"He Who Controls the Weather Will Control the World." Lyndon Johnson, 1962 speech

Control the weather? Really? It sounds like the plot of a futuristic novel, but the fact is that the future is now. Mad scientists are among us. Geoengineering is a reality. And man playing God is likely causing some of the devastating weather situations around the world, not to mention undermining our health. 

Sleight of Hand and Weather Amnesia in the "Climate Change" Debate

Facebook memes often trigger a research area for me. When I saw the above meme I looked up Judith Curry and ended up on her website reading some of her fascinating material. While she doesn't seem to call climate change "a hoax" exactly, she points out how complicated the issue is and how extreme events like hurricanes have little to do with human action.

Tell Me Again Why We Should Trust the Climate Change "Experts?"

I'm a weather channel watcher. A week ago we had warnings of a big winter storm for tomorrow. It started out with a prediction of about nine inches of snow and then seven and then snow disappeared from the forecast altogether. 

Nobel Scientist is a "Climate Change Denialist!"

Pictures like this are part of the fear-mongering to hype the hysteria.

The latest hand-wringing terror talk is in progress. The U.N. head, António Guterres, recently stated, "The era of global warming has ended; the era of global boiling has arrived.” And, of course, mankind is to blame and if we don't take immediate action the end is near. (Source) Gosh, how many times have we heard that?

Did You Hear about the "Great Christmas Blizzard?" Chicken Little Attributes it to Global Warming!

The "Great Blizzard of 1888"
ground traffic to a standstill in NYC.

Global warming really is alarming. All these extreme weather events that we've never seen before!

Yeah, right!

The unexpected blizzard of the headline happened after Christmas. It was an "extratropical cyclone blizzard winter story" and piled on a record snowfall in the northeast. New York City saw over 26 inches of snow in fewer than 24 hours when the white stuff fell at a rate of three inches an hour.  Seventy-seven people died, public transportation ground to a stop. Buses and cars were abandoned in the streets making them nearly impassable for emergency vehicles. Telephone and electric service was spotty due to downed power and phone lines.

A Letter to Greta from Friends of Science: THERE IS NO CLIMATE EMERGENCY!

It's not about a climate emergency; it's about money and power. CO2 is plant food! Did you know that greenhouses use machines to increase the CO2 level in their grow rooms to increase plant growth?

Fr. Tom Collins' brief comment on Greta Thunberg Gets Me Thinking...

The left crucified Nick Sandmann, but
Greta is untouchable. 

Fr. Collins sent a very short comment yesterday morning about Greta Thunberg and those using her
to advance the climate change meme:

It is interesting how so many, who vehemently assert that Greta Thunberg had no right to be born, are now asserting that her voice must be heard and taken seriously by those who condescended to allow her to be born. Having already been born, she now proclaims that other pre-born children must be denied the right to live before they can accelerate global warming by their presence on our planet.

On target as usual! Thank you, Father.

The Greta Thunberg phenomena is certainly puzzling. Here we have a young girl, who appears even younger than her 16 years, being paraded around as a climate expert.

Really?

King Jorge Bluster from South America

King Phineas when he was
a Prince with a red hat

Phineas T Bluster was a puppet character in the American children's television program Howdy Doody (1949-1960) hosted by Buffalo Bob Smith. Phineas, the resident skinflint and Howdy's nemesis, was one of the Bluster triplets. Don Jose Bluster was the South American brother (living in Buenos Aires, I think, where everyone called him Jorge Bluster.)

However, for the purposes of this fairy tale, we'll pretend that Don Jorge Bluster and King Phineas T Bluster are one and the same puppet person.

The black print article (02/17/17) is from Brietbart; the red is a fairy tale.

In an impassioned address Friday, Pope Francis denied the existence of Islamic terrorism, while simultaneously asserting that “the ecological crisis is real.” In a kingdom far away on a hill lived a king named King Phineas T. Bluster. When the former king "retired" to a dungeon and King Phineas ascended the throne, he told his subjects, "Just call me Phineas," and so it is to this day.

Monday Morning Meandering: "Climate Change" and other Stuff

• False prophets on the left keep blathering: Just thinking....we should all be dead by now. Paul Ehrlich, the bug scientist who predicted in the 1960s that overpopulation would kill us all by starvation is still spouting nonsense and people are still dumb enough to give him a platform including the Vatican. And then there's Al Gore whose silly movie, An Inconvenient Truth, claimed Miami and Manhattan would be underwater by now. Of course, they aren't, but that hasn't kept him from continuing to impersonate Chicken Little with a stupid sequel that is filled with errors and junk science. Just go home, Al, and take Paul with you! Let's listen to a real climate scientist, Roy Spencer. 

