Pope Christopher's environment encyclical

Christopher the Pontiff to all dudes of good will, greeting! And, while I'm at it, hello trees, hello sky! (My mate Fotherington-Thomas wrote that bit.)

The environment is, like, where it's at. It's the scene. It's happenin.' It's the dog's – er, better make that "breakfast," Gerhard. It's well cool, know what I mean? And Bishop Marxelo Sancho Panza of the Pontifical Academy of Communists (Papa-PAC, regd. 501(c)(3)) tells me we all gotta keep it that way.

He's told me all about the sciencey stuff an' all. Sancho likes windmills. Says they fan mother Earth and keep her cool. Says I should take down that totally, totally old-fash cross thingy atop the vista-dome and put a ginormous windmill on it.

Cool weather cool, warm weather uncool, right? Right! Especially in stuffy old Rome in the summer. Get that coal-fired power plant stoked, Giuseppe, spin up those hummin' turbines, Bubba, an' crank the papal air-con to the max!

Wrong, actually, Marxie, baby. Thing is, Pope Suburban VIII put that Galileo dude under, like, house arrest for saying the earth goes around the sun. His bad. I don't gonna slide in the same doo-doo. Uh-uh ! No way, Jose, as we say in Argentina!

I mean, like, anyone can see it depends on your actual frame of reference. If you're standing down there on the blue planet Sol III, which in a very real sense you all are – I'm sitting way up here on my cushy papal throne, me – then what you're standing on is your, like, reference frame, innit? An' any fool can see Brother Sun goes around Mother Earth, just like Sister Moon does.

But look at it from where Brother Sun does his thing. Brother Sun can see that Sister Moon goes around Mother Earth and both of them go around Brother Sun. Celestial mechanics rocks an' relativity rules!

So Pope Chevy was kinda right, but Galileo was kinda righter.

The Panza Division is kinda right, too. I mean, if you breathe out, which in a very real sense you all do – I'm a cyborg, me, 'cos the conclave hated each other way too much to pick anyone – you put tons and tonsa see-oh-too in the air an' that makes it hot, hot, hot. Add some more tons o' the stuff from all those power plants and poof! We all go up in holy smoke.

"Or not, as the case may be." That's how the curial cardinals talk, so I put it in just to show I can jabber diplomatese with the best of 'em, hell, yeah! (Delete "hell" and substitute "oh": +Gerhard, prefect, Holy Office.)

See here, Marxie, it's like this. That Monckton dude – gotta just love the guy – snuck into the Vatican a month back. He caught our hefty but slow-movin' Swiss guards with their multi-colored knickers down. (That Michelangelo dude woulda never made it in the rag trade.) Strolled right past 'em, lookin' like he owned the place (no one does it better, not even me) an' got himself right into one of your grim re-education sessions in the Casino Audi Quattro. Stick to blackjack, my advice, Marxie.

He even schmoozed past the chef de protocol (whose face was a picture, apparently)an' shook Ban-Ki Moon, the Sekjen of the YewEn, firmly by the hand an' told him a thing or two. Hanki-Banki told me afterward he'd learned for the first time that global warming might not be that bad after all.

So I've been doing my homework. An' what I've found out is this.

See that thermostat thingy for the papal pad over there by the big tapestry with the naughty bits? Yeah, that one … stop leerin,' Marxie! All I have to do is twiddle this dial an' set the temperature to suit a red-blooded cyborg, an' then, whatever the weather, the air-con keeps the State Apartments within 6 Fahrenheits either side of nominal.

Well, Mother Earth has a thermostat thingy of her own, jes' like this one. An' – this is, like, far out, Marxie – for the last 810,000 years that thermostat has jes' kep' on workin,' an' in all that time her temperature has never been more than 6 degrees Fahrenheit above or below nominal, jes' like the State Apartments.

At present, that Monckton says – he's a genius an' he knows, like, everythin,' an' he's never wrong, I've checked – Mother Earth's temperature is about 2 or 3 degree Fahrenheit above nominal, 'cos we're in an intergalactic – um, no, interglacial – warm period. That means the warm bits between the cool bits. Don't be disgusting, Marxie – I am the pope, you know.

Anyway, Monckton says – so it must be right – that Mother Earth regulates her own temperature, all by herself. It's really, really hard to change it much. So, although we've added gazillions of tons of see-oh-too to the air for 18 years and six months, there's been no global warming at all – zero, zilcho, nada, nix, nichts, nil, nothing, none, nowt, rien ne va plus, les jeux sont faits, cross yer fingers an' spin that wheel, Mr. Bond!

An' that drives a billion-ton Beetlejuice bulldozer through all your sciencey stuff, Marxie, old son. Being a cyborg myself, I know a thing or two about computers. An' they're made by humans just like you would be if you could ever bring yourself to be human, Marxie. An' they're programmed by humans. An' their output is interpreted by humans. I mean, come on!

That's what Monckton calls the Cybernetic Trifecta: "Humans get stuff wrong, so computers – made, programmed and interpreted by humans – get stuff three times wronger." An', brother, that's jes' what they did with this global warmin' situario.

The billion-dollar brains screwed up big time, yessirree! A quarter of a century back they predicted with "substantial confidence" that there would be getting on for three times as much global warming by now as there has been. Oops with knobs on!

So Monckton wrote his own computer model, but he made it so simple you can run it on the Vatican abacus. An', get this, I've tried it out an' it turns out it's a whole lot more accurate than the billion-dollar brains.

You can read all about it at Scibull.com – silly name for the way cool website of the Science Bulletin of the Chinese Academy of Sciencey People. Jes' click on "Most Read Articles" an' Monckton's paper's the all-time Numero Uno, as we say in Argentina.

An' he says his mini-model shows there won't be that much global warming – maybe just a degree or two – before all them fossil fuels runs out. So he says there's no need to panic. After all, we've had 18 years and six months with no global warming at all at all, as we say in Argentina. So it's not as though we're exactly, like, in a hurry.

Bottom line, Marxie, you jes' gotta love each other like the man said, an' you gotta love your fellow creatures an' the trees an' the sky an' the good Earth beneath an' the good universe it spins in, 'cos He made 'em all an' made 'em real good, an' didn't use computers while He was at it.

Respect, that's where it's at. We're His stewards an' we gotta take care of His (delete that word and substitute "Creation": +Gerhard, prefect, Holy Office).

An', y' know, Marxie, that's really all that needs to be said. This is way the shortest encyclical evaaah, an' the coolest, an' the hottest! Way to go!

His peace be with y' all. It's all you need. You really, really don't need an unelected world government to make global warming go away. You need a world government like you need an ashtray on a Harley doin' the ton. Trust me.

Vroom, vroom!

+Christopher, pope of all he surveys

Media wishing to interview Christopher Monckton, please contact [email protected].