Cardinal Pell, babbles from the tower of babel, and neighs about Noah's Ark, with a dash of incidental climate science ...

(Above: the tower of babel by Pieter Bruegel the Elder 1563, and strong scientific evidence in the cartoon below that the long absent god didn't think through the societal implications properly).

And so, it being Sunday, we come to the thoughts of the religious leaders who inspire their flocks with deep insights ...

And lo and behold, the first insight this week comes from Cardinal Pell, with his revelation that climate science can't possibly be understood without an extensive preamble and ramble through the book of Genesis, heavily footnoted to assure us that all the appropriate research protocols have been fulfilled.

Introduction
In the Book of Genesis we read that God “regretted having made human-beings”(1) , such was their wickedness and anarchy and decided to send an immense flood “to destroy them and the earth”.(2)

However God chose Noah “an upright man” (3) to build an ark and enter it with his wife and family and two animals of every kind. The ark survived the flood and Noah was commanded “to breed, multiply and fill the earth”, reassured by God’s promise that “never again shall all living things be destroyed by the waters of a flood”. (4)

(1) Gen. 6:5-8, (2) Gen. 6:13, (3) Gen. 6:9. (4) Gen. 9:7-11.

Now there are other footnotes as well, so we urge you to rush off to Cardinal George Pell: One Christian Perspective On Climate Change, or a direct pdf link to the full lecture here, but it's a great relief right up the front there to learn that there won't be a second holocaust by flood (since genocide is unseemly even for a deity), and that destruction will be limited to the odd tsunami. Not much fun for tsunami victims, but there you go, god's merciful but there have to be limits on mercy ...

For those in need of a reminder, we take an illustration from the book of Crumb, click to enlarge:

What joy to discover - from the horse's mouth - that Genesis provides all the insights we need in relation to climate science:

Not surprisingly Kass believes that in today’s Western world “the project of Babel has been making a comeback . . . . Science and technology are again in the ascendancy, defying political boundaries en route to a projected human imperium over nature”.(9) Kass asks “Can our new Babel succeed?”(10) We should ask whether our attempts at global climate control are within human capacity, (that is, the projected human imperium); or on the other hand, are likely to be as misdirected and ineffective as the construction of the famous tower in the temple of Marduk, Babylon’s chief god.

Enough already with the footnotes. And again from the book of Crumb:

By golly those Crumb illustrations are evoking cutting edge science, which is just as well, because now it's time to establish a vast international conspiracy:

Where does scientific striving become uneconomic, immoral or ineffectual and so lapse into hubris? Have scientists been co-opted onto a bigger, better advertised and more expensive bandwagon than the millennium bug fiasco?

Indeed. And is the Catholic church full of pious prattling hubristic priests, ready to join a cult bandwagon that imagines all would have been well if attention hadn't been paid to a defined, recognisable flaw in many computer systems (Microsoft of course)? Fixed so there was no fiasco ...

Now you might ask why a Catholic bishop might feel the need to comment on weighty matters of science, without any respectable credentials or peer reviewed research, and the pious Pell has a ready answer, as he proceeds to take a detour through great moments of science - the house arrest of vexatious, difficult, quarrelsome, troublesome Galileo, which might be taken as some kind of reflection on the church's reliance on the literal sense of Sacred Scripture.

Which naturally doesn't stop the geese from cackling about Genesis, and babbling about Babel, and neighing about Noah some four hundred years or so down the track after Galileo ...

And then there's the question of Darwinian evolution, as opposed to the theory of evolution proposed by, supported by and expanded by any number of scientists, because - well let's face it - because Darwin is still a little suspect, as in the ...

... celebrated debate between Bishop (Soapy Sam) Wilberforce and T. H. Huxley in 1860 at Oxford on the topic of Darwinian evolution, when the claim that man is made in God’s image was seen as contradicting evolution.

Sadly the notion that Wilberforce might once have asked Huxley about his simian ancestry being on his grand-mother's or his grand-father's side (pause here for knowing chuckles, perhaps a gale or gust of laughter) has been a boon for anti-religious forces for decades.

