In matters of Catholic dogma the Holy Father in Rome is deemed infallible, but when it comes to more earthly matters surrounding climate change, Pope Francis is mostly talking through his Pontifical Posterior. At one point, Francis suggests humans emitting carbon dioxide are causing “seaquakes”, while his inner Guardian soul is on clear display with his claim that the world is “collapsing and may be nearing the breaking point”.
Pope Francis’s latest comments on climate change are contained in an ‘Apostolic Exhortation’ titled Laudate Deum. It is a follow up to an earlier doom-ridden encyclical letter in 2015 when he referred to CO2 – a gas the Supreme Pontiff emits with every breath – as highly polluting. The latest letter is full of emotional errors, unsubstantiated scientific opinions and a cold condescension for the growing number of scientists who dispute the political narrative of a climate emergency. At one point these scientists are said to bring up “allegedly solid scientific facts”.
Francis is on very shaky ground with his contention that humans somehow cause submarine earthquakes. Even more nonsensical is his suggestion that the human-caused seaquakes are leading to communities being swept away. As the Daily Sceptic recently noted, the Holy Grail of climate alarmism is to link earthquakes to humans driving their cars. Sadly to date the suggestion is only to be found at the whacky end of climate fearmongering. A recent article in the Conversation noted “evidence” that the loss of surface ice in Scandinavia triggered numerous earthquake events around 7,000-11,000 years ago. Alas, further inquiry showed that the only tectonic plate action was to be found in the circuit boards of a researcher’s computer. Seaquakes would appear to be a new field of climate alarm, suggesting Francis is well ahead of the game on this one.
The Pope is also leading the pack with his contention that melting of the continental ice sheets at the poles will not be reversed for hundreds of years. What melting of the ice sheet in Antarctica Francis is referring to is not immediately clear. Alarmists usually find Antarctica a difficult neighbourhood to run the Thermogeddon narrative. According to Singh and Polvani, warming has been “almost non-existent” for at least 70 years. NASA reports the ice loss is 0.0005% a year. In 2021, the South Pole recorded its coldest winter since records began in 1957. Meanwhile in the Arctic, a small, little publicised, cyclical recovery in sea ice has been underway for over a decade.
At one point in his letter, Francis makes the claim that it is “verifiable that specific climate changes provoked by humanity are notably heightening the probability of extreme phenomena that are increasingly frequent and intense”. Quite how it is possible to verify something that is only probable is not immediately clear, but it seems Francis is referring to the computer model-driven pseudoscience of weather attribution that has grown up in recent years. In fact its popularity is partly in response to the UN-backed Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) currently holding back from directly linking individual weather events to longer term changes in the climate.
Despite all attempts to deny, conceal, gloss over or relativise the issue, continues Francis, the signs of climate change are here and increasingly evident. No one can ignore recent extreme weather events such as droughts, floods and unusual heat, he continues. 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-20th century, he argues. As regular readers will know, plenty of scientists do just that, as does the IPCC. According to its latest report, the IPCC states there is “low confidence” that humans influence droughts in most regions, while confidence is generally low in attributing changes in the probability or magnitude of flood events to human influence.
All Francis is doing is joining up the dots of recent weather anomalies and claiming a causal link to long-term climate trends. With global warming having run out of steam over the last 25 years, this practice is in common use in alarmist circles. It is used to promote the collectivist Net Zero narrative, and is profoundly unscientific.
“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,” states Francis. In fact the Pope shows no sign, as was his attitude in 2015, of listening to any alternative view – the “allegedly solid scientific data” he seems to find so distasteful. He merely repeats the collapsing and tipping point fearmongering of the green activist lobby. In doing so he does a disservice to a tradition of Church support and patronage to the scientific process through monasteries, funded hospitals, schools and universities. The Catholic Church teaches that faith in God and science are complementary, with the Catechism noting that “methodical research in all branches of knowledge, providing it is carried out in a truly scientific manner and does not override moral laws, can never conflict with the faith, because the things of the world and the things of faith derive from the same God”.
