WaPo declares Pope failed!? ‘The pope asked Congress to do one specific thing: Address climate change. It won’t’

 

The last time Congress considered major legislation aimed at curtailing the greenhouse gas emissions that contribute to the warming climate was in President Obama’s first year in office. The proposal was a “cap and trade” bill that would have set limits on how much heavy carbon dioxide producers could emit and created a marketplace on which allowances for excess production could be traded. Your coal plant is producing more CO2 than it’s supposed to? Buy credits from a plant that is producing less than it’s allowed. The idea would set an overall amount of pollution — and provide market-based rewards for producing less. It’s a system similar to what was implemented to curtail acid rain under the administration of George H. W. Bush.

Thanks to a combination of the faltering economy, bad political choices and Republican opposition, the bill passed the House only to be abandoned in the (then-Democratic) Senate. In short order, the fight on Capitol Hill became about health care, and the topic faded.

 

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Warmists lament: ‘Did Pope Soften His Climate Message for Congress?’ ‘Message today is much softer, much less direct’

In a draft of the pope’s speech to Congress this morning lays out a considerably softer message on climate. He cites his landmark encyclical on climate, Laudato Si, but he doesn’t use the phrase “climate change” at all:

It goes without saying that part of this great effort is the creation and distribution of wealth. The right use of natural resources, the proper application of technology and the harnessing of the spirit of enterprise are essential elements of an economy which seeks to be modern, inclusive and sustainable. “Business is a noble vocation, directed to producing wealth and improving the world. It can be a fruitful source of prosperity for the area in which it operates, especially if it sees the creation of jobs as an essential part of its service to the common good” (Laudato Si’, 129). This common good also includes the earth, a central theme of the encyclical which I recently wrote in order to “enter into dialogue with all people about our common home” (ibid., 3). “We need a conversation which includes everyone, since the environmental challenge we are undergoing, and its human roots, concern and affect us all” (ibid., 14).

In Laudato Si’, I call for a courageous and responsible effort to “redirect our steps” (ibid., 61), and to avert the most serious effects of the environmental deterioration caused by human activity. I am convinced that we can make a difference and I have no doubt that the United States – and this Congress – have an important role to play. Now is the time for courageous actions and strategies, aimed at implementing a “culture of care” (ibid., 231) and “an integrated approach to combating poverty, restoring dignity to the excluded, and at the same time protecting nature” (ibid., 139). “We have the freedom needed to limit and direct technology” (ibid., 112); “to devise intelligent ways of… developing and limiting our power” (ibid., 78); and to put technology “at the service of another type of progress, one which is healthier, more human, more social, more integral” (ibid., 112). In this regard, I am confident that America’s outstanding academic and research institutions can make a vital contribution in the years ahead.…

Pope’s climate push is ‘raving nonsense’ without population control, says Paul Ehrlich

Those thrilled by the pope’s intervention on climate change – and Ehrlich counts himself among them – were troubled by Francis’s refusal to countenance the need to limit population, the scientist said. “It is crystal clear. No one concerned with the state of the planet and the state of the global economy can avoid dealing with population. It is the elephant in the room,” he said.

Ehrlich became a household name in the US nearly 50 years ago for warning of a global catastrophe because of population growth – a scenario he later conceded did not entirely materialise.…

Special Report: ‘Unholy Alliance’ – Exposing The Radicals Advising Pope Francis on Climate

(Also see: The Climate Skeptic’s Guide To Pope Francis’ U.S. Visit: Talking Points About The Pope & Global Warming)

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CLIMATE DEPOT SPECIAL REPORT 

The Vatican’s Advisors: An Unholy Alliance with the UN Global Warming Agenda

Full PDF Report Available Here:

In the preparation and promotion of its widely touted encyclical, Laudato Si: On Care for Our Common Home, the Vatican relied on advisors who can only be described as the most extreme elements in the global warming debate.  These climate advisors are so far out of the mainstream they even make some of their fellow climate activists cringe. Many of these advisors oppose individual freedom and market economics and stand against traditional family values.

The Vatican and Pope Francis did not allow dissent or alternative perspectives to be heard during the creation and promotion of the encyclical. The Vatican only listened to activist voices within the climate movement.

Even more startling, many of the Vatican’s key climate advisors have promoted policies directly at odds with Catholic doctrine and beliefs. The proceedings of the Vatican climate workshop included activists like Naomi Oreskes, Peter Wadhams, Hans Joachim Schellnhuber, and UN advisor Jeffrey Sachs.

Pope Francis’ advisors, and the UN climate agenda he is aligning himself with, are strong supporters of development restrictions, contraceptives, population control, and abortion.  Despite these strange bedfellows, the encyclical is clear in condemning abortion, contraception, and population control.

There has been nothing short of an “Unholy Alliance” between the Vatican and promoters of man-made climate fear. The Vatican advisors are a brew of anti-capitalist, pro-population control advocates who allow no dissent and are way out of the mainstream of even the global warming establishment.

Here are profiles of some of the key radical voices with whom the Vatican has associated itself.

UN Advisor Jeffrey Sachs

Prof. Jeffrey D. Sachs

Jeffrey Sachs, a special advisor to UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, participated in a 2014 Vatican workshop on sustainability as well as in the Vatican summit on climate that took place in April 2015. Sachs was reportedly the author of the Pontifical statement, Climate Change and the Common Good:  A Statement of the Problem and the Demand for Transformative Solutions, issued on April 29, 2015.

Sachs, who is also the director of The Earth Institute, believes climate skeptics are responsible for the deaths of people due to alleged man-made, global warming driven, extreme storms. Sachs tweeted on …

Skeptical Scientist to Pope Francis: ‘Before one can know what is moral, he must know what is true’

Pope Francis: Before one can know what is moral, he must know what is true.
By Dr. Craig D. Idso, Chairman
Center for the Study of Carbon Dioxide and Global Change

As predicted in an article I wrote last week published in The Federalist, Pope Francis is making climate change a signature issue during his visit to the United States. This morning, in remarks presented at the White House, Pope Francis commenced his U.S. tour by proclaiming “climate change is a problem that can no longer be left to a future generation,” thereafter complimenting the Obama Administration for the policy prescription it advocates in addressing the issue (i.e., reducing CO2 emissions).

However, as noted in my Federalist piece, neither the Pope’s concerns, nor the Administration’s alarms, over potential global warming are based upon the best available science. The biosphere is not spiraling downward toward planetary Armageddon and policies designed to deal with the subject are, quite frankly, nothing more than a recipe for social and economic disorder and disaster. And in support of this position, our Center is releasing today a massive new report exposing the pathetic house of cards upon which the entire global warming movement is founded — global climate model predictions.

The new report, titled Mathematical Models vs. Real-World Data: Which Best Predicts Earth’s Climatic Future?, presents a thorough and careful scrutiny of hundreds of peer-reviewed scientific publications evaluating the accuracy and capability of climate models to simulate the response of a number of important climatic phenomena to rising atmospheric CO2 concentrations. In short, this treatise provides the proverbial look under the hood of the inner workings of today’s state-of-the-art climate models that provide the basis for both the Pope’s and the Obama Administration’s belief that global warming is a problem and that something must be done about it. And that “look” is not encouraging.

In brief, our report present the results of a thorough and careful scrutiny of the scientific literature that evaluates model credibility as it pertains to a number of important climatic phenomena. First of all, pouring over some 33 originalscientific studies of the subject, along with 34 of their relevant citations of other such studies — all of which 67 publications are listed in the Reference section of our document’s initial chapter on Clouds — we encounter 188 major documented errors, inadequacies or shortcomings in …