(Also see: The Climate Skeptic’s Guide To Pope Francis’ U.S. Visit: Talking Points About The Pope & Global Warming)
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CLIMATE DEPOT SPECIAL REPORT
The Vatican’s Advisors: An Unholy Alliance with the UN Global Warming Agenda
Full PDF Report Available Here:
In the preparation and promotion of its widely touted encyclical, Laudato Si: On Care for Our Common Home, the Vatican relied on advisors who can only be described as the most extreme elements in the global warming debate. These climate advisors are so far out of the mainstream they even make some of their fellow climate activists cringe. Many of these advisors oppose individual freedom and market economics and stand against traditional family values.
The Vatican and Pope Francis did not allow dissent or alternative perspectives to be heard during the creation and promotion of the encyclical. The Vatican only listened to activist voices within the climate movement.
Even more startling, many of the Vatican’s key climate advisors have promoted policies directly at odds with Catholic doctrine and beliefs. The proceedings of the Vatican climate workshop included activists like Naomi Oreskes, Peter Wadhams, Hans Joachim Schellnhuber, and UN advisor Jeffrey Sachs.
Pope Francis’ advisors, and the UN climate agenda he is aligning himself with, are strong supporters of development restrictions, contraceptives, population control, and abortion. Despite these strange bedfellows, the encyclical is clear in condemning abortion, contraception, and population control.
There has been nothing short of an “Unholy Alliance” between the Vatican and promoters of man-made climate fear. The Vatican advisors are a brew of anti-capitalist, pro-population control advocates who allow no dissent and are way out of the mainstream of even the global warming establishment.
Here are profiles of some of the key radical voices with whom the Vatican has associated itself.
UN Advisor Jeffrey Sachs
Jeffrey Sachs, a special advisor to UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, participated in a 2014 Vatican workshop on sustainability as well as in the Vatican summit on climate that took place in April 2015. Sachs was reportedly the author of the Pontifical statement, Climate Change and the Common Good: A Statement of the Problem and the Demand for Transformative Solutions, issued on April 29, 2015.
Sachs, who is also the director of The Earth Institute, believes climate skeptics are responsible for the deaths of people due to alleged man-made, global warming driven, extreme storms. Sachs tweeted on November 10, 2014, that “Climate liars like Rupert Murdoch & the Koch Brothers have more & more blood on their hands as climate disasters claim lives across the world.”
Many of Sachs’ views are at odds with Catholic teachings. Catholic activist Liz Yore detailed Sachs’ view on overpopulation.
“At a 2007 international lecture, Sachs claimed that ‘we are bursting at the seams.’ The focus of Sachs’ overpopulation mantra is primarily the continent of Africa. He argues that if only poor African countries would just lower their fertility rate, the world and Africa would thrive economically. This fear mongering is nothing new. Sachs is standing on the shoulders of Paul Ehrlich, architect of the ‘sky is falling’ deception perpetrated in his 1968 book, The Population Bomb.”
Yore concluded: It is “incomprehensible that the Vatican would be duped into thinking that the United Nations and its Millennium and Sustainable Development goals share common solutions for the world’s problems. The Catholic Church welcomes children as a gift from God. The UN Secretary General and Jeffrey Sachs want to limit children.”
In 2009, Sachs addressed the annual conference of the Party of European Socialists. He described the “profound honor” of addressing the far-Left Party of European Socialists and said they were heirs and leaders of the most successful economic and political system in the world — Social Democracy. Social equity, environmental sustainability, and fiscal redistribution are the successful elements in managing a just society, Sachs maintained. This is, he argues, in marked contrast to the U.S., whose taxes are too low and where the poor are ignored.
In 2009, in advance of the Copenhagen UN climate meeting, Sachs called for a carbon levy, claiming that millions were suffering because of drought caused by Western-induced climate change. Sachs has advocated for a carbon tax and a financial transactions tax, a global health fund, a global education fund, and a global climate fund. Sachs’ Earth Institute at Columbia has included members of an external advisory board such as George Soros and Rajendra Pachauri, former UN IPCC chairman. Soros has funded Sachs via his Open Society Institute.
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German climate adviser Hans Joachim Schellnhuber
Hans Joachim Schellnhuber, who has called for the “creation of a CO2 budget for every person on the planet,” was appointed a member of the Pontifical Academy of Sciences in June 2015 and was one of the four presenters of Pope Francis’ new encyclical on the environment. Schellnhuber was also a key player at the Vatican climate presentation in 2014.
Schellnhuber is an atheist who believes in “Gaia, but not in God.” In 2015, Schellnhuber boasted about having climate skeptics excluded from participating in drafting the Pope’s climate encyclical. The April 2015 Vatican climate summit in Rome banned a skeptical French scientist from attending because the organizers reportedly “did not want to hear an off note” during the summit.
Schellnhuber is a scientific activist who is mocked even by his fellow warmist colleagues. See: Warmist Ray Bradley trashes prominent warmist Hans Joachim Schellnhuber for “spouting bullsh*t”; Phil Jones says, “We all agree on that.”
At a meeting in Japan in 2004, Scientist Tom Wigley found prominent EU warmist Schellnhuber to be “a bit of a laughing stock among these people.”
Schellnhuber has also declared human society needs to be managed by an elite group of “wise men.” He referred to this idea as his “master plan” for the “great transformation” of global society.
Schellnhuber’s views on population also are at odds with Catholic teachings. Echoing the claims of overpopulation guru Paul Ehrlich, he has claimed that when the Earth reaches nine billion people, which is projected to occur soon, “the Earth will explode” due to resource depletion.
Schellnhuber also berates those who disagree with him, calling his critics “vicious liars” and mocking Americans as “climate illiterate” for being skeptics.
