So, Trump has decided to withdraw from the Paris climate accord. It’s not really a great surprise, but disappointing nonetheless. The thing that gets me is how inconsistent the arguments for leaving seem to be. I particularly liked David Roberts’s article which pointed out that the Paris climate deal can’t be both nonbinding and draconian. Similarly, people seem to justify leaving on the basis of the Paris accord not really achieving much. Well, it wasn’t intended to be the final step and if it isn’t achieving enough, surely the solution is then to do more, not less.
However, some of the claims of it achieving little are wrong. It’s suggested that it would only reduce global temperatures by a few tenths of a degree by 2100. However, this is only likely if, after 2030, we simply give up, and go back to increasing our emissions. As illustrated by the figure on the right, [f]ull implementation of current Paris pledges plus all announced mid-century strategies would reduce expected warming by 2100 to 3.3°C, a difference of 0.9°C.
However, I actually think the momentum is going to be diffiult to stop. Lots of countries are starting to think of ways to reduce theirs emissions, and even many US states have claimed that this will not influence their intention to reduce emissions. So, when it comes to addressing climate change, the US withdrawing from the Paris accord may not be that significant. It may mean that we don’t reduce emissions as fast as we might have otherwise done, but I suspect that the overall effect will be small.
What I think is more concerning are the geopolitical implications of this decision. A global superpower has decided to withdraw from an agreement that was aimed at addressing what might be the most important global issue of this age; essentially the US will no longer be playing a leadership role. Other countries will be, and already are, stepping in to take on this leadership role and the influence of the US in the world will be diminished. Not only that, there are economic implications. It seems clear that we will be seeing more and more of a shift away from fossil fuels, and those who embrace this will probably benefit more than those who do not.
I don’t have a good sense of the implications of the above. Maybe there aren’t many. However, it would certainly seem better to have the US playing a leading role, than taking a step back and allowing others to take over this leadership role. I don’t think it’s going to be easy to take it on again, and I hope they don’t regret allowing this to happen.
...and Then There's Physics 
The unfortunate part of that figure is that at no point by 2100 is there a decline.
Ariana,
Absolutely. There are analyses that go beyond 2100. However, there seem to be some who think we shouldn’t bother looking beyond the next century. Of course, one issue is that what we do now will be locking in changes that will persistent (and, in fact, continue to change in some cases) well beyond 2100.
The best part if Trump’s rationale is his argument that the US will provide leadership by opening coal mines.
As for his reference to Paris = 0.2c reduction in warming…
https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.cnn.com/cnn/2017/06/02/politics/trump-mit-study-paris-agreement/index.html
–snip–
President Donald Trump used a Massachusetts Institute of Technology study to back up his departure from the Paris climate agreement on Thursday. But one of the study’s authors says the President misinterpreted their data, showing “a complete misunderstanding of the climate problem.”
https://twitter.com/scottwahlstrom/status/870778926838054912
Methinks teh Donald’s pulling the same PR trick as with his Trumpcare.
This will end up being better for the planet as “blue” states will go greener and reap all the huge economic benefits. Experiments are great. ya’ll should be thanking Trump.
Also note they are running away from the hoax argument.
sliver linings
US emissions are already ahead of schedule wrt PA reductions:
That will probably continue.
SM writes: “Experiments are great. ya’ll should be thanking Trump.”
Steve, this assumes that we will/can collectively learn from the results. Did the right learn from the economic experiment (regarding ‘austerity’) that followed the financial collapse? I’d say, no. For that matter, Trump was elected President; that pretty much rules out any logical, rational, evidence-based criteria in making political decisions for a significant proportion of the electorate.
For those who do pay attention to such things I think the available evidence is already pretty strong. I don’t think GM and Ford heard Trump, heaved a sigh of relief and thought: Thank god, now we can forget about all that electric car crap.
Steven,
Yes, I’m sure that there will be winners. Not sure that, overall, we’ll be better off following this path as opposed to one in which the US is engaged and playing a leadership role.
“Steve, this assumes that we will/can collectively learn from the results.”
Err no it doesnt. Experiments are great regardless. If I learn from it and you refuse to learn that is great. If we all learn that is also great.
Are experiments optimal? I dunno. But they are great.
Leaders wear white hats:
https://twitter.com/DonaldSomethin/status/870809991829127168
***
Preliminary results show that Freedom Fighters have little to respond to ExxonMobil’s endorsement:
https://twitter.com/DonaldSomethin/status/870811535194685440
One called me a paid troll and blocked me. Sad snowflake. Triggered.
” Did the right learn from the economic experiment (regarding ‘austerity’) that followed the financial collapse? ”
Sorry I missed that experiment.
The experiment I am talking about is this.
The argument goes that there will be a great economic boom from going green.
40% of the US GDP is going to take that side of the bet
60% will not take that bet.
Its not a controlled experiment to be sure, but in general people are somewhat rational.
sorta
https://www.forbes.com/forbes/welcome/?toURL=https://www.forbes.com/sites/rexsinquefield/2016/05/23/25-years-13-billion-lost-connecticut-income-tax-continues-to-fail/&refURL=https://www.google.com/&referrer=https://www.google.com/
“Steven,
Yes, I’m sure that there will be winners. Not sure that, overall, we’ll be better off following this path as opposed to one in which the US is engaged and playing a leadership role.”
where did this non sense of “leadership role” start?
I see zero tangible evidence of the US playing a “leadership” role in climate policy.
As if coercing folks into a nutless non binding accord is leadership.
The US has never been a leader, and had no leadership role to lose.
I have no issues with fighting at the local level. I think its preferable.
here
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_by_carbon_dioxide_emissions
Steven,
Obama seemed to be trying.
“US emissions are already ahead of schedule wrt PA reductions:”
yes, Its amazing that folks let Obama get away with sandbagging, folks probably give him strokes as well on the golf course.
Sandbag your climate policy and then claim leadership. Jeez.
“I don’t think GM and Ford heard Trump, heaved a sigh of relief and thought: Thank god, now we can forget about all that electric car crap.”
Of course not. Ford is pressing ahead with over a dozen electric models, Their market ( over 50% of new car buyers) are indicating they want EV.
Trump pulled out of a nothingburger accord.
his tribe cheered and will be isolated over time.
More will happen at the state level, corporate level, city level and who knows some people might stop using private jets.
folks might even take real as opposed to symbolic action.
Steven,
I agree that the momentum means that Trump withdrawing might have little actual impact on how we progress in terms of alternatives. It may even act as an impetus for those who want to prove something. However, I still suspect that there will be global political implications. I might, of course, be wrong.
“However, I still suspect that there will be global political implications. I might, of course, be wrong.
Its hard to see what political implications there will be..
more disrespect for Trump? hard to increase his negatives.
Consequences for beating your targets, but announcing a withdrawl?
When germany may miss its target?
http://www.dw.com/en/germany-risks-missing-its-climate-targets/a-36776866
Any way.
here is a good resource for the pragmaticaly inclined
http://cait.wri.org/indc/
That will probably continue. …
Trillions will be lost. GDP will tank. There will be soup lines…
Let’s ask our man in NYC about our current nothingburger:
I tend to agree with Steven on this. Seems to me that on the short term, Trump’s withdrawal from the PA was more about politics than anything else. Particularly since policy-wise it doesn’t create much change until the day after the next presidential election.
That Rose Garden commercial was mostly about appealing to right wingers’ sense of aggrievement, I mean seriously, what else could an argument that we’re going to lead by opening new coal mines be about? Did you watch Pence’s introduction? Did you watch Pruitt’s follow-up comments? It was a dog and pony show, produced and written by Trump’s ego. And have you seen the right wing reaction?
http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2017/06/01/hollywood-suffers-melt-down-over-paris-climate-accord.html
http://www.breitbart.com/radio/2017/06/02/wilbur-ross-europeans-angry-losing-free-ride-climate-accord-terrible-deal-america/
And on the micro-scale, we have this:
Of course, it’s not a good idea to try to generalize from online climate change fanatics or those heavily invested such as Breitbart and Fox News fans….but on the other hand, it’s possible that Breitbart and Fox News at least are fairly representative of Trump’s “base.” And looking at those responses, we see that this was about schadenfreude. It’s about identity-aggression and identity-defense.
And on the short-term, it is hard to believe that much is going to change here. Trump may solidify his 40% somewhat. And on the other side, he has only further exposed the weak moral underpinning of his political agenda. But on the climate-scale level what matters is long term – how will this move play out w/r/t emissions on a global scale? Do we really have any idea?
Joshua,
Yes, I agree that this was more about politics than anything else. I’m also not sure what impact this will have on global emissions, but it does seem that there is already momentum and this is not going to stop that, even if it does slow it somewhat. I do think it’s going to be interesting to see what happens in terms of how other countries/regions respond (China and EU, in particular).
Folks can show their disapproval in very concrete ways now.
Otherwise they can be tarred with an orange brush
Just make a bright line, you either double down on your commitment or you are “normalizing” Trump.
Jeez do I have to tell you guys how to use a villian.
Wars are much easier to mobilize than a consensus.
Speaking of orange brushes, a Rorschach test:
Teh Donald will make vulgar displays of power great again.
I hate it when Mosher is right, but he is right.
That GOP controls Congress and that Trump got elected is bad for climate change. The ritual this Thursday is best explained by the hat Willard showed above.
Looks like this ritual may well lead to more climate action in America.
