invoked by the left today, as it has been for more than two centuries. After all, Karl Marx's ideology was called "scientific socialism" in the 19th century. In the 18th century, Condorcet analogized his blueprint for a better society to engineering, and social engineering has been the agenda ever since.
This is the way I see the issue: yes, there's global warming and yes, human beings are a factor in this warming trend. I'm not convinced, though, that we are the main, principal culprits behind the global warming "crisis."
The thing is that, considering the state of global politics today, the greatest group of human beings who most people are blaming for global warming seem to reside in the United States of America. Once that notion becomes "truthtified," it follows that internal and external forces get bent all out of shape to control and dictate the U.S. energy usage curve.
The Kyoto Treaty was such an attempt. For example, the treaty placed heavy, even crippling curves on American energy consumption, but little or none on China, Mexico and Brazil, the world's leading developing countries.
I don't know if you've noticed but these are the same places where you see lots of people walking down the streets of their big cities wearing surgical masks on their faces, places where the notion of "recycling" hasn't even peeked in their cultures. Kyoto was a bad deal through and through.
Global warming, whatever it is, has given new ammunition to every surviving Utopic Marxist -- and a new coterie -- to try to build intrusive, tyranic government structures that would force hapless citizens to live and consume a certain way or else they would be branded class or social criminals.
We must rebuff all such efforts here in the U.S.
The Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church dedicates an entire chapter to Safeguarding the Environment. I think that the relevant paragraph is this one,
469. The authorities called to make decisions concerning health and environmental risks sometimes find themselves facing a situation in which available scientific data are contradictory or quantitatively scarce. It may then be appropriate to base evaluations on the “precautionary principle”, which does not mean applying rules but certain guidelines aimed at managing the situation of uncertainty. This shows the need for making temporary decisions that may be modified on the basis of new facts that eventually become known. Such decisions must be proportional with respect to provisions already taken for other risks. Prudent policies, based on the precautionary principle require that decisions be based on a comparison of the risks and benefits foreseen for the various possible alternatives, including the decision not to intervene. This precautionary approach is connected with the need to encourage every effort for acquiring more thorough knowledge, in the full awareness that science is not able to come to quick conclusions about the absence of risk. The circumstances of uncertainty and provisional solutions make it particularly important that the decision-making process be transparent.The problem is, as Cardinal Pell and Thomas Sowell see it, that defenders of the Global Warming theory see no room for new facts, and are bent to draw into their Inquisition anyone challenging their hegemony.
By all means, let's be prudent, let's adopt this "precautionary principle" Catholic social doctrine speaks about, by strengthening private partnerships in industry, businesses, and state and local governments; let's allocate more money for research and public education on energy conservation while we build the technologies that will wean us from foreign oil and the foreign entanglements that come with it. Then, let's share and/or exchange this new know-how and technologies with those societies that are ready to conserve and innovate on their own.
Will this stop some developing countries from pumping carbon into the atmosphere? No, but then, maybe the Kyoto Treat is tailor-made for them.
PING!
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Ping me if you find one I've missed.
God bless Cardinal Pell!
Global warming really is the new People's Temple. In the peoples temple of Jim Jones, religion was the vehicle and socialism was the destination. In the people's temple of global warming, fear is the vehicle but the destination is the same.
Excellent thread. Thank you.
Thank you kindly for your concurrence!
-Theo
"Curbs," not "curves."
"Piqued," not "peeked," I think; I'd redo the whole sentence.
"Utopian," not "Utopic," unless you're making a bizarre pun.
Holy Cow! No more wine before posting! I foursweare it!
I stand corrected! :-)
-Theo
You can say that. However, you should be clear that this position is simply a personal opinion, based on inconclusive and often conflicting data. (It might be interesting to ask yourself why you want to believe that scenario.)
Mars is showing signs of warming, too - erratic and inconsistent warming, just like Earth - and it's tough to blame that on my van.
Good piece, overall. You can't go far wrong agreeing with Thomas Sowell, America's greatest living intellectual!
I get more persnickety with more wine.
It's just because we are "here", discovered fire, and have been pumping a certain amount of carbon back into the atmosphere since we discovered it.
We're a factor because we're not mere animals. We affect the environment in a large scale. That much is also certain. The problem is to quantify that amount and compare it to other non-human causes.
I still don't think that we've pumped out more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere than Krakatoa, Vesuvius, St. Helen and Pinatubo. Yet, that's the allegation that it's been made.
What I am asking is for the evidence as to where we stand in that equation. And, I am gratified to see, am not the only one asking the question. But as some of the proponents would have it, I am as bad as a Holocaust-denier.
-Theo
Some of the proponents are unutterable goofballs, but you didn't hear that from me, or if you did, it was a cheap California Zinfandel talking ...
It's true that we're distinct from animals in essential ways. However, in terms of our chemical output, we're pipsqueaks compared to termites, hogs, cattle, and so on. That's one reason that levelling the entire U.S. economy would do nothing to affect "global warming," assuming one accepted the analysis and projections to start with ... we're just not that big a deal.
We may have "discovered" fire, for example, but lightning starts them. And what about Mars?
Mars? They don't make those any more, don't they? (LOL)
Any merit that the "Human Global Warming" theory may have, is overshadowed by the animus many feel against the U.S.
Prudence is OK, but not hysteria with anti-American dressings. (I hope I said that right).
-Theo
Prudence is better than dingbattery, definitely. Nobody has yet explained to my satisfaction what's BAD about higher average global temperatures. It was wonderful in the early medieval period!
Amen to that...the theme is "save our selves" S.O.S...
As if God has nothing to do with our welfare, we have to do it all on our own...Sad...Pray for those who fail to remember God's promise to watch over us and Christ's great advice to not worry about things such as these...
The church of the world is open and receiving memebers at an alarming rate...The accuser is smiling somewhere...
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