Aussie CSIRO boss Larry Marshall: Politics of climate ‘more like religion than science’
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-02-11/csiro-boss-apologises-for-climate-religion-comments/7160288
CSIRO chief Larry Marshall has apologised for describing the emotion of the climate debate as almost “more religion than science”.
Key points:The CSIRO boss apologises for referencing religion in climate debateHe said he was referring to the ‘passionate zeal around the issue’Dr Marshall defended this CSIRO shake-up, despite international backlash
Dr Marshall had told the ABC the backlash from his decision to restructure the organisation made him feel like an “early climate scientist in the ’70s fighting against the oil lobby” and that there was so much emotion in the debate it almost “sounded more like religion than science”.
He also said he would not be backing down on his controversial shakeup of the organisation’s climate divisions, telling the ABC he was yet to be persuaded.
At Senate estimates Thursday afternoon he backed away from those comments.
“I’d like to apologise for any offence I may have caused to anyone with respect to my reference to religion,” Dr Marshall said.
“I was merely referring to the passionate zeal around this issue, not any other reference, and I deeply apologise.”…
Claim: Pope Francis Part of Amicus Brief Filed in Support of Teen’s Landmark Climate Change Lawsuit
On Friday, the Center for Earth Jurisprudence, on behalf of the Global Catholic Climate Movement and the Leadership Council of Women Religious filed an amicus curiae brief in support of the constitutional climate change lawsuit brought by 21 young plaintiffs from across America.
The Catholic groups filed their brief promptly after Magistrate Judge Thomas Coffin of the federal District Court in Oregon granted defendant status to three trade associations, representing nearly all of the world’s fossil fuel companies. The Catholic groups filed the brief to make their views known that the youth’s legal claims are rooted in U.S. traditions and parallel Roman Catholic tenets.
“As an organization inspired by the principles of Laudato Si’, the Global Catholic Climate Movement welcomes the opportunity to support the young plaintiffs,” Tomas Insua, Global Coordinator with the Global Catholic Climate Movement, said. “Laudato Si’ reminds us that ‘Intergenerational solidarity is not optional, but rather a basic question of justice, since the world we have received also belongs to those who will follow us.’ By supporting this initiative, we join our voices with the young plaintiffs who are calling for climate justice and the protection of the atmosphere for generations to come.”…
NASA Scientist in NYT: ‘I have Stage 4 pancreatic cancer’ but ‘climate change’ is still my top concern – Skeptical Scientist Responds
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/17/opinion/sunday/cancer-and-climate-change.html?_r=0
Piers J. Sellers is the deputy director of Sciences and Exploration at the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center and acting director of its Earth Sciences Division. As an astronaut, he visited the International Space Station three times and walked in space six times. Sellers is also the ‘boss’ of NASA’s Gavin Schmidt.
Excerpts from Sellers from January 16, 2016 New York Times:
…I’m a climate scientist who has just been told I have Stage 4 pancreatic cancer.This diagnosis puts me in an interesting position. I’ve spent much of my professional life thinking about the science of climate change, which is best viewed through a multidecadal lens. At some level I was sure that, even at my present age of 60, I would live to see the most critical part of the problem, and its possible solutions, play out in my lifetime. Now that my personal horizon has been steeply foreshortened, I was forced to decide how to spend my remaining time. Was continuing to think about climate change worth the bother?…
Last year may also be seen in hindsight as the year of the Death of Denial. Globally speaking, most policy makers now trust the scientific evidence and predictions, even as they grapple with ways to respond to the problem. And most Americans — 70 percent, according to a recent Monmouth University poll — believe that the climate is changing. So perhaps now we can move on to the really hard part of this whole business….
There is no convincing, demonstrated reason to believe that our evolving future will be worse than our present, assuming careful management of the challenges and risks….
While many have mocked this accord as being toothless and unenforceable, it is noteworthy that the policy makers settled on a number that is based on the best science available and is within the predictive capability of our computer models.It’s doubtful that we’ll hold the line at 2 degrees Celsius, but we need to give it our best shot. With scenarios that exceed that target, we are talking about enormous changes in global precipitation and temperature patterns, huge impacts on water and food security, and significant sea level rise. As the predicted temperature rises, model uncertainty grows, increasing the likelihood of unforeseen, disastrous events.All this as the world’s population is expected to crest at around 9.5 billion by 2050 from the current seven billion. Pope Francis
New climate activists schtick: Tattoo yourself with birth year CO2 level
New climate activists schtick: Tattoo yourself with birth year CO2 level
http://junkscience.com/2016/01/new-climate-activists-schtick-tattoo-yourself-with-birth-year-co2/
From Mashable.com:…
‘A Democrat & environmentalist dares question the Church of Global Warming’
David Siegel, a self-proclaimed Democrat & environmentalist.
