Pope Francis will officially unveil his encyclical on climate change and human stewardship of the environment this Thursday, which can mean only one thing.

The Koch Brothers and other fossil fuel interests have failed in their attempts to thwart the Pope’s call for climate action and justice.

Joe Bast, president of the anti-science Heartland Institute who never finished college, explained that it was his “moral calling” to send a team of “climate scientists” to Rome ahead of a Vatican summit on the environment earlier this year to lecture the Holy See, a Jesuit with a degree in chemistry, on the inadequacies of climate science.

“The Holy Father is being misled by ‘experts’ at the United Nations who have proven unworthy of his trust,” Bast said in a statement. “Though Pope Francis’ heart is surely in the right place, he would do his flock and the world a disservice by putting his moral authority behind the United Nations’ unscientific agenda on the climate.”

The climate deniers at the Heartland Institute aren’t the only ones trying to discredit the Pope’s encyclical before it even comes out. Devout Catholic and Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum took the lead in Pope-bashing, saying, “The church has gotten it wrong a few times on science, and I think that we probably are better off leaving science to the scientists.”

In fact, just about all of the Republicans running for president who are Catholic will find themselves at odds with the Pope’s stance on climate change, as Mother Jones documents.

Rush Limbaugh has chimed in, too, saying the Pope “doesn’t even disguise” his Marxist beliefs when talking about global warming being caused by human activities, according to Media Matters.  

Then there’s the incoherent ramblings of Lord Christopher Monckton. It’s not clear what he’s talking about, but it’s surely anti-Pope, whom he appears to refer to as “Marxie” throughout the rant.

And yet it appears Pope Francis means to go ahead with his encyclical anyway, despite the best advice of the Heartland Institute and Rick Santorum and Rush Limbaugh and even the guy who signed off as “+Christopher, pope of all he surveys.”

There is a good deal of excitement amongst climate activists about how the Pope’s grand entrance might impact the debate over taking action on global warming.

Just in time for the release of Pope Francis’s highly anticipated encyclical (a copy of which leaked earlier this week), comes this action-packed movie trailer in which the pope is cast as a scrappy climate crusader, complete with a training montage worthy of Rocky Balboa.

“If we destroy creation, creation will destroy us,” the Pope says in the video (an actual quote from one of his sermons). His conclusion in the fake film?

“It’s time to take out the trash,” the Pope says before kicking in the door where a secret cabal of Big Oil executive-types are plotting to thwart the Pope and burn every last fossil fuel they can get their hands on. (“These are God-given gifts, and they are ours for the taking!”)

Watch it:

The comedic trailer video was made by a network of Brazilian climate organizations called Observatório do Clima.

All kidding aside, the Pope’s message is a critical call to the world to pursue climate action and justice to safeguard our world, especially for the protection of the poor.

According to the Guardian, which translated several key passages of a leaked copy of the Pope’s encyclical on climate change, Pope Francis will warn of “grave consequences for all of us” if we don’t change the way we live our lives and the way we consume energy.

“Numerous scientific studies indicate that the greater part of the global warming in recent decades is due to the great concentration of greenhouse gases … given off above all because of human activity,” the draft encyclical unequivocally states.

Interestingly, and somewhat surprisingly, the Pope will also specifically call out carbon credits as a false solution to the climate crisis. The Guardian quotes the Pope as writing that they “could give rise to a new form of speculation and would not help to reduce the overall emission of polluting gases.”