Much of what we face as opposition by the Anti-Catholic groups in our nation and in Western Europe is based upon Junk Science. Is this an appropriate topic here? Has the Church said anything officially about this? I'm talking about abortion as a choice; the false claims of global warming; the false claims of over population; etc., etc. The HHS mandate is part of this as well.

What is the junk science around global climate change?

It is virtually all junk. If you have been keeping up 30,000 scientists are filing a class action law suit against Al Gore and his friends. Global Warming is not as extensive as once taught and it has no proven correlation with anything man does.

While I can well believe that climate change is a natural process, I have no problem with people making it an issue du jour if it means making us ask questions about our own consumption of resources and the things we burn.

Having said that, I think your suggestion that 'it has no proven correlation with anything man does' is probably an exaggeration as well.

Climate changes all the time--that's why it's climate. The climate on the moon does not change, which is why it has no climate. The real question you are asking is whether anthropomorphic climate change is true, to which the answer increasingly appears to be probably not, but if so, very marginal indeed. Even the IPCC doesn't stand by the claims it was making just four years ago. But, assuming that "global warming" (to give this scare its original name, until it became apparent that the world wasn't warming after all) is true, it's certainly junk science to try to counteract it by rolling back man-made carbon dioxide emissions. Even the IPCC admitted that, if its (impossible to achieve) goals were met, it would only reduce the projected temperature (now proven to be bogus) by a fraction of a degree--not much of a result for pushing the entire world into poverty. But, hey, think of the polar bears (who, by the way, seem to be more numerous than ever--not bad for an "endangered" species).

Quite so, Stuart. I'm not sure why anyone would believe this nonsense any longer.

Insofar as I am no economist, but rather have to develop an understanding based on my discernment of others' expertise, I am wary of polemics.

I have no problem with your assessment of climate change, Stuart; I would find the reticence to acknowledge any human contribution to it easier to accept, though, if it wasn't concomitant with statements that seem so excessive.

Your outline of the issue of overpopulation some time ago was helpful. Can you - or anyone here - speak with clarity and with (at least some) authority on a more appropriate response to the climate change issue than asinine targets and knee-jerk reactions?

You don't need to agree about the motives behind or the results to come from any of this. The point is that the people who propose to enforce major change on all the rest of us have shown themselves to be overwhelmingly ignorant and repeatedly wrong about the whole matter.

From the "ice age" scares of the 70's, to the recent retreat from speaking of "global warming" (after it became clear that there was, in fact, no warming) to the complete failure of the IPCC reports to predict anything with accuracy, these guys just don't know what they're talking about.

I don't know why anybody would listen to them.

Ditto.

Yeah, put more crap into the air. Oh and drill baby, drill. Stir up the shale with impunity. Big Tobacco "scientists" for years just could not see, would not trust findings that tobacco + the cardiopulmonary system make for wheezebags and worse. Do you think it is only liberals who know how to bend a statistic to conform to their political bias?

Do you think only conservatives smoked?

It's all junk science that defends man made global warming. Climate change has occurred for as long as there has been a solar system. Thirty thousand scientists can't all be wrong, can they?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FfHW7KR33IQ

Carson, the matter isn't about who smoked. The point is about scientists and, in view of the myriad methodological flaws that can come to pollute research, the willful or inadvertent nulling of the null hypothesis.

The bankrupt left-right spectrum has little useful place in Christian discourse.

Sure they can, at least until more cogent research is provided by the other thirty thousand scientists who beg to differ. The point is, dismissing an estimable scientific segment as promoting global warming to be probable as "junk science" is not, in any respect, the definitive word on the matter; in this regard it's simply the side you want to be on, your own bias. Hot button issues like this get politicized and become divisive. It ain't small dry stuff like finding out that neutrinos actually are not faster than the speed of light. "Junk science", though: that damning phrase seems better applied to crystals and copper bracelets.