You are a self-proclaimed Democrat and an initial believer in global warming yet you decided to look more deeply at the issue, which in most liberal circles is an article of faith. Tell us a little about your background and explain what motivated you to study the issue. How did you go about your quest for the truth about global warming?
I have been studying rationality and decision science for four years now, spending a lot of time at sites like www.lesswrong.com. I have an amazing mentor who answers my questions. What I’ve discovered is that what most people (including me) believe tends to be a very distorted version of the facts, and that in general our mental models of the world are not very reliable. Reading “Thinking Fast and Slow,” by Danny Khaneman was also a turning point for me. What we usually call thinking is usually just reacting. At some point, I emailed my mentor and said “So, I suppose you’re going to tell me that global warming is also a load of BS,” and he replied “Do you want to take the red pill, or the blue pill?” As it turns out, he had spent a lot of time sorting this out several years ago, and he started pointing me toward the sources I cite in my essay. I had lunch with a “green” friend, and I asked her about global warming. She said “Really, the science is settled, trust me,” and that made me look deeper. Soon I was upset enough that I started to write. The first drafts were pretty confused, but eventually, with the help of Richard Lindzen, Willie Soon, and others I reached out to, it came together. My goal wasn’t to really interpret the science, only to try to explain clearly what we think we know at this point.
Tell us about what happened when your blog post hit the internet. Did you lose friends? Gain new ones?
I was told I was going to lose friends. I did. About five long-time friends took one look at my essay and decided they didn’t want to hear from me again. I got some very angry emails from people saying I was simply wrong. It’s amazing how the people who are with me talk about the data and the science, while the people who think I’m wrong …
NASA Scientist Claims Texans Won’t Listen To NY Jew About Climate Change
http://lidblog.com/nasa-scientist-claims-texans-wont-listen-to-ny-jew-about-climate-change/
Jeff Dunetz: I too am a New York Jew, but a conservative one who is observant and believes in God. According to google analytics Texas is the #2 state in terms of traffic to this site proving that Texans will listen to a New York Jew who is not feeding them with lies.
…
Flashback: Fox’s Andrew Napolitano: Pope Francis is ‘somewhere between a communist with a lowercase ‘c’ and a Marxist with an uppercase ‘M’
http://mediamatters.org/video/2015/09/15/foxs-andrew-napolitano-calls-pope-francis-a-com/205560
Fox’s Andrew Napolitano: Pope Francis Is A “Communist” And A “Marxist.” On the September 15 edition of Fox Business’ Varney & Co., Fox’s senior judicial analyst Andrew Napolitano called Pope Francis a “communist” and a “Marxist” for linking the Syrian refugee crisis to global poverty:
…ANDREW NAPOLITANO: I am sighing because the Holy Father is a challenge for traditionalist Roman Catholics, of which I am one. Particularly, traditionalists who came of age under John Paul II and then under Benedict XVI. Who, though they had impulses that were not exactly Ayn Rand on capitalism, were far more into philosophy and theology, and far less into the economy … This particular Pope, who has proclaimed himself a Peronist, is somewhere between a communist with a lowercase “c” and a Marxist with an uppercase “M.” At the same time he is trying to be a Roman Catholic — uppercase “R,” uppercase “C.”
[…]
The Pope is infallible on faith in morals. Thank God it is just limited to faith and morals because he is, he is — he sounds like a left-wing professor at the London School of Economics when he blames the mass migration on economic inequality. [Fox Business, Varney & Co.,9/15/15]
Former Advisor to Aussie PM Declares UN climate agenda ‘more about Marxism than science’ – Laments World succumbing to ‘bogus science & catastrophism’
Maurice Newman has blasted the United Nations climate agreement reached recently in Paris. He says in a newspaper column that the UN is more about Marxism than science. Photograph: Julian Smith/AAP
Tony Abbott’s former business advisory council chairman, Maurice Newman, has criticised Malcolm Turnbull and Barack Obama for prioritising “collectivist visions” over “private choice” in relation to climate change.
