Pope Francis and Global Warming

Pope Francis has so far been silent on global warming/climate change.

The church of global warming has many supporters in the Catholic Church. When Pope Francis was elected in March they all had great expectations. Some of the most fanatic warmists have not abstained from putting words into the Pope's mouth in order to prove that he is a fellow warmist :

On 31 March 2013 Francis used his first Easter homily to make a plea for peace throughout the world, specifically mentioning the Middle-East, Africa, and North and South Korea.^[212] He also spoke out against those who give in to "easy gain" in a world filled with greed, and made a plea for humanity to become a better guardian of creation by protecting the environment

The pope’s homily was striking for its repeated references to environmental protection, highlighting what is likely to be a central theme of his papacy and setting up the 76-year-old pope as a leading activist against climate change.

Source


Let’s hope that Pope Francis follows in his predecessor's footsteps and adopts an aggressive stance on fighting climate change around the world, a growing scourge on the world’s poor that the UN estimates is killing 1,000 children a day and costing the global economy $1.2 trillion a year. That's a toll that will rise to unfathomable levels if we don’t cut our addition to dirty fuels.

Source


In the recently published biography, Pope Francis: Untying the Knots, Paul Vallely notes that the Pope is planning a major encyclical on environmental matters. In a move which will drive conservatives to distraction, Pope Francis has asked Leonardo Boff to send him his writings on eco-theology as part of his preparation. Boff was a major figure in the liberation theology movement and his writings were closely scrutinised by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. Indeed his book, Church: Charism and Power was the subject of a notification from the Congregation.

In an interview in 2010 Boff noted:

There are regions in the world that have changed so much that they've become uninhabitable. That is why there are 60 million displaced persons in Africa and Southeast Asia, which are the most affected by climate change and which emit less carbon. If we don't stop it, in the next five to seven years there will be as many as 100 million climate refugees, and that is going to create political problems.

It will not be difficult for the Pope to connect this issue with his own very public concerns on the plight of refugees.

Cardinal Oscar Rodriguez de Maradiaga confirmed during a recent visit to Australia that Pope Francis is indeed planning a document on the environment. The Cardinal is chair of the group of eight cardinals chosen by Francis to advise him, and is a strong proponent of action on climate change. A strong and clear statement from Francis on climate change will be heard all around the world. The Pope has proven himself an able and direct communicator and a document from him will be difficult for our political leaders to ignore.

Source

 

 

Don’t take our word for it. Ask the pope. Or, ask the members of the Social Concerns Team at St. Peter Catholic Church in Huron, where a Nov. 12 program will explore the issue.

The program is “Melting Ice, Mending Creation: A Catholic Approach to Climate Change.”

“The pope, Pope Francis, is behind this,” said Karen Giaco, a member of the Social Concerns Team at the church.    The pope has asked Catholic churches to educate as many people as possible about the effects of everyone’s carbon footprint on the planet, Giaco said.

“The biggest part of this is that the poor and the most vulnerable are going to be affected the hardest,” she said. “Everybody needs to make a change.”

Source

An organisation calling itself the Catholic Coalition on Climate Change, which is running the global warming propaganda website Catholic Climate Covenant, has published quotes on climate change by Pope Francis' predecessor. The Catholic Climate Covenant also has a page with Quotes from Pope Francis on Creation/Environment.

It is worth noting that the words climate change or global warming are nowhere to be found among the quotes. Neither do any of the catholic or other global warming fanatics, who expect to Pope to be one of them, produce any evidence that Pope Francis actually has used the words climate change or global warming in his speeches or writings. (Please correct me, if I am wrong on this).

Pope Francis is clearly worried about environmental questions. But that is not the same thing as being a firm believer in human induced global warming. It is of course possible that the Pope will turn out to join the AGW believers in his forthcoming encyclical on environmental matters. But so far he has not done it, based on what he has said and written.

Robert Bryce: "Wind Turbines Are Climate-Change Scarecrows"

Robert Bryce, writing in the National Review Online, claims that wind turbines are nothing but climate change scarecrows. And he is of course right:

Global energy use has nearly doubled since 1982, according to the BP Statistical Review of World Energy. As for non-hydro renewable energy, despite decades of hefty subsidies and in some cases, mandates, it now provides about 2 percent of the 250 million barrels of oil-equivalent energy (from all sources) that is being consumed globally every day.
The hard truth is that renewable energy cannot even keep pace with soaring global energy demand, much less replace significant quantities of hydrocarbons. That’s not an opinion. It’s basic math.
Last year, all of the wind turbines on the planet provided about 2.4 million barrels of oil equivalent per day to the global economy. That sounds like a lot until you compare wind’s contribution with that of the world’s fastest-growing source of energy: coal. In 2012, global coal use increased by about 2 million barrels of oil equivalent per day. Thus, just to keep pace with the growth in coal usage, we’d have to nearly replicate the entire global fleet of wind turbines — some 285,000 megawatts of capacity — and we’d have to do so every year. --

