Global warming deniers unimpressed with pope's climate encyclical
Prominent climate deniers pushed back against the pope's long-awaited environmental encyclical Thursday, claiming the debate over man-made global warming has yet to be settled.
"I disagree with the pope's philosophy on global warming," Sen. Jim Inhofe, the leading voice of climate denial in the Senate and chairman of its Environment and Public Works Committee, said in a statement to Paste BN.
"I am concerned that his encyclical will be used by global warming alarmists to advocate for policies that will equate to the largest, most regressive tax increase in our nation's history," he added.
In his decree, Pope Francis — who said global warming was mostly caused by humans — argued the poor stand to suffer the most from extreme weather events tied to climate change that are already wreaking havoc across the planet.
However, Inhofe — who famously tossed a snowball on the Senate floor earlier this year as his proof global warming is a hoax — said it was the impoverished who would lose the most from any actions taken to combat warming.
"It's the poor that spend the largest portion of their expendable income to heat their homes, and they will be the ones to carry the heaviest burden of such onerous policies" that would increase their taxes, he said.
Inhofe also said he maintained his long-standing belief that climate science isn't settled, despite recent surveys that 97% of climate scientists believe in man-made global warming.
"We have been innovative with our energy supply, and for generations the United States has lifted people out of poverty through the development of our God-given natural resources, most prominently from fossil fuels," he said.
The pope's decree came as a new report showed May was the warmest on record worldwide. This spring — from March to May — was also the hottest, as were the first five months of 2015, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
The conservative, Chicago-based think tank the Heartland Institute, which sent representatives to the Vatican in April for a climate summit, also weighed in Thursday.
"Pope Francis' heart is in the right place, but he made a grave mistake by putting his trust and moral authority behind agenda-driven bureaucrats at the United Nations who have been bearing false witness about the causes and consequences of climate change for decades," spokesman Jim Lakely said in a statement.
"More than a billion of the poorest people in the world would remain in abject poverty for generations if they are to rely on windmills, solar panels, and other unreliable and expensive sources of energy," Lakely added.
In a series of tweets, Chip Knappenberger of the Cato Institute, a libertarian group, detailed parts of the encyclical that he had issues with. (Though Knappenberger clarifies that he is not a climate denier, but a skeptic).
"In the encyclical, Pope shows disdain for modern society and calls for return to simpler life. Not a good prescription for nature," Knappenberger wrote in one tweet.
"The tone of the #encyclical is one of 1960s/70s ecology. Even channeling Jimmy Carter — turn down the heat and wear a sweater. (Sect.211)," he wrote in another.