Pope Francis Demands Immediate Action to Halt Global Warming, Save Environment

[PatrickJS]

The infallibility thing isn't entirely true. In encyclicals like this, the Pope is held in high moral regard and is probably right, but is not infallible. Papal Infallibility is only possible if the pope is speaking 1) with the Holy Spirit, 2) while wearing the papal crown, and 3) while on the throne of Peter.

The Pope is considered infallible when making what's called an "ex Cathedra" ("from the Chair") declaration. There's a long history of dispute over what exactly both this term and all its requirements mean; the only widely accepted ex Cathedra proclamation was one made about Marian doctrine back in the 1950's. Two thousand years of Catholicism, and it's happened once; hardly "what the Pope says, goes".

Thank you for correcting me! I've edited the news post.

 

[loa]

Fuck the pope.
I mean what he's saying is right but no religious leader in the civilized world should have that much influence in this day and age.
So fuck the principle of the position of a pope, even though this one is kinda alright sometimes, the next one could be an old white bigot with a funny hat yet again.

As for everyone saying the pope shouldn't comment on science, how about staying true to that principle when trying to institutionalize creationism as something that should be taught in schools on equal grounds with "evolutionism".

 

[TallanKhan]

You want to do this, fine by me.

To start with, no it isn't.

Adoption of Christianity is the direct basis for switching from gravelkind to primogeniture succession in the lands of Rus, which finally allowed long-term building of a nation as opposed to constant squabbling of a thousand Rurikids who all were morally justified in the eyes of their subjects to have a claim. Boom you're already wrong.

Boom! No I'm not. Nice single example, doesn't prove the original point I was disputing. In addition there is significant evidence that suggests that the Rus people may have existed as a united or afiliated polity as early as 837 AD, with the earliest estimates for Christianity taking hold in the area being around 860. There is even some suggestion that the introduction of Christianity may have had something to do with the collapse of this entity, although this is most often attributed to Scandinavian aggression.

Religious practice of varying forms existed for centuries before tribal social structures were seriously challenged, and a number of significant civilizations pre-date the emergence of current major religions.

Yes, because just a religion on itself is not capable of anything. It took specific religions and religion practices in their specific regions and cultures for system to "just develop further". You do understand that there were times when people lived with no newspapers, constitution and schools, and the religion was the closest thing they had to a universal system of morals and laws that lived longer that a generation? So there simply was not other way to preserve even what little the society had? And he powers that be had zero reasons to change the system?

What drivel. You talk of "the powers that be". For the vast majority of recorded history, the "powers that be" that you claim had no reason to drive change, and the religious institutions you credit for the changes that did occur were so intertwined as to be all but one and the same thing.

Again, you correctly identify an advance and then erroneously attribute it to religion. Increased centralisation did indeed bring all the benefits you describe, but centralisation didn't have anything to do with religion.

Suuuure. Once again - a hundred different Russian tribes having a hundred different pagan cults and a hundred different cultures and moral systems growing from those cults were having no problems uniting under a centralized rule before said cults were replaced by Christianity. Oh wait, they totally were.

The need for communication

Oh, and you know another thing that Christianity brought into the Russian lands? The first common written language.

[See my first point for full details]

No, it really hasn't. The Catholic Church in particular has been a frontrunner in the field of repressing science. Yes they may have founded schools and universities, and I will grant that these did provide access to a basic level of education. However, the fact that these institutions taught religious doctrine as fact, directly impacting the way research was conducted, leading people to build theories on false assumptions more than offsets the benefits here.

Pffffrrrrtt. That's like saying that Lavoisier was full of shit just because he suggested the existence of caloric, which proved to be false. Gradual development.

No it isn't, you draw a false comparison and then rubbish it. You say gradual development, but in many cases no development at all, or even the repression of development.

Beyond this, when you look at events such as the Condemnations, the suppression of Copernicus or the Inquisition, to claim that the Catholic Church has been any kind of net positive for scientific endeavour is laughable.

