Book handed out at Catholic Churches warns of ‘seven social sins’ including ‘polluting the environment’

by Cliff Kincaid

Excerpt:

Meanwhile, factions of the U.S. Catholic Church and some Protestants are brainwashing church members into accepting the non-Christian idea that religious faith involves a belief in an Earth Spirit.

A so-called “Little White Book” was handed out in a number of American Catholic churches on April 16, supposedly to offer reflections based on the Resurrection narrative of the Gospel of Mark. Instead, the book included a number of Marxist sermonettes, such as that the “seven social sins” include “polluting the environment; contributing to widening the divide between rich and poor; excessive wealth; and creating poverty.”

Inside the booklet, Catholics were also told to celebrate “Earth Day” on April 22, practice the “Small is Beautiful” philosophy, and take their cues from Native Americans who “believe in the Great Spirit.”

The “Little White Book,” a publication of the Catholic Diocese of Saginaw, Michigan, is one in a series of booklets, with three million currently in circulation.

The Catholic Diocese of Saginaw created the original “Little Black Book” on the Lenten season, followed by the “Little White Book.” The series is the brainchild of notorious liberal and “gay-friendly” Bishop Kenneth E. Untener.

Exact figures were not available on how many “Little White Books” were distributed in Catholic churches on April 16. But it appears that the church is moving toward the idea of an “Environmental Sabbath,” long popularized by the United Nations. A brochure about the project encouraged children to hold hands around a tree and meditate.

The “Little White Book” highlights the importance of the environmental encyclical “Laudato Si: On Care for our Common Home,” released by the Vatican under the name of Pope Francis and demanding 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.”

The “Little White Book” also promotes the work of Fr. Thomas Berry, a New Age figure described as “a major figure in the environmental movement.”

Berry called himself a “geologian,” rather than theologian, and was president of the American Teilhard Association, named after the mystical Jesuit philosopher Teilhard de Chardin. Berry’s books included Evening Thoughts: Reflecting on Earth as Sacred Community, and he is buried at Green Mountain Monastery in Greensboro, Vermont.…

Unusual Cold Wave & Heavy Snows Hit Europe

Lower atmosphere (850 mb, ~5000 feet) temperature anomaly forecast map for tonight across Europe by the 00Z Euro model; map courtesy tropicaltidbits.com

Lower atmosphere (850 mb, ~5000 feet) temperature anomaly forecast map for tonight across Europe by the 00Z Euro model; map courtesy tropicaltidbits.com

Overview
A cold wave has hit Europe and it looks like much of the continent will stay well below normal right through the rest of the month of April.  In addition to the unusual cold, heavy snow accumulations are likely over the next ten days in many higher elevation locations (e.g., Alps) and accumulating snow is probable as far south as southern Italy and Greece.

Lower atmosphere (850 mb, ~5000 feet) temperature anomaly forecast map for Sunday night, April 23rd across Europe by the 00Z Euro model; map courtesy tropicaltidbits.com

Lower atmosphere (850 mb, ~5000 feet) temperature anomaly forecast map for Sunday night, April 23rd across Europe by the 00Z Euro model; map courtesy tropicaltidbits.com

Details
Much of Europe is currently experiencing temperatures that are some 10-15 degrees (C) below normal for this time of year and it looks like there will be two or three additional cold air outbreaks during the next ten days or so.  The temperature anomaly maps from last night’s 00Z European model for the lower atmosphere (850 millibars) suggest reinforcing cold air outbreaks will prevent any sustained return to normalcy for Europe in the near term. Well below normal temperatures are predicted throughout Europe not only for tonight, but also late in the upcoming weekend with the next cold air outbreak, and then again late next week with yet another cold blast.

Lower atmosphere (~5000 feet) temperature anomaly forecast map for Thursday night, April 27th across Europe by the 00Z Euro model; map courtesy tropicaltidbits.com

Lower atmosphere (~5000 feet) temperature anomaly forecast map for Thursday night, April 27th across Europe by the 00Z Euro model; map courtesy tropicaltidbits.com

In addition to the cold, snow will accumulate to substantial levels in parts of the Alps where skiing will be quite good going well into the month of May. The 00Z GFS ten-day total snowfall map (below) for Europe has more than two feet of snow in some of the higher elevation locations of central Europe and accumulating snow as far south as southern Italy and Greece.

00Z GFS total snowfall map for the next ten-days across Europe; map courtesy tropicaltidbits.com, NOAA/EMC

00Z GFS total snowfall map for the next ten-days across Europe; map courtesy tropicaltidbits.com, NOAA/EMC

On occasion, the weather pattern in Europe can be a signal for upcoming weather conditions in the eastern US and while there are cold air outbreaks headed this way over the next couple of weeks, it does not look like they will be quite as widespread or sustained compared to what Europe is experiencing.

Meteorologist Paul Dorian
Vencore, Inc.

