…
Hail the Episcopal Bishop who “knows” which experts are right in this science debate. She hath declared that certified climate scientists paid by government grants speak the word of God. Other scientists (like 48% of Meteorologists, and two thirds of Geo’s and Engineers, plus practically everyone retired from NASA) are immoral, blind, threatening the poor, and wrong.
The Guardian: Climate denial is immoral, says head of US Episcopal church
The highest ranking woman in the Anglican communion has said climate denial is a “blind” and immoral position which rejects God’s gift of knowledge.
Get ready climate denier, for your brain was not a gift from God. When you speak of Aristotle, Popper, and Feynman, you are not using the gift of knowledge to take apart the false posturings of broken climate simulations. Nor are you protecting the poor from witchdoctors with biblical prophesies of doom.
Katharine Jefferts Schori, presiding bishop of the Episcopal church and one of the most powerful women in Christianity, said that climate change was a moral imperative akin to that of the civil rights movement. She said it was already a threat to the livelihoods and survival of people in the developing world.
Climate sensitivity is a lot like the civil rights movement. Sure.
Everyone is a racist these days, even if you don’t talk about race.
In the same context, Jefferts Schori attached moral implications to climate denial, suggesting those who reject the underlying science of climate change were turning their backs on God’s gift of knowledge.
Didn’t God give us weather balloons, satellites, and boreholes? Or did He just stop at Al Gore and James Hansen?
“Episcopalians understand the life of the mind is a gift of God and to deny the best of current knowledge is not using the gifts God has given you,” she said. “In that sense, yes, it could be understood as a moral issue.”
Yes, and God’s plan is clearly for you to switch off your brain and accept the Truth of the Department of Eco-Glory.
She went on: “I think it is a very blind position. I think it is a refusal to use the best of human knowledge, which is ultimately a gift of God.”
Schori was trained in the Green Religion at the Church of Academia first:
An oceanographer before she was ordained at the age of 40, Bishop Jefferts Schori said she hoped to use her visibility as a church leader to help drive action on climate change.
It’s a shame she didn’t get the Gift of The Scientific Method with her oceanography.
Hail, father, the State is my Church. Whatever the loudest government scientists say is now God’s word.
I suspect Christian philosophers might have a thing or two to say, maybe, like Exodus 20:3 “”You shall have no other gods before me.”
Give her points for ethical flexibility though. Coal may be killing kids in her visions, but it’s fine for the church to make money from fossil fuels. Even she, from her extreme position, thinks the Guardian divestment plot is bonkers:
The Episcopal church has also come under pressure to withdraw its fossil fuel holdings. A number of diocese are pressing for divestment, and will bring the issue to a vote at the church’s annual convention this summer.
Jefferts Schori opposes fossil fuel divestment. “If you divest you lose any direct ability to influence the course of a corporation’s behavior,” she said. “I think most pragmatists realise that we can’t close the spigot on the oil wells and close the coal mines immediately without some other energy source to shift to.”
I seem to recall that Climate Conferences have typically been visited by unusual, unseasonal and even exceptionally cold weather.
Perhaps the bishop might like to ponder if those may have been clear messages from God to disregard what climactivists preach?
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Jesus said : “And he spake a parable unto them, Can the blind lead the blind? shall they not both fall into the ditch?”
This was in terms of spiritual guidance, and not being judgemental.
However, if you consider its the same “Church” with an openly homosexual bishop that also calls itself “Christian”…well..I’m not surprised it has trouble telling nonsense from sound theology.
I’m not being mean, just telling it how it is……
60
Sorry…some clarity:
” if you consider its the same “Church” ” – by this I mean the Episcopalian church……not the Church Jesus set up.
40
Climate-religion is the opiate of the dumbmasses.
It’s OK, Jo… if you want to ‘whack’ this one I completely understand.
330
She’s just another fanatic. ‘nuf said about the fruitbat.
30
Somehow so typical of the religious establishment. They say nothing about the victims of climate policies, but when they decide to speak up, it’s to condemn the people pointing out a false god is being worshipped.
https://thepointman.wordpress.com/2014/10/02/tell-me-why/
Pointman
491
Yes of the religious establishment. The religious autocracy. But don’t extend that belief to “christians” per se. I have many christian friends, all are skeptics. Most have a pretty good grasp of physics.
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Bishop Schori draws an analogy between the CAGW issue and the Civil Rights movement. … ‘a moral issue akin to the Civil Rights movement.’
I think this is a very poor analogy. In the Civil Rights movement it was a movement of a repressed minority against the position of the prevailing legal system, social mores and the State. In terms of how John Stuart Mill would classify it, it was a movement against the ‘tyranny of the majority’.
But in Bishop Schori’s case, the facts of the analogy are all the wrong way around. With CAGW, it is clearly the majority – as represented by political parties, government policies and the so-called ‘97% consensus’ amongst scientists – that represents the mood of the current prevailing legal system, the State and the power structures of the world. It is the group of people vilified as immoral skeptics who are the minority. The minority stands against the tyranny of the majority.
Many of the heroes of the Anglican Church – and, indeed, of Christianity generally – are people who individually stood against the tyranny of various majorities. The role of William Wilberforce in opposing the slave trade in British ships is a case often held up by Anglicans as an exemplar of the brave individual who speaks out. It was in 1879 that he introduced his first private member’s Bill to ban British involvement with the slave trade. It was roundly defeated. He was definitely in the minority. He tried again, numerous times. Eventually, on 25th March, 1807, he was successful and the Abolition of Slave Trade Act was passed. The House was reported to have risen to its feet and cheered wildly.
So much for modern Anglicanism, if the particular case of Bishop Schori and her vilification of skeptics as blind and immoral is how we are to judge it. (In other cases, Anglicanism has a lot going for it. It’s not all bad!)
Final point. In the piece quoted by Jo, above, Bishop Schori is quoted a referring to God’s gift of knowledge. What about God’s gift of reason?
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Sorry for typo, above. Let’s go for 1789 that Wilberforce first introduced his Bill, ie, many years before it was eventually passed.
40
—————-
I kinda get the analogy but, even though I feel persecuted I don’t believe we skeptics are persecuted like the blacks were.
That’s doesn’t mean many members of “The Team” are against enslaving us and killing the poor of color.
00
Ditto from me TedM
40
Yes, same from me TedM.
40
The biggest problem for most Christians these days is that most Churches have remade Jesus in the image of Karl Marx and are currently remaking God in the image of Gaia. The Catholics resisted for quite some time but the new Pope seems to have the socialist bug of championing the theft of money from the productive citizens to pay off selected victim groups and then labeling it charity. Gaia worship will be next on the list.
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And again TedM.
Round about here http://www.cornwallalliance.org/ needs a mention.
Doug
10
I find the same thing as Ted, and agree with his point.
20
Right on, Pointman.
Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori might wish to point her moral acumen toward the hundreds of billion$ wasted on supposed sustainable energy, which could have gone to providing fresh water to the poor.
How many children died of diarrhea and dehydration from polluted drinking water, while huge sums were spent on an AGW pseudo-problem that has produced no observable harm?
There’s a moral issue in “global warming, alright, but Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori has entirely missed it.
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And a reliable water supply along with a proper sanitation system, requires the availability of reliable power.
80
Knowledge is useless if those with it cannot think.
I’m sure the Sun would remain completely unimpressed at any attempt to impose a `moral imperative‘ on it’s actions.
Maybe she should lead a revival of Akenaten’s religion. It would be due acknowledgement of all the Sun does for us, both good and bad. Then she wouldn’t have to deny that contribution any longer.
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“Knowledge is useless if those with it cannot think”. Or knowledge without understanding.
What I refer to as regurgitators and extrapolators.
10
“those who reject the underlying science of climate change were turning their backs on God’s gift of knowledge.”, she said.
Ummm, Ms.Schori that would be you, would it not? You and the all the rest of the warmists are the people who who reject real climate science, right?
Because unlike you, “Deniers” base all their claims on the underlying science of climate change.
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A bizarre intervention indeed. I thought the church had, belatedly, realized that it had lost its authority on temporal matters.
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I expect the Episcopal Church cleric is asserting that knowledge of climate change is a personal revelation by God to each and every warmist.
When evangelical Christian Sir John Houghton was co-chair of the IPCC, he claimed that his knowledge of global warming was the result of a gift from God and the basis of his revelation of the connection between Science, Environment and Christianity. He even compared his position on man-made global warming to the prophet Jeremiah’s message to the jewish people to accept the consequences of their disobedience to God.
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The climate religion is God’s gift. ( God spoke to NOAA, right?)
That is blasphemous…but darn funny.
280
It’s hilarious! I don’t find it in the least bit blasphemous.
My OH and I are both sick to death of our stupid bishops spouting this AGW nonsense.
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Even if it is viewed as blasphemous, there will be no jehad, no removing of heads. OK?
After all good Christians aren’t like that.
Are they?
Eh, Right?
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But NOAA keeps turning a deaf ear.
Abe
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NOAA is busy adjusting the God model to conform with the latest message.
Soon the revised prediction will appear in Nature, New Scientist, the Scientific America and the Brigalow church gazette ( all the leading AGW journals in other words ) to praise about its accuracy from all the usual subjects.