Copernicus was prosecuted for being a huge pain in the bishopric's ass, not for his discoveries. Inquisition was used to hunt down political enemies of the Spanish Crown (you know, like any secret police in a secular country), not scientists.

I didn't say anything about the prosecution of Copernicus, it was the suppression of his findings I talked of, which, by the way, is what drove him to make such a pain of himself. If you don't believe his ideas were deliberately supressed by the church, look up Giovani Maria Tolosanni.

As for the Inquisition, you're just plain wrong. The Inquisition was a branch of the Catholic church charged with combating "heresy". Among their more repugnant operations, were the first witch trials, during which not only were (as is popularly depicted) they used by bored husbands to have their wives offed, but anyone found to be possessing "unnatural" knowledge or powers - read anyone who could read and write but wasn't a good little christian - was murdered.

The Spanish Inquisition you refer to was a specific branch, that didn't come about until around 400 years later. The leadership of church in Spain was overwhelmingly made up of family members of the ruling classes and the inquisition was for all intents and purposes hijacked by a number of Spanish nobles and officials for political ends.

any kind of net positive for scientific endeavour is laughable

Literally ALL the development of medicine and herbal sciences on the Russian lands until Peter the Great - monasteries.
All the local book publishing, rewriting, translation and production until Empress Catherine - monasteries again.
Royal Botanical Gardens in Prague, Vilno and Petersberg - Christians once again.
It took the October Revolution to institute the first non-parochial schools (of which there were more than 18 thousand) for people of common birth. That's XXth century. Every common-born man in Russia before that who knew how to read or count learned it in either a parochial or jewish school. Telling that ten centuries of people learning alphabet, writing and algebra constitutes nothing solely because they also read Bible there is just plain crazy. And the Church was not imposing a monopoly on education. It was simply the only institution interested in teaching people anything at all.

Hell, and I'm an atheist for crying out loud.

Of course the church was imposing a monopoly on education. Go open a supermarket and give everything away for free, soon enough you'l have a monopoly too.

His central nature is being the head of a religion.

No. He's human first and any sort of authority figure second. You know, human with a brain. Who's got PhD in chemistry. Capable of exercising independent thought no less than you are. One can actually believe that God wants him to be a logical and reasonable leader and example for his people. Ever thought of that one possibility?

No. If we were talking about a theoretical belief that would be fine, but this is a man who believes he communicates with God, actively engages with a spirit who's will he conveys. When he makes a statement as the pope therefore, he isn't speaking as a man making a judgement - hell he might not even believe it himself - he is speaking as someone who is saying what he thinks God wants him to say.

In addition, the pope speaks as a religious authority, and as such, those who obey him, are doing so because of his status. He didn't present evidence, or make an argument, he got up and made a speech that amounted to "climate change is ruining the planet, if you're a good christian do something about it".

The evidence is presented by scientists. He's part as a political and moral authority is giving more power and recognition to said evidence. Scientists can't reach everyone using their resources, so people like Pope and politicians provide them with some louder voices. Al Gore also isn't a scientist and mostly was just gathering awareness through popular methods. Was he harmful as well?

Yes but he isn't acting in reference to anything. When a leader or government minister makes an announcement it's after massive work, they don't just take a publication and say "yeah, looks good, lets support it", evidence is balanced, reports are drawn up, the potential impact of everything is analysed, and even then it isn't infallible. It's bad enough when Barrack Obama points at a natural disaster and says "look, climate change" but this is 10 times worse. Have a look at his reference material if you like (skip to the end) - http://w2.vatican.va/content/francesco/en/encyclicals/documents/papa-francesco_20150524_enciclica-laudato-si.html

If that had been prepared by any government or respected institution it would have been shredded.

This isn't encouraging people to make an informed choice, this is demanding obedience, "do it because I say so".

Yep. Pretty much the way works. Or you think every man in every massive social movement made an informed choice, as opposed to being persuaded by popular political methods. A reasonable orator can gather attention a handful of people. A demagogue can gather a billion. As far as gaining awareness on the matter goes - he's doing the only good and reasonable thing possible.