Of course it would take a longer article than this to identify many of the inevitable past conflicts between the Church authorities and some of the findings of science (don’t mention Galileo). So far as the climate story is concerned, scientists are just starting to comprehend the complexities of the non-linear atmosphere. However, it is perhaps not surprising that the Vatican has hitched its influential wagon to current unproven scientific narratives that serve a largely political purpose. In a 2020 encyclical letter, Francis spoke of the possibility of a world authority “equipped with the power to provide for the global common good”. The world Government should be given “real authority in such a way as to provide for the attainment of certain goals”. In this way , there could come about a multilateralism that is not dependent on changing political conditions or the interest of a certain few, and possesses a stable efficacy, he concluded.
Possibly this is papal speak for no more Trump, Farage, Brexit and all those other annoying inconveniences of national democracy.
Chris Morrison is the Daily Sceptic’s Environment Editor.
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and some commentators on courts and legal issues still deny that judges make law.
These people aren’t “making law”, they’re trying to take over policy decisions from (supposedly) democratically elected governments by judging opinion statements about the likely weather in future. This stinks of corruption as they can’t be so stupid to be unaware of the fact that they’ve done something no court had ever or can ever have authority over. What might happen in future cannot be decided in court cases.
Point me to an institution that hasn’t been corrupted?
I can’t see any public institution that hasn’t been taken over and is now a tool of climate policy, gay-trans policy, pharma led medical policy, race policy etc.
That’s actually the explicit goal of those who drive DEI and ESG and such like. Basically they demand that all companies and all institutions adopt these goals as a matter of moral principle. If they don’t they are evil.
Why would the ECHR be any different? It’s the same type.of people. Credentialed commies who think the world needs to be governed by people like them from centralised bureaucracies.
To use the first example out of my head: The government of North Korea?
And they’ve been at it an awful long time. They’ve worked hard to get all their minions into the key positions in almost every public and private organisation of any importance. It’s a black mould or dry rot of the judiciary, the executive and legislature. It all happened while we were focused on 9/11, football, Diana, Iraq and all the rest. It’s how they organise themselves as we know. Any global management scheme seems to be tied into the main body of this snake. Almost impossible to remove as so many in those organisations think they’re doing a good job to help the planet.
As Mark Steyn said….The response to 911 was the never ending Patriot Act and flooding the US with Muslims.
Yep, Global tyranny step by step.
it seems not all are bought (at this stage at least) there was an article last week talking of how some Banks were pushing back against ESG. In my cynical mind they’re realising they can’t fight wars with ESG and steel from China.
Once a Supreme Court – rather than a Court of Appeal which only decides if legislation has been correctly applied – is established it will become a government within a government.
One downvote to 104 upvotes at the time of writing to EppingBlogger‘s 14 word comment.
WTF is objectionable about it? Is this the same knuckle-dragging bone-head Justin Trudeau supporter who downvoted here:
Comment-946842 – Trudeau’s Dystopian Online Harms Act Makes Margaret Atwood and George Orwell Look Like Amateurs
This is a disaster.
Who will rid us of this meddlesome court?
Well, not Sir Keir’s forthcoming government.
Remember when GB Resistance asked Sir keir and Lammy what’s it like being a Freemason. Not sure is Starmer is a Freemason but that was probably the only time he’s been asked hard questions. Well, that and The Raven pub in Bath!
This is not a court, it’s directorate. The ruling is a blatant attempt at erecting a supranational oligarchy in Europe.
Correct. Mrs Thatcher was one of the first to realise that when she was keen to have Nuclear Energy instead of coal. She thought when the issue of global warming came up that it would help her drive to have Nuclear Power because there are no CO2 emissions from Nuclear. But later on she realised what climate change policies would mean “Supranational Socialism” and she spoke about this realisation and change of opinion in her book “Statecraft”.
Unintended consequences.. like the CIA and Al Queda, Netanyahu and Hamas.
I’m pretty Marmite about Maggie, and this ‘slow burner’ consequence may eventually overshadow her achievements.