I expect the headline to be something like “what do AGW scientists think will happen to the climate in the next 5 years? God knows! “
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Yes and it was about rising sea levels.
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Sarc
60
“God spoke to NOAA” my first LOL for the day, thanks.
There appears to be a definite blurring of belief values that go against the conventions of what developed post enlightenment, even with the contentious issues of religious belief having a place in the scientific world aside there has been a new Zealot that’s appeared from the age of CAGW.
The truth is Zealots have always occurred from both sides but at least you could see where they were coming from, however the CAGW believer is confusing at best with the ability to jump from modern to primitive dogmas in a second and always with a bizarre answer to explain why, this random reasoning gives away the fact that CAGW is simply a cult where confusion reigns for the purpose of control over the unsure and afraid.
Humans may take small steps in development but recognizing the difference in what’s observed to what’s believed is one we won’t throw away so easily.
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Well! I knew god had spoken to Noah, & saved the animals of the world.
I did not realise he had spoken to NOAA & asked them to save the whole damn world.
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The first time was from a flood.
So is this second time, only from melting ice caps!
Tony.
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Yes but speaking plainly – the true heart and theolgy of CAGW is genocide against all who disbelieve.
Sounds like Stalin, or Pol Pot or…..the many Inquisitions….a new Dark Ages is upon us….
11
Was she a passenger on the Ship Of Fools voyage?
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Guardian editor Alan Rusbridger is using divestment as his last big strategy pre-retirement, leading into Save The World @ Paris.
They’ve gone total fruit-loop, ignoring the Pause and decades of failed models. Mountains of slam-dunk evidence their theory is junk are waived as they double down. THAT really requires faith.
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Radical Islam vs EcoTerrorism, Infidel vs Denier, Quran vs IPCC, Imam vs Authority. Different words but the same twisted certainty.
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The Gruniard will have to do very much better than peddling Ms Schori and The Pope in their efforts to evangelize the sheeple for Paris.
What the Greenblob actually needs is their Moses Man, someone to descend from Mauna Loa with a fresh set of tablets direct from God.
One of the the Green wingnuts is going to fulfill this prophecy…they presently appear on the right trajectory.
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If I was a religious man, I would recommend AlGore as Moses and Tim Flannery as his accolite.. !
Both have booming voices and talk with a sense of urgency and authority, both are very well versed in the doctrine, both are religious in the true sense of the word. What is yours is mine, whats mine is mine!
50
Typo alert: I think you spelled “catamite” incorrectly. 🙂
20
Acolyte
00
Good job there are no “climate deniers” on this blog. I mean, what kind of idiot denies there is climate? Similarly, what kind of idiot denies there is no such thing as climate change? Finally, what kind of idiot denies that there can be no climate change without humans?
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(hmmmm… a bit tied up there with trying to be too clever. That last sentence should read: “Finally, what kind of idiot denies that climate can change without humans?”)
40
BTW, Ms Nova, why is my comment still “awaiting moderation”? What have I said to deserve your loss of trust?
——-
Sorry, Radical. A word must have tripped the auto-filter. I freed it up. Thanks. No change in moderation here. – Jo
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If the climate changed in the forest and there was no one there to see it would it make a sound?
I think those enamored with climate think exactly that, that if not for us humans the climate would never change. Now that is about as silly as it gets but they do seem to tend towards the dramatic and ridiculous.
Or we’ll hear the “but it wouldn’t change this fast” as though anyone knows how fast it should or shouldn’t change. The whole damn thing has gone beyond ridiculous, and the trough dwellers are scrambling lest their trough dries up and they have to do some real work for a change.
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Perhaps she has been reading the same media climate agitprop as the Pope.
80
Most of you will know that we’ve got (in the UK) a General Election coming up. Our Top Man in the Church of England, the Archbishop of Canterbury, has issued a 52-page edict to his flock as to what they need to consider before voting – and although I can’t be bothered to find a copy, I’ve read that it could be regarded as published by the Church of Marxist-Leninist England. To add a bit of spice to that, the Bishop of Leicester – who likes to be known as Bishop Tim – is CEO of Common Purpose. That’ll definitely reverse falling church attendances – 😉
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The Anglican church has been on the fringes with the nimbys for some time now.
110
Bemused
Not just the Anglicans but the Uniting Church here in Oz, the Community Church I go to and most probably the rest of the denominations here and 97% of my christian friends. Well most likely I’ve been “unfriended” by most of them because of my skeptic views.
R-COO- K+
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Interesting because it’s the reverse of my experience.
90
Sorry to hear that they ‘unfriended’ you.
True friends will stand by you even if there is a difference of opinion between you on some issues.
50
Meanwhile in good old blighty the climastrologers are warming us up for paris with threats of disease and pestilence. Note the article by the learned Telegraph is full of could and mights. Not one fact. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/science/11489158/Plague-of-mosquitos-carrying-deadly-diseases-is-headed-for-Britain-scientists-warn.html
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And paying through the nose for electricity is going to stop those mossies?!
60
Craig Taylor
Oh dear another report that is lacking in historical perspective. Maybe this will help.
It was the wholesale use of insecticides that wiped the infection from European shore, nothing else.
From http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2627969/
or
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Oliver Cromwell is believed to have died from malaria, assumed to have been contracted in his native Fenland, although there were plenty of other places where he might have picked it up. In Shakespeare’s day and for a long time afterwards, the word “ague” was used for malaria, although, given the medical knowledge of the time, the word was also applied to fevers in general.
Daniel Defoe describes what a dreadful killer malaria was in part of Essex, not far from his native London:
“…all along this county it was very frequent to meet with men that had had from five or six, to fourteen or fifteen wives; nay, and some more; and I was inform’d that in the marshes on the other side the river over-against Candy Island, there was a farmer, who was then living with the five and twentieth wife, and that his son who was but about 35 years old, had already had about fourteen…
The reason, as a merry fellow told me, who said he had had about a dozen and half of wives, (tho’ I found afterwards he fibb’d a little) was this; That they being bred in the marshes themselves, and season’d to the place, did pretty well with it; but that they always went up into the hilly country, or to speak their own language into the uplands for a wife: That when they took the young lasses out of the wholesome and fresh air, they were healthy, fresh and clear, and well; but when they came out of their native air into the marshes among the fogs and damps, there they presently chang’d their complexion, got an ague or two, and seldom held it above half a year, or a year at most; and then, said he, we go to the uplands again, and fetch another.”
From Defoe’s A Tour in Circuits, Through the Island of Great Britain, of which this particular circuit was made in 1722 (http://www.visionofbritain.org.uk/travellers/Defoe/2). “Candy Island” is now “Canvey Island”.
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Fantastic Article. Learn something new every day. Cheers.
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Be aware of suspicious Rick’s too.
00
I can recommend DDT.
20
the good CAGW Bishop needs to follow the debate more closely:
24 March: WUWT: Mann on the run – latest paper ‘dead at birth’, rejected by German warmist scientists, deletes inconvenient Facebook challenge
Pierre Gosselin over at “No Tricks Zone” is reporting that within a day of its publication, the paper from the German Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research has now been debunked and denounced by German climate scholars, some of whom side with the warmer view of climate. He writes…
Meanwhile on Mann’s Facebook page, WUWT reader Jaime Jessop asks Dr. Mann an inconvenient question and mentions a study indicating the change in AMOC is due to “natural variability”, which he then answers and later deletes…
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2015/03/24/mann-on-the-run-latest-paper-dead-at-birth-rejected-by-german-warmist-scientists-deletes-inconvenient-facebook-challenge/
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On page 19 of his book which I have just started reading Dr Mann refers to “civilization’s addiction to fossil fuels” (my italics), a term I find rather offensive. There is no viable alternative to power the Western lifestyle. It is a process of evolution from our ancestors who discovered that fossil fuel can be harnessed economically to make things work. People have been working on renewables for many decades and getting nowhere. Today I read a newspaper article from 1977 which told of the virtues of wind power and explained that in 10-15 years electricity generated from it would be cheaper than that from coal. I’m still waiting!
The article also said that wind towers placed all the way along the coast from Adelaide to Port Hedland would replace all of Australia’s coal generated electricity. Well it hasn’t even though there are now towers all around the country.
60
She’s forgetting to apply the ‘you shall know them by their fruits’ principle. The fruits of anti-fossil fuel alarmist policies have been corruption, starvation, oppression, and depression. The fruits of fossil fuel use have been peace, prosperity, freedom, and environmental stewardship.
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I think the therapists will do a roaring trade after Paris. The guys & gals are going to such extremes, winding themselves up for the big event that when it flops just like Cancun , Copenhagen and all the rest of the talkfests they will need a lot of help.
How the Church can talk about widening gaps between the rich and poor on one hand, then back the climate religion on the other, is beyond me. What will it take for them to understand that cheap , accessible energy is the way for poor nations to make progress for their people –the very people the Church is supposedly worried about.
80
Ross, what makes you so sure they won’t succeed? Just because nature is against their theory does not mean networking, threats, abuse, and passion will not achieve an agreement of sorts. Just the fact that they are all going to Paris for 2 weeks is itself a success. Then there are the billions that will probably be tossed. That’s a “success” too. But what they want is global bureaucracy – one that doesn’t answer to voters.
