Pell out of step with Vatican

The Archbishop of Sydney, Cardinal George Pell, is not convinced by a Vatican-appointed committee of climate experts who are warning about the need to mitigate man-made global warming.

Pell maintains the causes of climate change were ”unclear”.

The report released this month by the Pontifical Academy of Sciences called on ”all people and nations to recognise the serious and potentially irreversible impacts of global warming” caused by man-made greenhouse gas emissions.

”By acting now, in the spirit of common but differentiated responsibility, we accept our duty to one another and to the stewardship of a planet blessed with the gift of life,” it read.

”Climate change is real. The causes are unclear, and our ability to influence climate change [is] even less certain,” Pell said.

He agreed to read the document carefully.

Earlier this year Cardinal Pell had dismissed the head of the Bureau of Meteorology, Greg Ayers, as a ”hot air specialist” for suggesting that he had been ”misled” by the geologist Ian Plimer, whose book on climate change had been criticised by scientists.

Cardinal Pell had relied heavily on Professor Plimer’s work when he argued against human-induced global warming in a written submission to a Senate estimates hearing, claiming increases in carbon dioxide tended to follow rises in temperature, not cause them.

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