Hard to say what happens internationally, but my guess is also on more action. Russia is dragging its feet, they did the same for Kyoto, then Europe gave them WTO against the wishes of the USA and Russia joined. We will see what their price is this time.
Let’s see what other Trump allies do, Saudi Arabia, The Philippines, but I would be surprised if they got out. Saudi Arabia needs predicable global policies. What do the local experts say about May’s UK, and Australia? For the rest of the world, this is a good signal to step up. That includes The Netherlands and Germany who talked nicely, but did not do that much the last few years.
The main consequence is likely outside of climate policy, together with Trump’s first international trip having shown he is really as incompetent as he seems to be on TV the world will even more look for leadership elsewhere. In former times that may be bad, with the current state of the radicalized and completely corrupted GOP and the rest of the world having become more democratic it may even be a shift for good.
Thanks victor, but it’s not so much being “right”. It;s looking at a battlefield and asking
“how can I shape this to my advantage”
oops wrong video
A very thought-provoking analysis (which resonates with me) by David Roberts begins with…
After months of dithering and teasing his decision like it’s a reality show finale, Donald Trump has finally pulled the trigger: He will withdraw the US from the Paris climate agreement (technically, he will begin the multi-year process of withdrawing).
It is an unwise and immoral decision — bad for US interests, bad for humanity, and bad for future generations. It’s even against Trump’s own interests. It’s just dumb all around, really, from any vantage point you can pick.
Rather than dive into the specifics, I want to pull the lens back a bit, because I also happen to think the Paris decision is a direct window into a profound contest of worldviews. And the outcome of that contest matters more, in the big picture, than the specifics of US carbon emissions over the next four years. Indeed, at risk of being melodramatic, the outcome of that contest will determine the fate of our species in the 21st century.
To put it as bluntly as possible: The cosmopolitan progress of the late 20th century is threatened by a tribalist backlash, and if cosmopolitanism doesn’t win — if it doesn’t regroup, adjust, and reconstitute — we are all screwed.
Trump’s Paris climate decision shows the threat rising tribalism poses to the planet by David Roberts, Energy & Environment, Vox, June 1, 2017
The url for the Roberts’ article…
https://www.vox.com/science-and-health/2017/6/1/15723174/trump-paris-tribalism
“US emissions are already ahead of schedule wrt PA reductions:”
Only if you stop the chart in 2012 and if you only look at the CO2 emissions (that was a pretty bad chart at Business Insider…it suggested it was CO2e, but it was CO2 only, and it ignored three years of additional data! given in the link they themselves provided https://www3.epa.gov/climatechange/ghgemissions/inventoryexplorer/#iallsectors/allgas/gas/all)
Nicely balanced take on the Trump decision, hopefully pretty accurate as well.
There will be a ripple effect. There have been many positive statements from other countries in the wake of the announcement, but with US backsliding the marginal tendency will be to do less and not more. It is hard to recoup lost ground when the impacts are proportional to cumulative emissions.
Thanks, but you might be slightly biased 🙂
John Harz
thanks for that link which I read with interest.
It seems to me that the commentator was being somewhat simplistic and his bias that his own form of tribalism was the best is one of the reasons we have come to this stage. Everyone’s’ views except those of my tribe are wrong, seems to have become a common refrain these days. There is also often a scarcely concealed subtext. ‘if you disagree with my tribes views you are obviously a moron/racist/senile etc.’
David Goodhart gives a somewhat more thorough and balanced analysis of the splits we are seeing in his recent book ‘ The Road to Somewhere.’
He is/was very much one of the ‘cosmopolitans’ but has somewhat shifted position and is increasingly ostracised;.
the cover blurb reads;
‘Several decades of greater economic and cultural openness in the West have not benefited all our citizens. Among those who have been left behind, a populist politics of culture and identity has successfully challenged the traditional politics of Left and Right, creating a new division: between the mobile ‘achieved’ identity of the people from Anywhere, and the marginalised, roots-based identity of the people from Somewhere. This schism accounts for the Brexit vote, the election of Donald Trump, the decline of the centre-left, and the rise of populism across Europe.
David Goodhart’s compelling investigation of the new global politics reveals how the Somewhere backlash is a democratic response to the dominance of Anywhere interests, in everything from mass higher education to mass immigration.
well worth a read.
tonyb
tonyb,
If you’re referring to the David Roberts article, I don’t really see how that is a reasonable summary.
ATTP
Here is the headline to the article;
‘Trump’s Paris climate decision shows the threat rising tribalism poses to the planet
Cosmopolitanism must win the war, or we’re screwed.’
his version of tribalism seems pretty explicit and his belief it is correct is as well.
to be fair, the article makes a number of good points and accepts some blame, but the thrust of it often matches the headline
tonyb
Not a big fan of how the Paris Agreement requires that western countries give billions of dollars to countries that kill gay people. I think this is appalling.
I’d much rather see western countries place trade & aid embargos on countries that kill gay people, to put pressure on countries to stop killing gay people, similar to what was done to end Apartheid in South Africa.
tonyb,
Except, I don’t think that cosmopolitanism is a form of tribalism. I think his argument is that we need to not see things as some kind of zero-sum game in which if one “side” wins, another has to lose. I don’t think this is true, in the sense that we can cooperate in a way that allows us all to benefit, even if we don’t all benefit in exactly the same way, and by the same amount.
Having said that, I don’t necessarily think the article gets this issue completely correct. Michael Tobis has made some interesting comments on Twitter about not forgetting that there is nothing wrong with loving one’s own culture, which I agree with.
-1,
Your comments appear to be getting more and more hyperbolic. Can you provide some kind of link that supports your suggestion that the Paris agreement will require Western countries to give billions of dollars to countries that kill gay people?
-1,
Here is the roadmap to $100 billion, which says:
Are you suggesting that all developing countries kill gay people?
Trump’s best friend Russia is killing homosexuals in Chechnya. Trump’s best friend Saudi Arabia is killing homosexuals and a main source of fundamentalism and terrorism. Why do we keep sending them our oil money?
-1, why don’t you start defending the rights of homosexuals in your own tribe who want to force their Christian sharia law on others and legalize the discrimination of homosexuals and limit their freedom to marry? You could make a real contribution there because you have more influence on them than on foreign countries. It thus gives much more the impression you actually care about the issue and not just about hating others.
Here, look at a map of countries that kill gay people (plus countries that imprison gay people, sometimes for life):
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LGBT_rights_by_country_or_territory
I’m suggesting that the green climate fund goes to a pool and then some of that pool money goes to countries that kill gay people. You really don’t think Nigeria or Iran wont get any of that money? How about India where you can get up to life in prison? How about countries that kill apostates?
-1
–snip–
Not a big fan of how the Paris Agreement requires that western countries give billions of dollars to countries that kill gay people.
–snip–
That rather timings me of your comments that exploit “people sorting from cancer” to score points in the climate wars.
Continuing with our current practice of using fossil fuels is hardly the most effective way to starve governments that kill gay people of financial resources. Consider, for example, withdrawing from the PA in the context of Trump’s recent trip to Saudi Arabia.
@Victor – “why don’t you start defending the rights of homosexuals in your own tribe who want to force their Christian sharia law on others and legalize the discrimination of homosexuals and limit their freedom to marry”
What tribe is this? I’m not part of any tribe, let alone some Christian Sharia tribe. I’m not in a political party, nor am I Christian, nor am I a Trump supporter.
@Joshua – “Consider, for example, withdrawing from the PA in the context of Trump’s recent trip to Saudi Arabia.”
Yes, that trip was absolutely appalling. Trump certainly avoided saying ‘Radical Islamic Terrorism’ there. I wish more countries took the Sweden approach of an Arms embargo on Saudi Arabia.
And – 1,
With reference to your earlier comments related to access to health care, consider the likely range of impacts of withdrawing from the PA in the framework of disproportionate impact on people who have less access to healthcare in response to risks from climate change.
-1,
That doesn’t answer my question. As far as I can tell, the Paris agreement has simply come up with a plan for developed nations to help developing nations. It is not a plan to give money to countries that kill gay people (which is an appalling thing to do and something that we should be addressing). My request was for you to find evidence to support your claim that the Paris agreement will require Western nations to give billions to countries that kill gay people. As far as I can see, you’ve essentially accused all developing nations of killing gay people.
-1,
–snip–
I’m suggesting that the green climate fund goes to a pool and then some of that pool money goes to countries that kill gay people. You really don’t think Nigeria or Iran wont get any of that money? How about India where you can get up to life in prison? How about countries that kill apostates?
-snip–
What proportion of the money that transfers from liberal democracies benefit oppressive authoritian governments do you suppose flows via climate-related policies?
-1,
=={ Yes, that trip was absolutely appalling. }==
I’m asking that you place your concerns in the larger, related context. Doubling down in support of fossil fuels hardly seems the way to starve the governments of Saudi Arabia or Nigeria of economic resources.
.1: “What tribe is this? I’m not part of any tribe”
🙂 Whatever. They will still listen to you because of your shared “values”:
@ Joshua –
“PA in the framework of disproportionate impact on people who have less access to healthcare in response to risks from climate change.”
As far as I’m concerned, anyone that wants to go around killing gay people doesn’t deserve healthcare.
“Doubling down in support of fossil fuels hardly seems the way to starve the governments of Saudi Arabia or Nigeria of economic resources.”
Buy ethical oil from Canada instead.