He isn't raising awareness though, everyone is already aware in this instance. What needs to happen now is convincing people, and you do this by sharing knowledge, not demanding adherence. The big problem with the climate change debate, is that there has, to date, been very little meaningful debate about anything, rather, just two opposing camps each trying to shout their opinion louder than the other. The little headway that has been made has been made with evidence.

Lasting solutions to the problems we face as a society can only be achieved through understanding and awareness

Understanding by people who need to understand it. The crowd is there for political drive. They don't need a degree to do their part. All they need for that are their votes. A society ruled by representative democracy is founded on the principle of people putting their trust on a reasonable authority. Because a human cannot be informed and educated on every relevant social issue ever and still perform his functions in a society. A farm-worker who works 10 hours a day can't be bothered to do all the Climate Change research on the internet - he believes that he already paid his due to the scientists by giving them something to eat. The only things that can grab his attention are Al Gore on the evening news and pastor at his church. And you can't make all the farm-workers read Nature and Science - there will be no one left to tend the crops.

They don't need the detail but they need an overview. It's like when you vote at an election, you don't need to see spending projections to the penny, but you need an outline of what the various parties are proposing. But the pope isn't doing that, he's just saying "do it because I say so".

Even Al Gore on the evening news (well, Al Gore circa 2010) used to argue his case.

I'm afraid not. Dogma refers to an official or accepted principal laid down by an institution or authority, which in turn underpins a system of behaviour or belief.

A rational approach would be analyzing every specific case and checking if the sum of damage that society suffers from it outweights the profits gained. You choose to simply believe that EVERY case is harmful by default. That in itself is dogmatic and close-minded.

And once again you fail to address the point I made.

However, as you seem to be struggling with it, let me make my point clear. It isn't about a balance of outcomes alone. When you tell someone "don't think for yourself, think what I tell you to think, believe what I tell you to believe" regardless of whether what you are telling them is right or wrong, you are harming them. To do so not only robs people of self-determination, it leaves them horrendously vulnerable. Blindly following the words of another because of a belief in their infallibility has resulted in some of the worst crimes ever perpetrated against humanity. Religion is now the last bastion of the unquestionable, of this sickening, twisted idea of obedience to an infallible absolute. To exert such control over people makes them less, makes them slaves, and doing so, no matter the cause, is wrong.

 

[Cowabungaa]

No [http://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/abs/10.1175/2008BAMS2634.1]

Not a word about human factor.

Those three links were a response to you saying the website was lacking scientific credibility and was just being clickbait, which is sheer nonsense unless you'd like to call institutions as the Royal Netherlands Metereological Institute or the American Metereological Society, among many many other sources used in that website's articles, scientifically worthless. Not to prove the end-all-be-all of climate research.

And that's just statistics on the extreme temperature. Where's the human input?

Gee I wonder who's been putting all those extra greenhouses gases in the atmosphere? You're diving into these three small examples as if, again, they're the end-all-be-all of climate research. But they're not, and were not meant to be that either. You're overreacting.

And the behavior of electromagnetic waves and subatomic particles fits the models of the M-theory. Yet scientific community somehow find some reason in itself to question it rather strongly. Because jumping to conclusions helps nobody. I already said that human involvement is a completely possible factor for climate change. But however comforting is the thought of you already having All The Truth Needed - it is still to be proven or discarded. Simply embracing it at the current stage will easily lead to employment of absolutely inefficient methods to counter the effects, which will cost governments hundreds of billions of dollars with no measurable effect. This could ruin the authority of environmentalism for decades. Additional research on the matter of strong connection between the climate change and our industrial efforts is the preferred course of action if we are actually looking forward to control our climate.

Except that that's not what's happening with climate research, so that comparison is pointless. We do have all the 'truth', aka empirical evidence, needed to conclude that a rapid increase of greenhouse gases are causing rapid shifts in climate and that we're the ones who have been emitting those greenhouse gases.