Now let’s look at carbon dioxide emissions. In 2012, the American Wind Energy Association claims, wind energy reduced U.S. carbon dioxide emissions by 80 million tons. Again, that sounds significant. But consider this: Last year, global emissions of that gas totaled 34.5 billion tons. Thus, the 60,000 megawatts of U.S. wind-generation capacity reduced global carbon dioxide emissions by about two-tenths of 1 percent.
To make the point even clearer, let’s look at the history of carbon dioxide emissions. Since 1982, global carbon dioxide emissions have been increasing by an average of about 500 million tons per year.
If we take the American Wind Energy Association’s claim that 60,000 megawatts of wind-energy capacity can reduce carbon dioxide emissions by about 80 million tons per year, then simple math shows that if we wanted to stop the growth in global carbon dioxide emissions by using wind energy alone, we would have to install about 375,000 megawatts of new wind-energy capacity every year. If we assume each turbine has a capacity of two megawatts, that would mean installing 187,500 wind turbines every year, or nearly 500 every day.--

Over the past few years, the U.S. and other countries have been subsidizing the paving of vast areas of the countryside with 500-foot-high bird- and bat-killing whirligigs that are nothing more than climate talismans. Wind turbines are not going to stop changes in the earth’s climate. Instead, they are token gestures — giant steel scarecrows — that are deceiving the public into thinking that we as a society are doing something to avert the possibility of catastrophic climate change.

Weeks of talks ended this morning: Germany to have a social democratic government led by Angela Merkel

Flashback September 25:

Last Sunday's German election was a victory for Angela Merkel's (formally) conservative CDU/CSU. However, Dorothea Siems, writing in the conservative German Daily Die Welt discloses the real result of the election:  The "social democratization" of the German Bundestag.  The fact that the conservative business friendly wing has virtually disappeared from the CDU means, according to Die Welt, that there will be three social democratic parties and a socialist party in the German parliament.

Die Welt is of course on the spot. Angela Merkel is, and has never been, a real conservative. She and finance minister Wolfgang Schäuble will be more than happy to include the second largest social democratic party, the SDP, in the next cabinet, although it will all be preceded by a performance of political theatre in order to give the impression of difficult negotiations. (Of course there is a certain element of competition between the leaders of the two "social democratic" parties)

PS
There are still a number of  real conservatives in the Bavarian sister party CSU, but their influence on the policies pursued by Merkel's "social democrats" will be minimal.

Today German media report that political theatre is (almost) over:

Weeks of talks ended early Wednesday morning with a contract between Angela Merkel's conservatives and the center-left Social Democrats to form Germany's next government. The deal still faces a difficult vote by all SPD members in December.

After five weeks of talks and 17-hour, all night negotiations, the parties seeking to form the next German government reached an agreement early Wednesday, with Angela Merkel poised to begin a third term as chancellor. Merkel's conservative Christian Democratic Union (CDU), its Bavarian sister party, the Christian Social Union (CSU), and center-left Social Democrats (SPD) agreed on the language of a contract stipulating the policies they would pursue over the next four years. The heads of all three parties signed the 185-page agreement Wednesday morning.

PS

Isn't funny that German media still describe Angela Merkel's CDU as "conservative", in spite of the fact the party has not been conservative for decades ...

 

"Distinguished" French professor: French National Front and Dutch Freedom Party "maintain the anti-humanist, cynical, and racist worldview of their predecessors in the 1930's"

The academic world is full of people who think that their fine titles gives them the right to denigrate and belittle us "ordinary" citizens. One such academic is Dominique Moisi, Senior Adviser at the French Institute for International Affairs (IFRI), professor at L'Institut d’études politiques de Paris and currently guest professor at Kings College, London.

The professor does not like the alliance that the French National Front and the Dutch Freedom Party have formed ahead of the European Parliament elections in May 2014. Of course M. Moisi has the right to criticize the alliance, but he should stop slandering the two parties and the vast majority of their supporters:

Likewise, though Europe’s populists use their opposition to “Brussels” as a rallying flag, their ideology retains the atavism that motivated their forebears. Today’s far-right forces may be more anti-Muslim than anti-Semitic – Wilders may even be sincerely pro-Israel – but they maintain the anti-humanist, cynical, and racist worldview of their predecessors in the 1930’s.

The twilight of Germany's solar panel industry: Loss making Solarworld buys Bosch's loss making solar production unit

One by one, German solar panel manufacturers disappear, either by filing for insolvency - like former heavyweights Q-Cells, Solon and Conergy - or by hopelessly trying to get a new lease of life through merging.

