Increasingly in my investigations into climate change denial “experts” I am coming across the name of George Pell – yes – the Cardinal. Having looked briefly for his credentials in this area, I can only find studies in theology. Regardless of this lack of any scientific qualifications, Cardinal Pell has been quite vocal about his view on climate change over the years.
Pell stated in his 2006 Legatus Summit speech:
“Some of the hysteric and extreme claims about global warming are also a symptom of pagan emptiness, of Western fear when confronted by the immense and basically uncontrollable forces of nature. Belief in a benign God who is master of the universe has a steadying psychological effect, although it is no guarantee of Utopia, no guarantee that the continuing climate and geographic changes will be benign. In the past pagans sacrificed animals and even humans in vain attempts to placate capricious and cruel gods. Today they demand a reduction in carbon dioxide emissions.”
So let me get this straight. Belief in a benign God will save us and those who engage in action on climate change through the ritual sacrifice of carbon dioxide emissions are pagans.
In a 2007 article for The Sunday Telegraph, Pell wrote that while climate had changed, he was “certainly sceptical about extravagant claims of impending man-made climatic catastrophes, because the evidence is insufficient.”
Responding to the Anglican bishop and environmentalist George Browning, who told the Anglican Church of Australia’s general synod that Pell was out of touch with the Catholic Church as well as with the general community, Pell stated:
“Radical environmentalists are more than up to the task of moralising their own agenda and imposing it on people through fear. They don’t need church leaders to help them with this, although it is a very effective way of further muting Christian witness. Church leaders in particular should be allergic to nonsense … I am certainly sceptical about extravagant claims of impending man-made climatic catastrophes. Uncertainties on climate change abound … my task as a Christian leader is to engage with reality, to contribute to debate on important issues, to open people’s minds, and to point out when the emperor is wearing few or no clothes.”
The hypocrisy of this paragraph leaves me speechless. The Church is built on “the task of moralising their own agenda and imposing it on people through fear”. Pell even concedes that the views of church leaders mute “Christian witness.” He says we should be allergic to nonsense, engage with reality and “point out when the emperor is wearing few or no clothes.” Well Cardinal Pell, I would suggest that you may want to check in the mirror to avoid embarrassment.
Cardinal Pell is not only a local expert – he takes his climate change views to the international stage. In 2011 he delivered the annual Global Warming Policy Foundation lecture in London. The GWPF is a United Kingdom group opposing action to mitigate climate change. This speech has been widely quoted under lines like:
“His Eminence approaches Warmism by looking to the scientific facts, not religion – and notes religious fanaticism in Warmism” or
“Cardinal George Pell can recognise a religious movement when he sees one, and being a rationalist can also see where the global warming faith is weak:” or
“Cardinal criticises religious climate zealots.”
Cardinal Pell’s ‘evidence’ all comes from The Hancock Free Enterprise Lecture, University of Notre Dame, Fremantle, June 2011 delivered by none other than Lord Monckton and sponsored and attended by Gina Rinehart. If you can be bothered reading through Monckton’s background paper, faithfully reproduced by Jo Nova, you will find the usual data manipulation. Temperature records are taken from one place and conclusions about global temperatures are inferred. Time frames are chosen to achieve certain results – pick the hottest year to start from, pick the last year that was below average temperature, look at 15 years rather than 150, quote anomalies rather than trends. Change scale on the axes if you have to.
Here are the main points Pell picks up on.
► The earth has cooled during the past 10,000 years since the Holocene climate optimum.
► The earth has cooled since 1000 years ago, not yet achieving the temperatures of the Medieval Warm Period.
► The earth has warmed since 400 years ago after the Little Ice Age three centuries ago.
► The earth warmed between 1979 and 1998 and has cooled slightly since 2001.
The following facts are additional reasons for scepticism.
► In many places, most of the 11,700 years since the end of the last ice age were warmer than the present by up to 2C.
► Between 1695 and 1730, the temperature in England rose by 2.2C. That rapid warming, unparalleled since, occurred long before the Industrial Revolution.