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Jo
I just see the same pattern of behaviour and spin being repeated, as occurred before previous conferences. Each one has promised the final agreement. But none of them have delivered and I don’t think they will get over the line this time. There is much more awareness of the situation now compared to before Copenhagen, for example , thanks to efforts of people like yourself with your blog , WUWT , Real Science and many others.
Despite the huge efforts going on in the USA between the White House and the EPA , climate change as an issue is falling rapidly down the list in the polls.
I don’t see the fact that they are in Paris for 2 weeks as a success — this has been on their talkfest program for probably 5+ years. I am sure the next two or three COP conferences after Paris are already in the dairies of most of the key people.
I agree that the global bureaucracy is their goal and that is the fact that needs to be put squarely in front of voters. The problem , at present, is most people probably see it as too far fetched and cannot comprehend the consequences of it.
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Ross,
The global bureaucracy is already in place. Has been in full force for about fifteen years and probably even much longer than that as regards the basic foundations of it.
If the ‘average person on the street’ became fully aware of how entrenched this movement has become, they would stop dead in their tracks just from the shock of it.
Abe
60
Yes, Abe, this is true but at the moment it’s not self funding. This means it has to pander to the whims of its funders ( the various national governments and through them to us). The global warming penance is an attempt to impose a tax by treaty, the beneficiary of which will be the global beaurocracy which will through the tithe become self funded with an avenue to tax populations through the funding provisions in the treaty. It separates the UN from needing to satisfy populations that it is working in their collective interests and gives the UN punitive powers against us. It is truly a surrender of sovereignty which should never be allowed to happen. In effect it funds world socialism on a scale never dreamed before. There must never be a tax by treaty capability – ever.
Some people (like the greens) seem to like the idea of a one world (generally of the socialist kind) government, for those people, I ask the simple question. Where do you go if you don’t like your one world government?
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Bobl, everything you say is true, but that doesn’t mean the “one-worlders” won’t get their way in Paris. Once a one-world government is established, that’s it.
“Where do you go if you don’t like your one world government?”
There is nowhere and They don’t care. That’s the point. During the brief Solidarity interlude in communist Poland, journalist Teresa Toranska sought out communist bigwigs, suddenly accessible and vulnerable to the Polish public, for interviews. These people were the unaccountable (although self-proclaimedly democratic) members of the post-Stalin nomenklatura. Toranska published her interviews under the title of “Oni” (Polish for “They”). The cast-members of Toranska’s They may have passed on, by now, but there are plenty of Them left, with the same attitudes, in every country on Earth. Even within Poland, They managed to re-assert Themselves for another eight years.
One of like mind is called Barack Obama. A president so determined to change laws by edict, or by extra-territorial means, isn’t going to worry about what voters think (he has made that abundantly clear since November). Furthermore, there is speculation, but no more than that (as far as I know), that he wants to be UN general secretary next, but with greatly expanded powers, vis-a-vis the current incumbent.
You don’t even have to go back to the Cold War to experience government by lunatic fiat. We’ve had it in Britain for decades, thanks to our presence in the European madhouse. Most legislation, not least relating to “climate” matters, originates in Brussels. British civil servants can usually be relied upon to make it even worse, presumably to justify their continued employment. Brussels bigwigs are as untouchable as Big Brother.
The only thing that will scupper Paris is resolute resistance from at least one prominent participant, or from an equally prominent national legislature in the aftermath. It’s not just the self-described “Greens” who like the idea of a one-world government and don’t care a jot about us little people. That nomenklatura thing has really caught on.
60
Yes, that’s what I’m afraid of. Can a wrong idea become a paradigm. Has it happened before but mostly would we even recognise it if it had.
40
Another stupid study from the Mann.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2015/03/24/michael-mann-and-stefan-rahmstorf-claim-the-gulf-stream-is-slowing-due-to-greenland-ice-melt-except-reality-says-otherwise/
More delusion and even some warmists have had enough. http://wattsupwiththat.com/2015/03/24/mann-on-the-run-latest-paper-dead-at-birth-rejected-by-german-warmist-scientists-deletes-inconvenient-facebook-challenge/
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Just last night here in the states, the local TV news only reported that Ted Cruz was a “denier” and then segued directly from that into a “special report” about an acclaimed climate scientist (I had never heard of before, but a pretty 20 something)giving a lecture about “Faith, Science, and the Urgent Need for Action on Climate Change”. She sat in front of stain glassed windows in a church and said there were 64,000 items(no specifics) that proved that AGW was real and being a denier is immoral. Nothing new there as it happens all the time now, but the chosen venue is clearly of note and germane to this topic.
About Bishop Schori, I was going to quote a scripture but I will avoid that tangent.
120
In a church, a “pretty 20 something”, must have been Hayhoe. Quite a few people have shown her to be quite clueless, but she is the Director of the Climate Science Center at Texas Tech University so one would expect that ensuring the continued flow of funding will be one of her priorities.
60
… William Shakespeare, The Merchant of Venice.
120
I’ve been wondering about the origins of:
as spoken by the character of Jean-Luc Picard in Star Trek: TNG
100
So the Episcopal Church becomes the Church of Climate Change. Based on the vague science of consensus, the church has finally embraced Science as truth, any science. Science is what people say, the science of consensus and opinion, people who know stuff. Pope Gore and his minions, the high priests of the University of East Anglia, and the international organization of volunteer monks at the IPCC collecting carbon indulgences from the guilty and the moral and showing the true path of enlightenment and strict adherence to the true worship of averages. Long may they stay constant, the holy averages which must be maintained. We must live in an unchanging world. Average temperature. Average sea level. Average weather and also the elimination of extreme events, which are the punishment for sin. Above all the specter of evil carbon, the demon element of the periodic table, God’s punishment on us all.
And at our end, only ashes will be left, because we are made almost entirely from truly evil man made industrial pollutants, CO2 and water. Amen.
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Exodus 20:3 “”You shall have no other gods before me.”
. . .
If we were living in the times of the Bible, this would be the moment when Jesus strode into the church and upturned the tables, or, when Moses, on
returning from the top of the mountain, finds them worshipping at the idol of the golden calf ( now called sustainability).
Jonova quote:
“In the same context, Jefferts Schori attached moral implications to climate denial, suggesting those who reject
the underlying science of climate change were turning their backs on God’s gift of knowledge.”
Quite so.
Tim Flannery, smh: ”Bless me father, for I have sinned,” he says.
”It’s been 45 years since my last confession: I probably eat too much meat and fly too much.”
211
A very relevant quote.
131
Now proclaiming through God is serious,
And could leave a poor warmist delirious,
Like that Emperor who,
Just hadn’t a clue,
Being naked,thought he was imperious.
230
Why take it so serious?
It is all too mysterious.
We sit upon the pew,
and to question is taboo.
All this nonsense is making me delirious.
70
She came down to earth with a thud in her last sentence. That was the true revelation.
140
Robdel,
That sentence is worth repeating, thus,
“I think most pragmatists realise that we can’t close the spigot on the oil wells and close the coal mines immediately without some other energy source to shift to.”
90
Well, the Pope and the C of E Arch-Bishop have already thus spake
Other Protestant splinters cannot be seen to be left out
What a droll spectacle it all is – risible, one may think
Religion, having previously failed to burn all the scientists at the stake for heresy, are now clamouring as wee little beasties to join the consensus, lest they themselves be perceived as heretics and deniers
100
the Guardian writing about the Bishop’s words on CAGW as if they are gospel truth was matched over the weekend by ABC’s “Spirit of Things” presenter, Rachael Kohn, actually asking a New Age Dharma Guy “ARE WE THAT CLOSE?” when he moved seamlessly from talking about the US slavery era (racism, nudge nudge), to saying ““how many of us realise that what we’ve been doing over the last 40, 60, 100 years since the industrialised, homicidal economy took root, that essentially we’re in a potential near-term extinction moment on earth?”
“ARE WE THAT CLOSE?” – Rachael, what possessed you to ask him such a ridiculous question & why do Australian taxpayers pay your salary?
at least Clements answered “i don’t know”, tho he then referred people to the “evidence” of “mind scientists and environmental scientists”, (those that agree with him, presumably)!
AUDIO: ABC Spirit of Things: Dr Rachael Kohn: Betray the age to be spiritually free
Listen from about 43 mins in…
(first broadcast 15 March, repeated 18 March, repeated over the past weekend)
Guest: Alan Clements, World Dharma Online Institute
http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/spiritofthings/betray-the-age–to-be-spiritually-free/6293380
Kohn also spruiked Alan’s Skype consultations, which his “World Dharma Online Institute” says cost $145 for 3 sessons, (25 participants). one can only wonder if he’s ever reached his quota.
Kohn’s program is the ABC equivalent of the spiritual gobbledygook Californian public radio program “New Demensions” which, unfortunately, ABC also airs, and which has had Clements as a Guest, naturally.
what a fun evening this must have been:
18 Feb: Northern Echo Byron Bay: Spiritually Incorrect – why thinking is the new black
If you like your enlightenment with large doses of spiritual-political satire and activist entertainment, then Alan Clements is for you…
‘I don’t think the playing field is as it was two years ago – catastrophic climate change and near-term extinction are on our doorstep – it’s almost game over as we know it on this plane of existence.”…
***The show I do, Spiritually Incorrect, is for smart people – the last thing you want to do is have your mind co-opted by the enemy. There are a lot of shamans and so-called new-age thinkers out there that co-opt people into servitude.’