@ ATTP –
“As far as I can tell, the Paris agreement has simply come up with a plan for developed nations to help developing nations.”
Trudeau has already given $2.65 billion to the fund and the plan is that developed countries will give $100 billion per year by 2020. Even if you are in a country that has no plans to invest anything in that fund, by being in the Paris agreement, you are endorsing a plan to give money to countries that kill gay people.
“It is not a plan to give money to countries that kill gay people”
Yes it is, because countries that kill gay people will get some of that $100 billion per year.
“evidence to support your claim that the Paris agreement”
It will require once additional rounds of negotiation take place and binding agreements are added. Naive politicians like Trudeau and Merkel, in their desire to ‘preserve creation’ and save ‘mother nature’ will agree to binding agreements that will force future generations in their respective countries to pay into these funds long after they are out of power.
“As far as I can see, you’ve essentially accused all developing nations of killing gay people.”
No. Some countries don’t, such as Brasil and South Africa. However, some countries do, like Iran and Nigeria.
“How about India where you can get up to life in prison?”
A lot of countries have laws against blasphemy. In practice, many countries don’t use them at all. Apparently, section 377 in the Indian law has been used 200 times over a 150 year period, even though more than 2.5 million Indians have self-declared to be homosexuals. There’s still a lot to achieve in India to attain equal rights for homosexuals, but using a largely-unused law against India is stretching it.
Freedom Fighters, – 1.
climatereason/tonyb: Thanks for the positive feedback and for the book referral.
-1,
FWIW, I think this is a truly appalling thing for you to suggest.
The plan is to help developing nations address climate change, not reward some of them for having policies/practices that are objectionable.
This is bizarre. The problem with your view on this is that you make it seem as though the goal is to somehow reward countries that have objectionable policies/practices, which is clearly not the case. The plan is simply to have the developed nations help developing nations deal with addressing climate change. It is perfectly possible to object to the policies that some countries have while still accepting that we may need to help these countries with something unrelated.
You’ve somewhat missed my point. I’m pointing out what it appears that you’ve done. If you didn’t intend it to sound like this, maybe you should have been a bit more careful as to how you introduced this.
It’s maybe worth pondering that on another thread, -1 appeared to object to a moral argument for a 2C target, while on this thread is making a moral argument against the Paris agreement.
Just to expand on this. What I find objectionable about -1’s stance is that killing gay people is utterly appalling and something that we in the devloping world should strongly condemn. However, we can do this as well as trying to find ways to address climate change and to help those countries that are least able to deal with either the consequences of climate change, or the cost associated with adapting/mitigating. Suggesting that those who support Paris are somehow condoning objectionable practices in countries that we might help is – IMO – a truly awful thing to suggest.
A very well-written and well-researched indepth article that we will all likely want to refer to from time to time.
How G.O.P. Leaders Came to View Climate Change as Fake Science
by Coral Davenpot & Eric Lipton, New York Times, June 3, 2017
The campaign ad appeared during the presidential contest of 2008. Rapid-fire images of belching smokestacks and melting ice sheets were followed by a soothing narrator who praised a candidate who had stood up to President George W. Bush and “sounded the alarm on global warming.”
It was not made for a Democrat, Submitbut for Senator John McCain, who had just secured the Republican nomination.
It is difficult to reconcile the Republican Party of 2008 with the party of 2017, whose leader, President Trump, has called global warming a hoax, reversed environmental policies that Mr. McCain advocated on his run for the White House, and this past week announced that he would Submittake the nation out of the Paris climate accord, which was to bind the globe in an effort to halt the planet’s warming.
Click here to access the entire article.
Then it is at least good that the USA got out of the Paris agreement because they kill so many citizens that it would be immoral to collaborate with them in any way. http://www.gunviolencearchive.org/last-72-hours?page=1
Sorry, -1, I am not buying your nonsense. If you want to fight for human rights that is wonderful, making such an artificial connection to climate change is openly disingenuous.
Agreed. What’s more, I’d be very surprised if anyone who supported the Paris agreement would suggest that you should avoid doing so because it would get in the way of fighting climate change. It’s perfectly possible for us to address multiple issues at the same time. That climate change is an important issue does not mean that human rights issues are not also important.
@ attp –
“The plan is to help developing nations address climate change, not reward some of them for having policies/practices that are objectionable. ”
You can address climate change without giving money to countries that kill gay people. For example, British Columbia has had a CO2 emission tax for years and the British Columbian government has not given any money to countries that kill gay people.
“The plan is simply to have the developed nations help developing nations deal with addressing climate change. It is perfectly possible to object to the policies that some countries have while still accepting that we may need to help these countries with something unrelated.”
Spin it how you want. Its a transfer of hundreds of billions of dollars to developing countries, some of which kill gay people. Intent doesn’t change that.
I say embargo and sanction countries that kill gay people, until they cave and stop killing gay people.
I have it on good authority that when -1 plays a round of golf, he only uses a wedge. 🙂
@ attp –
“However, we can do this as well as trying to find ways to address climate change and to help those countries that are least able to deal with either the consequences of climate change”
Exactly. For example, we can pull out of the Paris agreement and try to get a better agreement.
“Suggesting that those who support Paris are somehow condoning objectionable practices in countries that we might help is – IMO – a truly awful thing to suggest.”
I’m not suggesting that. I think many people are supporting it because they want an agreement for the sake of an agreement so they can think that we are saving the planet. Then some people do support the 2C target because they keep hearing people repeat the 2C target over and over again, especially from scientists that haven’t done or looked at cost benefit analyses. Then you have various developed countries support it cause they get free money by supporting it. Then you have some countries like China and Russia do nothing and pretend to support it in order to look good and gain politician capital. There are all sorts of reasons for supporting the Paris agreement.
-1: If you want it to have a significant impact, your proposed embargo/sanction campaign should apply to military assistance as well. Do you agree?
On a happier note I am glad to announce that the great climate blog wars are over.
@ Victor – “Sorry, -1, I am not buying your nonsense. If you want to fight for human rights that is wonderful, making such an artificial connection to climate change is openly disingenuous.”
Huh? I genuinely am appalled by the west’s relationship with Saudi Arabia. They don’t let women drive, behead women without a male escort, kill apostates, kill gay people, oppress Shia, kill Shia leaders, commit genocide in Yemen, declare all atheists as terrorists, kill blasphemers, deny people freedom of speech, torture people, kill people for witchcraft/sorcery, imprison people that create liberal blogs like Raif Badawi (which btw Trudeau has made zero effort to free) and use their oil money to fund wahhabism: the ideology that leads to ISIS, Boko Haram, Al Queda, Al Shabab & Al Nusra. The birthplace of 15/19 hijackers of 9/11.
Yet rather than see them from the enemy that they are, Western leaders insist that Saudi Arabia is our best friend forever, so we overlook everything, sell them weapons, buy their oil & let them spread wahhabism. Meanwhile, Russia for some reason is still our #1 enemy despite the cold war ending decades ago.
I genuinely think that we should sanction countries like Saudi Arabia, similar to what was done with South Africa, to try to get them to change their ways. So given the fact that the Paris agreement gives money to countries that kill gay people, I cannot support it because we can’t have both the Paris agreement and a trade/aid embargo on countries that kill gay people; the two are mutually exclusive.
@ John Hartz – “-1: If you want it to have a significant impact, your proposed embargo/sanction campaign should apply to military assistance as well. Do you agree?”
Yes.
@ Mosher – “On a happier note I am glad to announce that the great climate blog wars are over.”
Unfortunately, the killing of gay people is not over though.
@- -1
Every time you use your computer and the internet you are supporting enterprises that have put enormous amounts of money into the economies of Nations who kill gay people.
To remain ethically consistent I suggest you would need to cease all use of such technology.
Unfortunately I doubt you will be able to hold yourself to the standard you seek to impose on others.
-1, then we agree on Saudi Arabia. Climate “skeptic” Donald Trump just made a historically by arms deal with them so that they can keep their genocide against Yemen going and can keep on arming terrorists around the global. The same Donald Trump who is very popular with the WUWT & Co. crowd. Let’s end our dependence on oil so that we can stand up easier to this horrible regime. (I would be happy to do it immediately, but would expect modern conservative parties to prioritize economy over human rights.)
Victor
It has always bemused me that the war against co2 was only ever fought on one level, physics that is uncertain and open to criticism and refinement.
Very many people are not against the idea of renewables provided they are cost effective and have always been open to the idea of ensuring energy security. That is security In two senses, the first that ensures there is a constant flow of reasonably priced electricity and in the wider sense of securing our way of life by ensuring our money does not flow in vast amounts to regimes that hate us or are murderous, or persecute their own people’s.
We are very reliant on Russian gas and mid east oil and should wean ourselves off them for all sorts of reasons
Tonyb
@ Victor – “Let’s end our dependence on oil so that we can stand up easier to this horrible regime.”
Don’t need to end the dependence on oil, can just buy oil from Canada instead.
tonyb,
I think this is clearly not true (many of those fighting this “war” are clearly not using physics) but maybe you can quantify the uncertainty. Everything is uncertain at some level, so the existence of uncertainty isn’t, itself, a reason to do, or not do, something. What I often see are people who suggest that it is far more uncertain than it actually is, so would be interesting for you to clarify in what way you think it is uncertain, and the significance of this uncertainty.
Paris. Kills gay people.
Word. Placement. Games.
Vile.