Newman, who was not reappointed to the council by the Turnbull government, has accused world leaders of acting “like ancient druids pleading with the gods for good seasons” at the recent Paris climate talks.
Newman blasted the final Paris agreement, which aims to hold global temperatures to a maximum rise of 1.5C above pre-industrial levels, saying there was “no empirical scientific evidence” to support the policy.
He lamented that “without a Tony Abbott in Canberra or a Stephen Harper in Ottawa, no world leader utters a peep in protest”.
A noted climate change sceptic, Newman has accused western capitalist societies of giving up on rational thinking.
“They embrace junk science and junk economics and adopt wealth-destroying postmodern pseudo-economics, which teaches that taxpayer subsidies can produce desirable ‘economic transformation’ and faster growth,” Newman wrote in the Australian.
“Pigs may also fly.
“Climate change has cowed once great powers into meekly surrendering sovereignty and independent thought to unelected bureaucrats in Geneva. From the White House to the Lodge, private choice now runs a distant second to collectivist visions.”
“But then climate change is not about credible scientific evidence,” he wrote.
“It has its roots in Marxism, and ultimately the Green Fund is presided over by the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, run by Costa Rican MarxistChristiana Figueres.”
…
Newman warned the 1.5C target would be “relentlessly pursued” by the UN with the help of the media.
“The media, in step with the Green Machine, will bombard us with climate alarmism to the applause of the leader of the free world, Barack Obama, who says: ‘My mission is to make the world aware that climate change is a bigger threat than terrorism.’ Really? That’s serious. Clearly authority, not common sense or science, now rules the world.”
Newman also accused the world’s largest emitter, China, of “adroit politics”, using climate change to act on its domestic air quality issues while promoting emissions …
Wash Post on ‘strangely warm winter’: ‘Jesus might be coming back…Or it’s something else. I don’t know’
Vatican bishop: Pope’s view on ‘global warming’ is as authoritative as the condemnation of abortion
A heated exchange regarding global warming and magisterial teaching between a top Vatican official and various other presenters ended a December 3 Acton Institute conference in Rome. Argentinean Bishop Marcelo Sánchez Sorondo, a close advisor to Pope Francis and the Chancellor of both the Pontifical Academy of Sciences and the Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences stressed that the pope’s declarations on the gravity of global warming as expressed in the encyclical Laudato Si’ are magisterial teaching equivalent to the teaching that abortion is sinful.
Father Joseph Fessio, SJ, the founder of Ignatius Press who obtained his doctorate in theology under Joseph Ratzinger prior to his elevation to the pontificate, told LifeSiteNews, “Neither the pope nor Bishop Sorondo can speak on a matter of science with any binding authority, so to use the word ‘magisterium’ in both cases is equivocal at best, and ignorant in any case.” Fr. Fessio added, “To equate a papal position on abortion with a position on global warming is worse than wrong; it is an embarrassment for the Church.”
The conference, “In Dialogue with Laudato Si’: Can Free Markets Help Us Care for Our Common Home?” was held at the Pontifical University of the Holy Cross with over 200 attendees including members of the media, professors, and students of the Pontifical Universities.
The controversy was sparked when in his address Bishop Sorondo spoke of “global warming” saying that in Laudato Si “for the first time in the Magisterium” Pope Francis “denounces the scientifically identifiable causes of this evil, declaring that: ‘a number of scientific studies indicate that most global warming in recent decades is due to the great concentration of greenhouse gases released mainly as a result of human activity.’” He repeated the point later, saying, “faith and reason, philosophical knowledge and scientific knowledge, are brought together for the first time in the pontifical Magisterium in Laudato Si’.”
These points were contradicted in the presentation by Acton Institute founder and President Father Robert Sirico who said it is “important to underscore the distinction between the theological dimension of Laudato si’ and its empirical, scientific, and economic claims.” He explained, “The Church does not claim to speak with the same authority on matters of economics and science… as it does when pronouncing on matters of faith and morals.”
Quoting the Compendium of Catholic Social Doctrine to support his point, Fr. Sirico said: “Christ did not bequeath …