► From 1976 to 2001, “the global warming rate was 0.16C per decade”, as it was from 1860 to 1880 and again from 1910 to 1940.
Leading climate change researchers launched a scathing attack on the speech, describing it as “dreadful”, “utter rubbish” and “flawedd”.
Rather than listening to Monckton or Pell, this is what the people who ARE climate scientists say.
The argument that the earth has cooled during the past 10,000 years is based on the work of Don Easterbrook who relies on temperatures at the top of the Greenland ice sheet as a proxy for global temperatures. That’s a fatal flaw, before we even begin to examine the use of the ice core data. It reflects regional Greenland warming, not global warming, and the data ends in 1855, long before modern global warming began.
Over the past 2,000 years, until 100 years ago, the planet underwent a long-term cooling trend. There was a ‘Medieval Warm Period’, but different regions warmed at different times, and overall global surface temperatures were warmer at the end of the 20th century than during the MWP peak. The 2,000-year cooling trend has been erased by the warming over the past century. And of course more warming is yet to come from continuing human greenhouse gas emissions.
It’s also worth noting that according to the instrumental temperature record, average surface temperatures for 1982–2012 have been about 0.2°C hotter than the 1970–2000 average. That additional warming would put current global surface temperatures well above any other time over the past 2,000 years.
The Medieval period is found to display warmth that matches or exceeds that of the past decade in some regions, but which falls well below recent levels globally as written about in the paper “Global Signatures and Dynamical Origins of the Little Ice Age and Medieval Climate Anomaly”.
The ten warmest years in the 132-year record have all occurred since 1998. The last year that was cooler than average was 1976.
Globally, the hottest 12-month period ever recorded was from June 2009 to May 2010.
Australia has been breaking records for hottest month, hottest 12 months, and so on.
Pell also said “The appeal must be to the evidence. First of all we need adequate scientific explanations as a basis for our economic estimates. We also need history, philosophy, even theology and many will use, perhaps create, mythologies. But most importantly we need to distinguish which is which.”
So who do you believe – Andrew Bolt, quoting Cardinal Pell, quoting Christopher Monckton, reported on by Jo Nova, and paid for by Gina Rinehart – or the tens of thousands of peer reviewed papers and conclusions drawn by all the climate scientists?
Pell objects to being called a climate change denier saying
“The term “climate change denier”, however expedient as an insult or propaganda weapon, with its deliberate overtones of comparison with Holocaust denial, is not a useful description of any significant participant in the discussion.”
Personally I think the term is far too timid for the holocaust that inaction on climate change could bring about.
Additional information thanks to Fed Up
In October 2010, the Senate’s Environment and Communications Legislation Committee agreed to table a letter from Cardinal Pell which quoted heavily from Ian Plimer’s book Heaven and Earth to claim there were “good reasons for doubting that carbon dioxide causes warmer temperatures.”
Director of Australia’s Bureau of Meteorology Dr Greg Ayers said “At one stage [Cardinal Pell] lists greenhouse gases. Included in the list is the gas nitrogen. That is not a greenhouse gas; it is 78 per cent of the atmosphere. You cannot have people out there telling the public that nitrogen is a greenhouse gas, because it is not.”
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Thank you Kaye Lee for assisting Pell to insert entire body into mouth – maybe he will disappear completely.
So much power does this man have and so little intellect to wield such responsibility.
Nono, Kaye – not PAGANS. Pagans can be forgiven for being what they are: they kind of can’t help it. The word he would use is ATHEISTS – those against God. Get the difference? :- On the other hand, who gives a tinker’s cuss what he’d use about anything, the lying swine?! I told a friend by email today that she must always criticise the Catholic Church – always! For there is no other institution in which hypocrisy is so triumphant.
I suggest you send this to the Pope, point out to him how his Australian representative mixes with the richest in the country(those very people the Pope says are not paying their way) to mitigate any! action on AGW/CC, I’m pretty sure he would not be impressed, imagine Pell getting a please explain letter from the boss!! or even better being asked to clean out his desk & leave all the trinkets where they belong, not in your pockets.