That's all there is to it:
1: There's solid, scientific evidence that a rapid increase of greenhouse gases is the main cause (note the word "main") of the shifts in global climate that we've been noticing. Hell, we even agreed to that in previous posts.
2: We are the ones who put those greenhouse gases in the atmosphere since, roughly, the start of the Industrial Age. That's apparently where the problem lies for you, for some reason I can't fathom as measurements have shown that to be the case. Measurements that have been documented. Documents you can read yourself, documents I have given you examples of, and for the hell of it here's another. [http://www.pnas.org/content/104/47/18866.full] And that's just one for the past couple decades.

You speak of research that shows a strong connection between climate change and our industrial efforts and that's exactly what even those tiny examples of scientific publications referred to on that ugly-as-sin website show. And hell, there's a ton more out there you don't even have to look for to find. Here's one [http://www.pnas.org/content/106/6/1704.full] I found after five seconds of Google Scholar-ing, note the 49 references if you feel like having some more reading material. And here's another [http://www.grida.no/publications/other/ipcc_tar/?src=/climate/ipcc_tar/wg1/095.htm] to keep you busy.

That additional research linking human industrial activity and the emissions of greenhouse gases is what people already have been doing for decades now, hence why I have no idea why you're being so difficult about this. There's only a few possibilities. Either you doubt that greenhouse gases are the main cause of climate change, which would make our emissions relatively unimportant, or we're not the main cause of greenhouse gas emissions, which would mean there'd be some other cause of the emission increase. Neither of those options have been shown to be the case. Proof of that in scientific publications is really easy to find. And that's just on the web and not even diving into actual on-paper publications in scientific magazines you might find at your local university.

 

[Stupidity]

we have far more pressing concerns that the vatican is actively fighting against the attempt to help.
like say... I dunno... the population problem? still doing your condoms and birth control thing vatican?

Are Catholics a significant factor in global overpopulation? Brazil maybe? Most wealthy countries these days have negative population growth. Japan even seems determined to half their population each generation. India, Africa, Middle East seem to be the main force behind producing more population than they know what to do with.

OT
Yes, I agree with the pope.
I suggest we implement laws that turn electricity off at night and limit families to a single vehicle. Also all coal/nuclear/wind/hydro/solar/petrol power plants should be shut down as they all harm the environment.
I'm sure humanity will gladly begin a new Dark Age in the name of environmental consciousness.

Yes this is sarcasm and I apologize but I'm so tired of hearing about global warming and how terrible we and capitalism are.

Yes we should preserve nature and limit the damage we do to the environment.
No we do not live in a fantasy world where doing so does not have a direct cost to human life that many, if not most people will not be willing to pay.

I have boundless respect for people who fight to preserve wildlands or invent new cleaner technology, even the unsexy ones like coal power. They give me hope for a better tomorrow.
http://nextbigfuture.com/2015/06/future-hotter-and-more-efficient-coal.html

I have no respect for people who talk %&$* without any realistic plan or understanding of human nature.

 

[Muspelheim]

The Big Jesus C. Saviour-man himself could show up and ask us to stop bleeding the planet dry, and people would still be bending over backwards to avoid having to change anything...

There's more to it than climate change. Pollution, depleted soils, poisoned water sources, ecological collapse, cornerstone species' dying out, all of which are serious problems that will affect us all, sooner or later.

But by reducing it all to a question of "Climate Change, True or False?", it becomes another detached, pointless opinion-game, that achieves nothing whatsoever.

 

[Cowabungaa]

Heh, who missed the classes now?

Not me, and neither have the scientists who calculated our part in the rapid increase of greenhouse gases since the Industrial Revolution. I love how you quote all kinds of CO2 emittors. Yes, they emit Co2. Have they seen some kind of rapid growth since roughly the 19th century that correlates with the increase of greenhouse gases? Is there some incredibly rapid rise of oxidizing bacteria that correlates with the increase of greenhouse gases in the last two hundred years? Some kind of huge increase (which would be very interesting considering how we're in a new mass extinction event) of oxygen breathing organisms that correlates with the increase of greenhouse gases? A huge increase in volcanic activity that correlates with the increase of greenhouse gases? Show. Me. The. Data. Show me that they cause the recent shifting balance of CO2 concentration, show me that they work as hypothesis.