Climate Change Hysteria: Whatever Happened to Real Science? And Free Speech?

Can we blame the great Galveston hurricane of
1900 that killed 8,000 people on global warming?

They are falling under the weight of money (truckloads of money) and political correctness.

Let's face it. There's lots of money in hyping the "climate change" hysteria which used to be "global warming" until it became evident that we are in a cooling trend. (Just look at Al Gore making millions off of alternative energy sources, while he powers his own mansion and private jet with conventional ones.)

So now, in order to keep the hysteria on the front burner, we need to criminalize "climate change" skeptics.

Make denying climate change a crime!

Associating the hurricanes with global warming is silly. We haven't had a major hurricane landfall in twelve years. Explain that. And hurricane Harvey isn't the worst storm on record:

Another Storm, Another Round of Hysteria...

 I will take away the stony heart
 out of your flesh, and
 I will give you a heart of flesh.
Ezekiel 36:26

...about Global Warming Climate Change. Folks, don't listen to the hysterics. It's Nature, not Man! And it's nothing new.

I do agree with the hysterical Chicken Littles in one respect, however. Yes, these storms are a warning, but not about global warming or climate change. They warn us that we need to change our hearts.

Just as Noah's building project was commissioned because of sin and Jonah's mission was a warning to repent and the Star of Bethlehem announced God's intervention in human history, and Jesus performed signs and wonders -- these attention-grabbing events are for our good. "Hey, people, pay attention. I'm God and you're not! Get with the program."

Actually, every single glory of nature should get our attention:

From the Insanity File: St. Peter's Basilica to be Venue for Climate Change Ad!

Vatican, World Bank partner to launch Year of Mercy with St. Peter’s ‘climate change’ light show

The author of this article has this exactly right when he opens writing:

The Catholic Church, founded to shed the light of Christ on the world, has quite literally invited the world to shed its light on her.

Pope John Paul II: America, Defend Life! Pope Francis: America, Defend the Planet

When Pope John Paul II visited America in 1993 for World Youth Day, he spoke about life. He reminded us of his 1987 visit when he said:

If you want equal justice for all, and true freedom and lasting peace, then America, defend life! All the great causes that are yours today will have meaning only to the extent that you guarantee the right to life and protect the human person.

Bill and Hillary Clinton sat with tight lips listening to him squirming for the whole world to see. Pope John Paul II confronted the world as a sign of contradiction.

What about Pope Francis this morning? (See the video here.) Did the most diabolical president in our history squirm?

Laudato Si': Who Really Cares about the Poor?

I've read the first 60 paragraphs of the 246 in Laudato Si' and have reached a portion the media is likely to ignore. Why? Because it challenges the population controllers:

49. It needs to be said that, generally speaking, there is little in the way of clear awareness of problems which especially affect the excluded. Yet they are the majority of the planet’s population, billions of people. These days, they are mentioned in international political and economic discussions, but one often has the impression that their problems are brought up as an afterthought, a question which gets added almost out of duty or in a tangential way, if not treated merely as collateral damage. Indeed, when all is said and done, they frequently remain at the bottom of the pile. This is due partly to the fact that many professionals, opinion makers, communications media and centres of power, being located in affluent urban areas, are far removed from the poor, with little direct contact with their problems. They live and reason from the comfortable position of a high level of development and a quality of life well beyond the reach of the majority of the world’s population. This lack of physical contact and encounter, encouraged at times by the disintegration of our cities, can lead to a numbing of conscience and to tendentious analyses which neglect parts of reality. At times this attitude exists side by side with a “green” rhetoric....

50. Instead of resolving the problems of the poor and thinking of how the world can be different, some can only propose a reduction in the birth rate. At times, developing countries face forms of international pressure which make economic assistance contingent on certain policies of “reproductive health”....

I'm only up to paragraph 18 of Laudato Si' and I'm disturbed by its assumptions

Here's the paragraph that started the lights flashing and bells and sirens going off in my head:

18. The continued acceleration of changes affecting humanity and the planet is coupled today with a more intensified pace of life and work which might be called “rapidification”. Although change is part of the working of complex systems, the speed with which human activity has developed contrasts with the naturally slow pace of biological evolution. Moreover, the goals of this rapid and constant change are not necessarily geared to the common good or to integral and sustainable human development. Change is something desirable, yet it becomes a source of anxiety when it causes harm to the world and to the quality of life of much of humanity.

