Help Me Find Good Catholic Stuff from a Climate-Skeptic Perspective (Vanity)

Myself | Mrs Don-o

[Mrs. Don-o]

I am the editor of our tiny monthly parish newsletter. My pastor, with whom I have a pretty fair relationship, has just directed me to devote the April issue to Earth Day, the Environment, and Climate Change. He included a link to a compostable, shovel-ready statement by Bp Stephen Blair. I am aghast.

I don't wish to fight my pastor about this --- being a busy man, I doubt he has much of an opinion on "Climate" one way or the other, aside from what parish Greenies tell him. Bless their hearts.

Therefore I'm looking for articles which will take a recognizably Catholic point of view (i.e. opposite of Bishop Blair's boilerplate Earth Day cheerleading) --- distinguish between prudential judgments and moral absolutes, explain the limits of episcopal competence, and generally equip us against Enviro-Fraud, IPCC totalitarianism, and Eco-Idiocy.

I've heard that Benedict XVI had some good stuff about a non-Leftaroo, prudent Stewardship and Biblical Creation Care in several encyclicals, but I need to know exactly where to find it.

Please send me your best links to articles I could link to, crib from, or be guided by.

You know what I'm talkin' 'bout.

Trusting your quick minds and good judgment.

[Varda]

The Catholic point of view is to leave science to scientists. Science being defined as the study of physical existance. Because of that, I've had the better of these arguments using science articles. The global warming types always attempt to portray any argument against them as anti-science so using a specifically theological source is counter productive (unless the source is a scientist who is also clergy).

Heres one Researcher: Basic Greenhouse Equations "Totally Wrong"

The basic idea is to inform that this isn't settled science and there is no scientific concensus. That makes the celebration of Earth Day and it's viewpoint just another political stance.

[clockwise]

Caritas in veritate, starting with paragraph 48, discusses our relationship to the natural environment.

Also, his message for the celebration of the World Day of Peace 1/1/08 beginning about paragraph 7 might be useful.

[Mrs. Don-o]

Well yes, but I don't intend to use the parish newsletter to pit one person's atmospheric gases against another's! That's exactly why we can't do a proper "critique" of CO²-based AGW vs. somebody else's solar-cycle model.

I'd like to stick with just the Genesis-based moral obligation to protect God's Creation (in general) and if I have to mention "Climate" at all, just note that all these hypotheses are controversial, even dubious.

[Mrs. Don-o]

Thank you, clockwise! Just what I was looking for. I knew one of our knowledgeable FReepers would come through!

[Varda]

In my area, Genesis is what’s used to promote global warming and government intervention. The argument goes, God commands us to be good stewards of the earth so we must reduce greenhouse gases. AGW is proclaimed a fact confirmed by science.

You are right that the parish bulletin is not the place for debate and letting people know that this is a subject of much debate within climate science is the best way to handle it. I don’t envy you being put into this position with the bulletin. I certainly was more able to handle it in CCD.

[Mrs. Don-o]

I think I'll have to have a face-to-face meeting (maybe over a vegetarian lunch!) with the main Peas+Justice Greenie (we're both gardeners, that's a good thing) --- and come to --- if not peace -- at least an armed truce on this.

These aren't bad people at all. I think a lot of it is just the "bubbles" phenomenon. They read the Reporter, I read the Register. They yak at Kos, I yak at FR. I go to the 8:00 Mass, they go to the 10.

Know what I mean?

You need to move your head from right to left at times, and vice versa, or you lose your peripheral vision.

[Mrs. Don-o]

I THINK I thanked you once, bu I wanted to thank you again for these AGW rebuttal resources. I'm just now writing my little bitty article for the little bitty parish newsletter, and much of this --- especially Monckton --- was directly usable.

I just want to convince my pastor, the principal of the parochial school, and other policy-makers, that there are two, three, may sides to this controversy, None of them has been indisputably canonized either by hard science nor by moral judgment.

[First_Salute]

Will [Mark] Steyn now 'Stick it' *the O’Sullivan Way* to Climate Fraudster Michael Mann?

Article at Principia-Scientific.org by John O'Sullivan [excerpts:]

…Michael Mann has a heavy burden to shoulder in order to win. He (not Mark Steyn) has the burden of proving that the statements are false AND he has to prove that Mark Steyn, at the time Steyn made the statements, believed them to be false or entertained serious doubts about the truth of the statement.

Steyn (a Canadian resident in the U.S.) in his article, ‘Defaming for Beginners’ (March 17, 2014) then correctly adduces that the American legal system has been cynically played by Mann, lamenting, “the leisurely procedural torture of US "justice" would count as cruel and unusual punishment in most other systems…

Finally, the mainstream media has cottoned on to the wider and profound implications of Mann’s abuse of process. Not only has the Penn. State professor cynically been hiding his graph’s tortured r^2 regression numbers since 1998, but he’s now gotten his cronies at Columbia Journalism Review (March 17, 2014) to back his shameless ploy to subvert freedom of information laws (FOIA) and preserve the crumbling credibility of the “science” of man-made global warming.

FreeRepublic.com post re O'Sullivan's article.

[First_Salute]

Anti-Science: Those Who Wish to Debate Climate Threatened with Death or Jail

[Salvation]

I was going to suggest Caritas in Veritate emphasizing the subsidiarity.

Start with yourself
Then your family
Then your neighborhood
Then your city
Then your county
Then your state
Then your nation
Then the world

Then the Church’s views on it all.

