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Cardinal Pell criticises climate-change ‘zealots’

02 November 2011

by Ed Thornton

THE RC Archbishop of Sydney, Cardinal George Pell, questioned the validity of climate-change science and described some environmental activists as “zealots”, in a speech at Westminster Cathed­ral last week.

The Cardinal said that he feared “that too many politicians have never investigated the primary evidence” for climate change, and that “the complacent appeal to scientific consensus is simply one more appeal to authority, quite inappropriate in science or philosophy.”

He continued: “I have discovered that very few people know how small the percentage of carbon dioxide is in the atmosphere. . . Carbon dioxide does not destroy the purity of the atmosphere, or make it foul or filthy. . . It is not a pollutant, but part of the stuff of life.”

Cardinal Pell criticised the “climate movement’s totalitarian approach to opposing views”, and compared “the immense financial costs true-believers would impose on economies . . . with the sacrifices offered traditionally in religion”.

Writing in the Church Times this week, in reply to an article by the Bishop of Chester, Dr Peter Forster (Comment, 21 October), which questioned “global-warming alarmism”, the Professor of Geophysics at Cambridge, Dr Bob White FRS, states: “Part of [Dr Forster’s] argument is that there is uncertainty in the precise link between the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and the size of the resultant global warming. But uncertainty does not mean improbability. There is no doubt about the increase of global carbon dioxide, nor about the fact that global warming is caused by increased greenhouse gases.

“One of the main uncertainties is that things may get even worse than current models predict, if we pass critical tipping points. We have already pushed atmospheric carbon-dioxide levels higher and at a faster rate than the earth has ever experienced since humans first trod on it.”

Professor White argues that Christians, “called to live counter-culturally”, should take a lead in addressing global climate change.

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