Mereja.Forum

[Messele Zewdie Ejeta]

The history of Galileo Galilei has it that science and The Vatican have not been in the best of terms.

Back on June 18, 2015, Pope Francis published an encyclical titled Laudato Si' in an effort to address climate change.

Definitely, the climate crisis needs addressing. Attributing climate change to natural variability and manmade elevated greenhouse gases in the atmosphere is also a frontier that needs concerted efforts.

I don't know when the ideation for addressing climate change by The Vatican through a scientific perspective that culminated in the publication of Laudato Si' started. I have heard reports that the late Pope Benedict XVI pioneered an effort at The Vatican to address climate change before retiring in 2013.

I have made some efforts to address climate change attribution based on climate science. Two peer reviewed journal papers have come out of this effort.

The first one, which is titled Step toward a Deterministic Solution of the Paradoxical Hydrological Stationarity Problem, was accepted back in June 2011 and published here in the U.S.

The second one, which is titled Validation of predicted meteorological drought in California using analogous orbital geometries, was accepted back in October 2012 and published in the UK.

I haven't yet reviewed the details of the scientific perspective of Laudato Si'. So, I am not sure if it marks a departure of its history of not being in the best of terms with science when Galileo Galilei pioneered it.