Morning:
8°c
A rioter who terrorised diners with an axe at McDonald's has been jailed for five years and three months - one of the toughest sentences for last summer's disturbances
More...
Bishop says climate-change deniers are as bad as sex dungeon father Josef Fritzl
Last updated at 23:49pm on 02.06.08
A Church of England bishop has been criticised after he compared climate change sceptics to the Austrian child abuser Josef Fritzl.
The Bishop of Stafford, the Right Reverend Gordon Mursell, said it was hard to imagine a more disgusting crime than Fritzl's, who sealed his daughter in a cellar for 24 years.
But Dr Mursell added: 'You could argue that, by our refusal to face the truth about climate change, we are as guilty as he is.
Monika Fritzl was born in the cellar where Josef Fritzl imprisoned his daughter
'We are in effect locking our children and grandchildren into a world with no future and throwing away the key.'
His comments, which were made in a pastoral letter addressed to churchgoers, have been widely attacked.
One critic accused the Church of England of elevating global warming to be a new religion.
Fritzl, a 73-year-old electrical engineer from Amstetten in Austria, was arrested in April after imprisoning his daughter Elisabeth in a cellar under his home for 24 years.
During that time, she bore seven children from his repeated rapes. Three of the children - the oldest 19 - were never allowed out of the underground chamber.
Dr Mursell, 59, a suffragan or junior bishop in the Lichfield diocese, yesterday told BBC Radio 4's Today programme: 'I don't wish to shock people unnecessarily and I am in no way trying to imply that people who ignore climate change are child abusers - of course not.
Dr Gordon Mursell: Denied calling sceptics child abusers
'I am simply trying to use an analogy to get people to wake up to the consequences of what we are failing to do, because if we don't there won't be a future for our children either.
'The problem with climate change is - as I heard Prince Charles arguing very eloquently a couple of weeks ago - that it is terribly hard to get people to see the seriousness of it because the consequences are not faced just by the person failing to take action now.
'I think we have to try to find ways to get people to see the consequences of our failure to act on climate change.
'Could you not argue that if there is no future for our children and grandchildren, we will have been guilty of committing the most appalling crimes as well?'
But Professor Frank Furedi, head of the sociology department at Kent University, accused Dr Mursell of demonising those who do not agree with the fashionable wisdom on climate change
He told the online magazine Spiked: 'Focusing on the current anxieties about the future of the planet is a fruitful way of rediscovering Satan.
'Demonologists in pre-modern times argued that scepticism about witchcraft was a form of heresy that had to be punished.
'Now, scepticism towards the received wisdom on global warming, or on public health issues such as Aids, is described as "denial".
'Denial has been transformed into a generic evil.
'History shows that crusades against heretics and demons have a nasty habit of disorienting society and undermining civilised and humanist behaviour.'
Jill Kirby, director of the centreright think-tank, Centre for Policy Studies, which has published papers by scientists sceptical of climate change, said: 'Climate change has achieved the status of an alternative religion.
'It is a shame to see the CoE putting so much faith into an idea over which there is no agreement among scientists.'
Dr Mursell is not the first CoE prelate to link climate change and evil.
Two years ago, the Bishop of London, Dr Richard Chartres, claimed it was sinful for people to ignore any actions that contributed to climate change.
Reader views (16)
Worldnet Daily, amongst other fine media outlets have published the likes of this:
"More than 31,000 scientists across the U.S. – including more than 9,000 Ph.D.s in fields such as atmospheric science, climatology, Earth science, environment and dozens of other specialities – have signed a petition rejecting "global warming," the assumption that the human production of greenhouse gases is damaging Earth's climate."
The scientists children are nowhere to be seen?
- Andyj, Wigan, UK, 03/06/2008 19:57
Report abuse
Here in the USA it is interesting to note that one of the biggest instigaters of the global warming scare, The New York Times, was blaring in headlines twenty-five years ago that we were about to enter a mini ice age.
- Ray, Gurnee, USA, 03/06/2008 19:44
Report abuse
The good clergyman should look up the results of the Vatican report. Climate change is not man made according to them and those pushing the Alarmist agenda are not doing the world a favour. Here is a guy who knows absolutely nothing about climate and his view is somehow important? The Sun drives the climate. Always has and always will. It's going to get a lot colder before it gets warmer. That's, if it gets warmer.
- Kirt Griffin, Guilford, CT USA, 03/06/2008 03:41
Report abuse
Methinks there is isn't much to worry about climate change, if the bubble needs to be inflated to the point of making a "Josef Fritzl" analogy...
(Does anybody want to guess when a CoE Bishop will finally associate climate change to that other nasty Austrian fellow, Adolf H?)