For Clements it’s about being a critical thinker…
Alan Clements presents Spiritually Incorrect at the Byron Community Centre…
Ticketing: $30 advance, $40 cash at the door…
http://www.echo.net.au/2015/02/spiritually-incorrect-thinking-new-black/
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Seems that business mergers and acquisitions model is extending its scope, with the traditional religions each seeking to woo the new Church of Climate Change to their fold. No doubt with the perception that there are synergies there for the taking. Why we’ve even seen the Bishop of Rome getting involved, so why not religious take-over battles with full bidding wars and all the usual intrigue. Perhaps it could even run to full disclosure statements with independent auditors reports on the participants (just don’t hold your breath on that last one).
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weather:
23 March: CBS Boston: Another Month Of Record Cold, But Reasons To Be Optimistic
By Terry Eliasen, Meteorologist, WBZ-TV Exec. Weather Producer
Enough is enough. For the past eight weeks or so (starting around Jan. 23) we have experienced the harshest New England winter stretch ever recorded in our long and weathered history. This is not an exaggeration. Records haven’t just been challenged, they have been smashed, obliterated. We all deserve and NEED a break.
After the snowiest and coldest February ever recorded, March came in like a polar bear and looks to be going out the same way.
In fact, as of this writing, our average temperature this March is 31.8 degrees.
This ties us with 1984 as the coldest March on record since they started taking readings at Logan Airport in 1936. A few relatively “mild” days later this week will likely prevent us from holding onto the number 1 spot, but either way March 2015 will go down as one of the coldest ever recorded.
And, likely something you don’t want to hear, this weather pattern isn’t going anywhere fast..
BUT, overall, the next several months have a much greater chance of being below normal than above in the temperature department. . . this will likely be the case into this summer and perhaps into next winter as well. . . yikes…
Can I promise you that you won’t see another flake fall this year? No. Nor can I promise that there won’t be any more bitter cold, winter-jacket-wearing days. But, Old Man Winter’s days are numbered. I have a feeling that after this historic winter, we are all going to appreciate spring and summer just a bit more this year. The flowers will be a bit more fragrant, the beach sand a bit softer, heck, I might even be more tolerant of a mosquito or two.
Mother Nature, we tip our hats to you, that was one heck of a winter…
http://boston.cbslocal.com/2015/03/23/march-2015-tied-for-coldest-ever-in-boston/
90
Well!!!! You see all this is due to global weirding driving the Polar Vortex around all over the place from New England to southeastern Europe. The Polar Vortex is writhing around like a cut snake and this because of Global Warming therefore making for colder winters all over the place, /sarc.
20
Jesus did not anticipate the climatology cult, but did know that people made false claims. This is from Matthew 7:15-20
Modern liberal theology is to interpret the Bible in modern terms. My interpretation is:-
The prophets of the Old Testament were people who understood the society of the time, and the wider context. As such, they could predict (prophesy) where society was moving, along with providing the uncomfortable solutions to save the chosen people. Climatologists always have the same doom-laden prophesy and the same solution. The french expression is truly apt in this context – Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose.
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Kevin,
“by their fruit you will recognize them.”
That’s the phrase Ted Cruz used in his CPAC speach.
If I was an American, I would be backing Ted Cruz and praying for him to be elected the next president.
131
Indeed Kevin
They come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly they are ferocious wolves.
30
A very good re-interpretation. Thank you.
40
It started when branches of the Church accepted that their ultimate worth can be judged by temporal humanitarian ideas of morals rather than by its own precepts. This is just one more result of falling in line with popular trends. It’s in tune with what many outside of the church have requested of the church.
90
the church of gorebull warming has larger collection plates
100
“the church of gorebull warming has larger collection plates” and the warm of an unburning bush.
50
1872.
In a backroom of the British Museum, a man called George Smith spent the darkening days of November bent over a broken clay tablet.
It was one of thousands of fragments from recent excavations in northern Iraq, and was covered in the intricate cuneiform script that had been used across ancient Mesopotamia and deciphered in Smith’s own lifetime.
Some of the tablets set out the day-to-day business of accountants and administrators – a chariot wheel broken, a shipment of wine delayed, the prices of cedar or bitumen.
Smith’s tablet, though, told a story.
A story about a world drowned by a flood, about a man who builds a boat, about a dove released in search of dry land.
Smith realised that he was looking at a version of Noah’s Ark. But the book was not Genesis.
It was Gilgamesh, an epic poem that had first been inscribed into damp clay in about 1800BC, roughly 1,000 years before the composition of the Hebrew Bible (the Christian Old Testament).
Even Smith’s tablet, which had been dated to some point in the 7th Century BC, was far older than the earliest manuscript of Genesis.
Coming less than 15 years after Darwin’s On the Origin of Species, the Epic of Gilgamesh felt to many like another great crack in the edifice of Victorian Christianity.
The story of how the Flood Tablet emerged from the mud of northern Iraq begins in a place called Kouyunjik – one of the archaeological sites now being mined for Assyrian antiquities by IS.
It’s a story told by Prof David Damrosch of Columbia University in The Buried Book: the Loss and Rediscovery of the Great Epic of Gilgamesh.
BBC: The men who uncovered Assyria
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At least this is moving discussion of the climate catastrophists belief system out of the sience arena into that of religion, where it belongs.
At the moment I happen to be reading a book on geology (Ghost Mountains and Vanished Oceans: North America from Birth to Middle Age by John Wilson) and this paragraph caught my eye:
Many seem to find the idea of wrathful gods comforting somehow and have replaced them by the evil CO2 which must be propitiated by large amounts of our collective wealth and wellbeing lest it strike us down. The large and growing body of scientific and observational evidence to the contrary is ignored or dismissed as error in the face of the revealed truth contained in the scriptures produced by the holy model.
The depressing thing is to contemplate the time it has taken to dismantle the hold of some completley discredited belief systems over peoples minds. We really don’t have a lot of time to dismantle this one. It has only to survive a few more years and we will have government of such scope and power that it will only be overthrown, in the end, by violence.
That is a sad legacy for the age of reason and knowledge.
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From The Bishop’s Gambit:
Antony Jay and Jonathan Lynn had a great deal of insight and got away with telling truths under the guise of comedy.
160
The historical association of Christian churches with totalitarianism is distressingly well established.
Recent reinterpretation and justification of this with a new-age eco-marxist backdrop is euphemistically described by the author (Peter Scott 2003) as, ‘a political theology of nature‘.
Pascal Bruchner’s work The Fanatacism of The Apocalypse provides a good explanation for the current re-run of virulent social and moral pathology. The link here is to the French philosopher giving a GWPF talk at the House of Lords on his book, introduced by Benny Peiser with concluding remarks from Nigel Lawson.
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The Nazis were a socialist movement with leaders like Hitler open about his dislike of Christianity.
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I’m wondering if the green-shirts will eventually come knocking on the door of dissenters.
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Notice where the good Bishop says this: (my bolding)
They all, hand on heart, know absolutely what the cause is, and yet they won’t even countenance the cure.
Lip service for the masses.
Tony.
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Nor will they forgo the dividends.
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An essay by Bob Carter recently posted on the catallaxy files portrays Bob’s knowledgeable common sense.
Up until about a decade ago I was an active member of the congregation at St. Columba’s Anglican church in Scarborough.
I always found the not so subtle references to “saving the planet” from God knows what annoying.
I recall responding to a general question at a mens’ club meeting one evening regarding the question “Should Australia build a nuclear power station”. My answer was no, but only because Australia has more coal than it knows what to do with, and in order to go nuclear Australia would have to invest in at least two dozen facilities because of the technology, expertise, and infrastructure it would take to build just one would be prohibitive”. From then on I was regarded as a rather black sheep.
After I moved away, I wrote to the rector at St Columba’s suggesting that he must feel rather foolish in that the globe is not warming, but cooling. One would think that I had suggested the Christ wore high heeled shoes! Then for a while I started commenting on the ludicrous posts he would make on Facebook, sharing garbage from 350.org. I pointed out numerous times to him, as well as the pastor in Bunbury, that in fact they were worshiping a false prophet and a golden calf. That went on for not very long and then he “unfriended me”. Then the Anglican Synod decided it would be cool to advocate CAGW fables o a grand scale. About the same time the C of E began to invest heavily in giant fans in Jolly Olde Blighty. When I go to church now it is to a community church that is concerned with Christian values as opposed to politics.
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I can understand why you moved on Rod S. It is upsetting to find your church is no longer your home but integrity comes first.
My OH was appalled that a legitimate question re supposed global warming at a synod in England had not been minuted. He protested and asked for an amendment to the minutes. He was unable to attend the subsequent synod of the diocese but later discovered that the minutes still did not contain his question. This was blatant control of what was permitted to be published. I can name the diocese and bishop concerned to anyone with a legitimate concern via Jo if she is willing.
10
out of the closet, & the CAGW “followers” will lap it up. imagine the premiums they’re after:
24 March: Business Green: Jennifer Shankleman: Insurance industry demands ‘ambitious, meaningful’ global climate deal
Open letter comes as Ed Davey says a Paris agreement must be priority for next government to avoid catastrophic climate change
The UK’s insurance industry will today join with green groups and academics to call on world leaders to sign an ambitious global deal on tackling climate change at a major summit in Paris later this year.
