Scottish Sceptic

There’s a general rule that anyone with any sense doesn’t make predictions based of very short runs of data. So it would be crazy for me to start getting excited on what is after all just the first day of the pre-release of the encyclical.
However, things just have not gone that smoothly for what was supposed to be a major event stemming the tide of scepticism. Because after the initial flurry of the expected environmentalists “pope excommunicates climate denier” type news stories, the alarmist stories have pretty much crumbled. So much so that even by the end of day one I reckon that sceptic articles were dominating.
That’s appalling! It’s their story! They should be running with it, not us. They should have had days of news stories, so such an early turn around is a disaster for the alarmists. Yes, it’s still early and things might change.
There’s a scene in Lord of the Rings where the auks are attacking Helm’s Deep and one of them says something like “is that all they’ve got”. Obviously it’s a really bad quote because the auks then blow up the defensive wall and nearly overrun the place. But looking at the climate articles I have been left very much thinking: “is that all they’ve got”?
Because at present, I’m left wondering what on earth the pope was thinking when he got involved with this encyclical.

Pope-gate** has started to get the feel of the Eurovision song contest. We’ve already had a series of monotonous contributions and now there’s some dreadful singer dressed in an appalling costume singing a song that no doubt was humorous in their own country but the humour has been lost in translation. And this is still the very start!!
In a similar vein, the latest re-incarnation of the “Pope-gate” story is a series of press releases asserting that sceptics are attacking the pope – and we are still days away from the official release!
That a rush of stories appears with similar wording isn’t news – because no doubt some green blobbiest has sent out a press release (but it could be a sceptic?)
But what is more interesting is what I found in one of these articles in the Telegraph Pope attacked by climate change sceptics because not only does it quote Lord Monckton:

“My message to the Pope would be, don’t take sides on the science. Don’t make the same mistake as seven out of 10 judges in the trial of Galileo, when they invited him to retract his views (that the Earth orbits around the Sun rather than the other way around).

“The Vatican used to be prepared to hear both sides of the debate but now they don’t want to listen to the sceptics,” said Lord Monckton, who was UKIP’s leader in Scotland before being sacked by Nigel Farage in 2013.

“Benedict XVI took a very cautious line but Pope Francis is not willing to say, ‘don’t bully the sceptics’.”

He accused the UN of “falsifying” data on climate change and insisted that levels of global warming were “insignificant”.

But it also quotes DeSmug Blog (an alarmist blog that banned me from commenting). More importantly, these new correspondents seem to be  … treating both sceptic and alarmists as equal! Wow! That’s very unusual in this subject.
Almost invariably journalists take sides and those like the BBC are so biased that if ever they include any comment from sceptics it is always preceded by the obligatory “warning” phrases intending to signal to the listener that our views are not credible.
But now the Pope seems to have brought out is a rash of articles where journalists (who do not appear to be natural sceptics) are treating our views with respect. What a change! Better still, because it is the pope, these stories are reaching a whole new audience (those interested in religion) who will be reading what we say free from the usual snide comments for the very first time.

So, thank you Pope!

Far from undermining us,  by entering the debate and involving a whole new group of journalists who don’t have the preconceived hatred of sceptics, you have quite unintendedly given Sceptic views credibility.
The big question now is this – will the initial interest being shown in Sceptic views lead to wider discussion, increased public interest in the sceptic view and potentially a wholesale shift in public opinion? Only time will tell, but suddenly I am beginning to think we sceptics may see progress – and not in the direction the Pope intended!

 
**Pope-gate – is just a humorous name – originally intended as a parody on the way everything these days seems to get called “-gate”.

Pope-gate** the “heinous act” of leaking a daft sorry draft copy of the Pope’s proclamation may have been an insider job according to “Newser“.

“[it] may have been designed to steal some thunder from Thursday’s official launch, Vatican observers say—and some think it may have been masterminded by Vatican insiders, the Associated Press reports”

Looking at Associated Press they continue:

On Tuesday, the Vatican indefinitely suspended the press credentials of L’Espresso’s veteran Vatican correspondent, Sandro Magister, saying the publication had been “incorrect.”