Pell probably still believes that the Sun and the stars rvolve around the Earth……..
Pell also appeared before a Senate Committee hearing, re his views on climate change. I still do not understand why.
The Pope, I believe is a climate change believer. He is also a trained scientist, I believe.
I do not see that Pell really has much power. He is not head of the church in this country. Any power he has, arises from respect for the office he holds, that of being a Cardinal.
Reblogged this on Nick Thiwerspoon.
If the Catholic religion is to have any future in Australia the Pope should insist on Pell’s resignation.
His open affiliation with corporate sponsored lobby groups / politicians,
condoning the implementing of ‘trickle down’ economic policy,
his disgusting inaction in countering child abuse and paedophilia in the church system,
and his denial and misrepresentation of climate science are more than enough reasons to dispense with his services.
He has betrayed the trust of the common citizenry, in failing to act in the best interests of humanity.
I find it laughable that a man who believes in an all powerful god without evidence of the existence of same can squeal look to the evidence you morons. What evidence does he have of an all powerful god?
Also I wonder whether the “faith” he calls on in his uneducated mutterings could be called forth to assist the victims of his faith?
Sounds a bit catch 22 to me I have to confess.
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Pell's power is in Rome.
No cardinal's in Australia will go against him for fear of retribution from Rome.
And of course Pell's power over "Slick" Abbott is legendary.
Belongs to this interesting & worrisome group: http://renaissancelearningfoundation.wordpress.com/tag/chartwell-society/ and it is nothing to do with Climate Change. Is he member of IPA? Therein may lie the answer. http://www.ipa.org.au/ This is full of truly disturbing articles & viewpoints.
He was present at the IPA 70th birthday bash along with Murdoch, Rinehart, Abbott, Brandis, Bolt, Jones, Wilson et al
It’s amazing how many Catholics are ignorant of the Vatican stance on climate change. Since the late 1990s the Vatican has supported the scientific consensus and support action on climate change as 1. Caring for creation and 2. Humanitarian grounds.
Is he not the only Cardinal in this country. As for Rome, I am not so sure his power has not waned there as well.
Does not appear to have much in common with the new Pope.
Not too sure that Bishops and Arch Bishops would hold him in high esteem.
They need to save their own backsides, to bother worrying about Pell.
During the Victorian Hearing into institutional sexual abuse of children, he was careful to say, he was not the head of the church in this country.
That is true, he is not the head of the church, here.
I admire your resilience, Kaye. I bet you feel like a good shower after wading through the many wingnut sites in the course of your research.
I have just read that our Minister for Science’s senior business adviser, Mr M. Newman, has also made claims that Australia has become hostage to climate change madness, (SMH).
Has anyone got the SP on this person, allowing him to make such claims with authority, or is he just another Bull-Sh*t artist.
Deena, this is from 2010.
“Newman is a stereotypical climate denialist—wealthy, white, male, conservative. Like nearly all other climate denialists, from the editors of The Australian and conservative bloggers right down to the angry old men penning poisonous emails from their Sunshine Coast dens, he will never see the true consequences of climate change. And like other denialists, he will pay little if any of the cost of actually doing something about it. These people have no stake in either climate change or action to prevent it.
The climate change “debate” is a parlour game for them, something to bait environmentalists and “the Left” about. At least the rentseekers who corrupted the CPRS with their alarmism and demands for handouts were motivated by self-interest. For most denialists, they have no motivation other than to continue the culture wars.”
Howard appointed Maurice Newman as ABC board member and chairman where he remained until 2012. This from 2010……
“Newman believes that climate sceptics and denialists don’t get a run in the media. Chris Monckton — conspiracy theorist and serial fantasist — got extensive and frequently uncritical coverage from the ABC during his recent visit — radio interviews locally and nationally, online coverage, a 7.30 Report piece, ABC-hosted debates. Indeed, the ABC gave far more coverage to Monckton than any other single outlet. And all for a man who is taking seriously only by the extreme right in his homeland.