But Energy and Climate Change Secretary Ed Davey has warned an agreement that limits global warming to 2ºC by the end of the century is far from certain…
An open letter, signed by a number of insurance industry leaders including Paul Evans, AXA chief executive and chairman of the Association of British Insurers (ABI), as well as Maurice Tulloch, chief executive of Aviva UK, warns countries not to repeat the mistakes at Copenhagen in 2009, where leaders failed to conclude a deal to tackle climate change.
“The UN climate summit in December must deliver an ambitious, meaningful global deal on climate change,” the letter says. “There is a sense of building momentum and insurers, environmentalists and academics want this to turn into action.”
The letter argues that any deal will have to be “measurable, time-bound and supported by a robust legal framework” if the world is to stand any chance of dealing with the “vast and complex” risks presented by climate change…
Ed Davey: “The insurance industry in the UK knows the impact of climate change globally already and as it plans its assets long term and looks at its liabilities, it is probably, along with the ***pension industry, more aware of the financial threats that climate change poses than anyone else.”…
http://www.businessgreen.com/bg/news/2401030/insurance-industry-demands-ambitious-meaningful-global-climate-deal
***the arrogance of Mann:
24 March: NYT: John Schwartz: Science Museums Urged to Cut Ties With Kochs
Dozens of climate scientists and environmental groups are calling for museums of science and natural history to “cut all ties” with fossil fuel companies and philanthropists like the Koch brothers.
A letter released on Tuesday asserts that such money is tainted by these donors’ efforts to deny the overwhelming scientific consensus on climate change…
The letter does not mention specific companies, but it does name David H. Koch, who sits on the boards of the American Museum of Natural History in New York and the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History and has given tens of millions of dollars to those institutions…
Mr. Koch and his family have funded conservative causes, including scientists and organizations that contest the role of humans in climate change.
Public records show that many fossil-fuel companies have made similar contributions to such organizations and scientists over the years.
The letter is a project of the Natural History Museum, a mobile museum that draws attention to “social and political forces that shape nature yet are left out of traditional natural history museums,” said its co-founder and director, Beka Economopoulos…
A petition drive, also released on Tuesday and sponsored by environmental organizations including Greenpeace and the Sierra Club, urges the Smithsonian and the American Museum of Natural History to “Kick Koch off the board!”
***Michael Mann, a climate scientist at Pennsylvania State University and signer of the letter, said the donors seek a halo they do not deserve. “Cloaked in the garb of civic-mindedness, they launder their image while simultaneously and covertly influencing the content offered by those institutions,” he said…
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/24/science/science-museums-urged-to-cut-ties-with-kochs.html?_r=0
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23 March RTCC: Ed King: India in no rush to deliver UN climate pledge, says minister
Delhi is “not in the habit” of taking pressure warns Prakash Javadekar, but says country will play its part in Paris
Prakash Javadekar told the Times of India he wanted to see what further climate policies developed countries were proposing before making any commitments.
“Developed countries need to act and take ambitious targets for 2015-20,” he said.
“Our plan will also be reflected in our Intended Nationally Determined Contributions (INDCs) – but before the world discusses our INDCs, we will discuss their pre-2020 action plan.”
He added: “You must remember what Prime Minister Narendra Modi said about climate change when he was asked about any such pressure – he said we were not in a habit of taking pressure.”
***So far only the European Union and Switzerland have submitted their plans to contribute to a UN deal, which is due to be signed off in Paris this December.
The US is expected to release its target for greenhouse gas emission cuts by 31 March, a loose deadline set for developed countries to reveal their goals…
http://www.rtcc.org/2015/03/23/india-in-no-rush-to-deliver-un-climate-pledge-says-minister/
NT delivers “bad news” based on no evidence; Carbon Brief laps it up:
24 March: CarbonBrief: Sophie Yeo: Are National Trust libraries at risk from climate change?
The National Trust delivered bad news for bibliophiles yesterday: its historic collection of around 230,000 books could become victim to the impacts of climate change.
Launching its 10-year strategy, National Trust leader Dame Helen Ghosh said that climate change is the biggest challenge faced by the conservation charity. In particular, she said, the rise in pests poses a threat to its libraries.
“Some of the bugs that we get in our furniture and in our books, for example silverfish, we used to only get those in the summer. They used to be killed off in winter. But because the winters have got warmer and wetter we get those kinds of bugs all year round,” she said.
Carbon Brief takes a look at what risks lie ahead for the National Trust’s literary collections…
According to Katy Lithgow, head conservator at the National Trust, furniture beetles, deathwatch beetles and clothes moths are also a concern for librarians, along with mould.
The National Trust collects data on the species and abundance of pests in its libraries, but the time scale is too short to be able to detect trends, says Lithgow, and certainly too short to be able to work out if potential trends correlate to climate change.
The assertion that the charity has already seen an increase in library pests is therefore largely anecdotal, says Lithgow, but in the sense that those working inside the houses are familiar with their history of insect problems. The number of insurance claims is also rising for the Trust’s properties, she says…
The National Trust owns 140 libraries, which it says are “generally preserved in the places where they were originally assembled and read”, many of which are country houses.
This means that they are subject to the usual difficulties of maintaining the UK’s stately homes, including leaky roofs and walls.
According to its newly released strategy, the National Trust already spends a minimum of £100 million a year looking after its land and property, and will spend an additional£300 million over the next ten years just to clear a backlog of conservation work.
Ghosh blamed warmer winters for the proliferation of silverfish, but it is the increasing damp in these leaky buildings that is the main threat, says Lithgow…
Attributing specific weather events to climate change is still an uncertain science…
http://www.carbonbrief.org/blog/2015/03/are-national-trust-libraries-at-risk-from-climate-change/
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. . . and . . .
So, let me get this straight. They don’t have enough data to correlate the problems to climate change. The buildings are old, leaky, and hard to maintain. Attribution is still an uncertain science. So naturally, . . .
. . . “its historic collection of around 230,000 books could become victim to the impacts of climate change.”
There’s that weasel word ‘could’ once again. There’s no basis to blame climate change, but it could be!
The Merchants of Doubt are at it again.
Abe
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I wasn’t in the UK for the last two winters but the three before that were very cold. Who are they trying to fool? There have always been damp and bugs in old houses and book collections.
10
I am a practicing christian but we had a thousand years until the mid 1400’s of the likes of the Bishop telling everybody what they were supposed to and required to believe, how the world was run and how it was to be run.
From that arose the Dark Ages where knowledge was held by a very few of the religious elite, where there was little in the way of advancement socially and technologically , where guilds of artisans along with the religious elite held that knowledge very closely to themselves and denied the masses so that they, the religious elite in their monasteries and palaces could retain total power and control.
It was only when the political pressures had built up due to the tremendous loss of life during the great plagues of the Middle Ages and then the shortage of labour to work the estates of the knights, principalities and princes and bishops and cardinals that the peasants could break from their medieval masters and could and did travel and sell their labour to the highest current bidder.
That set the scene which was further destabilised by Johannes Gutenberg’s invention of moveable type in the west in 1439 [ China had a version of its own for a few centuries previously ] which quite possibly in terms of human advancement could be rated along with the development of metal working and agriculture as one of the great central inventions and developments of mankind that has enabled mankind to travel the path we have over the last 6 centuries.
Gutenberg’s printing press with it’s ability to mass print political tracts and papers and even some books such as the Bible which had been denied to the masses as they all had to be copied by hand until the invention of the printing press
It placed a new and for the times, an immense store of knowledge into the hands of anybody who could read.
And surprisingly some recent research suggests that literacy was a at a lot higher level amongst the ordinary folk than has been believed previously.
This new and growing knowledge of the world, politics and religion led to increasing challenges to the Church hierarchy and the political elite and consequently increasing challenges to the religious hierarchy’s hard held historical power and influence over every aspect of peoples lives.
The resentment on the religious hierarchy’s corruption and power lust spread as the popular unrest became more and more marked until October 31, 1517, when a monk in the University of Wittenberg, an angry Martin Luther nailed a sheet of paper with 95 theses on the university’s chapel door and so began the Reformation, the overturning of the power of the religious elite to control every aspect of peoples lives.
The Refomation led to the separation of church and state and in doing so led to the personal freedoms and the individuality promoted under a political state that relied on the good graces of it’s citizens to continue exist and resulted in our Democratic system of western government.
This in turn with it’s personal freedoms and personal rewards led to the rapid increases in innovation and then onto the British Industrial revolution which we are still developing and refining.
And our reward is in the life style we now lead, a life style which even for the most humble amongst us in the west in it’s freedom from disease and health issues, our abilities to turn energy to our own purposes, our ability to travel and see new parts of the world in only days and weeks instead of months and years far exceeds that of the most lavish lifestyle of any emperor of the past.
And it all came to pass because the power of the religious elite to control and force their beliefs onto the entire society of the times was broken through both the printing press and it’s dissemination of information to the masses and then through Martin Luther who challenged the religious elite and won as the power of a group of princes allied to their people came behind him, supported him against the pomp and power of the religious elite and provided Luther with sanctuary when his life was demanded by the religious hierarchy through excommunication with the church..
