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Monday, February 2, 2015

WUWT attacks the Catholic Church

Sou | 1:20 PM Go to the first of 21 comments. Add a comment


Not satisfied with attacking scientists and science, now WUWT has set its sights on the Catholic Church. According to Tim Ball (archived here), the Pontiff doesn't realise that mitigating climate change means "reducing and controlling population" and "contradicts Catholic doctrine". Tim says that Pope Francis is a socialist who is "easily persuaded". Oh, and according to Tim, one shouldn't approach scientists if one wants to learn about science.

It's odd for WUWT to come out with a full bore attack on the Catholic Church because Anthony Watts recently declared himself as Catholic. Most Catholics are very loyal to their Church though many would recognise its faults and past transgressions. So if Anthony Watts had posted an article praising cigarette smoking, given his history, this would be the equivalent. Remember, Anthony favours the Heartland Institute, which waged a pro-smoking campaign for years, so he is not being inconsistent in his inconsistency.

What all this goes to show is that Anthony Watts has one goal which is way more important to him than his religion and his anti-smoking stance. His goal is to prevent anyone doing anything to mitigate global warming. He'll drop all his principles (did he ever have any?) and grab hold of anything, even Tim Ball, to achieve that end. His underlying motivation like that of many at WUWT, is mundane - it's money.


I won't dwell on Tim's article. It's the usual mishmash of disinformation, conspiracy theorising, anti-semitism and nuttery. I'll just let you know how some WUWT readers regard the Catholic Church and Tim's fantasies.


From the WUWT comments


I'm not surprised to see so many anti-Catholic comments in one place. Many people fear the Catholic Church, others despise it and some atheists are adamantly opposed to religion of any kind. What is a bit of a surprise is that Anthony Watts, being a Catholic, encouraged the attack. Religion gets tossed out the window when it conflicts with a higher faith, money.


General P. Malaise equates socialism, communism and progressive thinking as one and the same evil, with the Pope as its personification:
February 1, 2015 at 8:56 am
the Pope wants redistribution of wealth. which is very much against catholic doctrine since redistribution of wealth is socialist/progressive/communist speak for theft.

Golden takes a potshot at all the engineers at WUWT:
February 1, 2015 at 7:59 am
Rome had no science. Rome was an engineering society. They made absolutely no progress on the science of the ancient Greeks – who were they schoolmasters – and their slaves.
hunter doesn't entertain the thought that this time the Pope could be correct in agreeing with science.
February 1, 2015 at 7:31 am
This is not the first time that the Church has fallen into the trap of compromising with the world.It is disappointing to see a Jesuit, who are reputed to be well educated and discerning, fall for something as obvious as the climate obsession.

Patrick reckons the Catholic Church is part of the fantastical global conspiracy.
February 1, 2015 at 7:35 am
It shouldn’t surprise you, Dr. Ball, that the Pope is supportive of the UN. The Pope is a Jesuit. The Jesuits have been intertwined with the Communists and globalists for years especially in Central and South America. The Jesuits have always been behind Fidel Castro as well. There is no shortage of literature on the subject. In fact, Google is your friend.

MCourtney looks to evidence, but then shifts the goalposts:
February 1, 2015 at 8:24 am
There is evidence for evolution – it is observed.
There is evidence for DNA – it is observed.
There is evidence for Plate Tectonics – it is observed.

I know you're waiting for MCourtney to say "there is evidence of global warming - it is observed":



You'll be disappointed. Being a denier MCourtney suddenly shifts tack and opts for denier memes:
But newsworthy AGW- we haven’t seen the tropical hotspot, the acceleration of warming post-1950 or climate models with predictive power. We haven’t go the evidence.
If you let AGW in to the science fold, just because it is studied without finding any evidence, then you really need to let Astrology, Ufology and cryptobiology in too.
But for me, not yeti.