A space-time rift breaks the Intertubes every time Freedom Fighters appeal to social justice to support their cause.
-1,
=={ As far as I’m concerned, anyone that wants to go around killing gay people doesn’t deserve healthcare. }==
Although this is in response to my earlier comment, it doesn’t really follow logically from my earlier comment. I asked you about the impact on access to healthcare. As one example, let’s take a poor child in NIgeria, who is subject to potential health risks as an outcome of increased ACO2 emissions, and who lacks access to the care needed to address those risks should they manifest. That child is likely to have never done anything to harm gay people. So the logic of your argument would imply that that child does not “deserve” healthcare because of her government’s policies towards gay people.
Surely, you wouldn’t be making that argument, right? So then please go back to my question. You spoke in an earlier thread about the impact of climate policies w/r/t access to healthcare for sick people. Withdrawing from the PA might increase health risks for people who have the least access to mitigating the health risks posed by climate change.
=={ Buy ethical oil from Canada instead. }==
This, also, essentially misses my point about your logic. By decreasing our support for renewables, we are stuffing the pockets of the oppressive governments who make vast sums of money from fossil fuels. I am asking you to compare the scale of that source of financial resources for those governments as compared to the funds they might receive from us to mitigate ACO2 emissions. You you not agree that the question of scale of those two sources of money, respectively, raises some questions about the logic of your argument? Since you are concerned about fighting against governments that oppress gay people, shouldn’t you be in favor of undercutting their main source of financial support? Wouldn’t that mean supporting alternative fuels, as opposed to withdrawing support for alternative fuels?
Please answer my questions.
=={ Don’t need to end the dependence on oil, can just buy oil from Canada instead. }==
Us buying oil from Canada only increases the money that countries like SA get from producing oil – unless everyone agrees to only buy oil from Canada, which of course is impossible as Canada couldn’t produce enough oil for that.
Please deal with the illogic of your arguments.
On another thread, -1 seemed to be arguing that we should be guided by cost benefit analyses and that, in fact, the optimal pathway is one that leads to more than 2C of warming. Did this optimal pathway ensure that we only sourced fossil fuels from countries that do not have policies/practices that we find objectionable?
tonyb –
=={ Very many people are not against the idea of renewables provided they are cost effective and have always been open to the idea of ensuring energy security. }==
How do you measure external costs so as to determine what is and isn’t cost effective?
> just buy oil from Canada instead.
Canada kills indigenous people:
https://www.thestar.com/opinion/commentary/2015/06/10/cultural-genocide-no-canada-committed-regular-genocide.html
When are you moving your investments to Sierra Leone, – 1?
Anders –
=={ On another thread, -1 seemed to be arguing that we should be guided by cost benefit analyses… }==
It is always interesting to see how “cost” is defined, and whether that definition remains constant.
If you have been enjoying a relatively relaxing Sunday and want to continue doing so, skip over the following.
Avoiding Two Degrees of Warming ‘Is Now Totally Unrealistic’ by Robinson Meyer, The Atlantic, June 4, 2017
Michael Oppenheimer, a Princeton scientist and longtime observer of UN climate talks, says that the world has lost its last shot at staving off dangerous global warming
Michael Oppenheimer has been thinking about climate change about as long as most Americans have been alive. For almost four decades, he has worked on answering the phenomenon’s two most pressing questions: How dangerous will climate change get? And what can humanity do about it? So after President Donald Trump announced his decision to withdraw from the Paris Agreement on Thursday, Oppenheimer was one of the experts I most wanted to hear from.
It helps that Oppenheimer, a Princeton professor since 2002, has worked on or in some of the most important environmental programs of the modern era. He is currently a coordinating lead author of the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, and he edits the journal Climatic Change. From 1981 to 1996, he worked as the senior scientist at the Environmental Defense Fund, where he helped frame the 1990 amendments to the Clean Air Act that reduced acid rain.
Along with other scientists, he lobbied the United States to start negotiating the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, which President George H.W. Bush signed 25 years ago this week. Since then, he has attended the major UN climate negotiations, including Paris in 2015.
I spoke to him on Friday about his outlook for climate treaties looking forward, Trump’s ability to roll back older climate policies, and whether the U.S. withdrawal from Paris could make global warming significantly worse. Our conversation has been edited for concision and clarity.
Click here to access the entire article.
Joshua –
“That child is likely to have never done anything to harm gay people. So the logic of your argument would imply that that child does not “deserve” healthcare because of her government’s policies towards gay people.”
Despite the fact that many people in South Africa who were not responsible for Apartheid were harmed by sanctions imposed on South Africa, the sanctions to end Apartheid were still justified. The same applies here.
“By decreasing our support for renewables, we are stuffing the pockets of the oppressive governments who make vast sums of money from fossil fuels.”
The Canadian government is oppressive?
Well I guess we don’t have freedom of speech (section 2 of the charter is made useless by section 1), the government supports an awful dairy/egg/poultry cartel that doubles the price of basic goods to poor people for no good reason, and many provincial governments such as Ontario force its citizens to fund religion via Catholic School boards, so maybe the Canadian government is oppressive.
” Since you are concerned about fighting against governments that oppress gay people, shouldn’t you be in favor of undercutting their main source of financial support?”
Canada oppresses gay people? Well I guess so for some of the above reasons, but those apply to everyone.
“Us buying oil from Canada only increases the money that countries like SA get from producing oil”
No, because there is lower demand for Saudi Oil, thus lower price.
“unless everyone agrees to only buy oil from Canada, which of course is impossible as Canada couldn’t produce enough oil for that.”
Canada does have a lot of oil.
@ Attp –
” Did this optimal pathway ensure that we only sourced fossil fuels from countries that do not have policies/practices that we find objectionable?”
No, but ideally if lots of countries put on enough pressure then Saudi Arabia and other such countries would cave within a decade, so the pathway would still be somewhat close to optimal.
-1,
But you haven’t actually done a cost benefit analysis? Of course, the reason I ask is because this seems to be your response to any suggestion that we should follow a pathway that doesn’t match the optimal cost benefit pathway.
Tonyb, I wish it was possible to have an adult conversation on politics in the USA. The people who do not want to have such an adult debate start with childish nonsense replies on science. As far as I can see politicians do use the arguments of dependence on foreign oil and local air pollution. Doing that leaves the weird climate “debate”.
Not sure whether that many politicians really want energy independence. It is a major motivation for the bloated US military, which has a lot of political power. Also Saudi Arabia has a lot of lobbyists in Washington. As long as money is so important in US politics this argument will likely just be for speeches back home.
-1, Europe and Asia cannot just replace Saudi Arabian oil with dirty and expensive Canadian. The USA hardly imports any, as far as I know, so they would not be impressed by a US only boycott; even if it is a dirty word for the Trump regime it would have to be global. But also in America Saudi Arabia determines the oil price being the producer with the lowest production costs and most spare capacity. It is a world market. (Trump just permitted key Keystone XL pipe line to export Canadian oil to the international market.)
-1,
Thanks for addressing my questions.
=={ Despite the fact that many people in South Africa who were not responsible for Apartheid were harmed by sanctions imposed on South Africa, the sanctions to end Apartheid were still justified. The same applies here. }==
I don’t agree, because you spoke of those children not “deserving” healthcare because their government has oppressive policies.
But once again, you are not dealing with the question of scale. I have raised it numerous times in this thread, as I did in the earlier thread.
=={ The Canadian government is oppressive? }==
No, but by increasing the demand/value of oil by buying Canadian oil (and not advancing the use of alternatives) we are enriching governments like Saudi Arabia.
=={ Canada oppresses gay people? Well I guess so for some of the above reasons, but those apply to everyone. }==
I’m afraid I wasn’t clear in articulating my point. Buying oil from Canada – as a direct outgrowth of not investing in alternative energies, increases the value of oil and puts money in the pocket of countries like SA and Nigeria.
=={ No, because there is lower demand for Saudi Oil, thus lower price. }==
We do not comprise the full measure of demand. Once again, in buying oil from Canada we increase the value of oil on the market – particularly when that decision is being made as the result of a deliberate decision to pull away from supporting alternative energy pathways.
=={ Canada does have a lot of oil. }==
Which gets more expensive to obtain the more we purchase from them – which does nothing to diminish the attractiveness of cheaper oil which can be provided to other countries from places like SA and Nigeria.
Of course, your policy proposal seems quite fantastical anyway, as the decision to pull out of the PA is part and parcel with an “American first” orientation that in turn is part and parcel of elevating our economic benefits over any human rights considerations. But even if there were the political will on the part of those who have advocated pulling out of the PA to buy only relatively expensive oil from Canada, it still wouldn’t solve the problem of scale in your argument.
Again, I’ll ask you the question left unanswered earlier: What proportion of the money that transfers from liberal democracies to benefit oppressive authoritarian governments do you suppose flows via climate-related policies?
Trump invoked his empathic concern for the welfare of the American individual. The spurning of Paris was framed as driven by his sympathy with the plight of the US worker who believes his life has been damaged by the collective global agreement that the PA represent.
In rejecting the benefit of a global collective in tackling a global problem is part of a rejection of collective governance more generally. Smaller national government, and governance in general is seen as a moral good. Expansion to global levels is therefore a great evil.
The experiment to test this dogma is ongoing in Brownback’s Kansas.
Trump claimed as justification his sincere desire to serve and protect a much smaller collective. The American individual worker.