She was good on right to buy and didn’t let Council buy back enough housing stock. Apparently according to a mate whose sister is a dental nurse, Thatcher closed down nursing training centres, if that is true that is a scandal but Labour didn’t bring them back it seems.
Anbak and Ron Smith…..This article is not about Thatcher as such. It is about climate. And my comments about thatcher were in relation to RW’s comment just above about climate change policies being used as a Supranational Oligarchy in Europe. ——Thatcher realised this 40 years ago.
Fair enough….She also said NO to the EEC/EU when she saw how expansionist it was becoming.
Prove the null hypothesis. There is no concerted plan by at present unknown actors to undermine western democracy and western values by controlling key politicians in Western governments like Justin Trudeau and Jacinda Ardern and key faceless unnamed civil servants to put us all into an Orwellian Chinese style social credit system from which we can never escape – farmed for our health and enslaved.
It will be ironic if some of them die of cold next winter. It’s more likely than dying in a heatwave for the elderly – especially if their gas is cut off to meet targets.
You beat me to it. I cannot have an ounce of sympathy for these cretinous old witches. Dying from cold would be justice.
The thing is as I see it – if they are so sorried about so called warming and pollution why don’t they visit China or India?
I can recommend New Delhi in August/September – a perpetual pea-souper!!!
Seconded.
The fact that Switzerland is known for cuckoo clocks seems very apt to me. These women are completely cuckoo.
Just… not ironic.
The third from last para in Dr David McGrogan’s timely article ATL yesterday. Certainly in the Swiss case his fears have been largely confirmed:
“the same logic plays out in the European Court of Human Rights cases which fall to be determined on April 9th. If the court can decide that a failure on the part of states to protect citizens against the harms that are rightly or wrongly associated with climate change is a rights violation, it can decide that anything is. And the very purpose of law’s existence is thereby defeated, because its scope and its effects are so open-ended.”
The third from last para in Dr David McGrogan’s timely article ATL yesterday. Certainly in the Swiss case his fears have been largely confirmed.
It would seem to confirm , that BSE is out there in the community !
As I posted the other day, this is what Justice Clarence Thomas has to say on the subject of “rights” (from his “gay marriage” dissent)
“The Court’s decision today is at odds not only with the Constitution, but with the principles upon which our Nation was built. Since well before 1787, liberty has been understood as freedom from government action, not entitlement to government benefits. The Framers created our Constitution to preserve that understanding of liberty. Yet the majority invokes our Constitution in the name of a “liberty” that the Framers would not have recognized, to the detriment of the liberty they sought to protect. Along the way, it rejects the idea—captured in our Declaration of Independence—that human dignity is innate and suggests instead that it comes from the Government. This distortion of our Constitution not only ignores the text, it inverts the relationship between the individual and the state in our Republic. I cannot agree with it.”
I think it applies equally to this case, the “government benefit” in question being the “benefit” of the government cleverly controlling the weather.
“The European Court of Human Rights has ruled that the Swiss Government had violated the human rights of its citizens by failing to do enough to combat climate change.”
The court decision has now mandated the Swiss government “to combat climate change.”
Who will be responsible for determining “climate change” when climate changes are nothing more than features of living on planet earth? Suggesting that humans can determine a fixed climate and then set this in stone is Clown World on speed. What about those who take dissenting views? Off to the gulag presumably.
The reality of the court decision is that it is an unworkable madness that will never be fulfilled but it sure as hell will bring joy to the globalists aka Davos Deviants.
You’re underestimating the scope of this. This is an attempted to coup to ovethrow (or rather, neutralize) the democratically elected national government of Switzerland. The ClimateBitchesPastTheirShelfLife¹ should probably be tried for treason in their home country.
¹ Somewhat loaded translation of KlimaSenorinnen. A more sympathetic one could be ClimateGrannies. But these people certainly don’t deserve any.
“You’re underestimating the scope of this.”
To suggest that I underestimate any of the madnesses occurring on a daily basis indicates a less than complete reading of my posts.