And indeed it might be that Cardinal Pell himself has been a boon for anti-religious forces for decades:

At a recent meeting of the priests' council in Sydney one parish priest asked me why I was commenting publicly on the role of carbon dioxide in the climate, (1) because in the past the Church had made a fool of herself on a number of occasions. (2)

Pond footnotes (1) Pell, George, recording of parish priest. (2) ibid, Pell, George, alone.

To which there could be only one reply:

I replied that I was well aware of at least some of these instances and that one reason why I was speaking out was to avoid having too many Christian leaders repeating these mistakes and to provide some balance to ecclesiastical offerings.

Yes, the pious Pell is standing up for science in the very same way the Church stood up for Galileo four hundred years down the track, and for jokes about simian evolutionists in the nineteenth century, and he's now avoiding mistakes and achieving scientific balance by going with the 1%.

But to make this scientific stand, first you need to become aware of a deep conspiracy involving deeply conspiratorial humanistic secularist atheist Greens:

I first became interested in the question in the 1990s when studying the anti-human claims of the “deep Greens”, so I had long suspected that those predicting dangerous and increasing anthropogenic global warming were overstating their case. During the years 2008-09 it was dangerous for an Australian politician to voice dissent unless he was from a country electorate. Opponents were silenced. As I was not up for re-election and I suspected the Emperor had few if any clothes, I made a few more small public statements, never from the pulpit, never at a large public meeting.

And so it came to pass that the pious Pell would become a scientific expert, and be invited to London to explain in depth his scientific expertise, which naturally proves, in ways that are replicable over and over again, that climate science is deeply linked with anti-human claims of the deep Greens.

Now you might think this is trivialising and politicising science in a most unseemly way, but at once, thanks to the pious Pell, I can spot that you're likely an atheist, and certainly involved in a gigantic international conspiracy nee bandwagon.

First, it's important to note that the reason Pell was invited to blather on about climate science in London has nothing to do with Pell donning the red of a conservative Cardinal. Why any common or garden priest could speak with similar authority:

Thomas Aquinas pointed this out long ago explaining that “the argument from authority based on human reason” is the weakest form of argument (17) , always liable to logical refutation. (17) Pell channeling St. Thomas Aquinas

Uh huh. Now you might think appealing to an authority like St. Thomas Aquinas and his Summa Theologica is a peculiarly authoritarian Catholic thing to do, and you might attempt some logical refutation of the notion that Pell is somehow an authority on science, but you see that would allow Pell to refute your logic by citing St. Thomas Aquinas ...

Well then it's on with the science, with such leading scientific authorities as Lord Monckton high in the lavish footnotes. Yep the pious Pell still rates Monckton highly ...

Naturally the accumulation of distortions and misunderstandings that followed - too many to dally with here - sent actual scientists into something of a frenzy, as you can read here in Climate scientists slam George Pell's 'utter rubbish' claims.

But we prefer this sideswipe in The Guardian:

"The cost of attempts to make global warming go away will be very heavy," said Cardinal Pell. Hardly worth the bother. "Efforts to offset the effects on the vulnerable are well-intentioned, but history tells us they can only ever be partially successful." He says climate change advocates take a "totalitarian approach". But does this include Pope Benedict? Recently, addressing the Bundestag, the pontiff said that "the importance of ecology is no longer disputed. We must listen to the language of nature and answer accordingly." Polar opposites, one might suggest. Expect the argument to rage for 40 days and 40 nights. Meanwhile, the Arctic ice still melts. (here)

Say what? Just what did the Pontiff say to the Bundestag?

… I would say that the emergence of the ecological movement in German politics since the 1970s, while it has not exactly flung open the windows, nevertheless was and continues to be a cry for fresh air which must not be ignored or pushed aside, just because too much of it is seen to be irrational. Young people had come to realise that something is wrong in our relationship with nature, that matter is not just raw material for us to shape at will, but that the Earth has a dignity of its own and that we must follow its directives.

Oh noes, the deep greenies have got the pope, the pontiff himself has gone across to the dark side, all is lost, all is ruined. Surely the only way for the church to be saved is for this international conspirator and bandwagoner to be pushed to the sidelines, and Cardinal Pell dragooned in to run the church, and save the world from greenies, anti-humans and bandwagon scientists bandwagoning with the pope ...

