In expectation of the release of an encyclical on environmental stewardship, some people have claimed that Pope Francis has a degree, even a master’s degree, in chemistry, qualifying him to understand the scientific issues of climate change. Not so, according to the National Catholic Reporter. Actually, Francis graduated, at age 19, “with a título in chemistry from the Escuela Técnica Industrial No. 12*, which is a state-run technical secondary school,” and “the título really represents something beyond our high-school diploma, something akin a certificate from a community college in the U.S.”

These comments, by my friend Tom Sheahen (Ph.D., Physics), a Catholic who respects Pope Francis, shed light on how, depending on how the final, official version of the encyclical reads, we can assess the extent of Francis’s understanding of science, and he has permitted me to share them here:

We have learned that the Pope received some form of certificate to be a chemical technician, beyond high school. Therefore we can reasonably assume he took high school chemistry, and perhaps a bit more.

Acid balance: We can be confident the Pope was taught titration, litmus paper and all that, and knows that when pH = 7, a solution is neutral, neither acidic nor basic (alkaline). The pH of the ocean is about 8, and to get back to 7 it would take a factor of 10 increase in positive ions. That is quite impossible; a thousand undersea volcanoes of the magnitude of the Yellowstone cataclysm would not suffice to change the ocean that much. The ocean is not going to become acid (pH < 7). The phrase “acidification of the ocean” is employed by the alarmists to convey a scary threat, while technically referring to a slight decrease in alkalinity from about 8.2 to 7.9 or so.

The Pope surely knows this much chemistry, even if high school was back in the 1950s. If he allows “acidification of the ocean” into the text, it shows that he didn’t read what was placed in front of him.

Sea Level: The sea level has been steadily rising for a few thousand years, at the rate of about half a foot per century. Nothing that happened in the 20th century changed that significantly. There is no data out there showing abnormal sea level behavior — only conjecture by alarmists. As land rises or subsides, islands go up or down slightly. Presumably the Pope remembers Scripture well enough to know that Ephesus in western Turkey was a seaport in St. Paul’s day; now it is 15 miles inland and elevated substantially. Any remaining statement about fear of sea level rise suggests that he didn’t read the text.

Another way in which this Encyclical may become an embarrassing anachronism is the lack of any mention of the data collected by satellites. That’s the kind of “new technology” that would have earned a mention in documents written by previous popes. Of course, the reason the UN advisers suppressed any mention of satellites is that they show no warming [for the last 18.5 years].

Another way of discerning whether a person proficient in high school chemistry has read a document bearing his signature is to see if the text confuses “carbon” with “carbon dioxide.”

Little tiny particulates of unburned carbon are “soot,” and plausibly classifiable as a form of pollution. Carbon MONoxide (CO) is a poisonous, polluting gas. Carbon DIoxide (CO2) is the harmless gas that we exhale, and is necessary for plant life.

The lexicon of the alarmists takes advantage of the inattentive public’s easy confusion between “carbon” and “carbon dioxide.” The Pope can’t possibly be unaware of the difference.

Which means: if he lets that confusion go past, he didn’t bother to read the text.

In reality, one need not have a degree in science to understand many of the scientific debates about climate change. Simple recognition that hypotheses that generate predictions contradicted by observational data are wrong, coupled with the ability to read the fact that observed temperatures contradict modeled temperatures, is enough to conclude that the models are wrong.

 

 

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