Q. The Catholic bishops of Massachusetts recently issued a statement on climate change that repeats all of the propaganda from the global warming extremists. Could you look at this statement and tell me if you agree with me? — T.L.H., Massachusetts.
A. Yes, we do agree and have written to the bishops stating our concerns about their statement. Here are our comments:
In your recent letter on climate change and the environment, you called upon all persons “to take meaningful steps to protect our environment and provide relief from the impact of toxic pollution and climate change to protect the health and safety of all citizens, particularly the most vulnerable in our society.” You urged members of the Catholic community “to examine their personal vocations and opportunities to take action to take better care of our common home” in order to address this “global crisis.” And you quoted Pope Francis’ call for “dialogue throughout the world” on how we can become better stewards of the Earth.
The problem, however, is that there has been no dialogue on this matter; there has been only a one-sided presentation of a doomsday scenario and a denunciation of anyone who disputes this apocalyptic vision of the future as a “climate denier,” a not so subtle association with those who falsely deny the Nazi Holocaust.
In point of fact, however, there are solid reasons for questioning, for example, the doomsday predictions that the planet will cease to exist in ten or twelve years! Such predictions are nonsense, and the planet will exist long after those making these predictions are but a distant memory.
One reason for doubting these predictions is the track record of those making them. Some of them, back in the 1970s, were sounding the alarm about a “nuclear winter” and a coming “Ice Age.” Take a look at Time and Newsweek back then to see how wrong these prognosticators were at that time, and ask yourself why you should believe them now. Newsweek at least admitted in 2006 that it was “spectacularly wrong” about what it wrote in 1975 (“The Cooling World”), when it said that evidence in support of global cooling “has now begun to accumulate so massively that meteorologists are hard-pressed to keep up with it.”
In 1970, anti-life crusader Paul Ehrlich, who has compared the growth of the human family to a “cancer cell,” said that “at least 100 to 200 million people per year will be starving to death during the next ten years.” Such outlandish statements should have disqualified Ehrlich from ever being taken seriously again, but he is still saying that the “collapse of civilization is a near certainty within decades.” His solution: “Make modern contraception and back-up abortion available to all and give women full equal rights, pay, and opportunities.”
So why has Ehrlich been invited to speak at Vatican conferences on climate change in recent years? Could that be why Vatican statements are so filled with alarmist propaganda? And can we expect more of this at the Amazon Synod in Rome, where participants include such population controllers as former UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon and Jeffrey Sachs of Columbia University? Sachs, a promoter of abortion and giving contraceptive drugs and devices to children, spoke at Vatican conferences in 2013, 2015, and 2017.
Why are those who dispute these opinions never invited to Vatican conferences? Why are they shut out of the debate and called stupid and deniers? Why don’t Vatican officials invite scientists like Dr. Richard Lindzen, professor emeritus at MIT, who sent a petition to President Trump signed by more than 300 scientists who agree that CO2 “is not a pollutant but a major benefit to agriculture and other life on earth”?
In fact, there are more than 31,000 scientists who have sent a petition to Congress, saying that “the proposed limits on greenhouse gases would harm the environment, hinder the advance of science and technology, and damage the health and welfare of mankind.” These scientists said that “there is substantial scientific evidence that increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide produce many beneficial effects upon the natural plant and animal environments of the earth.”
They contend that the Earth’s temperature is driven by solar activity, not human activity, and even NASA at first agreed on its home page about “the sun’s impact on our climate system,” but then took the page down after protests by the global warming establishment. Climate scientist Vijay Jayaraj, of the University of East Anglia in England, said that NASA was right the first time and that a lull in solar activity from 2000 to 2018 explained why there was no increase in global temperatures during that period.
But all we hear today is that there is a “97 percent consensus” among scientists that human activity causes global warming. That figure is phony. The truth is that a survey conducted by the University of Illinois was sent to 10,000 earth scientists from many backgrounds. Just over 3,000 responded to the survey and, out of those respondents, 77 identified themselves as climate scientists. Seventy-five of them agreed that humans are causing global warming. Divide 75 by 77 and you get 97 percent. Divide 75 by 3,146 respondents, however, and you get 2.38 percent — which is a long way from a 97 percent consensus among scientists.
But that’s the modus operandi of climate extremists. They use computer models that bear no resemblance to the physical data. They don’t report on actual temperatures, but replace the facts with speculation about what they think the historical temperature record must have been. In other words, they routinely manipulate data, concealing findings that contradict their theories, making up other data, and suppressing dissenting views. They present scary projections about warming temperatures, rising sea levels, melting glaciers, and a diminishing polar bear population — all of which are false.
Recall the expedition that went to Antarctica in 2013 to observe the melting ice. What happened? Their ship got stuck in the frozen ice, and they had to be rescued by helicopter!
In your recent statement, you noted that, according to the National Oceanic and Atmosphere Administration, “July 2019 was the hottest month ever recorded worldwide.” But does that mean anything when we know that the greatest span of global cooling in the past century occurred between February 2016 and February 2018, with the temperature dropping 0.56 degrees centigrade? Even though The New York Times had predicted “the end of snow” a few years ago, the snow pack in Colorado this year was so deep that there was skiing into June.
Contrary to fake computer models, it is a scientific fact that the Earth has not warmed in two decades, which is why the global warming crowd switched the name to climate change. That allows them to put under their umbrella not just hot weather, but cold weather, floods, hurricanes, tornadoes, and various other phenomena that have been part of planetary weather since the beginning of time. These have always resulted from natural fluctuations, not from human causality. The notion of human-caused warming of the atmosphere is “a complete hoax and scam,” says Patrick Moore, co-founder of the environmental organization Greenpeace.
In an interview in March 2019, Moore said that “climate catastrophe is strictly a fear campaign” that is repeated over and over by the “media echo chamber.” He said that the narrative is bolstered by “green politicians who are buying scientists with government money to produce fear for them in the form of scientific-looking materials” and by “the green businesses, the rent-seekers, and the crony capitalists who are taking advantage of massive subsidies, huge tax write-offs, and government mandates requiring their technologies to make a fortune on this.”
With all the important things you have on your plate — declining Mass attendance, diminishing belief that Jesus is really present in the Eucharist, dealing with politicians who claim to be faithful Catholics but who dissent from Church teachings on abortion and same-sex behavior, it is difficult to keep up with the facts about climate change. Wouldn’t it be prudent, therefore, to focus on general moral principles about being good stewards of creation and let the laity get into specific policies regarding protection of the environment?
“By reason of their special vocation,” says the Catechism of the Catholic Church, “it belongs to the laity to seek the kingdom of God by engaging in temporal affairs and directing them according to God’s will….The initiative of lay Christians is necessary especially when the matter involves discovering or inventing the means for permeating social, political, and economic realities with the demands of Christian doctrine and life” (nn. 898, 899).
Please be assured of my prayers as you try to carry out your apostolate in difficult times.
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