But actually, truth to tell, Pell's tirade hasn't generated much interest. Even Deltoid hasn't bothered to get himself into gear to address all the usual mish mash of nonsensical mis-statements, linking instead to Lord Monckton's guest appearance on The Hamster Wheel - like Pauline Hanson, he really will show up on anything without doing any research - but as compensation, why not read The Australian's War on Science 71: Mitchell Nadin misrepresents.

Phew, thank the absent lord this sort of stuff is now locked behind a Murdoch paywall, safe from the eyes and hands of prying children ...

Speaking of the war on science, let's go back to Cardinal Pell for a solution to the non-existent problem of climate science, because you see Pell doesn't believe climate change related to human activity is happening, but if it is happening for one reason or another - who can say - then we need to turn to the bible for a solution:

For this reason (among others) I support the recommendation of Bjorn Lomborg (55) and Bob Carter that, rather than spending money on meeting the Kyoto Protocol which would have produced an indiscernible effect on temperature rise, money should be used to raise living standards and reduce vulnerability to catastrophes and climate change (in whatever direction), so helping people to cope better with future challenges. We need to be able to afford to provide the Noahs of the future with the best arks science and technology can provide. (55) so many footnotes, it must be true, because I read it in that font of climate science, The Australian on 22nd July 2011.

Yep, in case the planet fucks up, we need to provide Noahs of the future with some decent arks.

Now the question is, should we concentrate on a fleet of Starships a la Star Trek, so that the future Noahs can get the fuck off the planet and roam the known and unknown universe? (so many starships, so many designs).

Or should we concentrate on orbiting earth colonies, lunar colonies, Martian colonies, or plan a settlement in the Asteroid Belt (yes you too can get involved in the International Space Settlement Design Competition).

For the moment, the pond favours the Silent Running approach, provided Bruce Dern and Joan Baez's song can be left behind, and the whole thing trimmed to half an hour.

By golly, the pious Pell has provoked some deep thinking, and so to the wrap up:

When Galileo was placed under house arrest primarily because of his claim that the earth moved around the sun, he is said to have muttered “Eppur’ si muove”; and yet it moves.

Yep and when climate scientists were mocked by Cardinal Pell in London primarily because of their claim that the weight of scientific evidence suggested that human activity was having an affect on the planet, the scientists were said to have muttered ducunt volentem fata, nolentem trahunt (fate leads the willing, and drags the unwilling), or perhaps more to the point natura non contristatur (the natural world is not sentimental or compassionate) (and a hundred and one more handy Latin phrases here for those moments when religion meets science).

But wait, let's wrap up the wrap up, where the pious Pell wraps himself in the garb of Galileo, without a hint of irony or satire, as if the church's mis-treatment of science for several thousand years was but a momentary bit of nonsense, until the philosophical and theological Pell arrives on the scene to once more set scientists straight, because he knows what he's talking about and they don't:

As for Galileo so for us, the appeal must be to the evidence, not to any consensus, whatever the levels of confusion or self-interested coercion.

(That'd be the self-interested coercion from the mass of conspiratorial bandwagoners).

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.

Indeed. And if there's one certainty in life, if you rely on Pell and Monckton for evidence of which is which, and what is what, and what is not, and who's up whom, and how science is actually just a giant bandwagon, and the millennium bug never actually existed, and how steps taken to limit the impact of fluorocarbons on the ozone layer were a complete waste of time, then you'll end up with plenty of blather about the Tower of Babel and Noah's Ark, and bugger all about actual science ...

All the same, it's true scientific truth lies in the length and breadth and depth of the footnotes, and footnotes to the bible count double, and Cardinal Pell is diligent in his footnotes ... in the same way that Ian Plimer convinced everybody by offering up 2,300 footnotes in Heaven and Earth ...

Never mind if a footnote directs you to Lord Monckton, just close your eyes, and mutter And yet it moves ...

(Below: chose your ark, the USS Excelsior in 2293 ...

Or the preferred model of prattling bible-referencing priests for 2050 ...)