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Naomi Oreskes
Climate historian Naomi Oreskes has been actively involved in helping produce the Papal encyclical. Oreskes wrote the introduction to Pope Francis’ book version of the encyclical. See: Papal Encyclical book w/ introduction by Naomi Oreskes
Oreskes is perhaps best known for her calls for placing restrictions on the freedom of speech of global warming skeptics. Oreskes believes climate skeptics who dissent from the UN/Gore climate alarmist point of view should be prosecuted as mobsters for their tobacco lobbyist style tactics. See: Merchants of Smear: Prosecute Skeptics Like Gangsters?! Warmist Naomi Oreskes likes the idea of having climate ‘deniers’ prosecuted under the RICO act (Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act).
Critics of Oreskes fired back that it is Oreskes herself – not the skeptics — who uses the tactics of the tobacco lobby.
As a researcher, Oreskes’ body of work has not fared well among her peers. She has been criticized by warmist and skeptical scientists alike. See: Statistician from the U. of Mass Amherst performs very polite savaging of claims of Naomi Oreskes.
Warmist scientist Tom Wigley wrote that Oreskes’ work is “useless”. Wigley wrote: “Analyses like these by people who don’t know the field are useless. A good example is Naomi Oreskes’ work.”
Warmist scientist William M. Connolley slammed Oreskes for “silly” and “shoddy” work. Connolley, a former UN IPCC scientist, wrote that he “eventually concluded that Oreskes was hopelessly wrong.” He explained that a high-profile Oreskes “paper seems to have been written around pre-arranged conclusions…it is unlikely that anyone outside the incestuous field of climate history scholarship will notice or care.”
Others have been equally uncharitable in describing Oreskes research. See: Warmist Naomi Oreskes taken down — “consistently misrepresents the meaning of statistical significance and confidence intervals” – “Oreskes, the historian, gets the history wrong”
Oreskes has been undeterred, continually ratcheting up climate alarmism to the point of silliness. See: Forget Polar Bears, cats & dogs to die! Warmist Naomi Oreskes prophesizes the climate deaths of puppies and kittens – Oreskes: “The loss of pet cats and dogs garnered particular attention among wealthy Westerners, but what was anomalous in 2023 soon became the new normal.”
Sadly, Pope Francis is allowing Oreskes, who equates climate change to a “Nazi atomic bomb,’” to write the introduction to the book-form of his encyclical.
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Prof. Peter Wadhams
Another key advisor to Pope Francis is Cambridge University Professor Peter Wadhams. Wadhams is a scientist and activist whose views are so extreme that even many of his fellow global warming advocates distance themselves from him. In 2014, NASA’s lead global warming scientist Dr. Gavin Schmidt ridiculed Wadhams for “using graphs with ridiculous projections with no basis in physics.”
Wadhams’s fellow warmist colleagues have also piled on and ridiculed him, claiming Wadhams “uses anecdotal…very, very poor data; not credible plots…no physics behind his extrapolations.” One of his colleagues even chided: “Hasn’t Wadhams already predicted four of the last zero ice-free summers?”
Wadhams was at the center of international controversy in 2015, when he suggested three global warming scientists were assassinated by the oil industry. These claims were wholly unsubstantiated. See: Cambridge professor Peter Wadhams insists three scientists have been assassinated. Wadhams later tried to claim his comments about the deaths were “completely off the record.”
Other colleagues have also criticized Wadhams. See: German Scientists: Former IPCC Author Peter Wadhams Showing Pattern Of Irrationality …”Extremely Far-Fringe Corner”
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Naomi Klein
Pope Francis has also reached out to climate activist and anti-capitalist crusader Naomi Klein. See: Pope Francis recruits ‘ferocious critic’ of capitalism — Naomi Klein — in climate battle
Klein was brought into the Vatican climate process by one of the Pope’s key aides, Cardinal Peter Turkson, to lead a high-level conference. Klein, described by the Washington Post as a “secular” feminist, is a “ferocious critic” of 21st century capitalism. Klein believes: “To fight climate change we must fight capitalism.” Klein explained: “There is still time to avoid catastrophic warming but not within the rules of capitalism as they are currently constructed.”
Klein is author of the book, This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. The Climate.
She has declared that “Capitalism is irreconcilable with a livable climate.” She also noted: “Dealing with the climate crisis will require a completely different economic system.” Klein’s anti-capitalist advocacy clearly places her science as subservient to her politics. During the panel discussion at an event at the People’s Climate March, Klein was asked: “Even if climate change issue did not exist, you would be calling for same structural changes?” Klein responded: “Yeah.”
Greenpeace co-founder Dr. Patrick Moore criticized Pope Francis for sounding like Naomi Klein. Klein has also claimed that “It’s Clear” Climate Change Is Making Racism Worse.
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Related Links:
More advisors: Most prominent among the Pope’s advisors are the head of the Vatican’s social justice ministry, Cardinal Oscar Rodriguez Maradiaga, and Chair of the Pontifical Academies of Sciences and Social Sciences, Archbishop Marcelo Sanchez Sorondo. While each of these individuals have played a key role in helping craft the Vatican’s stance on climate change, there are two problems with their positions. First, the cardinals’ assessments on climate change quickly unravel when held up to the light of objective scientific scrutiny. Second, their harshly critical statements of climate change skeptics conflict sharply with Pope Francis’ call in Laudato Si for “honest debate” and “respecting divergent views.” Finally, there also appears an obtuse logic to some of Cardinal Sorondo’s statements linking climate change to various social ills such as poverty, human trafficking and even abortion. Such inane opinions tear at the credibility of the Vatican’s message.
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