Any discrepancy between the claims Trump makes and the actual effect of his actions is of course fake news or fact-checking depending on your tribal allegiance. If nothing else withdrawal from the PA increases polarisation.
izen –
=={ In rejecting the benefit of a global collective in tackling a global problem is part of a rejection of collective governance more generally. }==
It’s really a thing of beauty to see Trump’s argument stood on it’s head – to justify pulling out of the PA as a way to advance human rights, globally.
This thread has been hi-jacked by -1=e^iπ . Sad. Very sad.
attp
you queried my comment;
‘It has always bemused me that the war against co2 was only ever fought on one level, physics that is uncertain and open to criticism and refinement.’
I should perhaps have inserted the word ‘official’ or ‘at government level’ there may be a number of reasons to want to curtail co2 but the official line has always been to fight against rising temperatures, a somewhat amorphous and far off enemy that is difficult to quantify and for the general public to understand.
to curtail our reliance on it (primarily oil in this context) due to the money it is putting into the coffers of regimes that do not like us, or we do not in other ways approve of and who could cut off supplies, seems to me to be a compelling alternative narrative.
I remember when we came very close to petrol rationing and actually had vouchers issued as a result of the arab/Israeli war (1976?) . I thought at the time that this incident was sure to spark a change to alternative fuels/energy. In Britain’s case I thought that would revolve around using our oceans. it never came about and here we are forty years later, an island surrounded by a prime energy source we barely touch.
tonyb
JH –
=={ This thread has been hi-jacked by -1=e^iπ . . }==
-1 has held no one at gunpoint. No one has been forced to respond to him. Your “hi-jack” analogy fails, IMO.
=={ Sad. Very sad }==
And I would think that you would agree that on the grand scale, what has happened in this thread is completely insignificant. IMO, you should save your sadness for more important issues.
Joshua
you asked me
‘How do you measure external costs so as to determine what is and isn’t cost effective?’
That is a difficult one as it would depend on the ideology/politics of those setting the criteria.
from the consumers point of view it must be set at a reasonable price that enables you to heat your home without bankrupting yourself and that does not shackle business and those growing and transporting food etc.
Another big criteria is that it should always be available. Which is why I think development of battery technology is key at this time in order to cover the very large Achilles heel of solar and wind.
tonyb
tonyb,
I’m suggesting that your claim that it is difficult to quantify is not correct. We might not be able to quantify it exactly, but we can still quantify it with confidence intervals. Personally, I think the general public are more than capable of understanding.
tonyb,
I think you misunderstand the concept of an external cost. It is a real cost that someone will pay. If we don’t pay it now, then someone else will pay it later. There is, at least, an argument that we should not be passing on these costs to others.
tonyb –
=={ I should perhaps have inserted the word ‘official’ or ‘at government level’ there may be a number of reasons to want to curtail co2 but the official line has always been to fight against rising temperatures, a somewhat amorphous and far off enemy that is difficult to quantify and for the general public to understand. }==
That may be the first thing I’ve ever read from you that I agree with. Although I would argue that there is no particular reason that the different issues should be separated, it is true that there might be less polarizing and more effective lines of public advocacy for the reduction of reliance on fossil fuels than relatively low probability high damage impacts on century-long scales. It is interesting that in the US, conservatives like Bush led the charge for ethanol mandates under the stated rationale of decreasing dependency on foreign oil (I think, however, the real main motivating factor was the economic benefits to politicians elected from corn-producing regions).
Anders –
=={ If we don’t pay it now, then someone else will pay it later. }==
I would disagree in the sense that externalities are not only w/r/t what will be paid later. It also applies to costs we assume now but that aren’t reflected in the “prices,” such as health risks posed by particular matter and the vast geo-political “costs” of ensuring the availability of oil.
John Hartz says: “This thread has been hi-jacked by -1=e^iπ . Sad. Very sad.”
It is a pity the discussion is not more productive, but in principle this policy debate is the one we should be having. The science “debate” is there so avoid talking about the real issues that divide America. The nice thing is that everyone can join in.
But to hear it these days, corn ethanol and all the evils that flow from it are a direct and sole consequence of climate mitigation policies enacted by libruls.
BTW –
tonyb, I just thought that you might be interested that Judith routinely deletes any of my comments asking her to explain in some detail her approach to the vast uncertainties related to the economic “costs” of energy policies.
There are a variety of reasons why it is difficult to hold these discussions. Do you imagine the Trump administration, or in fact virtually anyone in the Republican Party, willing to engage in a comprehensive discussion of the various issues in play (other than just those related to the science of the GHE)? Any such discussion gets immediately polarized along partisan lines. I would imagine it is better on your side of the poind, but perhaps not.
BBD –
=={ But to hear it these days, corn ethanol and all the evils that flow from it are a direct and sole consequence of climate mitigation policies enacted by libruls. }==
Indeed – but if you look at the Bush administration’s initial policy documents, emissions gets barely a mention. The main rationale was dependency on foreign oil.
tonyb: “Another big criteria is that it should always be available. Which is why I think development of battery technology is key at this time in order to cover the very large Achilles heel of solar and wind.”
You could be politically right. The problem is we will only start to use storage when it is needed. With dropping prices it is sometimes already nice to have in small amounts, but the real need will be later. Especially as long as legacy oil and gas power plants are standing in the landscape that can take care of the fluctuations there is not much of a market.
Greenpeace Germany has started producing and selling wind gas. I would say it is much too early, but it may take some of the variability-anxiety away.
Joshua
I do miss you over there but you won’t tell anyone that you agreed with something I wrote will you? 🙂
I do not think things are as polarised over here but that brings its own problems in the acceptance of certain things, such as renewables are invariably good, which has impacted on our provision for future energy supplies.
I have never been against renewables but there are suitable horses for courses and a system that doesn’t work at night or poorly during the winter is not practical in a country that at best only gets 1700 hours of sun. Hence my comment on using energy from the ocrans as nowhere here is further than 70 miles from the coast.
I think trump missed a trick with Paris. The US has done well on reducing its emissions and it would have been easy to be able to take the moral high ground by suggesting resources should Instead be put into developing an Apollo type programme led by the States that was intended to refine renewables, find new sources, develop better battery technology and perhaps look at carbon capture.
This is better than a highly complex voluntary agreement which will have little impact on temperatures. Projects are exciting counting carbOn atoms is not. If the alternatives are better, then fossils fuels will naturally fade away. Instead trump has shot himself in the foot and damaged Americas leadership.
Tonyb
=={ I do miss you over there but you won’t tell anyone that you agreed with something I wrote will you? 🙂}==
My lips are sealed.
Noone over there reads my silly blog anyway, apparently, so you should both be fine.
The following article helps explain why Trump chose to start the process of withdrawing the U.S. from the Paris Accord. It’s all about keeping a large bloc of his political base of support happy – especially since he has yet to deliver on his other major campaign promises.
Why so many white evangelicals in Trump’s base are deeply skeptical of climate change</strong by Sarah Pulliam Bailey, Acts of Faith, Washington Post, June 2, 2017
In addition, see:
“I Worship Jesus, Not Mother Earth”: American Christian Exceptionalism and The Paris Withdrawal by Jacob J Erickson, Religion Dispatches, Anenberg USC, June 2, 2017
Pingback: Scott Adams is a tosser, part 2 – Stoat
John, I fear it’s much simpler than that.
Trump is a narcissist who loves attention.
Now he has it.
@-VV
” The problem is we will only start to use storage when it is needed. ”
Perhaps not.
Click to access pwc-future-utility-business-models.pdf
Within the next decade we anticipate that
step-change milestones will be reached
in at least some of the key disruptive
technologies – grid parity of solar
distributed generation, lower cost and
mass-scale storage solutions, vibrant
and secure micro-grids, attractive
electric vehicle options and ubiquitous
behind-the-meter devices.
There are economic drivers for utility business to establish storage. In New Zealand an energy company is offering the lease of a solar panel/battery storage system to its customers. A US utility is offering fixed low price power to anyone who will lease a storage system. It is a cheaper way of managing peak demand than upgrading the distribution system to allow for a centralised baseload source.
izen
The problem is that there is no battery technology that can compensate for solar seasonal variation (extratropical, obvz).
@-BBD
I think the claim is that distributed storage is an advantage whatever the generating source. It solves the problem that while it may be cheap to supply baseload, providing for a demand peak either needs additional fast response online central generation. As cities grow that entails a balance between distance and distribution costs. If a significant proportion of the consumers have storage then that peak demand can be sourced locally having been stored from cheaper baseload power. Or competitive renewables.
But battery storage is still Mesolithic. Incremental improvements and efficiencies of scale may not be enough.
Yes, and I’d agree with that.
And that as well. It worries me how much hinges on battery technology. In an ideal world, we need to get from knapped flint to Damascus steel in a decade or so. Also, given that the road to the future will be paved with untold billions of batteries, it would be nice if we could approach this manufacturing / recycling challenge coherently for once.
VTG: Trump’s narcissism is an overarching personality trait that impacts everything he says or does, Here’s an explantion for his decision to start the process of withdrawing the U.S. from the Paris Accord that strikes a chord with me and probably will with you as well.
Why Trump Actually Pulled Out Of Paris
It wasn’t because of the climate, or to help American business. He needed to troll the world—and this was his best shot so far.