Compare and contrast: James Hansen is currently in Australia. Hansen is probably the best-known climate scientist on the planet, but you wouldn’t know he was here from the ABC, which, a Phillip Adams interview last week excepted, has barely mentioned his presence. The bald figures tell the story: as of today, Monckton has been discussed on the ABC 161 times this year, while Hansen has only been mentioned nine times.”
“These people have no stake in either climate change or action to prevent it.”
Surely they have a stake in their children and great grand children, or do they believe their wealth will buy them sanctuary from the effects in some luxurious remote location.
mm! pell the head of nothing. as was shown in the royal commision into child abuse the catholic church has no control over its individual churches in oz and therefore Pell is the head of nothing. Whatever you believe if you believe that the Catholic church has no control over the churches in oz then I suggest you would believe any other amount of poppycock bull. Pell is a danger only because in oz he’s held in regard high in political circles. Im sure thats got nothing to do with the catholic tradition of using its financial/land ownership muscle to get its way.. In the past it worked a treat. Now for now hes a dangerous legend in his own and others lunchbox who has no compunction to muck over little people to hide from, masquerade as and generally continue the lies past told of gods hell salvation power and politics. Truth be told Pell is like too many who gain and hold power for their own justifications and glory. Alas the way this shitstem works for far too long now is to veneate the holes, raise up the inept and business as usual. Climate change and any other social/community/environmental/financial/political issue you care to raise is home to those of opinions and we all know opinions are like ; everybodys got one. but the point here is to me that Pell the pontificator of all things catholic holds and uses power to assault truth and raise their own glory. Pathetic if it wasnt the cause of so much collatoral damage to ordinary people.
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http://www.smh.com.au/lifestyle/our-man-in-rome-20120611-204wh.html
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/may/28/george-pell-cardinal-abuse-inquiry
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/nation/rumours-fly-over-cardinal-george-pells-job-in-rome/story-e6frg6nf-1225863376827
http://www.catholica.com.au/breakingnews/031_bn_130610.php
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http://annesummers.com.au/2013/12/pope-francis-hits-reset-and-its-tony-abbott-and-george-pell-who-must-adjust/
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Pell has the back room power in Rome and his ambitions are only on hold until a position can be found for him to join that back room power base.
He is totally "old school" and that's the appeal he has in Rome.
ME they don’t seem to care at all about the future. All actions taken by this government are terribly short-sighted.
No action on climate change.
No increase in superannuation guarantee and scrapping co-contribution when everyone knows the old age pension will become unsustainable.
Cuts in funding to preventative health bodies.
Second rate NBN
Roads rather than public transport.
Cuts to trades training and uncertainty about needs based funding for schools.
I just don’t understand them.
Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/lifestyle/our-man-in-rome-20120611-204wh.html#ixzz2p2ySbunG
One could say, Pell has squandered the power that being appointed a cardinal should have bought him. Sold out to big politics and business.
John Fraser,
That first link you provided has a lot of very interesting information including this ….
“”We have a huge network of services: we educate 20 per cent of all Australians in our schools, operate 24 per cent of hospitals, we provide 55 per cent of palliative care … There are also a couple of Catholic universities and an immense welfare system, mostly financed by the government.”
An investigation by BRW magazine in 2006 put the Catholic Church’s revenue in Australia for the previous year near $16.2 billion, all tax-exempt. It is Australia’s biggest private property owner and non-government employer, with more than 150,000 people on its payroll.”
We talk about subsidies to mining companies and car manufacturers…how’s THAT for a subsidy! Perhaps the Catholic Church could fund it’s OWN education system, and maybe pay some tax? Oh and make a few pedophiles and their facilitators redundant?