Bob Weber doesn't try to hide his political leanings and paranoid conspiracy ideation, and uses them as an excuse to reject science:
February 1, 2015 at 7:49 am
If the shoe was on the other foot, the typical lefty Marxist warmist would howl and piss and moan if a conservative religious icon stood up and told the world what it had to do, whatever it was, and they would shout that person down. Hypocrites.
The FALSE PROPHET here is a scientifically clueless foolish tool. The scary part is he is working with the most anti-Christian rabblerouser this country has ever had as an occupant of the oval office.
The grand pooba ought to think really carefully here: as temperatures drop off from low solar activity during the next few years, he will clearly be seen as either stupid, or a liar, or both, and his personal credibility and that of his church will drop off precipitiously with the temperatures.
Does the leader of one of the world’s largest religions really think God intended for humanity to be led down the destructive Agenda 21 road based on a pack of lies?

General P. Malaise wrote a lot of comments like this and worse (anti-muslim etc), and wasn't chastised by anyone that I could see.
February 1, 2015 at 8:48 am
this Pope is a communist. a one world proponent and a redistribution advocate. and yes he is actively contradicting Catholic doctrine. 

In fact there were a few comments expanding on Tim Ball's coded anti-muslim sentiments, which I won't repeat here.


Read this comment from Dawtgtomis and ask yourself, how can anyone claim that WUWT doesn't attract/encourage wacky conspiracy theorists? (Not that you need more proof. Publishing any of Tim Ball's articles is sufficient evidence that Anthony Watts deliberately sets out to attract the nut jobs.)
February 1, 2015 at 8:48 am
Hidden agendas and mass deception have become the preferred method of governance in the “brave new world”. As religion is among the oldest forms of governance, these tactics have been employed successfully for centuries to control the commoners. The first thing we teach our children is respect of authority and adherence to it, without dissent. Those of authority therefore determine through consensus what is truth in the collective mind of the populace and disseminate it through the media they control. Education becomes mere programming, with the bourgeois discouraged from pursuing higher thought and punished for skepticism of established dogma.
IMHO, it is this which presently threatens the future of Humanity more than anything else

The mods at WUWT, to their credit, allowed a few normal people to comment. icouldnthelpit wrote:
February 1, 2015 at 9:19 am
Tim Ball gets more and more bonkers.

And you know why the mods let that comment through. It was to give the conspiracy theorists some target practice. It didn't take all that long for r murphy to show up supporting Tim Ball and his paranoid fantasies:
February 1, 2015 at 9:50 am
The fact that Dr. Ball has the courage to speak out about the behind the scenes machinations of the elites does not indicate a weakness of mind but rather incredible courage to speak truth to power, Elites collude, always have, always will, to believe otherwise is incredibly naive.

Oh, it gets even better. icouldnthelpit referred to the Lewandowsky paper:
February 1, 2015 at 10:07 am
I suppose if they can fake the moon landings they can do anything.

Sure enough, a conspiracy theorist took the bait. BFL saying "who really knows for sure...":
February 1, 2015 at 10:41 am
It’s not that the moon landings were actually faked, but that the government would have been fully and immorally capable of doing it if they had decided too. That knowledge makes it all too easy to believe many of the “supposedly” loony conspiracy theories because who really knows for sure…….

The discussion devolves from here on in, if you can try to imagine that. I didn't get to the very end, but I read far enough. You can read more here if you are so inclined.

21 comments:

  1. Jesuits are all commies.

    (BTW did you know that you can save $20K a year by doing your undergrad Law Degree at Harvard instead of Commietown (AKA Georgetown)?

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  2. We have long been asked to believe that the Wutters know more about a vast range of science than the scientists who actually study it. So perhaps its not much of a surprise to discover that the Wutters know more about 'proper' Catholicism than the Pope. Its just odd that these geniuses seem unable to acheive anything beyond writing their puerile gob shite blogs.

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  3. He'll drop all his principles (did he ever have any?) and grab hold of anything, even Tim Ball, to achieve that end.