By Michael L Grunwald, Politico, June 01, 2017
Donald Trump’s decision to withdraw from the Paris climate agreement was not really about the climate. And despite his overheated rhetoric about the “tremendous” and “draconian” burdens the deal would impose on the U.S. economy, Trump’s decision wasn’t really about that, either. America’s commitments under the Paris deal, like those of the other 194 cooperating nations, were voluntary. So those burdens were imaginary.
No, Trump’s abrupt withdrawal from this carefully crafted multilateral compromise was a diplomatic and political slap: It was about extending a middle finger to the world, while reminding his base that he shares its resentments of fancy-pants elites and smarty-pants scientists and tree-hugging squishes who look down on real Americans who drill for oil and dig for coal. He was thrusting the United States into the role of global renegade, rejecting not only the scientific consensus about climate but the international consensus for action, joining only Syria and Nicaragua (which wanted an even greener deal) in refusing to help the community of nations address a planetary problem. Congress doesn’t seem willing to pay for Trump’s border wall—and Mexico certainly isn’t—so rejecting the Paris deal was an easier way to express his Fortress America themes without having to pass legislation.
Trump was keeping a campaign promise, and his Rose Garden announcement was essentially a campaign speech; it was not by accident that he name-dropped the cities of Youngstown, Ohio, Detroit, Michigan, and Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, factory towns in the three Rust Belt states that carried him to victory. Trump’s move won’t have much impact on emissions in the short term, and probably not even in the long term. His claims that the Paris agreement would force businesses to lay off workers and consumers to pay higher energy prices were transparently bogus, because a nonbinding agreement wouldn’t force anything. But Trump’s move to abandon it will have a huge impact on the global community’s view of America, and of a president who would rather troll the free world than lead it.
Of course, trolling the world is the essence of Trump’s America First political brand, and Thursday’s announcement reinforced his persona as an unapologetic rebel who won’t let foreigners try to tell America what to do, even when major corporations, his secretary of state, and his daughter Ivanka want him to do it. He was also leaning into his political identity as Barack Obama’s photographic negative, dismantling Obama’s progressive legacy, kicking sand in the wimpy cosmopolitan faces of Obama’s froufrou citizen-of-the-world pals.
Click here to access the entire article.
Psychanalyzing Trump is best left to the pros, as is pyschoanalyzing those who have vested their mental health in a triumphal view of the Paris Accord:
https://vvattsupwiththat.blogspot.com/2017/06/climate-activisms-freudian-slip.html
tonyb –
In case you’re still reading:
An example of the kind of comment of mine that Judith deletes rather than passes through moderation.
I can’t figure out the logic of her moderation, so I’m curious as to your opinion: Why do you suppose that she will post other comments of mine that are on more trivial issues, but won’t post comments such as that one?
joshua
for what its worth, sometimes your questions are very long. convoluted and involved. Some times to answer them you would have to have been following the rest of your questions in the thread. In this excerpt that you quote you make reference to a previous question you had obviously asked and it may be there were others as well.
Judith these days tends to pop up and answer one off simple questions. I doubt if she has the time or inclination to read long involved evolutions of questions unless they relate to things she is specifically interested in.
perhaps ask short direct questions of her that don’t require her to wade through previous messages?
As regards moderation, there are plenty of times I go into moderation for some reason and plenty of times I don’t emerge the other side!
tonyb
tonyb –
=={ perhaps ask short direct questions of her that don’t require her to wade through previous messages? }==
I asked her similar, short questions earlier in the thread – with quotes that referenced exactly the statements that she made where she glossed over vast uncertainties. They were, likewise, deleted – so it isn’t just the vagaries of the moderation system. And I’m not asking why she doesn’t answer, but why she won’t allow the question to post.
It seems to me that maybe she is just very resistant to exposing her inconsistency in dealing with uncertainties, but I’m trying to see if there might be another explanation.
Joshua
I wouldn’t take it too personally. I think there is a combination of her being extremely busy getting her new business up and running, generally less tolerance of questions she may have been asked hundreds of times before that perhaps don’t deeply interest her and a reflection of the limited time she now spends on the blog.
Javiers latest article ran for many days and although interesting was well past it’s sell by date when the trump story broke. Yet She did not post on it for several more days, even though it was the biggest story in town.
Eventually I asked her on week on review if we were to have a chance to discuss it.a new article then appeared covering it. I would like to think it was my influence but the sad truth is she probably never even saw my comment but just realised that it was high time to post a new article. 🙂
Tonyb
-1: I can’t believe you got that thread going for so long. Such many blatant lies in his words! 🙂
What would we score that Willard? An irrelevant Bate and Switch?
First and foremost… We don’t give away any money for the Paris Accord. Case closed. Thanks for coming out.
Second… We take away people’s rights to get our oil. Yeah… you hate straight ethical people… they get a might sick drinking all the cr*p we stick down there;
http://www.cnn.com/2014/04/25/justice/texas-family-wins-fracking-lawsuit/index.html
Third… you have yet to pay for the oil you’ve already extracted. You have 1000 years to deal with that CO2… but how about all your ethical holes in the ground? We don’t make 1000 year concrete for down hole. Did you know that? We’re building perpetual environmental hazards. All wells leak, its just a matter of time;
Click to access SBachuTWatson.pdf
“I can’t believe you got that thread going for so long… An irrelevant Bate and Switch?”
Irrelevant? Gay people being killed is irrelevant to you? You think they are subhuman or something?
Maybe you and Trudeau don’t care about gay people being killed in Saudi Arabia. But some of us do.
“We don’t give away any money for the Paris Accord. Case closed.”
The Green Climate Fund is real, believe it or not.
“Experiments are great.”
What’s the experiment? Do we have a hypothesis? A data set? Any sense for how to control for the fact that the experiment is being conducted within a single nation-state?
-1,
Kudos. I assume that this is what you were hoping to do when you introduced this?
Very kind of you to perform your own reductio ad absurdum so no one else need bother.
Why do I find it quite impossible to number you among them?
> Irrelevant? Gay people being killed is irrelevant to you? You think they are subhuman or something?
OK. I’ll call you on that one, -1.
Let’s take Human Rights Watch’s 2017 World Report.
The rise of populism has led to many human rights issues. But it doesn’t stop there. If you look at the report, you’ll see just about every country in the world. From Afghanistan to Zimbabwe. And yes, even Canada is there. Besides the violence against indigenous women and girls, the rights of indigenous people, children in immigration detention center, here’s my favorite:
Do you want me to go on until you realize that your silly criteria should be enough to stop most if not all economic activity in the world?
***
Please, don’t ever try to peddle your atheist concerns ever again.
And I mean ever.
I hope I am making myself clear.
And by -1’s logic… American Farmers are subhuman, because we take away their rights to their land, and leave a toxic mess behind as a matter of course. On the internet no one can see you toll your eyes.
Willard… Talisman Oil is oh so nice to people.
http://www.cbc.ca/news/business/oil-politics-and-human-rights-a-look-back-at-talisman-1.2964715
This would be the money shot; “Oil companies will operate in other countries that have even worse human rights records than Sudan did, but if it is not on the radar screen of the activists, then you can go along and mind your own business.”
Just look what all that oil money paid for.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Sudanese_Civil_War
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LGBT_rights_in_Sudan
Talisman says they aren’t interested in politics? Well say no more… they have fought hard to hide the fact that they are in fact Global Warming deniers;
http://www.greenpeace.org/canada/en/blog/Blogentry/oil-money-funnelled-to-climate-denier-group/blog/36895/
Bringing us the Fiends of Science;
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friends_of_Science
Not sure if anyone else knows this… but the Saudi’s can’t drill for oil. The Saudi’s are beholden to American companies and in particular American technology to drill. Every Barrel of Saudi oil requires good old American know how.
In addition to the New York Times article I posted above, we now have this…
If there was any lingering doubt that a tiny clique of fossil-fuel barons has captured America’s energy and environmental policies, it was dispelled last week, when the Trump Administration withdrew from the Paris climate accord. Surveys showed that a majority of Americans in literally every state wanted to remain within the agreement, and news reports established that the heads of many of the country’s most successful and iconic Fortune 100 companies, from Disney to General Electric, did, too. Voters and big business were arrayed against leaving the climate agreement. Yet despite the majority’s sentiment, a tiny—and until recently, almost faceless—minority somehow prevailed.
How this happened is no longer a secret. The answer, as the New York Times reported, on Sunday, is “a story of big political money.” It is, perhaps, the most astounding example of influence-buying in modern American political history.
As the climate scientist Michael Mann put it to me in my book “Dark Money,” when attempting to explain why the Republican Party has moved in the opposite direction from virtually the rest of the world, “We are talking about a direct challenge to the most powerful industry that has ever existed on the face of the Earth. There’s no depth to which they’re unwilling to sink to challenge anything threatening their interests.” For most of the world’s population, the costs of inaction on climate change far outweigh that of action. But for the fossil-fuel industry, he said, “It’s like the switch from whale oil in the nineteenth century. They’re fighting to maintain the status quo, no matter how dumb.”
In the Withdrawal From The Paris Climate Agreement, The Koch Brothers’ Campaign Becomes Overt by Jane Mayer, The New Yorker, June 5, 2017
@ Willard-
“Do you want me to go on until you realize that your silly criteria should be enough to stop most if not all economic activity in the world?”
So from what I gather, you would have been against sanctions on South Africa to end apartheid?
@ John Hartz –
“the heads of many of the country’s most successful and iconic Fortune 100 companies, from Disney to General Electric, did, too.”
