In this episode of "Hollywood Actors Should Stick to Hollywood Acting, Popular Singers Should Stick to Popular Singing, and Popes Should Stick to Poping..."
Noted climatologist and all-around woke dude Pope Francis has issued another whatever popes issue, in this case, a climate alarmist letter in which His Holiness declares — I assume, with a straight face — that mankind, by way of carbon emissions, is responsible for natural disasters, including earthquakes and other scary, existential-threat stuff, including "seaquakes," as a result of ignoring so-called "green energy agendas."
In Francis's latest Apostolic Exhortation, titled "Laudate Deum" — in English, "Praise God" — Francis wrote, in part, in a section titled "Global Climate Crisis":
Despite all attempts to deny, conceal, gloss over, or relativize the issue, the signs of climate change are here and increasingly evident. No one can ignore the fact that in recent years we have witnessed extreme weather phenomena, frequent periods of unusual heat, drought, and other cries of protest on the part of the earth that are only a few palpable expressions of a silent disease that affects everyone.
Admittedly, not every concrete catastrophe ought to be attributed to global climate change. Nonetheless, it is verifiable that specific climate changes provoked by humanity are notably heightening the probability of extreme phenomena that are increasingly frequent and intense.
For this reason, we know that every time the global temperature increases by 0.5° C, the intensity and frequency of great rains and floods increase in some areas and severe droughts in others, extreme heat waves in some places, and heavy snowfall in others.
If up to now we could have heat waves several times a year, what will happen if the global temperature increases by 1.5° C, which we are approaching? Those heat waves will be much more frequent and with greater intensity. If it should rise above 2 degrees, the icecaps of Greenland and a large part of Antarctica will melt completely, with immensely grave consequences for everyone.
Ooh, ice caps. Melting completely. Who does that remind you of? Unfortunately, Al Gore was unavailable to give us his expert opinion.
So What About Human Causes?
Francis further wrote:
It is no longer possible to doubt the human – “anthropic” – origin of climate change. Let us see why. The concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, which causes global warming, was stable until the nineteenth century, below 300 parts per million in volume. But in the middle of that century, in conjunction with industrial development, emissions began to increase.
In the past fifty years, this increase has accelerated significantly, as the Mauna Loa observatory, which has taken daily measurements of carbon dioxide since 1958, has confirmed. While I was writing Laudato Si’, they hit a historic high – 400 parts per million – until arriving at 423 parts per million in June 2023. More than 42% of total net emissions since the year 1850 were produced after 1990.
At the same time, we have confirmed that in the last fifty years, the temperature has risen at an unprecedented speed, greater than any time over the past two thousand years. In this period, the trend was a warming of 0.15° C per decade, double that of the last 150 years. From 1850 on, the global temperature has risen by 1.1° C, with an even greater impact on the polar regions.
[...]
It is not possible to conceal the correlation of these global climate phenomena and the accelerated increase in greenhouse gas emissions, particularly since the mid-twentieth century. The overwhelming majority of scientists specializing in the climate support this correlation, and only a very small percentage of them seek to deny the evidence. Regrettably, the climate crisis is not exactly a matter that interests the great economic powers, whose concern is with the greatest profit possible at minimal cost and in the shortest amount of time.
14. I feel obliged to make these clarifications, which may appear obvious, because of certain dismissive and scarcely reasonable opinions that I encounter, even within the Catholic Church. Yet we can no longer doubt that the reason for the unusual rapidity of these dangerous changes is a fact that cannot be concealed: the enormous novelties that have to do with unchecked human intervention in nature in the past two centuries.
Events of natural origin that usually cause warming, such as volcanic eruptions and others, are insufficient to explain the proportion and speed of the changes of recent decades. The change in average surface temperatures cannot be explained except as the result of the increase of greenhouse gases.
OK, that's enough.
While His Holiness peppered his Apostolic Exhortation with various facts and data, he also made broad-based claims that failed to back up his overall allegation.
Francis also ignored the larger reality that the earth's weather cycles are both short and long, not to mention the effect of solar activity on the entire solar system.
But then again, I'm not a renowned climatologist. Wait— neither is Francis.
The Bottom Line
Look, I'm not a theologian and Pope Francis is far from a climatologist, but I wonder why a pope, of all people, would argue that there were no extreme weather events prior to the Industrial Revolution. I mean, I seem to remember reading something about a great flood in the Old Testament of the Bible.
Never mind — this hurts my brain.
By the way, does anyone know how many years of life on the planet as we know it we have left?
Apologies; I haven't checked in with AOC on the subject for a while.
