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Matt Ridley: My life as a climate change lukewarmer

By Matt Ridley | The Times | January 19, 2015

Excerpts:

I am a climate lukewarmer. That means I think recent global warming is real, mostly man-made and will continue but I no longer think it is likely to be dangerous and I think its slow and erratic progress so far is what we should expect in the future.

This view . . . is even more infuriating to most publicly funded scientists and politicians, who insist climate change is a big risk.

I was even kept off the shortlist for a part-time, unpaid public-sector appointment in a field unrelated to climate because of having this view, or so the headhunter thought. In the climate debate, paying obeisance to climate scaremongering is about as mandatory for a public appointment, or public funding, as being a Protestant was in 18th-century England.

I was not always a lukewarmer. When I first started writing about the threat of global warming more than 26 years ago, as science editor of The Economist, I thought it was a genuinely dangerous threat.

Gradually, however, I changed my mind. What sealed my apostasy from climate alarm was the extraordinary history of the famous “hockey stick” graph, which purported to show that today’s temperatures were higher and changing faster than at any time in the past thousand years. I began to read the work of two Canadian researchers, Steve McIntyre and Ross McKitrick.

What shocked me more was the scientific establishment’s reaction to this: it tried to pretend that nothing was wrong. And then a flood of emails was leaked in 2009 showing some climate scientists apparently scheming to withhold data, prevent papers being published, get journal editors sacked and evade freedom-of-information requests, much as sceptics had been alleging. That was when I began to re-examine everything I had been told about climate change and, the more I looked, the flakier the prediction of rapid warming seemed.

The policies being proposed to combat climate change, far from being a modest insurance policy, are proving ineffective, expensive, harmful to poor people and actually bad for the environment: we are tearing down rainforests to grow biofuels and ripping up peat bogs to install windmills that still need fossil-fuel back-up. Some insurance policy.

To begin with, after I came out as a lukewarmer, I would get genuine critiques from scientists who disagreed with me and wanted to exchange views. They often resorted to meta-arguments, especially the argument from authority: if the Royal Society says it is alarmed, then you should be alarmed. If I want argument from authority, I replied, I will join the Catholic Church.

One by one, many of the most prominent people in the climate debate began to throw vitriolic playground abuse at me. I was “paranoid”, “specious”, “risible”, “self-defaming”, “daft”, “lying”, “irrational”, an “idiot”. Their letters to the editor or their blog responses asserted that I was “error-riddled” or had seriously misrepresented something, but then they not only failed to substantiate the charge but often roughly confirmed what I had written.

Talking of the committee on climate change, last year Lord Deben commissioned an entire report to criticise something I had said. Among other howlers, it included a quotation from the IPCC but the quote had a large chunk cut from the middle. When this cut was restored the line supported me, not Lord Deben. When I pointed this out politely to Lord Deben, he refused to restore the excision and left the document unchanged on the committee’s website.

I suppose all this fury means my arguments are hitting home.

I have never met a climate sceptic, let alone a lukewarmer, who wants his opponents silenced. I wish I could say the same of those who think climate change is an alarming prospect.

Full article with updates at Matt Ridley’s site.

December 10, 2016 Posted by | Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular | , , | Leave a comment

Pope Francis Insults Native People by Making Junipero Serra a Saint

By Noel Brinkerhoff and Danny Biederman | AllGov | September 8, 2015

Native Americans are upset at Pope Francis for his decision to canonize 18th-century Franciscan missionary Junipero Serra.

Serra founded the mission system in California, which helped establish the Catholic Church long before California ever became a state.

But the missions treated local Native Americans cruelly while trying to convert them to Christianity. Many of them were whipped, imprisoned, and put in stocks. Serra’s drive to “civilize” native peoples resulted in tens of thousands of deaths and the eradication of their culture, Gary Kamiya wrote at San Francisco Magazine.

That’s why tribal leaders and others have voiced objections to Pope Francis’ announcement in January to make Serra a saint. Protests have been staged all across California and more are expected throughout the year.

Francis has tried to soften the opposition by apologizing on behalf of the church for its crimes against indigenous peoples. In July, Francis “made a sweeping apology for the church’s sins and ‘crimes’ against indigenous peoples during a visit to Bolivia” by “humbly” begging for “forgiveness in the presence of Bolivia’s first-ever indigenous president and representatives of native groups from across South America, who wildly cheered the pope and said they accepted the apology,” the Associated Press reported.

“Pope Francis has gone to South America and apologized,” Norma Flores, a spokeswoman for Kizh Nation, told AP. “Yet he is going to canonize the individual responsible for the genocide of Native people.”

Flores wants the pope to come to California and acknowledge the church’s specific crimes. “We will never forgive or forget, but we need that in order for our wounds to heal,” she added. The pope’s travel plans don’t include a visit to the state.