Corporations care about profits and it is good PR to pretend to be green. It would be unprofitable not to support the Paris Agreement because supporting it is good for your corporation’s public image.
-1,
Are you being incredibly disingenuous on purpose, or do not you realise what you’re doing?
Just pointing out that it’s inconsistent to say we shouldn’t sanction countries that kill gay people cause that halts economic activity, but at the same time say that sanctioning countries that treat black people as second class citizens is fine.
-1,
I don’t think Willard was suggesting that we shouldn’t sanction countries that kill gay people. What he was suggesting – I think – was that if your decision as to whether, or not, to engage in economic activity with a country was determined by whether or not they engage in any practices that are objectionable, then you would probably decide to not engage in economic activity with any country. This isn’t to condone such activities, just to suggest that if you’re going to apply such standards, you should apply them consistently.
You could argue that, depending on the severity of the human rights abuses, you should take different approaches.
You could argue anything you like, but what you might want to consider is avoiding leading, and loaded, questions. You introduced this and then managed to accuse someone of being subhuman, or something. Until convinced otherwise, I will assume that this was the intent, and might suggest that you were more interested in scoring a point, than in objecting to human rights abuses.
I did not accuse anyone of being subhuman. Please do not create false accusations.
-1,
Oh please. Asking the question is pretty close. Let me lay this out for you.
1. You introduced a link between the Paris agreement and humans right abuses.
2. You got to suggest that someone who disagreed with you was subhuman.
3. I don’t believe that this is about human right issues. I think you simply found a reason to object to the Paris agreement and to then smear those who disagreed with you.
4. I might be wrong about 3, but that doesn’t change what I think. If you don’t like this, you could try to avoid playing this game. Human rights issues are, in my view, serious and they should not be used to score cheap points.
5. Try reading Willard’s comment again.
The only time I brought up ‘subhuman’ was asking someone who said that the killing of gay people was irrelevant if they thought that gay people were subhuman. I was asking a question, I did not claim anyone was subhuman.
-1,
True, you asked if he thought gay people were subhuman. My bad, but it doesn’t change my point. I don’t regard it as reasonable to use human rights abuses to score cheap points. It makes me think that you’re more interested in scoring cheap points, than really campaigning for human rights. I find that rather unacceptable, but it seems that you’re happy to do such things.
You should also bear in mind that the point being made was that your link between the Paris agreement and human rights abuses was irrelevant, not that the human rights abuses themselves were irrelevant.
More fake humanity from -1.
How is it irrelevant? Paris agreement involves giving billions of dollars to countries that kill gay people.
If developed countries got together and imposed sanctions on countries that kill gay people, I bet you at least a few of them would cave and stop killing gay people.
But apparently wanting to stop the killing of gay people is ‘scoring cheap points’.
-1,
The point (which you really must be able to get) is that the argument was that human rights abuses are not relevant to the Paris agreement, not that human rights abuses themselves are not relevant. Even if you disagree with the former argument, it doesn’t justify you misrepresenting what was being suggested.
Yes, this is probably true. If you want to campaign for this, then I think you should go ahead and do so. My current view is that you’re less interested in this, and far more interested in finding a reason to dismiss the Paris agreement.
It really does seem as though you haven’t given any of the comments aimed at you any thought whatsoever. Either that, or you’re being intentionally disingenuous.
Looks like nobody’s convinced, -1.
When a rhetorical gambit fails, the smart thing to do is drop it and move on rather than rolling around in the filth like a terrier in fox shit.
I see that you guys are resorting to assigning a false motive to me and then using an appeal to motive fallacy in order to avoid confronting my arguments. Perhaps that’s because you can’t justify supporting an agreement that involves giving billions of dollars to countries that kill gay people, but don’t want to admit it to yourselves.
“irrelevant” (to some particular question) does not imply “unimportant”. There are many problems in the world, and preventing action on one because of a lack of progress on another is a case of “letting the perfect be the enemy of the good”. A more productive approach is to get everybody signed up for action on climate (as far as the science/economics cost-benefit analysis recommends) and put pressure on countries that persecute homosexuals, or Christians or Muslims or ethnic minorities, or exploitation of the poor etc. to stop doing so.
One thing that certainly won’t help is “asking questions” that imply someone else plausibly thinks homosexuals are subhuman, for which there wasn’t the slightest bit of evidence. Please -1, you are not doing your case any good by indulging in this kind of rhetorical attack.
“Paris agreement involves giving billions of dollars to countries that kill gay people.”
The Paris agreement may *possibly* result in transferring money to countries that kill homosexuals.
However, there is also a considerable overlap between those countries that kill homosexuals and countries that get billions of dollars every year…from selling fossil fuels (Saudi Arabia, Iran and parts of Nigeria and Sudan come to mind).
-1,
I’m not assigning a false motive. I’m telling you that I don’t trust your motives and telling you that I think you’re being disingenuous. I might be wrong, but doubling down isn’t going to convince me.
No, it’s because, as far as I’m concerned, the Paris agreement involves finding a way for the developed world to help the developing world deal with climate change. It makes no mention about, as far as I can see, specific countries, or about human rights abuses. There may even be some merit in using this to try and influence human rights issues, but it might also be better to deal with that in a way that is independent of how we deal with climate change.
You introduced this to – as far as I can tell – play rhetorical games and to, ultimately, suggest that those who disagree with you don’t object to human rights abuses. This seems, to me, an attempt to use these abuses to score a point, rather than some genuine objection to these human rights abuses.
-1 wrote “If developed countries got together and imposed sanctions on countries that kill gay people, I bet you at least a few of them would cave and stop killing gay people.”
yes, and it would probably reduce the chances of them taking action on climate change by (i) reducing the resources available for them to do so and (ii) making them hostile to the developed world. “Carrots and sticks”, not just “sticks” is likely to be the best approach to solving both problems, and perhaps more. Thinking that difficult political problems have simple solutions with no downsides seems naive to me.
They don’t come any cheaper than this.
I think it may be time for -1 to either leave or be given their own separate territory to poison.
This is brilliant.
I wonder, -1, if you are a subhuman pond dweller with an aptitude for dishonesty and an unhealthy regard for your own sadly inadequate intellect.
For clarification, I’m not claiming that you are subhuman, a pond dweller, dishonest, self-regarding or intellectually inadequate.
I’m just asking a question.
vtg,
Indeed. I think I’m strongly leaning towards intentionally disingenuous.
Yes, I think this discussion has run its course and we’re simply starting to go over old ground again.
“The only time I brought up ‘subhuman’ was asking someone who said that the killing of gay people was irrelevant if they thought that gay people were subhuman. I was asking a question, I did not claim anyone was subhuman.”
Rashomon.
Ironic that the comments section under “Trump and Paris” is a close parallel to the real world “Trump and Khan”
Is Trump a sad excuse for a human being?
Is -1 analogous to a sad excuse for a human being?
I’m just asking questions. I have not claimed anyone is a sad excuse for a human being, or analogous to such.
Directly related to the OP…
President Donald Trump has, after months of procrastination and deliberation, carried through with one of his campaign pledges by announcing that he will withdraw the US from the Paris Agreement on climate change.
In a long speech delivered in the Rose Garden at the White House, Trump said the landmark 2015 deal was “very unfair” on the US. He added:
“In order to fulfil my solemn duty to protect America and its citizens, the United States will withdraw from the Paris Climate Accord, but begin negotiations to re-enter either the Paris Accord or a really entirely new transaction on terms that are fair to the United States, its businesses, its workers, its people, its taxpayers. So we’re getting out. But we will start to negotiate, and we will see if we can make a deal that’s fair. And if we can, that’s great. And if we can’t, that’s fine.”
It is not yet clear exactly what process he will deploy to achieve his desired exit from the deal, but Article 28 of the Paris Agreement provides a clause allowing parties to pull out which would take four years to complete. This means it would likely conclude on the eve of the next US presidential election. What he did not say – as many had feared – was that he would pull the US out entirely of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC).
Carbon Brief has produced an interactive grid rounding up the diverse range of reaction from across the world. Scroll down through the grid, or use the filters, to view dozens of reactions, ranging from business leaders and newspaper editorials, through to politicians, scientists and NGOs. [ My bold.]
Global reaction: Trump pulls US out of Paris Agreement on climate change, Media Analysis by Carbon Brief Staff, Carbon Brief, June 2, 2017
@- -1
“Paris agreement involves giving billions of dollars to countries that kill gay people.”
Factually wrong.
The Green Climate Fund has 43 projects underway. None are in gay-killing oil-producer nations.
In most of these projects the GCF provides a small percentage of the total value of the project, most comming from the Government involved with some from private enterprise. The ‘Billions of Dollars’ is not the total of donations, but the value of the projects, most of which GFC is paying a small fraction to promote, not subsidizing the total.
You can view the GCF projects here –
http://www.greenclimate.fund/projects/browse-projects
The closest I can find to giving money to gay-killers might be the 25m USD (less than half the total project value) given to a climate change/resilience government grant program to protect wetlands in Uganda.
If you think that sanctions should be directed at Uganda then unless you advocate a TOTAL ban on all interactions (Cuba?), such a project would seem well down any target list of effective boycotts.
izen
Yes, but you cannot play nasty little word placement games with ‘Paris’ and ‘billions’ and ‘kills gay people’ if you stick to the facts.
The Green Climate Fund was created by resolution of the UNFCCC in March 2011 at COP 16 held in Cancun, Mexico.