Magister told The Associated Press that his editor, not he, obtained the document and decided to publish it.

“I just wrote the introduction,” Magister said in a text message, adding that he had promised the Vatican to keep quiet about the scoop.

Several Vatican commentators hypothesized that the leak was aimed at taking the punch out of Thursday’s official launch of the encyclical, in which the Vatican has lined up a Catholic cardinal, an Orthodox theologian, an atheist scientist and an economist to discuss the contents.

They noted that conservatives — particularly in the U.S. — attacked the encyclical even before it was released, chiding the pope for talking science in a church document and insisting that global warming isn’t a scientific reality. It would be in their interest, the argument goes, to fudge the pope’s message.

Italian daily La Stampa suggested that the leak might have come from “conservatives” inside Vatican, noting that Francis’ reform plans for the Vatican bureaucracy have been resisted by the more conservative old guard who would have an interest in sabotaging Francis’ labor of love.

**In case it is not entirely obvious, “Pope-gate” is a jibe at the way every scandal gets a “-gate” suffix.

The first serious comment has started to arrive – so serious that I can’t actually discern the personal views of some of the journalist on climate (how refreshing!!). As they seem to come from a Reuters source, it’s likely to get a lot of coverage. So although it’s only the first comments, it’s important and the outlook does not look good. The story of a “split” in the church. This is not going to be welcome to the Papacy! (splits are a sensitive subject for an organisation still reeling from its split with the orthodox and protestants):

Catholics Divided Over Global Warming

Pope Francis’ stern climate encyclical faces deep political divides

Ahead of pope’s climate message, U.S. Catholics split on cause of global warming

Obviously these theme of “split” might be a copy and paste from a press release from a group opposing the proclamation, but the same theme of split is also present In another article “Will Pope’s Much-Anticipated Encyclical Be A Clarion Call On Climate Change?” and this doesn’t seem to stem from this poll at all:

Statements like these are generating controversy in some quarters. For example, Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum — who is Catholic — believes the pope should focus on problems that Santorum says are more pressing than climate change.

“The church has gotten it wrong a few times on science, and I think that we probably are better off leaving science to the scientists, and focusing on what we’re really good at, which is theology and morality,” Santorum said.

So, this early theme of “split in the church” seems to have reported spontaneously from two different sources and as such could very well be the main response in the serious press.
If one considers that the unauthorised release & publication of the proclamation in Italy might indicate some divisions within the Vatican itself then together with these early stories on “Catholic split”, it seems that far from climate coming under the microscope, the main story may turn around and become how this proclamation has increased divisions within the catholic church.

This whole story is beginning to look far more interesting than I ever imagined!

Vatican City — There’s something of a whodunit going on in the Vatican to discover who leaked Pope Francis’ environment encyclical to an Italian newsweekly, deflating the release of the most anticipated and feared papal document in recent times.
The Detroit News

I’ve been scouring the web trying to find the first “serious” comment on the Pope’s story and finally I found it – and from the sound of the article, they’ve got a very different take than I had thought.
I’ve called it “Pope-gate” … (it’s a parody on a parody! Every sensational news is a gate these days!).  But clearly the Vatican is not happy:-

On Tuesday, the Vatican indefinitely suspended the press credentials of L’Espresso’s veteran Vatican correspondent, Sandro Magister, saying the publication had been “incorrect.” A letter from the Vatican spokesman, the Rev. Federico Lombardi, to Magister advising him of the sanction was posted on the bulletin board of the Vatican press office.

This could turn out to be very interesting. It seems that this fiasco has exposed the very different cultures of environmentalist correspondents and those who normally cover the Vatican:

Vatican commentator John Allen, writing for the Boston Globe’s Crux site, said the leak highlighted the clash of cultures at play at the Vatican over different understandings of embargoes.

