“When Jeb Bush converted to Catholicism nearly two decades ago – adopting the faith of his Mexican-born wife, Columba – he explained what primarily attracted him.”
Bush said that the “sacraments of the Catholic Church, the timeless nature of the message of the Catholic Church, and the fact that the Catholic Church believes in and acts on absolute truth as its foundational principles and doesn’t move with modern times as my former religion did.”
His former faith was Episcopalian, writes Bloomberg.
With the Pope’s new encyclical, isn’t the church moving with modern times?
Is the U.S. seen as the world’s “last bastion” of climate change denial?
“The church bulletin inserts are nearly ready to go,” claims the New York Times. So are the emails to every Roman Catholic parish in the United States with preaching suggestions for the first Sunday after Pope Francis releases his “encyclical” (report) on the environment.
A week after that, on June 28th, churches worldwide are being asked to ring their bells at noon to commemorate a “Thank you, Pope Francis” march in Rome being held on that day.
Never before, say church leaders, has a papal encyclical been anticipated so eagerly by so many.
Advocates for the environment and the poor are excited, because Francis is expected to make the case that climate change, unchecked development, and over-consumption are exacerbating problems for the poor.
However, the leaders of the Catholic Church in the United States may be harder to win over, writes the New York Times.
At the spring meeting of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops last week, bishops from around the country said they were withholding their enthusiasm until they saw the document on Thursday the 18th of June, writes The New York Times.
Some said they were wary about getting the church enmeshed in the debate over climate change, a contentious issue in the United States.
They also expressed concern about allying with environmentalists, some of whom promote “population control” as a remedy, since the Church sees abortion and contraception as “great evils” writes The New York Times.
Archbishop Thomas G. Wenski of Miami gave a presentation to the bishops on the climate change encyclical as chairman of the committee on domestic justice and human development.
He said the pope’s message would ultimately “transcend” the divisions over the environment and climate change, writes The New York Times.
“The pope is not approaching this as a scientist, he’s not approaching this as a politician,” Archbishop Wenski said at a news conference. “I think he’s trying to approach the issue of creation care as a pastor and as a teacher.”
In this episode of The Trews, Russell Brand discusses world leaders’ pledge to end the reliance on fossil fuels and examines Donald Trump’s activities at his golf resort in Aberdeen, Scotland.
“Welcome to this week’s installment of ‘Don’t Mess with Geophysics,'” states the Washington Post – not the most liberal newspaper in America.
According to WaPo, there is possible destabilization of the Totten Glacier of East Antarctica, which could unleash over 11 feet of sea level rise in coming centuries.
This week brings news of another climate issue.
According to a new study just out in Nature Climate Changeby Stefan Rahmstorf of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research in Germany, and a group of co-authors, we’re now seeing a slowdown of the great ocean circulation. This circulation helps to partly drive the Gulf Stream off the U.S. east coast, among other roles.
The consequences could be dire, claims the Washington Post – including significant extra sea level rise for coastal cities like New York and Boston.
The Gulf Stream is a vast, powerful, and warm current, that transports more water than “all the world’s rivers combined,” according to the NOAA.
But it’s just one part of a larger regional ocean conveyor system – scientists technically call it the “Atlantic meridional overturning circulation.”
This, in turn, is just one part of the larger global “thermohaline” circulation (“thermohaline” conjoins terms meaning “temperature” and “salty”).
For the whole system, a key driver occurs in the North Atlantic ocean. Here, the warm Gulf Stream flows northward into cooler waters and splits into what is called the North Atlantic Current.
This stream flows still further toward northern latitudes — until it reaches points where colder, salty water sinks due to its greater density, and then travels back southward at depth.
The Washington Post claims that this “overturning circulation” plays a major role in the climate because it brings warm water northward, thereby helping to warm Europe’s climate, and also sends cold water back towards the tropics. This could change due to climate change.
Comedian Russell Brand gives his reaction to Fox News’ coverage of President Obama’s statement that the media overstates the threat of terrorism in comparison to the threat of climate change.
In other news…
The British paper The Guardian has decided to put coverage of climate change “front and center.”
Guardian editor Alan Rusbridger: “…changes to the Earth’s climate rarely make it to the top of the news list. The changes may be happening too fast for human comfort, but they happen too slowly for the newsmakers – and, to be fair, for most readers.