"Rapidification?" Is that even a word? I suppose one could talk about the term in the sense of "future shock," too much change in too short a period of time. I pretty much agree with that as being a problem of modern life. But what are we to make of the pope talking about the "slow pace of biological evolution." I have to assume he accepts evolution as a fact rather than a theory and dismisses fiat creation which all the Fathers of the Church accepted. So already the encyclical is beginning from assumptions that aren't necessarily true.

And I can't agree with the blanket statement that "Change is something desirable." Is it? If I'm healthy is a change to sickness "desirable?" Is a change from virtue to vice desirable?

Some changes are desirable, but certainly not all, as the pope himself points out in the second part of the sentence. So why make that blanket statement at all? It seems to me to be a distinctively liberal idea.

But I've only just begun and there are pages and pages and pages to wade through. Want to join the journey? Find the encyclical here.

Thoughts on the Upcoming Encyclical on the Envioronment

I echo Fr. Tom Collins' thoughts below. If you aren't praying about the upcoming encyclical yet, start now! We need to think about man's inner ecology. It's certainly as important as the global ecology.

I have read a report that the new encyclical on the environment is just under 200 pages! I just pray that it has at least as much on the real danger of everlasting "warming" being promoted by the Culture of Desecration and Death as it does on the alleged dangers of terrestrial warming. Our modern day Chicken Little's are not crying, "The sky is falling!", but rather, "The earth is warming!" In spite of actual data that shows otherwise, they contend that the data should not be reported, but rather carefully adjusted by computer programs to indicate that humanity is indeed the earth's greatest enemy. Some are even getting so bold as to openly declare that cleansing the "disease" of humanity from the earth's biosphere will have to include the development of policies and practices to promote or benignly neglect the evil consequences of contraception, abortion, sterilization, infanticide, homosexuality, plagues, famines, euthanasia, war and ethnic cleansing. I just pray that the new encyclical will be decisively Christocentric, and not just "lead from the rear" with a new "Me too" spirituality, which struggles to catch up with the agenda and the "wisdom" of the secular progressives.

In Christ,

Fr. Tom

They Put Men on the Moon and They Doubt Man-made Global Climate Change!

Have you uncritically accepted "Chicken Little's" theory of man-made climate change? If yes, you need to check the data. A group of scientists retired from NASA who were involved in the Apollo program have banded together to examine the data. Read that again -- "examine the data"-- not the opinions, not the flawed computer models, but the data.

According to them (and these are scientists who put men on the moon), there is no convincing evidence that the planet is at a crucial point and that we need to STOP GLOBAL WARMING OR DIE!!!!! (Ominous music plays in the background.) According to the group, which has been studying the data since 2012:

Chicken Little, "You're Fired!" Climate Change is a Myth.

Climate change PROVED to be 'nothing but a lie', claims top meteorologist

All the predictions of the climate gloom and doomers have failed. They said the ice cap was melting; it's increasing. They said the oceans would rise and coasts would be under water -- WRONG! They said we'd have more and worse storms -- not true.

So exactly why do so many people believe this nonsense? Could it be our education system is working as John Dewey desired -- to make little mindless robots who are easily manipulated by government? 

Teach your children to be critical thinkers!

We're All Going to Freeze to Death!

Global warming is a crock. And the latest data shows that there's been no warming for the past fifteen years. In fact the planet is actually cooling. Now watch for the Chicken Littles to develop a new sky-is-falling scenario to keep the funds rolling in. If you actually have something between your ears, this comes as no surprise. Natural fluctuations in weather have been observed since, well, we first started observing and recording the weather.

Chilling Climate Change News 

Are you fasting from plastic bags and incandescent lightbulbs for Lent?

Frankly, I never ate them in the first place.

But really, an article published by Catholic News Service (and printed in the Arlington Catholic Herald to their shame) actually has the gall to suggest that Lent isn't "just about giving up chocolate or ice cream for 40 days." (Hear the superior tone?) No, what it's really about, according to the Catholic Coalition on Climate Change (CCCC) is sacrificing for the environment. Trees are people too, after all. In fact the Executive Director of CCCC, Dan Misleh, is sending out "Catholic climate ambassadors" this spring to urge folks to use cloth shopping bags instead of paper, replace incandescent light bulbs with fluorescent bulbs, give up disposable paper products, and use refillable coffee mugs. Yes indeed, this is what Lent is really all about; the way to Christian holiness is recycling and reducing your carbon footprint.

