The Pope endorses science

From here - apparently the Pope is unaware of the irony of his current statement chastising global warming alarmists:

I suspect that the Daily Mail has chosen to spin the actual words, a bit, into a particular direction. Popes typically do not come out and attack or defend one side or another of major arguments; they set out guidelines that (in their opinion) should set the tone for all sides of the discussion. When read in context, rather than excerpted for alarmist effect, I do not see the pope claiming any “skepticism” of AGW, nor do I see any attacks on environmentalists. I see an (almost excessively) even-handed appeal to the leaders of nations to place nice and act responsibly.

The complete text (without being chopped up and surrounded by editorial insertions) of his words on the environment are:

The entire text (released now, but intended to be delivered to world leaders on January 1), is found at MESSAGE OF HIS HOLINESS POPE BENEDICT XVI FOR THE CELEBRATION OF THE WORLD DAY OF PEACE 1 JANUARY 2008

I am also wondering whether part of his message is aimed at a (perhaps European centered) social groups calling for the dismantling of modern society? In the U.S., such groups are pretty small and typically dismissed as cranks, but I get the feeling that they are more politically powerful in Europe. The riots that accompany the various G-8 summits and related events always appear louder and more violent when held ourtside the U.S., although that could be a false impression that I have picked up.

And if we are going to pick and choose little snippets of the pope’s letter to quote, why not choose

Why would he say that “time is short” if he thought AGW was nothing but hype?

Criticizing the letter for being so neutral as to be meainingless would seem to be a much more accurate criticism than that leveled by The Daily Mail (and simply reprinted or repeated without evaluation by a number of other news outlets who clearly read only the Daily Mail’s excerpt).

Thanks for the insight! I do find this tidbit, altho less sensational, still somewhat ironic:

The real story is why the Daily Mail apparently completely put words in the pope’s mouth. They essentially made up lies about what the pope had said.

If they wanted to claim that one should interpret the pope as saying what they claimed he said, that would be one thing (still basically wrong, I think but not libelously false). However, instead they made it sound as if the pope had actually said these very things. In fact, the differences between their “paraphrasing” in that article and their actual quotes makes the whole thing kind of funny!

The Daily Mail’s approach here sort of reminds me of one of the classic Bloom County comic strips. I couldn’t find the original (maybe someone with better google-karma can) but here is a description of it:

I guess what the pope actually said was just a bit “too wordy” for the Daily Mail’s tastes!