    As Groucho Marx once said " These are my principles and if you don't like them, I have others"

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  4. Tim's dropped the ball. He's totally overlooked the Mt. Graham Vatican Observatory that's in Arizona and run by a commie Jesuit astronomer with a commie-sounding name. And that's not taking into account the dozens of commie-loving Jesuit astronomers that work there on their commie research into God-knows-what.
    Back on task, Tim could have found some real inspiration from a book, no not the Good Book, the book "Exo-Vaticana: Petrus Romanus Project Lucifer" which reveals the Vatican's astonishing plan for the arrival of an alien saviour! Now that would really resonate with the practitioners of wattsology, a fusion of surrealism, mysticism and divination.

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    1. Wonderful, George. I do hope that Tim discovers it :)

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    2. Well, George, you know those commie Jesuits are looking deep out into space at galaxies that are far more than 6000 light years away -- or so they'd claim. And as a US Congressman once said, all this science stuff is "lies from the pit of hell".

      Incidentaly, the Vatican telescope on Mt. Graham is known in the trade as "the Pope Scope".

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    3. Ah yes palindrom Rep. Broun (R). Two science degrees- BSc (Chem) and a Doctorate of Medicine. Broun also believed that embryology was delivered to us from that same hell pit. Needless to say he was immediately elevated to the House Science Committee.
      As Irving Berlin (nearly) wrote:

      Folks are dumb
      Where they come from.

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  5. "Dr. Ball has the courage to speak out about the behind the scenes machinations of the elites"

    i'm sure the black helicopters are on their way as we speak, filled with Swiss Guard death-squads. watch out for those halberds, Tim!

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    1. oooh yeah right.. And we all know that the IPCC is just a tool of the UN. So those might be IPCC helicopters coming..

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    2. The musical satirist Weird Al Yankovic has this contribution:

      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w-0TEJMJOhk

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    3. Great video, palindrom. Bookmarked it. Sure it will come in handy on any number of AGW denier threads :-)

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  6. "the Pope wants redistribution of wealth. which is very much against catholic doctrine since redistribution of wealth is socialist/progressive/communist speak for theft."

    he might find that the Catholic Church disagrees somewhat. if you read the 2004 report "Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church" (commissioned by that arch-Communist sympathiser, Pope John Paul II), you'll find a section entitled "Wealth exists to be shared", and numerous statements on the sharing and fair (re)distribution of wealth.

    §329: "The rich man — Saint Gregory the Great will later say — is only an administrator of what he possesses; giving what is required to the needy is a task that is to be performed with humility because the goods do not belong to the one who distributes them. He who retains riches only for himself is not innocent; giving to those in need means paying a debt."

    §332: "The production of goods is a duty to be undertaken in an efficient manner, otherwise resources are wasted. On the other hand, it would not be acceptable to achieve economic growth at the expense of human beings, entire populations or social groups, condemning them to indigence. The growth of wealth, seen in the availability of goods and services, and the moral demands of an equitable distribution of these must inspire man and society as a whole to practise the essential virtue of solidarity, in order to combat, in a spirit of justice and charity, those “structures of sin” where ever they may be found and which generate and perpetuate poverty, underdevelopment and degradation."

    §353: "It is necessary for the market and the State to act in concert, one with the other, and to complement each other mutually. In fact, the free market can have a beneficial influence on the general public only when the State is organized in such a manner that it defines and gives direction to economic development, promoting the observation of fair and transparent rules, and making direct interventions — only for the length of time strictly necessary — when the market is not able to obtain the desired efficiency and when it is a question of putting the principle of redistribution into effect. There exist certain sectors in which the market, making use of the mechanisms at its disposal, is not able to guarantee an equitable distribution of the goods and services that are essential for the human growth of citizens. In such cases the complementarities of State and market are needed more than ever."

    §355: "Tax revenues and public spending take on crucial economic importance for every civil and political community. The goal to be sought is public financing that is itself capable of becoming an instrument of development and solidarity. Just, efficient and effective public financing will have very positive effects on the economy, because it will encourage employment growth and sustain business and non-profit activities and help to increase the credibility of the State as the guarantor of systems of social insurance and protection that are designed above all to protect the weakest members of society."

    §363: "Looking after the common good means making use of the new opportunities for the redistribution of wealth among the different areas of the planet, to the benefit of the underprivileged that until now have been excluded or cast to the sidelines of social and economic progress."