And so we have today’s world of church and state, both free to go their own way with in our laws that are based on past religious moral tradition but are handed down and enforced by the state alone.
If the good Bishop believes that she has the right as a religious person and a part of the religious elite to dictate to society and it’s people what is the correct belief to follow, let her justify the still hard held connection between religion and state as is being practiced in the Islamic countries today.
Islam has not yet had it’s reformation and until it does it will be mired in the long past religion based medieval and religious dictatorial thinking and governance that Christianity was forced to divest it self of some 500 years ago thereby severing church and state after a 1000 years of the religion run and often quite corrupt governing of the people.
Are those corrupt religious elite dictated pre Reformation times really a period that Episcopal Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori wishes our society and people to regress and return back to?
If not then shut up about things you really haven’t a clue about!
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The Internet is like the arrival of the printing press. Suddenly there is a whole new level of information available to the people, details we found it very hard or impossible to get are now right there at a click. (or not, if we have to FOIA)
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I hope my final line in my post above which is not clear to read unfortunately, is not misread.
I was referring to the “Bishop” and I sincerely hope others read it as such.
Re the Internet, Jo.
I have made very similar comments to yours a number of times in the past.
History may one day point to the development of the internet as the next great driver of human development due to the speed and access that it provides to the total sum of human knowledge for the first time in human history.
And it provides readily accessible guide lines based on the sum of experiences of others across the world on the ways in which we can use and utilise that knowledge.
_______
To the non believers here, Please do not degrade your comments and language about those who are religious and their beliefs to the levels of the alarmists when they attack skeptics.
The religious ones here are not attempting to force you into any religious straitjackets so some respect please for other’s attitudes and beliefs whether they are atheistic or religious.
Respect extended to others who you also want and demand respect from for your views.
It was after all the choice of each of us to be what we are and what we believe.
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Hi ROM, I recently stated as an Atheist I felt very bad for CAGW skeptics that follow a faith only to cop the insult of CAGW being likened to a religion that is somehow aligned with the mainstream beliefs, it’s nothing but a fear cult that has strong socialist dogmas to condition the gullible.
We can clearly see that from the many types of people on both sides of this fight there is no pattern that suggests a particular type of person is more inclined to believe either way, this argument from personalities has a definite eugenics feel where someone is pigeonholed to behave a certain way simply because of one held belief that has no impact on evaluating science.
An example is this story of a bizarre “climate Church” service from the 2009 Copenhagen summit as told by (weepy) Bill McKibben founder of 350.org, besides the incredible sickening over emotive drivel written you’ll note the large range of backgrounds and beliefs (or not) of all the people that attended, what’s astounding to me is this eclectic group of people were eager to accept this cult that even offered idols and offerings that represented the held beliefs.
This story was a real epiphany for me that clearly showed what we were dealing with was powerful enough to sway the leaders of the oldest religions in the world to commit blasphemy for all to see without any repercussions from the billions of followers.
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Jo,
Do you mean FOIA like this example from Steve Goddard?
A paltry US$262,000 to provide data that should be already available online to everyone. Who do these people think that they are working for?
50
That same thought occurred to me Jo as I read ROM’s post. It doesn’t suit the power drunk that we should have the freedom of the internet.
20
ROM,
As Jo says it is the information age now, even Gutenberg (in name only) is in on the act allowing legal free downloading older publications and audio files.
What we have now is a battle to convince the less knowledgeable public who holds the truth
So who can you believe these days? It is now your choice, but I advise reader beware.
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Those statesmen who crafted the US Constitution were well aware of the abuses of religious government. Article VI of the US Constitution builds a ‘wall of separation’ [Jefferson] between Church and State. There was to be no officially sanctioned church.
The First Amendment contained a `Free Exercise’ Clause
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof…
The US Supreme Court in 1878, interpreted the clause thus:
“Congress cannot pass a law for the government of the Territory which shall prohibit the free exercise of religion. The first amendment to the Constitution expressly forbids such legislation.”
and
“Laws are made for the government of actions, and while they cannot interfere with mere religious beliefs and opinions, they may with practices.” which permitted laws outlawing practices such as bigamy to be enforced.
They were also well aware of the excesses of the Witch Hunts, the New England (aka Salem Witchcraft Trials) prosecutions and executions, only 80 years previously. They had to be aware of the English and European activities as well. This can be seen in the design and establishment of the system of justice.
It would do many of the `denier’ criers a world of good to learn from the Constitution. Maybe they should be sentenced to read Thomas Payne’s “The Rights of Man.”, an excellent read.
40
Surely you mean, Thomas Paine, (1737-1809).
His “The Rights of Man.” is available free in various formats including eBook, EPUB®, Kindle®, or plain text, as a Webpage(HTML), and many compressed (zip) versions.
10
Also, available in a free audio book from Librivox.
I like to listen while I’m on the road.
https://librivox.org/rights-of-man-by-thomas-paine/
10
Devinney advises CAGW Divestment activists to invest in fossil fuels:
24 March: The Conversation: The Guardian’s fossil fuel divestment campaign could do more harm than good
Timothy Devinney, University Leadership Chair & Professor at University of Leeds
(Disclosure: Timothy Devinney receives funding from The Australian Research Council.)
The Guardian’s Leave It In the Ground campaign names and shames the Wellcome Trust and the Gates Foundation for not divesting their holdings in fossil fuel companies…
The tactics applied harken back to the anti-apartheid boycotts of the 1960s-1980s in the hope that the campaigns will ultimately filter through to the money making parts of the fossil fuel industry…
One of the hallmarks of investing in a company is that share ownership confers the legal right of proportional ownership. Legally, any individual holding a specific ownership share can bring issues to the company and has proportional rights to vote on all motions put to the ownership either by the board or shareholders.
While corporations have to engage in conversations and negotiations with a multitude of “stakeholders”, it is only those who possess ownership rights that they are, in practice, accountable to in a fiduciary sense…
Those behind divestment campaigns have lost sight of the fact that investment can imply control. Significant ownership shares, or coalitions of ownership shares, can be turned into activist voting blocks and also ensure that specific ownership interests get seats on the board…
Investment can influence corporate actions, which is why pension funds and institutional investors want to hold significant shares in key companies…
Divestment does not destroy value – it simply transfers it to another set of owners who are ***not so morally outraged and are willing to pick up the shares set aside, at a slight bargain. As the outraged owners are being replaced by ***less moral types, the likelihood that inside pressure can be brought to bear declines…
However, such campaigns may be inferior to a more activist alternative, which is to either increase the investment or to work to pool the investments of like-minded shareholder groups so as to form ownership blocks that can demand changes in the board, management and strategy. In the end, it may be that moral outrage is not as effective as capitalism because one of the points of capitalism is to separate ownership from management while allowing owners control over managers…
If the divestment advocates want companies to operate according to different precepts, perhaps more active ownership control would achieve their goals more quickly and effectively.
http://theconversation.com/the-guardians-fossil-fuel-divestment-campaign-could-do-more-harm-than-good-39000
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pat,
We had this very conversation here on the 19th of March in Jo’s blog-post, The Guardian-the-gullible: blind to whistleblowers, ignoring scandals, defender of feel-good teenage thinking
I’d made a comment to which Jo replied,
Martin Clark provided a link to a report called Fossil Fuel Divestment: A Costly and Ineffective Investment Strategy.
Looking back, my original comment wasn’t too well written, and I also managed to make duplicate posts, but the conversation starts here, if any one is interested.
For those that may not want to go back and read everything, I posed two questions at the end:
Abe
Hat tip to Jo for writting about the divestment issue five days before The Conversation.
Hat tip to Martin Clark for that informative link.
50
Who’s buying water-side properties?
80
What Madam Bishop is doing is using moral blackmail….no less.
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Whats new?
Do as we say or burn in hell? Do as we say and get some virgins?
Sounds like business as usual for the insanity of religion.
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The insanity of distorted religion. True religion does not coerce or bully.
10
Relax RR.
It happens regularly to me and this one is a rather loaded post involving religion so must be handled with care by our hostess.
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***4% by 2020, how exciting. but we’ll force it on India & African countries big-time(hehehe):
24 March: BBC: Roger Harrabin: Solar energy ‘could provide ***4% of UK electricity by 2020’
The association’s spokesman, Leonie Greene, said: “We need subsidies for another few years – maybe five – before we can compete with fossil fuels in the UK.
“Only 35% of the cost of solar is the price of the panels – the majority cost is the installation and that will only come down if we have a large and thriving competitive industry in the UK.
“The government’s decision to pull out subsidies is an own goal – it will delay the moment when solar can compete with fossil fuels.”…
But Mr (Ed) Davey said recent tenders for energy contracts among different types of renewable energy companies showed that solar was ready to compete already…
Davey: “This is wonderful for humanity.
***”There are 300 million Indians without electricity… the effects in sub-Saharan Africa will be dramatic.
“Solar power will do to energy what mobile phones did for communication and markets.”…
http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-32028809
***Shell already has its activist shareholders:
23 March: Guardian: Terry Macalister: Shell oil drilling in Arctic set to get US government permission
Controversial decision expected from US interior secretary likely to spark protests from campaigners against Anglo-Dutch exploration in seas off Alaska
The US government is expected this week to give the go-ahead to a controversial plan by Shell to restart drilling for oil in the Arctic.
