Pope Francis has been widely praised by world leaders, scientists and others for issuing an unprecedented moral and ethical call to action on global warming in a letter released Thursday, which was addressed to "every person living on the planet."

The document, known in the Catholic Church as an "encyclical" or papal letter to bishops, was the first such document ever issued on the environment. It adds a crucial component to climate discussions in the run-up to a potentially decisive round of United Nations climate talks in Paris five months from now.

The encyclical got many things right. Yes, the climate is warming. Yes, poor nations are already suffering more from this problem than rich countries, which is inherently unfair, given that emissions from the industrialized world are causing the problem in the first place.

However, there are two critical areas in which Francis erred. The first concerns his portrayal of climate science findings. Here, he was too conservative, perhaps in a bid to placate the Catholics and members of other faiths who are hostile to mainstream climate science findings.

As a result, he painted too rosy a picture of where we are today, and where we're headed in the near future. This is unfortunate because sound policy can only emerge from a full accounting of how much of a bind we're really in. While there is certainly hope and time to change course, the reality is that on our present path of carbon emissions, we're in store for a wild and unpleasant ride through the 21st century.

Faster, more severe and more certain

The reality is that global warming is happening more swiftly, and having more severe and increasingly evident repercussions worldwide, than the pope's encyclical says. Here is how he describes the scientific consensus on global warming:

A very solid scientific consensus indicates that we are presently witnessing a disturbing warming of the climatic system. In recent decades, this warming has been accompanied by a constant rise in the sea level and, it would appear, by an increase of extreme weather events, even if a scientifically determinable cause cannot be assigned to each particular phenomenon. ... It is true that there are other factors (such as volcanic activity, variations in the earth’s orbit and axis, the solar cycle), yet a number of scientific studies indicate that most global warming in recent decades is due to the great concentration of greenhouse gases (carbon dioxide, methane, nitrogen oxides and others) released mainly as a result of human activity.

None of this is incorrect, per se, judging from numerous reports by groups including the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and the National Academy of Sciences, as well as hundreds of studies in peer-reviewed scientific literature.

But it's a huge understatement to say that "a number of scientific studies" blame global warming on manmade greenhouse gases.

That's akin to saying, "Well, a number of studies say that smoking can cause cancer," which leaves open the possibility that a number of credible studies say the opposite.

Rather, it would be more accurate to say that almost every credible climate study blames the majority of recent global warming — and very likely nearly all global warming since the dawn of the industrial revolution — on human activities.

We've changed the climate, oceans and other aspects of the Earth so much through industrial activity and other impacts that geologists are pushing for the naming of a new geological epoch to describe the human-driven era we're in: the Anthropocene.

An Indian man pushes his cycle through a flooded road during a monsoon in Mumbai, India, Friday, June 19, 2015. Image: Rajanish Kakade/Associated Press

Francis also cited a constant increase in sea levels worldwide, which is true — to an extent. The science shows that recently, sea level rise has become more pronounced, and won't likely follow a linear course in the next few decades. Instead, as glaciers and ice sheets melt and ocean temperatures increase, we're going to see a faster uptick in sea level rise, perhaps exceeding a meter (3.3 feet) on average around the globe by 2100.

Studies using ice core records and other data indicate that carbon dioxide levels are now higher than they've ever been in all of human history, and beyond. When the industrial revolution started in about 1750, the amount of carbon dioxide concentration in the atmosphere was about 280 parts per million (ppm). Now it is climbing past 400 ppm.

The last time there was this much carbon dioxide in the air, humans didn't exist, the oceans were up to 100 feet higher than they are now and average global temperatures were about 11 degrees Fahrenheit higher.

This suggests that if carbon dioxide levels stay this high, or climb much higher (as they are almost certain to do), the longterm climate response may be beyond our capacity to cope. After all, with Hurricane Sandy in 2012, we saw what the combination of 1 foot of sea level rise and a major storm can do to New York City. Imagine the same storm — and seas that are 100 feet higher (hint: New York would not exist in the same place it does now).

Studies have shown that global average temperatures are already warmer than they have been in more than 4,000 years.

Extreme events

While Francis discounts making direct connections between extreme weather events and global warming, the science is actually out ahead of him on that front, too. A 2004 study in the journal Science, about a deadly European heatwave the year before, said there was a greater than 90% chance that global warming at least doubled the risk of such an event. The 2003 European heatwave is estimated to have killed up to 50,000 people.

Smoke rises from the Bogus Creek Fire, one of two fires burning in the Yukon Delta National Wildlife Refuge in southwest Alaska on June 7, 2015. Image: Matt Snyder/Alaska Division of Forestry/Associated Press

Scientists have drawn similar links to the increased risk of particular extreme weather events, including many extreme rainfall events across the Northern Hemisphere and deadly heat waves.

A 2012 study led by now-retired NASA scientist James Hansen found that a new category of extremely hot summers, such as the scorching and deadly heatwave that gripped Russia in 2010, has been made more common due to global warming.

Yet another study published earlier this year found that Australia's record hot summer of 2013 was "virtually impossible" without global warming playing a major role.

The weather, it seems, is getting weirder with each passing day, and it's increasingly clear that global warming is tied to some of the trends that we're seeing. The U.S., for example, just saw two states — Texas and Oklahoma — get so much rain in such a short time period that a multiyear drought was ended in a matter of weeks. Meanwhile, the lower 48 states as a whole had its wettest month on record during May. Then in the middle of June, the same states saw renewed flooding thanks to a landfalling tropical storm.

Sorry, but population growth in an era of unsustainable resource use is a problem

Francis held firm to the Catholic Church's longstanding opposition to birth control, saying that the problem is unequal distribution of wealth and "extreme and selective consumerism on the part of some," which is causing resource scarcity among poorer countries.

A demolition crew begins to tear down a squatters' community at suburban Caloocan city, north of Manila, Philippines, Tuesday, May 26, 2015. Image: Bullit Marquez/Associated Press

"Instead of resolving the problems of the poor and thinking of how the world can be different, some can only propose a reduction in the birth rate," the pope wrote. "To blame population growth instead of extreme and selective consumerism on the part of some, is one way of refusing to face the issues. It is an attempt to legitimize the present model of distribution, where a minority believes that it has the right to consume in a way, which can never be universalized, since the planet could not even contain the waste products of such consumption."

No one expected Francis to suddenly back the free distribution of condoms at churches across fast-growing areas of Sub-Saharan Africa, though that would've been interesting. But he is only addressing half of the equation by attacking consumerism and resource-use habits in the developed world. We also have to look at how quickly developing countries are growing, and how sustainable those rates are.

An acknowledgement that population growth is partly responsible for poor countries' vulnerability to climate change impacts, as well as one of the biggest drivers of rapid and unsustainable urbanization — which Francis laments elsewhere in the encyclical — would have been a welcome change of pace for a pope that seems to delight in doing the unexpected.