Today German engineering and electronics company Bosch confirmed that it has sold its solar panel production to the Bonn based Solarworld after loosing 2.4 billion euros ($3.23 billion).

Congratulations to Boss. However, the 800 employees at the company's solar cell production unit and module facility in Arnstadt in the eastern German state of Thuringia have few reasons to celebrate. The future of their new employer, with production facilities both in Germany and the US (Hillsboro, Oregon) is hanging in the balance.

Solarworld lost 60,2 million euros and its volume of sales dropped 25% during the first nine months of this year. It is highly questionable that the acquisition of another loss making solar panel company will prevent Solarworld from sharing the same fate as so many of the other German solar giants.

The blind leading the blind is usually not a winning formula ...

PS

One should not forget that that all these solar bankruptcies and crisis are a result of Angela Merkel's failed energy transition policy. Without the promise of huge subsidies - which now are not high enough to stave off Chinese and other competitors - these failed companies would not have been founded ...

Putin and the Pope

"The brother shall not acquire anything as their own, neither a house nor a place nor anything at all." (St. Francis of Assisi)

Pope Francis, who chose to be called after St. Francis of Assisi, "the man of poverty", today received Russia's ruler Vladimir Putin, who had flown to Rome with a delegation of 11 ministers and countless delegates.

The Vatican did not offer any comments after the meeting that lasted 35 minutes.

One can only hope that the Pope chose to remind Putin - "who has at his disposal 20 lavish state villas and palaces, four yachts, a fleet of more than 40 aircraft, 15 helicopters, phalanxes of cars, a collection of luxury wristwatches worth about $700,000, and an alleged personal fortune that may amount to billions of dollars" - about his recent visit to Assisi, where he appealed to Christians worldwide to divest themselves of worldliness, which leads to “vanity, arrogance and pride,” because “it is bad for us”.

PS

At least one can be certain that Pope Francis did not call Vladimir Putin's long rule a "miracle of God", as the head of the Russian Orthodox church, Patriarch Kirill, did last year.

How the European Union bribed the group of 48 Least Developed Countries to support the Warsaw COP 19 deal

UK Climate Change Secretary Ed Davey on the EU
bribes to the group of 48 Least Developed Countries:
"UK and EU achieved our aims, building alliances with our friends across the world"
 

The European Union has been celebrating the empty deal reached at the UN global warming "summit" COP 19 in Warsaw. UK Energy and Climate Change Secretary Ed Davey was cheerleading the European "success":

 "All nations have now agreed to start their homework to prepare for a global climate change deal in 2015. The world now has a work programme, with timetables. While the long negotiations in Poland showed there are many tough talks ahead of us, the determined diplomacy of the UK and EU achieved our aims, building alliances with our friends across the world."

(Wow, "a work programme, with timetables"!)

The reality behind this European "success story" is this: The European Union as a matter of fact bribed the group of 48 Least Developed Countries, which had come to the conference with demands for unlimited "loss and damage" claims.

When the group of 48 realized that their demands would be ignored, they settled for the next best thing - new promises of funding from their traditional paymasters in the European Union:

The European Union and its Member States – which together are the biggest donor of Official Development Assistance and the leading provider of climate finance to developing countries - showed in Warsaw that they are delivering on climate finance and will continue to do so in the future.

Last year the EU and a number of Member States announced voluntary contributions totalling around €5.5 billion, and a recent assessment shows they are on track to deliver this in 2013. In Warsaw the EU and several Member States announced new climate finance for 2014. The indicative contributions to developing countries are expected to be at least at the same level as in 2013. In particular, EU Member States have contributed well over half of a US $100 million addition to the Adaptation Fund requested by developing countries.

The European "trick" (Der Spiegel) worked - the group of 48 Least Developed Countries switched sides, making the empty deal in Warsaw possible. But how long will European taxpayers - struggling with low or no growth, high unemployment and constantly rising energy prices - be prepared accept this madness?

PS

This is what EU taxpayers can look forward to, unless Connie Hedegaard and her colleagues in Brussels are stopped:

At least 20% of the entire European Union budget for 2014-2020 will be spent on climate-related projects and policies, following the European Parliament's approval today of the 2014-2020 EU budget. The 20% commitment triples the current share and could yield as much as €180 billion in climate spending in all major EU policy areas over the seven-year period.
The EU’s development policy will contribute to achieving the 20% overall commitment, with an estimated €1.7bn for climate spending in developing countries in 2014-2015 alone. This is on top of climate finance from individual EU Member States. This budget marks a major step forward in transforming Europe into a clean and competitive low-carbon economy and helping developing countries adapt to the impacts of climate change.