It also shows that you paid absolutely no attention to the sources I gave. How about you actually dive into that 14 chapter IPCC report and look at the actual data, instead of handily ignoring the support I give for my arguments? I have supported the hypothesis that human activity has caused a rapid growth of greenhouse emissions. You have ignored that data. Next you've given other explanations. Explanations for which you have given no data. You have given zero evidence that your (note: your, specifically, I'm not making a statement against all objections made to leading climate change theories) skepticism is in any way scientifically reasonable.

Also, on a smaller note, did you also notice that I clearly said main cause of climate change (I can link to the post if you want to), not only cause? Apparently not, because according to your post I throw 'everything else out of the window' to just look at anthropogenic causes.

But I'm going to try again here. Here's [http://hvo.wr.usgs.gov/volcanowatch/archive/2007/07_02_15.html] some data regarding one of your alternative hypothesis though it sadly doesn't exactly support it. Now here [http://www.realclimate.org/index.php?p=87] is a nice summary of why the data does support the theory that human activities are the main cause of the increase of greenhouse gas concentrations (a very, very important word in this context that we have not used before but should) over the past two hundred years. And here two; some nice little references for further reading, if you feel so inclined. A little quote from the second link:

Over the last 150 years, carbon dioxide (CO2) concentrations have risen from 280 to nearly 380 parts per million (ppm). The fact that this is due virtually entirely to human activities is so well established that one rarely sees it questioned. Yet it is quite reasonable to ask how we know this.

One way that we know that human activities are responsible for the increased CO2 is simply by looking at historical records of human activities. Since the industrial revolution, we have been burning fossil fuels and clearing and burning forested land at an unprecedented rate, and these processes convert organic carbon into CO2. Careful accounting of the amount of fossil fuel that has been extracted and combusted, and how much land clearing has occurred, shows that we have produced far more CO2 than now remains in the atmosphere. The roughly 500 billion metric tons of carbon we have produced is enough to have raised the atmospheric concentration of CO2 to nearly 500 ppm. The concentrations have not reached that level because the ocean and the terrestrial biosphere have the capacity to absorb some of the CO2 we produce.* However, it is the fact that we produce CO2 faster than the ocean and biosphere can absorb it that explains the observed increase.

Here's a quote from the IPCC report, check for sources if you so desire:

In more recent times, atmospheric CO2 concentration continued to fall after about 60 Myr BP and there is geochemical evidence that concentrations were <300 ppm by about 20 Myr BP (Pagani et al., 1999a; Pearson and Palmer, 1999, 2000; Figure 3.2e). Low CO2 concentrations may have been the stimulus that favoured the evolution of C4 plants, which increased greatly in abundance between 7 and 5 Myr BP (Cerling et al., 1993, 1997; Pagani et al., 1999b). Although contemporary CO2 concentrations were exceeded during earlier geological epochs, they are likely higher now than at any time during the past 20 million years.

And what's the variable that has stood the rigors of the scientific method? Our output. That's why we use that as an explanation. Multiple sources that I have given will also tell you that certain predictions made based on the hypothesis that the variable of our greenhouse gas output have been confirmed; the anthropogenic theory is the explanation we use because it works. That's how science works; make predictions, test them against empirical data, see if the prediction still holds up, rinse and repeat.

I don't even no how to respond to you anymore as providing an actual foundation for my arguments seems to be completely pointless. All you say is "nope" and repeat the misguided mantra of "correlation does not mean causation!" (You forget to put 'necessarily' between those two things, which is very important.) You provide no data, you provide no workable alternative, you provide no counter-examples and you simply deny all given sources instead of showing how they'd conflict with, or have no impact on, the given theory. You show zero incentive to actually learn about climate science, to actually learn about the data gathered. That's the sad thing here.