[Mrs. Don-o]

Guys, this bogus "Climate Change" issue (like so many political issues) could potentially split parishioners into warring camps. This was my way to handle it.

It's not the whole campaign, but maybe the first step: to convince the climate activists and other parishioners that there is no "consensus" on AGW; that it is certainly not Catholic Doctrine; and that it is not an area in which there ever COULD be Catholic Doctrine, since any dispute pertains 100% to prudential judgment, and not to doctrines concerning faith and morals.

---

LOSE 10 pounds of Climate-Related CONFLICT
with ONE WEIRD TRICK:

(Various graphics were cluttered around the top of the page, something I can't do with FR graphics.)

Humility!!

Yes, I could use a big dose of that, and I mean on a regular basis. Thinking about earth-wide, and even Solar System-wide issues like the warming and cooling of the planets, leads to a sense of one’s insufficiency (and our species’ inadequacy) to predict, much less control, such cosmic, interlocking processes.

Though there are controversies, there are big areas in which all of us who read this newsletter agree. We agree that for humanity to have benign dominion over this planet is a primordial command which God gave to us, His rational creatures. We agree we are caring for a Creation of which we are stewards, not masters.

We agree that this “care” is morally obligatory, not optional. We agree that Earth with it beauty and its resources is to be developed with the needs of everybody in mind, including the poor, the vulnerable, and our children not yet born. We all believe that.

These concerns go back to before the first Earth Day (1970), before St. Francis of Assisi: they go back to Genesis.

Back in 1971, Pope Paul VI Pope Paul VI addressed the climate crisis, warning that “man is suddenly becoming aware that by an ill-considered exploitation of nature, he risks destroying it, and becoming in his turn the victim of this degradation.”

And yet, interestingly enough, what crisis was he addressing at the time? The “crisis” of Global Cooling.

Oh? Yes. In the ‘70’s and 80’s, the real concern --- we were told --- was that temperatures were dropping.

Specifically, many American scientists were terrified of an imminent Ice Age. Senior Presidential Science Advisor John Holdren was one of them. Holdren and others proposed pouring huge quantities of soot (carbon!) over the arctic to melt the ice cap and so prevent the dreaded Ice Age. Holdren warned of dire consequences – -including starvation and the largest tidal waves in history –-- if mankind did not unanimously rally on an emergency basis to stop the development of “Snow Ball Earth”.

This was the Consensus Science of 30 and 40 years ago. Pope Paul VI taught the urgency of caring for Earth --- this is an unquestioned moral obligation --- but was wise enough not to urge acceptance of any particular hypothesis about what was happening Earth-wide, or how, specifically, we were to respond to it.

Perhaps he was remembering that the Church got into big trouble in the 17th century for seeming to endorse the Consensus Science of the age: namely, the Ptolemaic (earth-centered) model of the Universe. So Pope Paul confined his remarks to the area in which he had ecclesial and moral competence (reiterating the duty to foster a just ecological ethic) and prudently refrained from endorsing the Technology and Public Policy areas in which he had neither Scientific expertise nor Magisterial authority. Pope Paul VI had humility.

We all need humility. It’s just something to keep in mind when reading the statements of the clergy ---- priests, bishops, cardinals, and Popes --- on climate change.

Bishop Stephen Blaire of Stockton endorses the Catholic Climate Covenant and specifically calls for steps to avert what he calls catastrophic, anthropogenic global warming. Cardinal George Pell of Australia, on the other hand, compared the sale of carbon credits with the pre-Reformation practice of selling indulgences, and said climate activists are descending into pseudo-science and zealotry.

Earlier this month, a professor at Rochester Institute of Technology said he wants to send conservative global warming skeptics to jail for life. That was followed up by others charging that liberal climate activists “hate the poor” because they want to permanently deprive energy-hungry poor countries of power sources we historically benefited from --- like coal --- which are essential for development and the eradication of hunger and poverty.

And worse and worse and back and forth and on and on.

Let’s not adopt the belligerent, polarized attitudes of the secular world --- Right Wing vs Left Wing, war to the death. We Are the Church: Right Wing, Left Wing and Middle of the Bird (which is where the heart , the brains and the lungs are. Take ten deep breaths!)

Let’s adopt rules that make Catholic dialog on these issues distinctive and constructive, because of our distinctive, Inestimable Gift: we are One in the Lord.

Here’s what I suggest:

1. No avoiding hard, controversial issues in order to “be nice.” Avoiding hard issues is how we’ve gotten into every single mess we’re in.

2. No attributing malice or stupidity to others, even by implication. Stop that kind of talk as soon as it starts.

3. Become skilled at listening. Let each person commit to hearing out the other side (or sides!!) fully and patiently. Listen before thinking of a rebuttal.

4. Sincerity does not take the place of facts. We’re going to assume everybody is sincere here. But sincerity does not substitute for evidence, and reasonable inferences from evidence.

5. “Let prayer delight you more than disputation, and charity more than knowledge. “- St. Robert Bellarmine

6. Humility!

[DuncanWaring]

Just keep in the back of your mind that if the sun’s “sunspot” level doesn’t start picking up, we’ve got another Little Ice Age coming up, probably noticable in the next decade or so.

That’s proven by the historical record; it’s not depending on an unvalidated computer model that doesn’t match the historical record.

Good Luck.

[Matchett-PI]

BTTT