Cardinal Pell of Australia expresses unorthodox views about climate change

BY: Speroforum dated 27th Oct, 2011

SOURCE :
http://www.speroforum.com/a/LGLNBEOTBL9/Cardinal-Pell-of-Australia-expresses-unorthodox-views-about-climate-change?utm_source=web&utm_medium=topbanner&utm_campaign=images

The Roman Catholic Archbishop of Sydney George Pell questioned the morality and cost/benefits of following government-imposed policies in the cause of curbing global climate change. Speaking on October 25, the Australian cardinal gave a lecture to the controversial Global Warming Policy Foundation, chaired by former British chancellor Nigel Lawson, in London.

Said the Australian cleric, "Whatever our political masters might decide at this high tide of Western indebtedness," Cardinal Pell said, "they are increasingly unlikely, because of popular pressure, to impose new financial burdens on their populations in the hope of curbing the rise of global temperatures, except perhaps in Australia, which has 2 per cent of the world's industrial capacity and only 1.2 per cent of its CO2 emissions, while continuing to sell coal worth billions of dollars to Asia.

"In 1135, the water flow in the Danube was so low that people could cross it on foot. Somewhat earlier, the Rhine had suffered the same fate. Around the middle of the Little Ice Age, the year 1540 was the warmest and driest for the millennium in central Europe. Once again, the Rhine dried up.

"We can only imagine the excitement such events would provoke today.

"Extreme weather events are to be expected, but are unexpected in every period. No one towards the end of the medieval warming in Europe expected the rapid descent into the cold and wet of the Little Ice Age, for example, or the freezing gales, winds and heavy rains that produced the short summers and the terrible developing famines of 1315 to 1320. Surprises such as these will continue into the future."

"We need to be able to afford to provide the Noahs of the future with the best arks science and technology can provide," Cardinal Pell said.

"In essence, this is the moral dimension to this issue. The cost of attempts to make global warming go away will be very heavy. Efforts to offset the effects on the vulnerable are well intentioned but history tells us they can only ever be partially successful."