President Trump Should Run, Not Walk, Away From The Paris Climate Treaty

The Paris Climate Treaty is a heat-seeking missile aimed solely at American jobs that will do nothing to reduce global warming. Why would we deploy it?

 

By Joseph Bast

APRIL 18, 2017

Top officials in the Trump administration apparently are debating whether to withdraw from the Paris Climate Treaty, an agreement negotiated in the waning years of the Obama administration that would commit the United States to reducing its greenhouse gas emissions by 26 to 28 percent relative to 2005 levels by the year 2025.

The Heartland Institute has been studying climate change for nearly two decades. Our advice to the Trump administration is simple: Run, don’t walk, away from the Paris Climate Treaty! Here are our reasons for this recommendation. Sources for our statements are readily found here and here.

There Is No Scientific Basis for the Paris Climate Treaty

The Paris Climate Treaty is supposedly an attempt to keep global temperatures from increasing 2 degrees C, but this objective is based on political science, not climate science.

The goal is an arbitrary political target based on climate activists’ demands for a number, no matter how dubious or fake, to use in their fundraising letters and to appear on their signs at protests. There is no scientific evidence suggesting a warming of 1.9 degrees C is safe while 2.1 degrees C is not safe.

Climate models that forecast temperature increases of more than 1 or 2 degrees during the next century are not scientific. They flunk the objective requirements of scientific forecasting. They are educated guesses by activists whose credibility and livelihood depend on showing ever-increasing certainty of impending doom, even as their data point in the opposite direction.

Climate models have greatly overestimated warming over the past two decades. The models have not matched observed temperatures from satellites, the only truly global and accurate way we have of measuring Earth’s temperature. Why should we imagine their forecasts of climate conditions 100 years from now and beyond are accurate?…

Venezuela Blames ‘Climate Change’ after Its Troops Invade Colombia – Border blurred by ‘constantly changing direction of a river’

TODAY VENEZUELA – Venezuela tried to downplay its illegal entry of troops into Colombia this week by claiming the constantly changing direction of a river near the border accidentally led the soldiers beyond their jurisdiction.

Foreign Minister Delcy Rodriguez said the Venezuelan soldiers entered Colombia’s eastern department of Arauca as a result of the Arauca River, which she said is constantly changing its flow and direction.

Memo To Trump: Run, Don’t Walk, From The Destructive UN Paris Climate Treaty

IBD COMMENTARY

Memo To Trump: Run, Don’t Walk, From The Destructive Paris Climate Treaty

Dr. James Hansen, the former head of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies and an advocate for harsh measures to fight climate change, called the Paris Climate Treaty “a fraud, really, a fake.” (AP)

Donald Trump met with advisors and Cabinet members Tuesday to decide whether to take the U.S. out of the Paris Climate Treaty — a deal that was sold to the public based on the idea it would lessen the threat of global warming. In fact, it’s really nothing more than an attempt by other, less-well-to-do nations to shame the U.S. into dismantling its economy and its standard of living.

Walking away from the sham treaty shouldn’t be a hard decision.

Trump promised several times to exit the Paris treaty during his presidential campaign. He should keep his promise.

It was a bad idea from the beginning, a bogus climate deal intended to take billions of dollars from wealthy nations and give them to developing nations, many of which lack even basic political or human rights.

President Obama agreed to the deal, but never presented it as a treaty to the Senate for ratification, as the law requires. Instead, in 2016 he pretended it wasn’t a treaty and started using executive orders to put the agreement into effect unilaterally.

This wasn’t just some political maneuver. It was a brazen attempt by Obama to put the U.S. economy under the control of other nations without the input of U.S. citizens and their representatives in Congress — a clear violation of our Constitution.

The U.S. should walk away — quickly, and without hesitation — from this awful climate deal, which would sock Americans with hundreds of billions of dollars in lost output and millions of lost jobs in exchange for minuscule, impossible-to-measure cuts in carbon-dioxide output.

No doubt, Trump will get an earful from climate-change zealots about being a science “denier.” But those who say such foolish things are not speaking in the interest of science; they’re mainly media types and hyper-politicized scientists who are hooked on government funding for their global warming crusade.

The 184-nation Paris deal was ridiculous from the very beginning.

Instead of CO2 cuts that would lead to a 2-degree-centigrade rise in expected temperatures from preindustrial levels during this century, radical environmental groups pushed the assembled

Why Big Oil wants Trump to stay in UN climate deal – Restrictions on emissions favor natural gas

by Matt Egan

Excerpt:

A BP (BP) spokesman told CNNMoney that it “welcomed the Paris agreement when it was signed, and we continue to support it…

“We believe it’s possible to provide the energy the world needs while also addressing the climate challenge,” BP said.

Chevron (CVX) told CNNMoney it “supports continuing with” the Paris deal because it “offers a first step towards a global framework.”

Exxon (XOM), the biggest US oil company that Tillerson used to lead, sent a letter to the White House last month hailing the Paris agreement as an “effective framework for addressing the risks of climate change.”

A Shell (RDSA) spokesman confirmed that the energy giant remains “strongly in favor” of the Paris deal.