I wouldn’t be at all surprised if many Vatican staff are beginning to twig that environmental coverage doesn’t work to anything near the same standards they are used to. If so, they might already be regretting so enthusiastically endorsing the rantings of environmentalist correspondents.
I’ll leave the last word to Detroit news:

“As a final observation, the frenzy probably will boost interest in Thursday’s official presentation, if for no other reason than to see whether there are actually any substantial changes between the leak and the real deal,” he said.

Also:
Who Leaked Pope’s Paper? Vatican Scrambles After Environment Encyclical Leaked Before Launch

As I regularly check news stories on global warming I have a fair idea of the press interest and yes, there have been a few idiotic “POPE BLASTS CLIMATE DENIERS” articles – but generally the response has been pretty mute with what I would describe as “copy filler” articles popping up.
That might change, but so far it looks like a lot of fuss about nothing.
Rechecked – just one mention of  the Pope’s scientific pronouncement in the last 9 news stories, that is really bad! Continue reading →

For some 2000 years the Christian Church has been condemning the “pagans”, but now in the pope’s proclaimation he has embraced paganism and talks of “brother sun, sister moon, brother to the river and to mother Earth”. Has he joined the secret order of the golden sickle?

Continue reading →

When I heard the pope was going to “excommunicate” us sceptics at first I laughed, then realising that rearranging the date the Pope did the same to Luther (1520) we get this years date (2015), I contemplated reproducing Luther’s 95 Thesis which I might have “nailed to the door”. But I quickly realised we sceptics only have one real demand and that is for science to be based on the evidence and not religious or political belief whether Catholic, New Age, Pagan, eco-fascist, etc.
But as I’ve watched the public mood turning overtly hostile to this scam and the mother nature not playing ball I realised the Pope had missed the boat. What appalling timing when even the very last “pro” warming indicator of Arctic ice now shows refreezing. This proclamation is a shot in the foot by the Pope which can do nothing but undermine the Pope’s own credibility.
But still I ought to respond – but how? Continue reading →

Anyone with even an ounce of intelligence knows that fossil fuel companies welcome higher energy prices. Anyone who’s ever worked in the wind business knows that all the big oil companies were the first with their snouts in the trough of public funding through unreliables.
They have been absolutely delighted that the gullible greens did so much to boost their share prices through higher profits on oil and public subsidies on unreliables.
But as anyone who comments online knows, we sceptics have won the debate – at least online. The alarmists have all but given up. There are now very few left to make the oil company case to raise energy prices and boost their profits.
So, recently we’ve seen a spate of articles such as “Even oil companies support a carbon tax” or “UN welcomes oil groups’ help to fight global warming” or “Even oil companies believe in climate change“.
To which all I can say to those printing this trash is ….  OF COURSE THEY SUPPORT IT YOU MORONS!!!
When will you get it into your thick skulls that the oil company support higher energy prices. That hasn’t changed, instead what has changed is that political support for this scam has plummeted. There are now so few gullible greens left to do the Big-Oil’s dirty work that the oil companies must do it themselves.
 

After 18 years without warming, when not a single one of the academic’s predictions from rising temperatures, to accelerated sea level rise to global sea ice loss has come true. When rising CO2 levels are boosting harvests worldwide and stopping famines, and when there have been some 1million extra deaths in the winter months since this scam started made far worse by rising fuel bills, when one of the big killers in the third world is smoke from wood burning fires which could be stopped completely if they had our access to cheap, clean fossil fuels.
It is just completely utterly bizarre that we are even considering wasting more money on this scam.
The science doesn’t support it, the economics doesn’t support it, and it is not morally valid.
When all sane rational analysis tells us that this scam is just that: a scam why are our politicians still going to these climate talks talking about destroying our economies? Far from being an ill fossil fuels are undoubtedly the single best thing that has happened to humans. We live in an age of unprecedented prosperity, health welfare because of the economic prosperity created by our coal and oils and what do we do?
We are stupid enough to believe the single biggest contributor to our modern society is evil. Completely mad – that’s what these climate talks are.
 Horaeee!!! Finally managed to find a forum where I was the first sceptic to comment – OK the first to comment!  Hence the post – but it was only because I got up very early.  (See: Scotsman)