I visited the CCCC website, another misguided project of the USCCB launched in 2006. It begins with the unreserved acceptance of manmade global warming propaganda (now referred to as climate change). In a position paper describing CCCC I found this interesting and laughable statement:

Because we are not experts on climate change and its consequences, we rely on a scientific consensus (best represented by the Intergovernmental Panel on
Climate Change) to guide our activities. Read the document here...

Perhaps CCCC hasn't heard about all the scandals associated with the IPCC including manipulating data, maligning scientists whose research conflicts with their desired results and denying them access to peer reviewed journals, lying about glacier melt. Oh, and then there are the 1000s of emails that showed the deliberate fraud by this group promoting what meteorologist and founder of the weather channel, John Coleman, calls "the greatest scam in history." Yup, these are the "scientists" whose results CCCC relies on. Not particularly convincing I'd say.

What made me especially angry about the bishops' site was the manipulative video using a child's voice to decry the heavy carbon footprint of the rich countries that are stepping on the poor all over the world. You can almost envision yourself squashing the poor like bugs every time you turn on the hot water, drive your car, heat your home, etc. You are to blame for all those sad faces because of your heavy and deep carbon footprint. Just imagine how guilty the parents of large families should feel!

The video speaks an outright lie when it quotes Cardinal Martino saying:

There is new and stronger evidence that most of the warming over the last fifty years is attributed to human activities.

Now I'm not accusing the Cardinal of lying. No doubt he is buying the fraudulent data of the IPCC.  And considering that he spent about 20 years as papal nuncio at the U.N., he may have a hard time distinguishing between liars and truth tellers; but the fact is there is not only no "new and stronger evidence" for man-made global warming, there is evidence we are moving into a period of cooling and that fluctuations are a normal part of climate measured over time. The "scientists" at the IPCC haven't come up with a good explanation for the Medieval warming period which can hardly be attributed to the use of fossil fuels, so they conveniently ignore it along with any other facts that dispute their bogus claims.

Having said all this, Catholics ought to live a simpler lifestyle where we voluntarily use less so we can contribute more to the poor. Underline that world "voluntarily." The Dives and Lazarus story says it all. We have a moral obligation to care about the poor and share what we have. That's what charity is all about and we have a special obligation during Lent. However, charity, to be charity, must ALWAYS be voluntary. Someone who steals from Peter to give to Paul is not charitable; he's a thief.

And there are plenty of those thieves listed on CCCCs website. When you read their position paper linked above, note their Catholic partners on the left. Many of them are funded big-time by "government" money especially Catholic Relief Services (CRS) and Catholic Charities (CC). (I.e., The only money the government has is what it takes from taxpayers and that is supposed to be used for limited and specific purposes.) In fact both CRS and CC are hardly recognizable as Catholic groups because they water down their Catholic identity to protect the government bucks stolen from the taxpayer. So CRS and CC are part of the government conspiracy to forcibly redistribute income which is NOT CHARITY. It's also not very efficient since massive amounts of money go to the bureaucracy and only small amounts trickle down to the poor. And sometimes what actually gets to the poor isn't food and medicine; it's birth control pills, condoms, and suction machines.

Let's look at a few other of CCCC's partners. The Catholic Hospital Association is notorious particularly in view of the betrayal on Obamacare by Sr. Carol Keehan who makes nearly $900,000 in annual salary and can afford a much heavier footprint than most of us. Then there are the dissident nuns of the Leadership Conference of Catholic Women (LCCW) who never met a liberal issue (including abortion) that their members couldn't support. The Franciscan Action Network has endorsed the union thugs in Wisconsin. The Department of Justice, Peace and Human Development is the USCCB office that runs the tainted Catholic Campaign for Human Development and employs staff with links to pro-abortion democrats. It just goes on and on and on. This is the social justice money machine.

I hope you are as angry as I am about the video below. What really hurts the poor is corrupt governments, biofuels which turn food crops into ethanol (promoted big-time by Al Gore and his environmental minions until it became clear it was causing massive rises in food prices), foreign aid linked to murdering and sterilizing the poor, and other complicated issues. The nonsense about global warming and fossil fuels killing the poor is nothing but propaganda. And just think, if you're a Catholic you paid for this idiotic video, one more reason to boycott the bishops' collections.

Instead of putting money in that rice bowl this Lent for the very problematic CRS, give to a charity that really serves the poor and doesn't take government money to do it. Medical Missionaries is one of my favorites and we'll be filling our alms jar this Lent for them. And if you feel guilty after watching the video, go visit a nursing home. Remember what Mother Teresa said, "The poverty of being unwanted, unloved and uncared for is the greatest poverty." Many lonely and forgotten people are waiting to hear your footsteps in the hall even if you arrived in a gas-guzzling SUV.