The green light from Sally Jewell, the interior secretary, will spark protests from environmentalists who have campaigned against proposed exploration by the Anglo-Dutch group in the Chukchi and Beaufort seas off Alaska…
But Kronick said the move particularly made no sense in the context of countering global warming. “If we want to avoid catastrophic climate change we can’t even burn all the fossil fuels we already have; we definitely don’t need to trash what’s left of the melting Arctic looking for more.
“Obama needs to show leadership ahead of the Paris climate talks; allowing Arctic drilling in Alaska will seriously undermine that leadership and US credibility.”
Ed Davey, the British energy and climate change secretary, has asked the Bank of England to investigate threats to the financial system due to a carbon bubble caused by fossil fuels which cannot be burned because of global warming…
Despite its determination to press ahead in the Arctic, ***Shell aims to confront the risk that climate change may pose to its future, backing a resolution from activist shareholders to be debated at its May annual general meeting. This requires Shell to test whether its business model is compatible with the pledge by the world’s nations to limit global warming to a further rise of 2C…
http://www.theguardian.com/business/2015/mar/22/shell-oil-driling-in-arctic-set-to-get-us-government-permission
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The climate religion is God’s gift. (God spoke to NOAA, right?)
I take it that the new measure of atmospheric CO2 volume is in cubit^3 (cubic cubits)
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I get it! haha – Funny! 🙂
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And if it is quantized it would be in cubic Qubits!
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i doubt there’s such a thing as a CAGW activist who watches cricket!!!
insanity from a pair of Rockefeller stooges:
24 March: Guardian: How dealing with climate change is like playing cricket
As India gears up against Australia for Thursday’s Cricket World Cup semi-final, here’s why climate change activists should play close attention to the game
by Cristina Rumbaitis del Rio, Anna Brown
(Cristina Rumbaitis del Rio and Anna Brown are senior associate directors at the Rockefeller Foundation, specialising in climate change and resilience)
As cricket fans well know, one of the toughest deliveries to face in cricket is a “googly”, where the ball’s movement is discontinuous and difficult to predict, posing a challenge for even the most experienced batsmen.
One-track minds that we are, this reminds us of the challenge we face with climate change – knowing that an unpredictable future is imminent, and feeling uncertain as to how to prepare for it.
One of the trademarks of great batsmen, such as India’s Sachin Tendulkar, has been their resilience, even when facing diverse and unpredictable bowling outcomes. Turns out, the ways in which these athletes handle a “googly” match up quite well with the characteristics cities need to be better equipped to cope with climate change.
Here’s how …BLAH BLAH BLAH BLAH BLAH BLAH BLAH
http://www.theguardian.com/global-development-professionals-network/2015/mar/23/how-dealing-with-climate-change-is-like-playing-cricket
the 2 cricket-loving ladies from the Rockefeller Foundation!
Senior Associate Director
Cristina Rumbaitis del Rio, joined The Rockefeller Foundation in April 2007. As a Senior Associate Director, Dr. Rumbaitis del Rio helps develop the Foundation’s initiatives regarding building resilience for poor and vulnerable people who will be affected by climate change. She is currently leading the Rockefeller Foundation’s exploratory work on oceans and fisheries conservation.
Prior to joining the Foundation, Dr. Rumbaitis del Rio was a post-doctoral fellow conducting research on sustainable development at Columbia University’s Earth Institute. She also did policy research for the United Nations Environmental Program, the U.S. Department of State, and other institutions. She was a recipient of the 1996 National Harry S. Truman Scholarship for Public Service and a Mass Media Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement Science…
Anna Brown joined the Rockefeller Foundation in January 2007 in the New York head office, and shifted to Asia in 2010. As a Senior Associate Director, Ms. Brown manages one of the Foundation’s flagship initiatives, the Asian Cities Climate Change Resilience Network (ACCCRN). She is also part of a team tasked with refining the Foundation’s global strategy, and serves as deputy manager of the Asia Regional Office in Bangkok.
Prior to joining the Rockefeller Foundation, Ms. Brown served as a researcher and coordinator for the MIT-USGS Science Impact Collaborative, a program devoted to improving the use of science in decision-making…
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They talk about handling a googly and have a picture of a fast bowler!
You look to see if there is any tell tale signs as the ball comes out of the hand. If you don’t see the signs of a googly, play it like a regular leg spinner otherwise you are more likely to get out. The captain will not listen to gibberish about precautionary principles because it might have been a googly even though the bowler hadn’t bowled one for 18 years.
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‘…and by continued resistance to science in American classrooms.’
This is not happening in Australia, probably because of the large number of left wing unionized teachers running the show.
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When the Very Left Reverend Schorri starts caring more about unborn human babies than unreleased carbon atoms she will have begun to regain her spiritual and moral sight, and with it, her credibility. Oh, and she could stop stripping local congregations of the buildings and assets they built and donated, but are forced to give up in her Mammon capture scheme.
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Child sexual abuse is immoral too but that’s never stopped the Episcopal church in the past.
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There is an Anglican priest in Perth who spoke about climate change and CO2 at the Synod a few years ago, the governing body of the Anglican Church (essentially same as Episcopalian church in US). The synod is basically a gathering of the lay members whose decisions can be overturned at any time by the council of bishops.
This priest who talked has virtually built his career on climate change and so-called caring for the planet. I was at the synod as one of the lay members.
During the break I challenged him on his climate beliefs – I simply asked him four questions. 1) Did you read the emails released from the Hadley Climate centre, which showed that the top climate scientists are falsifying the evidence for climate change? 2) Do you know that global warming has stalled completely, and none of the predictions of the climate models have come true? 3) Are you aware that the globe is not a closed system and there is leakage of heat into space every day? 4) Have you even looked at the evidence against climate change?
He went from (apparently) meek and gentle as a lamb to full boil, steam coming from his ears, spitting at me with absolute rage, face red and twisted with hatred and baring his teeth at me in less than 30 seconds.
It was very revealing! The whole ‘gentle meek and mild’ priest thing was clearly an act.
Another story – at the church where I worship, just before the last state election one of the bishops got the priest to ask the people at the church to letter drop pamphlets ‘encouraging people to change their way of life to prevent climate change,’ a clear and rather transparent plug for the Greens. Someone stood up and said, “This is blatant electioneering.” Only one person came to the church when the bishop arrived to meet all the supposed people who were going to help him with his letter drop and that person only went out of curiosity to see if anyone else came along! Nobody came to help him with his letter drop!
Also – I went to Bible college to learn Greek. Also did a unit in Old Testament. It was a small class. The lecturer in the first lecture said global warming was something we all needed to be concerned about and that we needed to reduce my carbon footprint. I put up my hand (being in my forties) and said, have you examined the evidence? Global warming simply isn’t happening. He boiled with rage and marked my next essay (on the relationship between science and theology in the idea of creation ex nihilo) with a lower mark than it deserved because he was now biased against me. When I gave the seminar after the essay, he quietly admitted that he would have to give me a very high mark on the seminar to compensate the low mark on the essay, because he realised now that I knew what I was talking about.
Unfortunately, the climate change deception has fooled a lot of Christians, despite what the fellow in one of the comments above said. Some of my friends are Baptists, Church of Christ, Catholic, and other denominations, and unfortunately many of them believe that global warming is happening. This is not always stupidity, but I think the reluctance to actually examine the evidence is more of an acknowledgement that climate skepticism is socially unacceptable these days. Often many Christians feel marginalised enough, without adding being a climate skeptic to the equation!
Nonetheless, I don’t think there’s any excuse for church leaders who make moral pronouncements without looking at the evidence for themselves. But when you examine the other things some of these people say they are just as stupid, sometimes even on subjects they ought to be experts in, such as church history or the historicity and reliability of the New Testament.
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If it was even possible for this debate to descend any further into shameful nonsense, then this pretty much did the trick.
I have to say I think even publishing the story gives the speaker entirely more credit than they deserve.
I don’t think its a secret to anyone here that I regard men in dresses calling to mystical spirits as barking mad across the board. Acknowledging their bizarre position in a modern rational society by publishing their babble, of any sort, is unhelpful at best and just stupid at worst.
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The Episcopalian church has become liberal and corrupt in its beliefs to the point of apostasy. They’ve already rejected God’s gift of knowledge and truth for the comforting lies of sham, high finance, politically correct science.
1 Corinthians 1:20 says:
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Lord of the Rings says
“It’s a dangerous business, Frodo, going out your door. You step onto the road, and if you don’t keep your feet, there’s no knowing where you might be swept off to.”
― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings
What’s your point or are we just swapping quotes from fiction?
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I was brought up, as a young boy, in a Scottish Presbyterian household and forced to go to Sunday school each week (which I loathed as a total waste of the only free time I had, with compulsory sport on a Saturday). That is, until the “Meenister” turned up on our doorstep one day and asked my Mother to kindly remove me from Sunday school as I was a “disruptive influence”. Apparently it was my wont to regale my class mates and confound the 17 year old lass who was our teacher with explanations of the “miracles” which, I expounded, we’re not miracles at all, but easily explained through human behaviour, first aid techniques, chiropractic and basic science!
I know that many reputable and professional scientists also believe strongly in their religion, but it seems to me that anyone who can believe in an all-seeing, all-knowing, all-powerful God for which there is absolutely no empirical evidence could believe in anything.