At first glance, it might seem surprising to hear that Big Oil isn’t seizing on the shifting political environment to poke holes in a deal that undermines fossil fuels like crude oil.

After all, Trump himself has called climate change a “hoax” and blasted COP21 as a “bad deal” for the U.S. (Trump later told The New York Times he has an “open mind” about the agreement).

But these traditional energy companies have a vested financial interest in the Paris deal. That’s because COP21’s crack down on carbon emissions favors natural gas, which emits much less pollution than coal.

While Exxon, BP and Shell are primarily identified as oil companies, they are actually diversified energy firms that rely heavily on natural gas to make money.

For instance, 42% of Exxon’s total daily production last quarter was actually in natural gas, according to FactSet. BP and Shell also lean on natural gas for a large chunk of their output.

“These companies view natural gas as a key growth area going forward for them. It just makes sense for them to be at the table,” said Brian Youngberg, senior energy analyst at Edward Jones.

Natural gas production has soared over the past decade, thanks to the abundance of shale gas in North America.

And now there’s the added benefit that governments are cracking down on carbon emissions.

BP’s statement mentioned its commitment to “reducing emissions in the power sector by producing and marketing natural gas.”…

STUDY: Temperature Data Isn’t Accurate Enough To Find The Cause Of The ‘Hiatus’ In Global Warming

By MICHAEL BASTASCH

New research found there was, in fact, a nearly 15-year “hiatus” in global warming in the early part of the 21st Century, suggesting it could have been caused by natural variability in the atmosphere’s energy balance.

What’s more is climate scientists with Germany’s Max Planck Institute found there’s too much uncertainty in observational data to determine the true cause of the “hiatus” in warming.

Scientists argue that “unless the uncertainty of observational estimates can be considerably reduced, the true origin of the recent hiatus may never be determined.”

“That’s an important sentence, because it demonstrates that despite many claims to the contrary, CO2 induced forcing of the planetary temperature is not the control knob, and natural variability remains in force,” veteran meteorologist Anthony Watts wrote of the Max Planck study on his blog Watts Up With That.

Max Planck scientists found hiatuses in global warming can be caused by relatively small changes in ocean energy balance, which can originate from the top of the atmosphere or the ocean.

“This is the true dilemma at the heart of the hiatus debate: the variability in ocean heat content alone has no power to explain the hiatus, and the measure that can—the surface-layer flux divergence—is dwarfed by observational uncertainty,” researchers wrote in their study, led by scientist Christopher Hedemann.

For years, scientists have debated the existence of the “hiatus” in global warming — a period from 1998 to 2012 with little to no statistically significant warming.…

CEI: Mr. President: Stop the Paris Climate Treaty – Urges Public to Sign the Petition

Sign the Petition

To President Donald J. Trump:

Don’t listen to the Swamp. Please keep your campaign promise to withdraw the United States from the U.N. Paris Climate Treaty and send it to the Senate for a vote.

Share on Facebook and Twitter


President Trump should keep his promise to withdraw from the Paris Climate Treaty. The Paris treaty is a key part of President Obama’s war on America’s most affordable and abundant energy—coal, oil, and natural gas.

But the Washington Swamp and the United Nations establishment are fighting hard to change President Trump’s mind. These are not the people who voted to change the direction of the country.

The Paris Climate Treaty requires regulations that will force Americans to pay more and more for energy. Higher energy costs hurt hardworking American families, destroy jobs, and put our nation at a competitive disadvantage.

The Paris Agreement is a treaty. According to the Constitution, treaties require a two-thirds supermajority vote by the U.S. Senate.

The Paris Climate Treaty process was dishonest and unconstitutional. Congress has voted repeatedly against energy-rationing climate legislation time and again. A Senate vote against ratification will re-affirm this position.

Sign the Petition

White House Officials Split On Whether Trump Should Pull Out Of Paris Climate Deal

Senior administration officials are split down the middle over whether the president should keep or break his campaign promise to pull the United States out of the Paris climate deal.

Though Donald Trump’s top policy advisers were scheduled to meet Tuesday afternoon to determine a path forward, the meeting was canceled because of “scheduling conflicts,” a White House official has confirmed. A new date for the meeting — which included figures like Jared Kushner, Steve Bannon and Rex Tillerson — has not been set yet.

(Photo: Shawn Thew-Pool/Getty Images)

Though it’s been reported that staffers who are in favor of keeping Trump’s promise — and therefore pulling out of the climate accord reached last year in Paris — are out numbered, a source told the Daily Caller that it is evenly split.

The source added that Energy Secretary Rick Perry, considered by some to be a climate skeptic, has softened his stance.

(Photo: MANDEL NGAN/AFP/Getty Images)

As a candidate, Trump promised to cancel the agreement within his first 100 days in office.

“We’re going to cancel the Paris Climate Agreement and stop all payments of U.S. tax dollars to U.N. global warming programs,” a statement that is still published on his website reads.…