I was specifically referring to your unworkable madness statement. That’s absolutely not what this ruling is about. It’s a seriously covidesque power grab, nothing else. Everything humans do is said to have some climate footprint. Hence, everything humans do is – from now on – theoretically a human rights violation because of the climate.
It’s not really madness because these people aren’t trying to address a climate change caused by human-induced CO₂ emissions. Nothing the government of Switzerland does or doesn’t do will have a meaningful impact on these and O’Leary is certainly intelligent enough to understand this as well. But the Swiss government has apparently, possibly because of voters not being that much in favour of it, not toed the UN line strictly and feverishly enough. Hence, it was now declared that democracy violates people’s human rights and that the solution would be political diktats by some internationalist oligarchy.
Weaponising the legal system to push through policies in a way that will help deflect the blame for the negative aspects of those policies.
Given the inevitability of it, I do find it interesting how focused some older people are on not dying. I could understand this more if they had campaigned for the government to do more to “save” the planet from “climate disaster” for the sake of the young …
Absolute BS, especially in that country! After all, they have been pioneers at the large scale use of hydroelectric power (geography helps, but so did WW2) with large scale electrification of railway transport of all kinds to start with.
Every country capable of that must immediately withdraw from the ECHR. Further, if at all possible, corruption charges must be brought forward against the people involved with this obviously illegal¹ decision.
¹ The scope of law is to judge past event wrt their conformity to it. This is an attempt to judge future events some people believe might happen instead. With the same logic, one can randomly arrest people in the streets and try them for murders someone believes they might commit in future.
Minority Report again. That gets mentioned more and more these days.
Didn’t know this until you mentioned it. But one of the complaints in the court case was that the government had not done enough to prevent future heatwaves and other disasters supposed to happen in future. And that’s the opposite of what courts are supposed to do, namely, address past grievances based on objective fact (to the degree that this is possible). Here, an imaginary future grievance is supposedly addressed.
We have now reached the stage of the Climate Inquisition, where a non-scientific court (ECHR) makes a ruling that is apparently infallible (cannot be challenged) on a religious topic (devout belief that man is solely responsible for changing almost any asprect of climate).
How long before apostates are subject to burning at the stake, or the modern equivalent, roasting in an electric air fryer.
Yours is the best summary of the whole situation.
In some sort of Gulag would probably be more their style. I wonder of Toby and envision a day when us on the right get put in a modern Gulag, or is that still too conspiratorial for him.
This same Irish Catholic woman who was chosen to head the European Court of Human Rights, Sioban O’Leary, also “ruled” that the UK’s Northern Ireland Amnesty for ex-soldiers and militants violated the human rights of Catholics, whose IRA total amnesty was somehow not violating the human rights of Irish Protestants and British Army Veterans. No bias there, then.
Now she’s sticking her oar into this cringeworthy attempt by Greenpeace to persuade 2500 elderly Swiss women into disgracing themselves for the Global Warming Hoax, just like the now 21-year-old Swedish woman still pretending to be a little girl.
It’s just more evidence of the Globalists forcing the world into a Global “Judocracy” = “Rule by Judges”.
The world needs to tell them all to get stuffed.
The proper term for this is oligarchy — rule by a (self-appointed) set of the selected few, usually some subset of the set of really rich people.
WRONG. The proper term for Rule by Judges is “KRITOCRACY = “JUDEOCRACY”.
“Kritarchy, also called kritocracy, was the system of rule by Biblical judges (שופטים, shoftim) in ancient Israel, started by Moses according to the Book of Exodus”
That is exactly what is being attempted by the Globalists, getting rid of all democracies and monarchies in order to establish “Rule by Judges”, as when “there was no king in Israel”.
It has nothing to do with the word “oligarchy”, which has nothing to do with judges:
“Oligarchy: “form of government in which supreme power is vested in a small exclusive class,” 1570s, from French oligarchie (14c.), from Latinized form of Greek oligarkhia “government by the few,” from stem of oligos “few, small, little” (a word of uncertain origin) + -arkhia, from arkhein “to rule” (see archon). An earlier form of the word in English was oligracie (c. 1500, from Old French).”
