'Climate change' worries Obama, pope more than ISIS

President Obama with Pope Francis

NEW YORK – President Obama and the Vatican under the leadership of Pope Francis are equally committed to elevating climate change to a top public policy priority, ahead of issues such as the continued surge of ISIS in Iraq and Syria, and its massacre of Christians.

But they are ignoring a growing body of scientific evidence challenging the assumptions on which the theory of human-caused “climate change” is based, critics contend.

Marc Morano, editor of the website ClimateDepot.com, called President Obama’s speech on the subject Wednesday at the Coast Guard Academy commencement “politically contrived nonsense,” arguing “scientific studies, data and history refute Obama’s climate/national security claims.”

“The president's speech was so farcical in its claims that it hardly merits a response,” Morano said in a statement posted on ClimateDepot.com. “Contrary to the president’s claims, it seems ISIS may in fact trump ICE as a bigger concern.”

Morano said that "believing Obama’s climate claims undermines our nation’s ability to distinguish real threats from politically contrived nonsense."

"U.N. climate treaties and EPA climate regulations will not prevent wars, conflicts or impact the creation of terrorist groups," he said.

Morano cited evidence to support the conclusion that the presumed scientific link between anthropogenic climate change and extreme weather events is “weak (or worse) on scientific ground.” He noted it has been nine years since a Category 3 or grater hurricane has struck the United States, with the last being Hurricane Wilma in October 2005. Also, the U.S. tornado count has plummeted to record lows in three consecutive years, 2012 through 2014.

Sen. James Inhofe, R-Okla., the author of the 2012 WND book, “The Greatest Hoax: How the Global Warming Conspiracy Threatens Your Future,” observed that Obama’s speech Wednesday shows the White House is getting “more desperate.”

“The president’s speech at the Coast Guard Academy stating his belief that climate change poses the greatest threat to future generations is a severe disconnect from reality,” Inhofe said in a statement posted on his Senate website.

In "The Greatest Hoax," Sen. James Inhofe reveals the reasons behind those perpetuating the climate-change hoax, who is benefiting from the general acceptance of the hoax and why the premise statements are blatantly and categorically false.

“The president's repeated failure to understand the real threat to our national security and inability to develop a coherent national security strategy has put this nation at an unknown level of risk with consequences that will span over decades,” the senator said.

“While the president has spent at least $120 billion on climate change initiatives since first taking office, he has also set into motion more than $1 trillion in budget cuts to our national defense,” Inhofe stressed.

He noted that when he talks to military personnel, whether in Oklahoma or overseas, their greatest concern is not climate change.

"Instead, what I hear is their concern for global instability, the disarming of America and the lack of vision from their commander-in-chief," he said.

Obama: Climate change 'a threat multiplier'

Obama insisted in a speech at the Coast Guard Academy commencement in New London, Connecticut, that “the best scientists in the world know that climate change is happening.”

“Our analysts in the intelligence community know climate change is happening. Our military leaders – generals and admirals, active duty and retired – know it’s happening,” Obama continued, with no reference to the hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars his administration has spent on failed alternative energy solar and wind projects. “Our homeland security professionals know it is happening. And our Coast Guard knows it’s happening.”

“The science is indisputable,” Obama insisted. “The fossil fuels we burn release carbon dioxide, which traps heat. And the levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere are now higher than they have been in 800,000 years. The planet is getting warmer. Fourteen of the 15 hottest years on record have been in the past 15 years. Last year was the planet’s warmest year ever recorded.”

Obama argued this was a national security concern “at the very core of your [Coast Guard] service,” the type of threat the Pentagon calls “a force multiplier.”

“Our scientists at NASA just reported that some of the sea ice around Antarctica is breaking up even faster than expected,” Obama asserted, echoing themes of former Vice President Al Gore's 2007 documentary film, “An Inconvenient Truth.”

“The world’s glaciers are melting, pouring new water into the ocean. Over the past century, the world sea level rose by about eight inches,” Obama continued. “That was in the last century; by the end of this century, it’s projected to rise another one to four feet.”

He said it's not just a problem for countries on the coasts or for certain regions of the world."

“Climate change will impact every country on the planet," he said. “No nation is immune. So I’m here today to say that climate change constitutes a serious threat to global security, an immediate risk to our national security. And make no mistake, it will impact how our military defends our country. And so we need to act – and we need to act now.”

In conclusion, Obama stressed that combating climate change was a major public policy goal of his administration.

“That’s why confronting climate change is now a key pillar of American global leadership,” Obama concluded. “When I meet with leaders around the world, it’s often at the top of our agenda – a core element of our diplomacy. And you are part of the first generation of officers to begin your service in a world where the effects of climate change are so clearly upon us.”

Vatican signs onto U.N. climate agenda

On April 28, at the Pontifical Academies of Sciences and Social Sciences, the Vatican held a much publicized meeting “on climate change and sustainable humanity" attended by U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon; Cardinal Peter Turkson, the head of the Pontifical Council of Justice and Peace; and Columbia University economist Jeffrey Sachs, a leading academic advocate for the United Nation’s “sustainable development” agenda.

The meeting provided what most observers concluded was a preview of the encyclical Pope Francis is expected to issue later this year on humanity’s moral responsibility to care for the environment.

“Human-induced climate change is a scientific reality, and its decisive mitigation is a moral and religious imperative for humanity,” the world leaders attending the Vatican conference concluded in a final statement.

“The world has within its technological grasp, financial means, and know-how the means to mitigate climate change while also ending extreme poverty, through the application of sustainable development solutions including the adoption of low-carbon energy systems supported by information and communications technologies,” the final statement continued.

The Vatican conference, like President Obama, stressed the need for government action to curb climate change.

“The financing of sustainable development, including climate mitigation, should be bolstered through new incentives for the transition toward low-carbon energy, and through the relentless pursuit of peace, which also will enable the shift of public financing from military spending to urgent investments for sustainable development,” the final statement said.

The Vatican conference’s statement endorsed the United Nations’ climate summit, COP21, planned for Paris later this year as “the last effective opportunity to negotiate arrangements that keep human-induced warming below 2-degrees Celsius."

“Political leaders of all U.N. member states have a special responsibility to agree at COP21 to a bold climate agreement that confines global warming to a limit safe for humanity, while protecting the poor and the vulnerable from ongoing climate change that gravely endangers their lives,” the statement stressed.

“Climate-change mitigation will require a rapid world transformation to a world powered by renewable and other low-carbon energy and the sustainable management of ecosystems,” the statement continued. “These transformations should be carried out in the context of globally agreed Sustainable Development Goals, consistent with ending extreme poverty; ensuring universal access for healthcare, quality education, safe water, and sustainable energy; and cooperating to end human trafficking and all forms of modern slavery.”

In his opening address to the Vatican conference, U.N. Secretary General Ban declared that climate change is “the defining issue of our time.”