- Maurizio Morabito, London, UK, 03/06/2008 00:18
Report abuse
How can we know if this Bishop isn't indulging in the same practice so many priests in the USA (and as we've seen, all over the world) do in sexually abusing children? Because as all "global warmers" have been shown to be liars, then Mr. Bishop can be at the same level of Mr. Fritzl.
"Tell me what are you bragging about and I will tell you what you are lacking."
- Eduardo,, Córdoba, Argentina, 02/06/2008 22:47
Report abuse
Climate has always changed and it always will. The Bible says this was pointed out to Pharaoh by Joseph (the one with the Technicolour Dreamcoat) in the Bronze Age(Genesis 31). But I would not expect this Bishop to know that.
I am a climate change proclaimer because I proclaim that climate always changes. And I proclaim that global warming and global cooling have both repeatedly happened since the Earth gained a climate.
We had global cooling from 1940 to 1970, global warming from then until 1998, and we have had global cooling since. Anybody claiming to understand why is either a charlatan or a fool (probably both). Nobody can control climate, and if anybody knew how to control it the knowledge would be in the hands of the military because it would be the greatest weapon of mass destruction ever imagined. No Christian would equate those who state these facts with Josef Frizl whatever collar he wears.
- Richard S Courtney, Falmouth, UK, 02/06/2008 22:32
Report abuse
I think what Mr Mursell by comparing climate change to that monster is very stupid, first of all to give that monster any comparison to anything is giving him importance, which I am sure he would like as he is a vain and sick man, but for Mursell to give this man air time is to me terribly irresponsible in the extreme! and actually unforgivable. It adds to the sensationalism of the society we are living in and using that to put his point across, Mr Mursell lacks intelligence and imagination how disgusting of him to refer to this man at all.
- Daisy, London, 02/06/2008 21:01
Report abuse
No wonder the churches are empty when half-wits can reach the rank of bishop.
- Sean Dunne, Louth UK, 02/06/2008 19:23
Report abuse
Oh, please! Where do they get these bishops? Maybe this is the ultimate result of 'care in the community'...
- Catscradle, London, 02/06/2008 18:32
Report abuse
'I don't wish to shock people unnecessarily and I am in no way trying to imply that people who ignore climate change are child abusers - of course not.'
When you say it is the same, then that is exactly what you ARE doing in effect. If you have a platform to expound upon your views, you are responsible for what you say. It isn't what you meant in your own mind that matters so much as what people hear - and for a public speaker to suggest that he wasn't aware of this is just a bit disingenuous to my mind.
- Rogan, DFW Texas, 02/06/2008 16:58
Report abuse
You have to be joking. Climate change is something that is constantly happening and we have no to little control over the forces of nature. Yes, we should reduce unnecessary consumerism, putting chemicals down our drains, keeping plastic bags off our beaches, etc. But climate change? The climate is forever changing. We just need to learn how best to adapt to each phase.
- Annie, London, UK, 02/06/2008 16:46
Report abuse
That's rich coming from someone who believes everything that was written in a book that has never been proven... called the bible
- Neil Grinsell, London, 02/06/2008 16:35
Report abuse
Nope, their actions affect the entire universe whereas his had a limited impact.
- Dennis, Taplow U.K., 02/06/2008 16:18
Report abuse
Well done Bishop! Great to see that you have joined Rowan Williams in the "see who can empty the pews quickest" competition.
This has to be one of the most ridiculous analogies that I have seen in ages.
Climate change is going to continue happening, as it has done since the beginning of time, regardless of what we do or don't do. It is high time that politicians and "greenies" stopped pretending that it can be stopped and started doing something about adapting to the change.
Anthropomorphic climate change is far from proven, but a very convenient scare story for cash-strapped governments.
The biggest threat to our survival on this planet is overpopulation. Nothing is being done about this because the liberal left have made it a taboo subject.
- Keith Lonsdale, Doncaster, 02/06/2008 16:10
Report abuse
This Bishop of Stafford is a disgusting man, to compare ordinary decent people with Fritzl.
Many people have yet to be convinced that human activity causes Climate Change, because we know from our history books that in Chaucer's time it was warm enough to grow grapes for wine in England, but by Dickens time people were skating on the Thames... There has never been a period in our history when climate has been stable for very long.
Unthinking people like the Bishop just take the politically correct line always.
- Peter, Hatfield, UK, 02/06/2008 15:55
Report abuse
So what does this Bishop say about overpopulation. Has that anything to do with Global Warmimg?
- Grim Reaper, Hell, 02/06/2008 13:07
Report abuse