Thank You so much Kaye Lee. As an Electronics Ginger Beer (Engineer) for Geophysical companies around the World, I am either getting on a plane or off one, (I hold a Commercial Pilots rating as well) it appears to me the weather is changing from bad to worse, especially around the Indian cape near the Gulf. I was born and bred around the country town of Longreach, never in my 20 years there did I see the temps go to 45 degrees, EVER. The trip from Perth to Dubai and back just seem to get more bumpy each Year. A lot of old Seismic travelers, tell me that also.
Pell Huh. Studied Theology Huh. I have studied both science and theology. A theology lecturer described theology as the prince of science, I disagreed, at the time, in my mind Maths was prince. I now agree, Biology and Geology are based on chemistry, Chemistry is based on Physics, Physics is based on Maths, Maths is based on Theology or Mythology, take your choice. But whatever both Theology and the Sciences are completely complimentary.
The only theology Pell has taken on board is a theology of the Christian religion, not the theology of the Christian faith. Religion is the egotistical way out, a way of denying the truth or twisting something to fit your own preconceptions. Thoroughly consistent with denying scientific truth. His theology has no credibility, let alone give him any credence in any other field of endeavour. His theology is based on Dogma and usurped authority, not on systematic discovery.
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Pell saying that he isn't the head of the catholic church in Australia is just another form of abuse.
Only this time he is abusing all Australians.
Typical vomit inducing Dunning Kruger of the worst kind. Completely spoils the whole idea of evolution… and easily wins the Loathsome Hypocrite Toad of the year award. The perfect ‘spiritual adviser to King Toad Tony. Damn… the Brown Acid just keeps getting more horrible by the day.
George Pell believes in Abbott and Uncle Rabbit believes in Him. Two little peas in a pod. I can see the two of them reciting the Lords Prayer together, No clue and No Idea, just reading the words from the Great Book. I have a prayer of my own, “God forgive these Idiots in power, as nothing will save them next election”.
Apologies to the Great Gough Whitlam .
What can one say??? I’ve just read Maurice Newman’s attack on the IPCC and now this article about Pell. In a word, they’re both boofheads… like Monckton, Bolt, Reinhart and all the rest of the lunatic right. I’m convinced that being a far-right conservative is a form of brain damage. Sorry…..
“my task as a Christian leader is to engage with reality”
the irony is deafening.
You mean George Pell is real? I just assumed with all the frocking up and the pronouncements he makes that he was a satire, you know, a sort of ecclesiastical Rampaging Roy Slaven. I have been searching everywhere on Foxtel for the George Pell Show, although I did hear he had got a gig at that renowned journal of truth and comedy, the Daily Telegraph.
climate change critic is nothing in comparison to cover up child abuse mogul….he needs to be shut up…but then all the money he receives from the people via free tax….does he really believe in god or does he think he is god…..no spelt backwards dog and that is an insult to the animal world…..he should be rid of…..and I am a catholic who has lost their faith having him as a leader of the church
Pell is definitely a climate change DENIER.
Just lately I have come across this video clip which is very scary
I suppose in a way Pell has aligned himself to what might be seen to be a corrupt Abbott gang. A French paper has stated that… “But how to take effective action when the lobbies of the most polluting industries are embedded within the government itself ?” http://www.monde-diplomatique.fr/2009/05/MAZURE/17074
Crikey has shown how much in donations the Liberal Party has received in 2010/2011 http://www.crikey.com.au/2012/02/21/the-rise-and-rise-of-mining-company-donations/
Here is a site that offers information that can be provided in relation to questions climate change deniers might come up with. http://www.skepticalscience.com/argument.php
Please pass on the first reference as I believe anybody would have to have the mind of a brick if it does not make them reflect a little.
Very interesting and scary video. Thanks Keith.
Where will Pell and the rabbott be if the pope makes Mary robinson and the mother superior of the Vatican cardinals???
May his god forgive him for he knows not what he does.