I’m using these terms in line with Aristoteles’ theory of governments which recognizes three basic types of government:
The Greek term for the second option is oligarchy. It doesn’t matter if these few are judges, EDI consultants or nailbar owners.
BTW, you seem to be much more interested in picking quarrels with me than in discussing anything. That’s a bit irritating.
Wrong. The proper term for “Rule by Judges” is “Kritocracy”:
Kritarchy, also called kritocracy, was the system of rule by Biblical judges (שופטים, shoftim) in ancient Israel, started by Moses according to the Book of Exodus”
That is the Globalist aim, to get rid of all democracies and monarchies in order to establish “Rule by Judges”, when there was no king in Israel. Hence “Judeocracy”, rule according to the Judaic Old Testament, like the Noahide Laws shoved through the US Congress.
“PUBLIC LAW 102-14—MAR. 20, 1991 Public Law 102-14 102d Congress Joint Resolution Mar. 20, 1991 [H.J. Res. 104] To designate March 26, 1991, as “Education Day, U.S.A.”.
Whereas Congress recognizes the historical tradition of ethical values and principles which are the basis of civilized society and upon which our great Nation was founded;
Whereas these ethical values and principles have been the bedrock of society from the dawn of civilization, when they were known as the Seven Noahide Laws;
Whereas without these ethical values and principles the edifice of civilization stands in serious peril of returning to chaos;
Whereas society is profoundly concerned with the recent weakening of these principles that has resulted in crises that beleaguer and threaten the fabric of civilized society;
Whereas the justified preoccupation with these crises must not let the citizens of this Nation lose sight of their responsibility to transmit these historical ethical values from our distinguished past to the generations of the future;
Whereas the Lubavitch movement has fostered and promoted these ethical values and principles throughout the world;
Whereas Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson, leader of the Lubavitch movement, is universally respected and revered and his eighty-ninth birthday falls on March 26,1991;
Whereas in tribute to this great spiritual leader, “the rebbe”, this, his ninetieth year will be seen as one of “education and giving”, the year in which we turn to education and charity to return the world to the moral and ethical values contained in the Seven Noahide Laws;
and Whereas this will be reflected in an international scroll of honor signed by the President of the United States and other heads of state:
Now, therefore, be it Resolved by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, That March 26, 1991, the start of the ninetieth year of Rabbi Menachem Schneerson, leader of the worldwide Lubavitch movement, is designated as “Education Day, U.S.A.”.
The President is requested to issue a proclamation calling upon the people of the United States to observe such day with appropriate ceremonies and activities.
Approved March 20, 1991.”
Noahide Law is a set of seven laws that are considered the minimum requirements for Non-Jews to live in a civilized society.
The punishment for violating these laws is decapitation.
“President Trump stated, “Today, we celebrate Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson, the Lubavitcher Rebbe, a compassionate and visionary leader whose influence continues unabated since his passing more than a quarter century ago. This year marks 70 years since Rabbi Schneerson assumed leadership of the international Chabad-Lubavitch movement…”
NOW, THEREFORE, I, DONALD J. TRUMP, President of the United States of America, by virtue of the authority vested in me by the Constitution and the laws of the United States, do hereby proclaim April 5, 2020, as “Education and Sharing Day, U.S.A.”
We can all see where this is going, can’t we? Bringing in laws to future proof scenarios that are highly unlikely to happen. They may as well legislate against mountains because of rogue avalanches. Once we have Greta Thunberg’s fanbase on the warpath, they’ll be banning everything and anything that might produce CO2. They’ll be banning animal farming and covering the countryside with massive solar and wind farms. These people are fanatics. They’re scared out of their wits (well, debatable about the ‘wits’ thing) that we’re all going to die horrible deaths by burning, freezing, drowning, starvation, thirst and all the rest. It’s such a tragedy that common sense and discernment are now absent from the courts.
What would be ‘enough’.