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    1. the Catechism of the Catholic Church is similarly clear: §2439 states "rich nations have a grave moral responsibility toward those which are unable to ensure the means of their development by themselves or have been prevented from doing so by tragic historical events. It is a duty in solidarity and charity; it is also an obligation in justice if the prosperity of the rich nations has come from resources that have not been paid for fairly."

      §2446 quotes Chrysostom ("Not to enable the poor to share in our goods is to steal from them and deprive them of life. The goods we possess are not ours, but theirs"; "The demands of justice must be satisfied first of all; that which is already due in justice is not to be offered as a gift of charity.") and Gregory (When we attend to the needs of those in want, we give them what is theirs, not ours. More than performing works of mercy, we are paying a debt of justice.)

      this isn't new stuff, either: it's mainly founded on Leo XIII's 1891 encyclical, Rerum Novarum, which in turn draws from (among others) the works of Thomas Aquinas, in the 13th century. so in this instance we can blame the Dominicans rather than the Jesuits ;-)

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    2. Isn't Pope Francis supposed to have chosen the name because of its association with the Assisi bloke? I'm pretty sure he wasn't a huge fan of the Koch lifestyle. Or are the Wutters rewriting church history now?

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    3. It's taken 500 years for a Jesuit to nab the top job. I suspect it will take another 500 for the 2nd.

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    4. I was brought up as a Catholic but lost my 'faith' at the ripe old age of about nine. The Nun teaching my grade five class asked us what we wanted to be when we grew up. The choices we had to write down on a piece of paper were Priest, Brother or Nun.
      This well meaning Nun then proceeded to read out our rather limited choices. There was a lot of laughter when Bert had chosen Nun. With a very grim face she said 'it is spelled as n o n e !'
      My best mate did much better in the laughter stakes as his choice was Pope!
      It is rather appalling that a bunch of deniers that have faith in a belief system without any evidence should start attacking the leader of another belief system that also has no evidence.
      The Irony is that the Pope is looking at real evidence for his evaluation of climate change and its dangers . As far as I know the Pope has very high degrees in science.
      Meanwhile the comments at other Australian Newspapers where AGW is mentioned still play the 8 track tape (that does not need reversing) endlessly repeating debunked denier memes.
      It is still whack a mole!
      Bert

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  7. Too bad he hasn't noticed past efforts to take the Vatican for a ride on carbon offsets - before embarking on a his new career as an ocean fertilization entrepeneur , Klima Fa 's founder hit the Knights of Malta for serveal million euro by parlaying the future biomass hopes of a truckload of acorns into a claim of carbon neutrality for the Papal state.

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    1. I find riddles annoying, Russell. Perhaps a link would help?

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  8. M Courtney here:
    I was waiting for commenters to correct Sue'sreading comprehension but it didn't happen so let me help.
    "I know you're waiting for MCourtney to say "there is evidence of global warming - it is observed":

    But I was correctly talking about "newsworthy anthropogenic global warming". The world will always warm or cool or (as at present do nowt much) because climate isn't constant. Look, the world warmed in the 20th century - well we know that. But why?
    Not for the reason the climate models assumed as they got the present wrong.

    Show evidence that man caused dangerous warming.
    At the moment the evidence is the same as for Yetis, UFOs and Atlantis.

    If you disagree - Show evidence that man caused (or will cause in the future :-)) dangerous warming.

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    1. Oh dear. A silly challenge from some denier riddled with get out clauses and gotchas. I suggest straight into the HotWhoppery ... :)

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    2. As you can see, in the main article (From the WUWT comments), I correctly interpreted MCourtney's intent.

      In his comment just above, he goes even further into denial. He declares himself a greenhouse effect denier. He implies that he doesn't "believe" the warming is caused by the greenhouse effect from human emissions of CO2, land clearing etc. (No, it's not the ignorance of someone new to climate science. MCourtney is a denialist of long standing at WUWT. He is fully aware of the IPCC and the science. He just doesn't want to face facts.)

      Good to know :)

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