“Back in the 1930s, there were just two remaining speakers of our language, Chochenyo,” Vincent Medina told San Francisco Magazine. “When I went to my grandfather and asked him about the language, he said, ‘We don’t know the language anymore’… There’s a reason why it wasn’t passed down to him from his mother. The decline started with Junípero Serra’s policies. He used to gripe about how Indians wouldn’t stop speaking their languages. He wanted them to speak Spanish.”

Louise Miranda Ramirez, tribal chairwoman of the Ohlone Costanoan Esselen Nation, whose people occupied large parts of northern California at the time of Serra’s arrival in 1769, told San Francisco Magazine she “felt betrayed” by the decision to canonize Serra.

“The missions that Serra founded put our ancestors through things that none of us want to remember. I think about the children being locked into the missions, the whippings—and it hurts. I hurt for our ancestors. I feel the pain. That pain hasn’t gone away. And it needs to be corrected,” Ramirez said.


Who Is the Controversial Missionary Canonized by the Pope?

teleSUR | September 24, 2015

On Wednesday, Pope Francis canonized Junipero Serra, a Franciscan priest, who is revered by Catholics but is also detested by some Native Americans groups who accuse Serra of abusing the native populations, subjecting them to forced labor, and cultural genocide.

Serra, an ordained a priest in 1738 is most famous for establishing nine of the state of California’s 21 missions in the 1700’s, effectively bringing Catholicism to the America’s.

According to U.S. census records, the population of native Californians dropped from approximately 310,000 when the missionaries first arrived to 20,000 at the start of the twentieth century.

Scholar Calley Hart attribute the sharp decline in population due to the discouragement of traditional medicinal practices, unsanitary living conditions, the lack of medical care along with radical changes in diet and location.

Native American groups argue that Serra, like many Franciscan missionaries at the time, forced native populations to work for Spanish settlements and were gradually stripped of their culture and religion.

“Pope Francis continues to ignore the true history of what happened to American Indian tribes in California. What Serra did to Indians was about the conquest of our people,” commented Valentin Lopez, chairman, the Amah Mutsun tribal band of Costanoan-Ohlone Indians to native news online on Monday.

Serra was first designated a candidate for sainthood in 1934 and later in 1988.


To Learn More:

Junípero Serra’s Missions Destroyed Entire Native Cultures. And Now He’s Going to Be a Saint. (by Gary Kamiya, San Francisco Magazine )

Pope’s Apology Doesn’t Change Opinions On Canonization (by Sudhin Thanawala, Associated Press )

Pope Taps Junipero Serra for Sainthood despite Pesky Complaints of Genocide (by Ken Broder, AllGov California )

September 19, 2015 Posted by | Timeless or most popular | , , , | 9 Comments

Will the Pope insist on seeing Gaza this time?

By Stuart Littlewood | Intifada Palestine | December 4, 2013

CNN reports on Israeli PM Netanyahu’s reception at the Vatican and plans for the Pope to visit Israel in May.

Recalling the shabby treatment of religious leaders on previous visits to the Holy Land, let us hope Pope Francis takes a firmer line than his predecessor and insists on seeing Gaza and ministering to his terrorised flock there.

In May 2009, when Benedict was Pope, the Vatican told the Israeli press that the Holy Father would refrain from visiting Gaza. The word ‘refrain’ was a peculiar one in the circumstances. “The Pope will refrain from visiting Gaza….” smacks of abstinence, as in refraining from sexual intercourse. Setting foot in Gaza was as sinful as sneaking into a brothel, it seems. Israel’s hoodlums of course were keen to prevent him seeing how the tiny, overcrowded enclave had been devastated 16 months earlier by their murderous blitzkrieg codenamed Cast Lead. And the Pope went along with it.

Gaza’s isolated and besieged Catholic community were none too happy with the Pope’s attitude, judging by the reaction of their redoubtable old priest Fr Manuel Mussallam. “We will ask him why he came, what he intends saying to the Christians, the Jews, the Muslims and why he isn’t coming to Gaza,” said Fr Manuel. “We’ll tell him that this is not the right moment to come and visit the holy places, while Jerusalem is occupied.”

Time for the Pope to join BDS?

Having decided to go to Palestine (via Israel) it was imperative for the Pope to include Gaza or it would look like he didn’t give a damn about the appalling persecution in the very land where Christianity was born. He might as well hammer one more nail into Christendom’s coffin. Then again, should he be going to Israel at all while Jerusalem, Bethlehem and many other places dear to Christian and Muslim religious belief are under the jackboot?

Indeed, has it finally come to the point where the Pope ought to do the decent thing and boycott Israel… join the BDS movement? Admittedly, it’s a tough call given the Catholic Church’s considerable interests out there.

But we have seen enough wimpish conduct by Christian leaders while Israel defiles the Holy Land. The previous November, while the regime was planning its vicious assault, codename Operation Cast Lead, on Gaza’s Muslims and Christians after softening them up with two years of blockade and starvation, we were treated to the spectacle of the Archbishop of Canterbury joining the Chief Rabbi on a visit to Auschwitz to show joint solidarity against extreme hostility and genocide. The Archbishop called it “a place of utter profanity” and spoke of the collective corruption and moral sickness that made the Holocaust possible.