Hopefully these hags will die of hypothermia when global warming is reversed.
The ECHR was conceived by Churchill as a mechanism to keep the warring tribes of Europe apart . This decision against the Swiss Government looks like interference in an area in which the ECHR has no business . More importantly , the invasion of Ukraine has quite passed the ECHR by . What has happened to this toothless tiger ?
I feel sorry for these women and for everyone else that clamours for government to save them from climate change. They clearly do not realise the folly of what they are doing. It is climate policies like Net Zero, not climate change that will impoverish them and put their health at risk. The whole goal of the climate change politics is to lower standard of living. The mentality is that the lifestyles of the affluent middle classes are too high. Their use of central heating or air conditioning, of private transport in cars, their holidays to distant places, their high meat intake etc are all things that use up the world’s resources of coal oil and gas, and that is what climate politics is really all about. Control of the worlds wealth and resources with climate change policies as the excuse. But please don’t take my word for it. Here is what a lead author at the IPCC Ottmar Edenhoffer, said a few years ago. “One has to free oneself from the illusion that climate policy is environmental policy anymore. We redistribute the worlds wealth via climate policy” ——-You can see the same type of politics all over Agenda 21 and 30 which is the UN agenda for the world in the 21st century. It is NOT about the climate.
This morning on GB News with Bev Turner and Andrew Pierce, we had another of those climate change discussions. McCarthy of the Independent, an avid supporter of everything Green and fully convinced of an impending climate apocalypse, and Montford, author of the “Hockey Stick Illusion” who is not a supporter of everything Green and who does not think there is a climate crisis. Both as usual had their say until Montford pointed out that the IPCC actually say that there is no real evidence of any increase in the frequency or intensity of storms, hurricanes, floods, droughts, wild fires etc etc. At this point the climate activist McCarthy decided to attack Montford’s source of funding by claiming he is funded by oil companies. This is typical of the climate change establishment. You don’t attack the actual argument anymore once you are starting to lose it, you attack the arguer instead and their source of funding. But OfCourse it is not Montford who is actually saying there is no increase in the frequency or intensity of any type of weather event, it is the IPCC itself. ——-But I say to Mccarthy. —–Who is it that actually funds almost all climate change “science”? ————-GOVERNMENT.— And who is it that actually has an agenda? ——GOVERNMENT. —IT IS CALLED SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT.
Excellent post.
Elderly swiss women. Oh dear. Another reason why women should not be allowed to vote or be involved in politics.
Unelected European Court judges make a ruling against a democratically elected nation government (Switzerland) on the basis of failure to promote ineffective damaging and unproven fantasy climate goals brought by a group of women supported by a globalist unelected NGO – yeah right! A signal to freedom loving Swiss citizens to have referendum to ignore the whole nonsense, leave ECHR and withdraw from Paris Agreement. The ECHR targeted Switzerland over Portugal and France climate cases maybe because it is a non-EU country bang in the middle of the EU. It looks like bullying and it’s judicial overreach. Time these unelected supranationalist organisations like the ECHR and UN were put in their place, better still, wholly delegitimised by world nations.
One thing is for sure, this verdict will cost the west dear in more ways than one as it moves into the near future!
I suspect trillions of dollars and a fall from world power will be it’s legacy and the east will rise as the west hobbles itself!
However, the main fact will still remain, the planet will definitely not be saved by it!
This is worse then judicial overreach. Addressing hypothetical future grievance is completely beyond the scope of law which is about assessing past events with known properties. This pseudo-court is basically expressing an opinion about the future consequences of policy choices of the Swiss government. That should be sufficient grounds to disestablish it immediately and the ClimateBitchesPastSellByDate ought to be tried in Switzerland for whatever crime is appicable for trying to subvert the constitutional order.
First question to Judge O’Leary, “Can you even define ‘climate change’?”, objectively, measurably, causally, definitively?
So if a thief breaks into a home can the homeowner sue the city or country for not having adequate protection against theft?
When the unelected rule over the elected representatives we have entered into a non-democratic society.