I'm all for skepticism, but your responses are nothing but short-sighted and in the end void of any actual support for what you claim. And now I have some school work to dive into as exams are still ongoing.

 

[Frankster]

For some reason the republican quote makes me lol.

Screw the survival of our planet, screw the survival of our entire species, no what we must REALLY be worried about is what if teh americans end up with the largest tax increase in history! D:

As we all know, we take our money when we are dead so only make sense that be our primary concern in all matters.

Better hope those climate change theories are all wrong and this was just a happy misunderstanding.

 

[BoogieManFL]

As George Carlin says, global warming and greenhouse gases are not damaging the environment. They are damaging the people. The Earth couldn't care less about what's happening - it's survived much worse. All of the damage is caused by humans and affects only humans. That's the only reason we care. The environment doesn't need saving. The people do.

Thing is, the damage we are causing will also affect so many other creatures. Sure the Earth itself will go on, but these changes if not fought will probably cause yet another large scale extinction event. There is a lot more than just Humans on the line here. We're fucking it up for everyone.

 

[catalyst8]

I just don't think any Current Global Climate Change is caused by Man.[...] I haven't seen any convincing proof that Current Climate Change is the result of Man's actions.

[...]I know this will please many Liberal Catholics (And Liberals in General) worldwide. Me? I'll try to be more Environmentally Friendly, but I'm still skeptical on Man-made Climate Change.

Then you don't accept science, the scientific method, or empirical evidence e.g. IPCC 2007 'it is a greater than a 90 percent certainty that emissions of heat-trapping gases from human activities have caused "most of the observed increase in globally averaged temperatures since the mid-20th century."' Here's another example which illustrates a 97% consensus http://climate.nasa.gov/scientific-consensus/

As for your use of the word 'liberal', are you by any chance a US American? I ask because as far as I'm aware only US Americans conflate liberal with Marxist, Marxist with socialist, socialist with communist, & communist with Stalinist. The use of the word as a pejorative confuses the rest of us in the post-Enlightenment world.

 

[Therumancer]

Okay, wow, there is some really bad information here.

For the sake of setting this straight "the pope is infallible" is supposed to be taken literally. The idea being that what he says is from on high and is the closest thing to a commandment directly from god. The idea here is that the pope is not going to tell you it's raining outside when it clearly isn't because well, that would be wrong, and by definition he would not do that. The Catholic church has not really pushed this point and has tried to soften it in recent years, but there have been some truly bloody wars fought over exactly this point. The Protestants and their various faiths (Baptists, etc..) largely came about in opposition to church policies and the fact that the Pope was basically declaring himself to be an infallible, divine, figure, which to many smacks of heresy. The Catholics pretty much tried to exterminate the protestants, the protestants fought back, and well shades of this conflict have been behind a lot of what has happened throughout history. What a lot of people don't "get" is that a big part of the battle between Ireland and England has largely come down to Catholics Vs. Protestants. What's more while there are Catholics in the US, and a good number of them, the Protestants tend to outnumber them, which is one of the things that has fueled tensions with our neighbors south of the border who tend to gravitate more towards the Catholic version of Christianity.

Another point that needs to be raised here of course is "who is the pope?". That question is not as straightforward as it might seem. What we're referring to as "The Catholic Church" and the man the world acknowledges as "The Pope" is simply the largest and wealthiest (by far) faction claiming the distinction of being the Catholic faith. Simply put Papal succession has been a mess over the centuries, and very un-divine in the way politics have gotten involved. The result is that you have had numerous claimants all claiming to be the rightful "Pope" following proper succession, which gets into the entire concept of Antipopes ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antipope ). The result being that some will claim the lack of infallibility on the part of the pope is proof that he is NOT the real Pope. Indeed it can also be claimed that there are no real popes and no real Catholic Church due to the right of succession being forever broken along with god's mortal voice in the world. Such things can get into conspiracy theories, like I'm sure you've all heard various versions of how the Catholic Church is actually being run by and covering for Satanists, and that the head of The Devil's armies on earth is none other than The Pope, who plays the role of the good guy in order to hide in plain sight. This of course ties into things like the real reason the church was protecting Pedophilles, etc...