“The climate threat features very prominently on the home page of the Guardian on Friday even though nothing exceptional happened on this day. It will be there again next week and the week after. You will, I hope, be reading a lot about our climate over the coming weeks.”
Rusbridger will be leaving the Guardian this year, and he asked himself if he had any regrets.
“Very few regrets, I thought, except this one: that we had not done justice to this huge, overshadowing, overwhelming issue of how climate change will probably, within the lifetime of our children, cause untold havoc and stress to our species.
“So, in the time left to me as editor, I thought I would try to harness the Guardian’s best resources to describe what is happening and what – if we do nothing – is almost certain to occur, a future that one distinguished scientist has termed as ‘incompatible with any reasonable characterization of an organized, equitable and civilized global community.'”
In other news…
Senator Jim Inhofe, a Republican from Oklahoma, walked onto the floor of the Senate with what he declared was persuasive evidence climate change is a hoax: a snowball. Inhofe is the chairman of the Environment and Public Works Committee, with jurisdiction over the climate problem.
The Huffington Post: “Indeed, even on his own terms, the snowball doesn’t make the point he thinks it does. Climate change produces wild and extreme swings in weather. That Washington, D.C., is experiencing record cold and snowfall is not refutation of climate change, but rather one more data point to add to the pile in support of it.”
The British paper The Guardian recently “admitted” that the U.S. president can have an impact on climate change. It is fashionable for the European press to claim that the president or political party doesn’t affect political outcomes.
“Yesterday, President Barack Obama became the first president who has taken a stand to stop climate change,” according to The Guardian.
Here are some quotes from The Guardian:
“…President Obama took that stand from his first step into the White House. He has put into place a series of initiatives that actually give us a chance at stopping the most serious consequences of climate change.”
As outlined in his Climate Action Plan, his administration has overseen investments in renewable energy industries in the U.S. that are creating jobs.
“He has worked on international agreements to reduce hydrofluorocarbons and methane emissions…”
“Even more significantly, he has overseen the plans to reduce carbon dioxide emissions from the nation’s new and existing coal plants; the EPA’s Clean Power Plan rewards state-level initiatives to find flexible solutions to reduce their emissions.”
“He has enacted increases in fuel-efficiency standards…”
“And also significantly, the President has achieved a huge agreement with China to curb and reduce carbon pollution,” according to The Guardian.
A Massachusetts woman and her 9-year-old daughter were found hanged Friday in the basement of their home by police officers who later discovered what authorities called “written information” that’s being reviewed to see it if sheds light on what happened.
The bodies of Ariana Rosa-Soares, 32, and her daughter, Marley Soares, were found shortly before 10 a.m. in their home in Brockton, Massachusetts about 25 miles south of Boston, after a concerned family friend called police asking for assistance at the house, Plymouth County District Attorney Timothy Cruz said.
Cruz didn’t disclose the contents of the written information found at the scene and said it was too early to say whether the deaths were murders or a murder-suicide. He said the girl’s father was interviewed by state police.
A homicide investigation is under way, according to Plymouth County District Attorney Timothy Cruz, but officials had not confirmed by Friday evening how the mother and daughter died.
Rosa-Soares recently divorced Marley’s father, Octavio Soares, according to friends and family members. The couple shared custody and Rosa-Soares worked two jobs – as a certified nursing assistant and a personal care assistant – “just to maintain food in the house,” said a friend of the family.
According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the Atlantic hurricane season runs from June 1st through November 30th.
Weather Underground stated that the 2014 Atlantic hurricane season ended up with below average activity. There were 8 named storms, 6 hurricanes, 2 intense hurricanes, and an Accumulated Cyclone Energy (ACE) that was 63% of the 1981 – 2010 median.
Fox 12 Oregon states that the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration issued their forecast back in May. They anticipated seven to 12 named storms, with three to six of those becoming strong enough to be classified as a hurricane.
Myfoxorlando.com stated that though the season was quiet, the National Hurricane Center was able to use new tools that could improve the track and intensity predictions.
Meanwhile, the eastern North Pacific hurricane season was its busiest since 1992, with 20 named storms.
OK, Fine. 