Would the pair show the same spirit of righteous solidarity by visiting Gaza? The scale of horror might be different but the moral sickness is just as obscene. And this being the Holy Land the profanity is many times worse.

The Pope too had been to Auschwitz to pray for the people murdered there. “I had to come here as a duty to truth and to those that suffered,” he said and spoke of the Nazis’ mania for destruction and domination.

Very commendable. But he wasn’t so keen to come and pray for those suffering in Gaza, victims of much the same kind of criminal insanity. Nevertheless, he turned up at Israel’s Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial and the Western (Wailing) Wall, and hobnobbed with the chief rabbis… but not with his brave priest and the shattered congregation in Gaza. What had happened to his ‘duty to truth’?

After my visit to Gaza in late 2007, 18 months after Israel’s merciless squeeze began, I wrote:

Fuel is running out, so are basics like washing powder. Shattered infrastructure and food shortages mean serious public health problems. Power cuts disrupt hospitals and vital drugs cannot be kept refrigerated. Thousands look death in the face as medicare collapses.

A friend emailed:

“Today in Gaza we have no cement to build graves for those who die.”

The subjugation and dispossession of Christians and Muslims in the Holy Land continues. It remains a mystery to me why our largely Christian democracy in Britain slavishly supports the Middle East ethnocracy that’s doing this…

The last six years have seen things go from bad to worse – much worse. Palestinians in the Holy Land, and especially Gaza, need to be shown that the Christian Church cares about them even if nobody else does. So where are these extravagantly robed and mitred Men of God when needed?

No repetition of the Benedict debâcle, please

Archbishop Rowan Williams, visiting in 2010, did manage to get into Gaza. But as far as I could discover he made no public statement about the wretched conditions there, nor did he reveal his findings to the House of Lords where he had the support of a large gaggle of bishops. This despite his claim to be “in a unique position to bring the needs and voices of those fighting poverty, disease and the effects of conflict, to the attention of national and international policy makers”.

And despite his declaration that “Christians need to witness boldly and clearly”.

And despite his urging greater awareness of the humanitarian crisis to ensure that the people of Gaza were not forgotten.

The Israelis, I heard, refused him access to Gaza from the start and only at the last minute allowed the Archbishop an hour or so, just enough for a quick visit to the Ahli Hospital and nowhere else. For that concession one wonders if he had to sign a gagging order.

His website, however, described how he, like the Pope, hobnobbed with the Chief Rabbinate of Israel and paid respects to Yad Vashem and the Holocaust. He also talked with the President of Israel, who no doubt enjoyed his guest’s frustration at being prevented from seeing the horrors that had been inflicted on Gaza.

And news of any get-together with senior Islamic figures on the ground was conspicuously absent, leaving a question-mark over his commitment to inter-faith engagement.

Why on earth did he agree to fraternise with Jewish political and religious dignitaries when it was clear that his wish to carry out his Christian duty in Gaza would be obstructed? Does Lambeth Palace not realise that meekly accepting such insults only serves to legitimise the Israelis’ illegal occupation and gives a stamp of approval to the brutal siege of Gaza, the daily death-dealing air strikes against civilians, the persecution of Muslim and Christian communities and the regime’s utter contempt for international law and human rights?

One can only hope the Vatican realises it too and avoids a repetition of the Benedict debâcle.

The Israelis walk all over fawning sycophants masquerading as Western political leaders. Our spiritual leaders, however, are supposed to be made of sterner stuff and to have the moral backbone to face down evil.

Related article

December 4, 2013 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Illegal Occupation, War Crimes | , , , , , | 1 Comment

Israel demolishes church property in Jerusalem, future mass demolitions threatened

MEMO | November 6, 2013

Israeli forces Monday demolished a property in occupied East Jerusalem owned by the Roman Catholic Church, displacing 14 Palestinians. At a press conference held by the ruins of the home, Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem Fuad Tawwal condemned the demolition in the presence of senior church officials, foreign diplomats and journalists, saying “there is no justification for the demolition” and accusing the Jerusalem “municipality and the Israeli government” of “increase[ing] hatred” through its policies.

Tawwal claimed that it was the first time Israel had demolished property belonging to the church, and promised “legal action in appropriate courts” in response.

Meanwhile, it has been reported that hundreds of Palestinian families in East Jerusalem have recently received demolition orders, notices which give residents 30 days to appeal.

Palestinian-owned properties in Israeli-annexed East Jerusalem are routinely demolished by the Jerusalem municipality on the grounds of lacking the right permit – permits that are notoriously difficult to get. For example, just 13 per cent of the Jerusalem housing units granted building permits in the period 2005-’09 were in Palestinian neighbourhoods.

November 6, 2013 Posted by | Aletho News | , , , , , , | 1 Comment