The point I'm getting at is that it's a giant mess, and one shouldn't confuse current church propaganda with the claims of The Catholic Church in the past. Indeed the infallibility of the Pope and inherent divinity of his words and actions is a big part of how the church has justified some of the biggest power grabs in history, the basic idea that being a divine personage The Pope's word could turn a King's own men against him since he is by definition unquestionable.

That said I almost laughed out loud when I read this article, especially the point about being against Capitalism and the statements against the powerful and political. No offense by the Catholic Church has no right to be lecturing anyone about gathering treasure, playing politics, or asserting undo influence against what "needs to be done" as if the church disagrees with you it's always quick to bring it's force to bear and that includes a massive amount of both political pull and financial might.

Now, despite how this sounds, don't get me wrong, I'm not Catholic (I'm Christian in a very general sense) but I do respect them and feel that have done a lot of good works and I respect The Pope and his position, despite how it might seem, I feel most Popes nowadays are very holy men and generally think they are trying to do the right thing. That said there is a point at which your laying it on a bit thick. I'm not convinced about global warming myself as I've read things from both sides that are interesting but nothing has really brought me firmly into one camp or another. If The Pope believes Global Warming is man made, he's welcome to that position and of course I expect him to use his influence in that direction... however when he starts going off about capitalism and politics, he's being a bit of a hypocrite in my opinion, to me while The Pope can be taken seriously for having an opinion on many things, that is not one of them, especially when it's conveyed without any sense of irony what so ever.

It's sort of like how given some comments about immigration I've heard over the years coming from Catholics, especially given how many of them there are south of the border, my basic attitude is the US is already 18 trillion dollars in debt, and I don't exactly see The Pope inviting them all to crash in Rome by the hundreds of millions and setting up transport to bring them there. I mean at least four immigrant families could probably live in his hat alone (J/K).


In short I respect the Catholics despite how it sounds, but really, I think they need to be a bit more honest, this Pope in particular seems to want to try and say all the right things, and while well intentioned, he doesn't seem to realize exactly who he is speaking for at times. Maybe after a thousand years of gradual changes I could take Pope Francis seriously, but right now it's ridiculous for a man controlling what is probably one of the biggest treasuries in the world (even if he doesn't admit it, or under reports it) and plays politics for his own agendas as has popes before him, to be speaking out against Capitalism and politicians.

 

[MCerberus]

Dat list

That's all evidences of climate change. Nobody denies that one. Yet not a single point from this list links the climate change to human involvement. One could actually notice that before posting.

I'd just like to point out that various greenhouse gasses having many of these effects are proven causal, and it's proven that humanity is the cause of these increased levels.

And if you don't think humans can have extreme effects on the environment, there's a country-sized hunk of death plastic floating in the ocean right now.

 

[Rylot]

Climate change debate here in the states seems to boil down to two possibilities: either almost every single scientist is lying so they can keep pretending to study the climate change and not lose research funding because that's how science works, once a discovery in a field is made all the scientist just pack up and go home and would never think about the environment and all the myriad ways it changes continuously ever again and of course no one would ever fund research into anything relating to the environment again, just nothing more to see there. Not to mention the incentive to prove other scientists wrong and increase your own reputation is a driving force in science.

Or some politicians are lying to keep their constituents happy and uphold the status quo.

 

[Maze1125]

stuff

http://www.skepticalscience.com/climate-models-intermediate.htm

Key quote:

Models don't need to be exact in every respect to give us an accurate overall trend and its major effects - and we have that now. If you knew there were a 90% chance you'd be in a car crash, you wouldn't get in the car (or at the very least, you'd wear a seatbelt). The IPCC concludes, with a greater than 90% probability, that humans are causing global warming. To wait for 100% certainty before acting is recklessly irresponsible.