And so it came to pass!
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I agree Peter and I left Sunday school before I got barred for similar antics. Here is some more info for what those religious nuts think…
http://www.pewforum.org/2009/04/16/religious-groups-views-on-global-warming/
http://www.randalolson.com/2014/09/13/who-are-the-climate-change-deniers/
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Thanks Gee Aye. The graphs in the second link were interesting, particularly the difference between religious and non religious and between Democrat and Republican. Strangely, fewer strongly religious persons believed in “climate change” than non-religious. No definition of climate change in the survey, though, so it could mean anything. Pretty useless survey really!
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I think you need to dig a bit deeper than to ascribe a survey question based on an axis abbreviation.
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Umm… Gee, in case you haven’t realized it YOU are a religious nut.
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ha ha. Clever one Robert.
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Ive come to realise Gee Aye is a cut above the average mendicant. He does in fact think for himself and is sometimes more sceptical and displays more sound critical thought than some of our “regulars”.
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Hearing people like that spout this kind of nonsense is simply sad …. it just shows that poor the correlation is between true intellectualism, true integrity and true understanding and these positions of authority …. moral or otherwise.
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Stargazer was polite: “Climate-religion is the opiate of the dumbmasses.”
I would have left out the “m” in the final word.
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If you say it fast the M is silent.
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Voltaire
I think that he was having a dig at superstition rather than religion
CAGW is not a religion but superstition and a certain Pope needs to be reminded of this. The recent attempt by Rahmstorf to use proxies for a model of the AMOC and ignore actual data is evidence enough that Climate Science has degenerated into reading chicken entrails.
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‘CAGW is not a religion but superstition and a certain Pope needs to be reminded of this.’
He is also dog’s man on earth and shouldn’t be sprouting nonsense, so after this debacle the organisation may need to consider its future.
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Meh… The Vatican is an awesome place to visit. It is absolutely amazing to see the architecture, the paintings, the history. The fact that it has survived through all the wars that have taken place in that region of the globe is pretty incredible.
That being said, I was raised Catholic and made the observation at a young age that for many it seemed their beliefs lasted for one hour a day and as long as they put some money in the collection plate as it went around they were good to go. It also seemed to me that the church was more interested in getting that money than anything else.
So as far as the “church” is concerned I’m not impressed. But I did meet plenty of Christians over the years who didn’t feel any need to get evangelistic on anyone, they lived their faith every day and left it to others to determine whether or not they saw something worth emulating.
Them I like, the people being absolute scum all week then trying to act like an angel for an hour on Sunday don’t do much for me. Perhaps if the organization had considered its future we wouldn’t have so many of that sort. But then again, when they can’t even police their own ranks why would I expect them to be able to lead anyone else?
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The American version of Anglicanism is a liberal denomination that one could hardly call Christian from an orthodox Christian perspective, at least not of the Protestant flavour. That Church, on this issue, is essentially Pagan. Christianity’s greatest theologian, Paul, defines Pagans by their worship of the creation rather than the Creator.
Having been brought up in the Welsh Calvinistic, Methodist tradition where as kids we had Calvin’s Institutes before breakfast I thought as a second best I’d check out the Australian Presbyterian Church’s position on human caused climate change. Here’s a synopsis of a more thoughtful approach from that Church:
“A Christian Response to Climate Change”
Abstract
This paper sets out to develop a Christian response to the claims of climate change, in particular global warming with feared knock on effects for weather patterns, ice caps and ocean sea levels. We do so recognising that a variety of Christian responses are feasible.
It is acknowledged that climate change and possible responses to it, is more properly the domain of scientists, technologists, economists, corporations and governments. The Christian cannot claim a privileged position though the Bible does assist in the assessment of the issue, including possible remedial actions.
Whilst focussing on the findings of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, attention is also given to the Kyoto Protocol, the Stern Report, some of the more strident voices calling for immediate and deep cuts to greenhouse gas emissions and as well, the views of those expressing reservation and even opposition to the consensus view on climate change.
This paper has been prepared with a desire to inform, to take the concerns of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change seriously, but at the same time to retain a healthy scepticism over mankind’s ability to know the future, remembering that no one in advancing a particular position is dispassionate and therefore free of bias.
This applies as much to bankers and corporations seeking to benefit from Government largesse in new investments as the scientists funded by the IPCC or ourselves for that matter.
We remain unconvinced that the science on climate change is settled, in particular we doubt the direct and controlling linkage to greenhouse emissions has been established, but equally recognise that Governments must prudently act on the basis that ongoing global warming may be a reality.
Given our perceptions and convictions, we offer, hopefully with modesty, some comments on what might be the most appropriate actions the Australian government might consider.
CONTENTS
1. Introduction
2. Disentangling Varieties of Approach to Climate Change amongst Christians
3. The Greenhouse Effect
4. UN Intergovernmental Panel Findings on Climate Change
5. A Brief Sampling of Climate Change Alarmists
6. Comment on Rising Global Temperatures and Atmospheric CO2 Levels
7. Kyoto Protocol
8. The Stern Review
9. The Nuclear Option for Australia
10. ExxonMobil Energy Projections
11. Wind Farms
12. Christian Contributions that accept the majority View on Climate Change
13. A Sceptical Christian Contribution
14 Lord Lawson’s Sceptical Contribution
15 Further Papers, Newspaper Articles, etc
16 The Articulation of a Christian Response on Climate Change
Appendix: Summaries of additional papers and articles consulted
http://www.canfederal.presbyterian.org.au/Currentissues.html
(Under Topic – Climate Change).
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This would be the part of the Presbyterian Church that did not go and join the Uniting Church of Australia. UCA is said to be the Greens at prayer.
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This isn’t the first time and probably won’t be the last where religion has picked the wrong horse when it dips it’s toe into science.
“The matter was investigated by the Roman Inquisition in 1615, which concluded that heliocentrism was false and contrary to scripture, placing works advocating the Copernican system on the index of banned books and forbidding Galileo from advocating heliocentrism”
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When the Jehovah’s Witnesses and Seventh Day Adventists come knocking on my door proclaiming Climate Change belief is a call to a false prophet (profit?), I might actually give them a few minutes to speak and outline their case. And I haven’t heard any cries from the other side calling this a Western plot. There’s an opportunity here, so who’s going to take the lead?
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Anglicans copping big money from what they preach against big-time…It’s a bit like a Borgia pope relaxing with his mistress after a hard day’s piety. Or Woody Harrelson sending a jet (California-Cannes) to pick up his favourite vegan shoes and belt when he left them behind.
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Reminds me of this classic quote from Yes Prime Minister.
Sir Humphrey Appleby: The Queen is inseparable from the Church of England.
Jim Hacker: And what about God?
Sir Humphrey Appleby: I think he is what is called an optional extra.
Katharine Jefferts Schori is just another clerical head who is joined at the hip to big government.
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Could she (she?? plenty of people will tell you that female clergy is un-Biblical of itself) answer the question asked of all warmies:
What is the minimum ECS that someone must believe in to be not a “den!@r”? Is it
0.00001C
1C
1.5C (at the lower end of the IPCC’s allowed range)
2.5C
3C (from retrofitting other unrelated forcings)
4C (the minimum accepted by Lemonsucker Milne)
6C?
What if someone believes in a high ECS but thinks that the consequence of slight warming is simply slight warming, and believes the data showing flat or declining trends in hurricanes, floods, droughts and other disasters?
Is it necessary to believe in a maximum level and minimum rate of change of ocean pH? Specific first and second moments of sea level?
I’m interested in the specific accepted parameters within which carbon-related belief systems must fall.
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Bishop has an blog at his site regarding a speech by Peter Foster. Well worth the read. One point he made is the speed of societal evolution where reason is trumped by emotions. Totalitarianism is the end product. The western churches are all stepping out in unison, either via emotional thinking or simply to try and survive under authoritarian rule.
Foster used evolution as an intro. The thing about evolution is the belief species evolve complexities and improvements over time. What is not emphasized is nearly all species have gone extinct. Authoritarianism may be the cause of our extinction since we have had the ability to mostly annihilate our species. Today, even small nations like Iran, using a few missiles and some modest nuclear devices, can create EMP pulses that would send Europe and North America back to using mules for transportation. Maybe not extinction but certainly massive death tolls.
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Just one more example of how the topic becomes ever more religious (on both sides).
Except by the people that ask the cause and effect question.
Always remember that no matter what “if the science stacks up, we change. If it doesn’t satisfy the process we question.
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Jefferts Schori opposes fossil fuel divestment. “If you divest you lose any direct ability to influence the course of a corporation’s behavior,” she said. “I think most pragmatists realise that we can’t close the spigot on the oil wells and close the coal mines immediately without some other energy source to shift to.”
Unfrock the heretic! Either that or excommunicate her SUV.
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Just one example…
And so does the Pope.
You now have a good idea why I left the Episcopal Church a long time ago.
If I could line up all the movers and shakers of this world who’ve had an enlightening word direct from God the line would stretch from here to Jupiter and probably back again. Humility may be a virtue but it’s not a very common aspect of human nature.
As I said before, science morons are the worst possible kind.
However, Katharine Jefferts Schori is probably not as powerful a voice in Christianity as she might like to believe. That position belongs to the Pope.
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