Pell is the sole reason why I walked away from Catholicism. Pell has no place within the Catholic Church. Pell uses the Catholic Church to sate his own self aggrandising, luxurious life style. Pell, and his like cohorts, is the reason the Australian Catholic Church continues to slip deeper into an abyss of nothingness. Pell is representative of everything that is vile in humanity. Pell is no Prince of Peter’s Church….more a Prince of Darkness….Pell’s comprehension of Climate Change runs in tandem with whatever lie crosses his lips in respect of any subject he turns his dark attention to……….I would recommend watching his performance before the Victorian Inquiry into Child Abuse during the last week of May 2013. An ‘artful dodger’ doing what he does best….spinning Convenient Lies. No one can be as naive as he likes to project when under question……it is just part of his lying nature…..
The resurgence of the far right in recent years as evidenced by climate change deniers like Pell and Bolt is a worrying phenomenon. Their power base has been enhanced by the influence of the Murdoch media and its blatant right-wing bias. The IPA is our version of America’s Heartland & Cato Institutes and Bolt and Jones our analogues of Bill O’Reilly & Rush Limburg. Reinhart is our Koch brothers. The climate denial campaign is funded by the IPA and the mining giants…. this is a fundamental battle for the hearts and minds of middle Australia and will shape our attitude to global warming for years to come. The deniers have the support of the mainstream media who provide a voice for their nonsensical attacks on climate scientists. The role of independent media in countering this and providing a balanced viewpoint is critical. Most people don’t realize how important the independents are in what is a blatant campaign to push society to the right by the MSM and their think-tanks. I consider the resurgence of the far right to be a dangerous social movement and must be fiercely resisted by mainstream Australia. Already the disease of neoliberalism is creating a widening divide in his country. Climate change denial is one of its central tenants and scientists are in their sights. We cannot let them win!
The climate change denier and leader of the Catholic Church in Australia, George Pell…….oh, and also an unmitigated liar. How typical that he believes in fantasy and protects the big end of town!
What a ‘shame’ reality proves him so very wrong, in every possible way.
Surely it is not fair to always talk about electricity prices? How about record profits???
In a 2007 article for The Sunday Telegraph, Pell wrote that while climate had changed, he was ‘”certainly sceptical about extravagant claims of impending man-made climatic catastrophes, because the evidence is insufficient”.
Insufficient evidence? This, from somebody who believes in God?
Thanks for a very nice article.
“Radical environmentalists are more than up to the task of moralising their own agenda and imposing it on people through fear. They don’t need church leaders to help them with this, although it is a very effective way of further muting Christian witness.”
Having been raised Catholic in the 1950s and 60s all I can recall was being ‘moralised through fear’.
@John Kelly, well done that man in having escaped the attention of many of Pell’s “class” mates.
Maybe I should fashion him a hat to go with his mitre, poor deluded fella. Mine has been protecting me from the influence of RWNJs for quite a while now. And the conversations we could have about the links between theology and astrology!! It would bend my head – and probably his! I wonder if he’s had the pleasure of a relaxing soak in the Pope’s bathtub, the one with all the signs of the zodiac emblazoned around it? His type denounce and vilify whatever might enlighten and/or empower people.These mob are like lampreys.
Thank you Kaye for yet another thoroughly researched and explained expose on what is true.
Not sure if this was linked to help out;
http://www.quarterlyessay.com/issue/prince-faith-abuse-and-george-pell
Pell has no ‘investment’ in the future as he not only does not have children but has no conscience that gathers up the vision of the future for others that will come after.
He is the greatest hypocrite of all with fear always being the central theme to all Catholic teachings past and present. Fear of the after life, of judgement, of heaven and hell. That is how you keep people in your thrall….Howard showed us that…make a common ‘enemy’ and you keep the people afraid you will be looked to and be given power over them.
Freedom is knowledge and understanding, not belief in flying teapots or imaginary friends.
What good a ‘benign’ god? What good a church who is a mirror of the Pharisees themselves? What good a church leader who is too busy hankering for more power whilst gathering up the manna of Caesar? What good a man of god who does not, cannot understand his own people? What good can come of this ‘pope’s man in Australia’?
He is more than immoral…he is dangerous.
The arguments used by Pell – and oft repeated by Abbott – are breathtaking; literally if we don’t act on biosphere change.