Cick here for a complete and official history of the Green Climate Fund.
Click here to access the Green Climate Fund website.
One of the most throught-provoking essays about climate denial that I have recently come across.
The lead paragraph
Those of us who study in the field of “Religion and Ecology” often experience befuddled looks when strangers find out what we do. “I didn’t know that was a field,” goes one response. “I didn’t realize those two things go together,” is another. One of the most common is, “Oh, so you study evangelicals who deny climate change?” The whole field is reduced to a single topic: climate denial.
A key paragraph:
I would clarify at the beginning and at the end of the day, climate denial is fundamentally about the multiple complexities of privilege and injustice. Climate change is disproportionately caused by the “Global North,” especially in histories of colonial Euro-American, Christian, neoliberal capitalist, and white privilege and violence. Most emissions of carbon and use of carbon emerge in such places and the global warming wrought in the aftermath impacts the daily lives, ecologies, and communities least responsible. Denial curls itself inside those global privileges and injustices and distributes itself across the planet as modes of self-preservation. To question climate denial is to interrogate at privilege.
The Many Faces of Climate Denialby Jacob J Erickson*, HuffPost US, June 6, 2017
*Jacob J. Erickson is Assistant Professor of Theological Ethics at Trinity College Dublin, the University of Dublin. Erickson writes within the creative interdisciplinary fields of environmental ethics, “Religion and Ecology,” and ecotheology. His primary research focuses on how religious imagination wrestles with, grieves, adapts to, and thinks about ecojustice and global warming. He’s a contributor to six academic books of theology and his writing has appeared in The Huffington Post, The Christian Century, Syndicate, and Religion Dispatches. His 2015 Religion Dispatches piece on Pope Francis’ “climate encyclical” won the Wilbur Award from the Religion Communicators Council.
ATTP: If you want to create the “Never-Ending” comment thread, make your next OP about Erickson’s essay. 🙂
-1=e^iπ : Here’s more foder for you to use in your campaign to protect the human rights of gay people throughout the world.
The U.S. foreign aid budget, visualized: From building wells to building armies, by Max Bearak and Lazaro Gamio, Washington Post, Oct 18, 2016
[No baits on peddlers’ stuff, please. This horse is dead – Willard]
[Playing the ref won’t help bypass the ultimatum posted yesterday. No more proto-atheist crap, please. – Willard]
Anders… Actually this is what it was like in Canada under conservative rule. Ethical Oil was really a thing here. Which is also why I know so much about how bad other oil countries are.
https://www.desmog.ca/ethical-oil
True to any Climate Ball antagonist, -1, is avoiding 2 facts. 1) there’s no evidence that we’re required to give money away, 2) human rights trampling is currently paid for with fossil fuels.
Oh and billions.. that’s a low number -1. We’re getting hit by Global Warming induced bills that big in Canada right now. Ice Roads need to be replaced with real high ways..
On the other hand, even if you take what -1 says as true, we do know one thing. There will be fewer humans left with rights to trample.
So, I’m not sure where all that logic leads, but its an interesting bait and switch. -1s arguing that fossil fuel pollution is good because it already tramples rights? I dunno how much more broken think there could be.
oily –
=={ 2) human rights trampling is currently paid for with fossil fuels.}==
I think that is the important point, and it is one that -1 repeatedly failed to address. The implication of her/his logic is that pulling out of the PA will significantly advance the rights of gay people. Rather absurd on face value, but in fact supporting the PA would effectively divert huge sums of money (in balance) from regimes that deny civil rights to hundreds of millions.
Notice how s/he failed address that aspect of her/his argument, despite being asked to do so multiple times.
Willard –
What is “proto-atheist”? Have you drawn the line on the discussion of -1’s concerns about gay people?
Joshua,
I say “proto-atheist” because -1 identified zeself as an atheist last time ze probed AT’s mind, and because “but what about the gays” is a known gambit among atheist Freedom Fighters:
.https://twitter.com/nevaudit/lists/freedomfighters
(Hint: Muslims.)
The list contains a few atheists, but that’s not its main area of focus. It has no area of focus, actually: it’s a placeholder for about anyone who invokes Freedom. It also needs to be cleaned up. It’s not as robust as my list on the Contrarian Matrix.
Fighting for freedom while invoking social justice is a thing of beauty. Since it’s a justice argument it can easily be flipped, e.g. what about all the millions of innocent children who die because of economic sanctions?
Arguments are easy to track after a while.
Yet we love our Sweet Shop Owners;
Joshua: Actually ignoring real arguments and facts are the hallmark of a denier such as -1. Its easier to just engage with verbose innuendo, and emotional pleas. Even better… spread it around everywhere.. anywhere else. Fill the forum!
The cold hard reality is that there isn’t a perfect silver bullet solution to everything going on in the world. [Snip. – Willard]
Please go discuss “but the gays” elsewhere, please.
Syria failed to sign on to the Paris Accord because of sanctions imposed in response to the civil war. The one partially triggered by AGW enhanced drought.
Nicaragua declined signing up to the Paris Accord because the government regarded it as merely aspirational, not operational. The justification was that
Nicaragua’s representative said they were trying not to block the compromise because his intention was “to work to perfect it” with some suggestions “for the good of mother earth and humanity” .
Trump has withdrawn from the aspirational declaration of collective responsibility not because it does too little to help the planet, but because it may do something to hurt the US people. By restricting aspects of the local economy.
As the value of the Accord was in the demonstration of a global consensus the US withdrawal destroys the primary quality inherent with the unanimity. (except the token rebel who complains it is not strict enough!)
It would be consistent with this stance to propose the withdrawal from the Montreal Protocols on the basis that American jobs in the CFC.s industry were a higher priority than a planetary UV barrier.
Especially as Trump has declared repeatedly his certainty that the CFCs in his favourite hairspray could NEVER have any impact on the ozone layer.
“So if I take hairspray and I spray it in my apartment, which is all sealed, you’re telling me that affects the ozone layer? “Yes.” I say no way folks. No way. No way. That’s like a lot of the rules and regulations you people have in the mines, right, it’s the same kind of stuff.”
Directly related to the OP and some of the comments on this thread…
After Paris, it’s clear the Trump GOP no longer cares about policies — they’re just trolls
Whatever ideas and principles the Republicans once had have devolved into self-destructive, small-minded malice
Bob Cesca, Salon, June 6, 2017
“In an ideal world, we need to get from knapped flint to Damascus steel in a decade or so.’
In the real world their use continues to overlap. albeit Asian Wootz technology played dead for two centuries for economic reasons, before is recent rediscovery, less by materials science than a Florida blacksmith. We still don’t have the skill set to synthesize mant metamorphic rocks properly and the only fleck of metallic hydrogen so far seen enjoyed its brief life confined by a pair of natural diamond anviis-
The stone age isn’t over because we’re not through with it any more than ideologues are through with abusing materialism.
Steven Mosher:
“Just make a bright line, you either double down on your commitment or you are “normalizing” Trump.”
Trump was elected. Some small part of it was his views on global warming. On the left right continuum, a flag was stuck into the ground, to the right of the prior flag. The flag represents X amount of support. One does not have to agree with the idea of a flag and can question if it’s real. They can say Ragnaar’s new flag is a false one. But there are many flags. The consensus climate scientist flag, the rest of the world flag, the MSM flag and the we got the money congress flag. Papers may be written on the new flag. Trying to explain where society went wrong? But we could also get along with the new flag being a democracy and all and possibly accomplish some more things. Maybe the left could reconsider nuclear, pipeline and fracking. As the consensus played out after the first Cook paper, it was leftward flag migration. You on the right are so far away. A can hardly see you. Did you see the Trump voters though?
Directly addressing the issues raised in the OP…
President Trump’s decision to withdraw from the Paris Agreement on climate change has raised questions about the effectiveness of the accord, and how that will change without the US.
In his announcement, Trump incorrectly claimed the deal would avoid just 0.2C of warming. In fact, nine separate studies show, on average, that full implementation of current climate pledges would avoid 1C of warming, compared to a business-as-usual world.
Analysis by Carbon Brief finds that if the US reneges on its Paris pledge and takes no action to reduce emissions, it could result in around 0.2C to 0.3C additional warming, whereas a delay in implementation of four or eight years would have minimal impact.
Carbon Brief explains how these temperature estimates are made and explores the impacts of Paris, with and without US participation.>/em>
Analysis: Meeting Paris pledges would prevent at least 1C of global warming by Zeke Hausfather, Carbon Brief, June 6. 2017
Two more excellent articles about Trump’s decision to begin withdrawing the U.S. from the Paris Climate Accord. The first analyzes how the Trump Regime turned the UN’s Green Climate Fund into a piece of propaganda. The second adresses how the Trump team cherry-picked the results of an MIT analysis of the climate impacts of the Paris agreement.
Beyond a lie: The White House is creating misinformation as propaganda by Eric Boehlert, Media Matters/Salon, May 7, 2917
Trump used our research to justify pulling out of the Paris agreement. He got it wrong. , Opinion by John Reilly, Washington Post, June 7, 2017
Delingpole’s latest Breitbart trumpery shouts:
Paris –
Trump Just Dodged
A $2.5 Trillion Bullet
Trouble is that he made up this high calibre factoid- this is the third in a row:
https://vvattsupwiththat.blogspot.com/2017/06/and-now-for-breitbarts-alternative.html
BBD:
russellseitz:
If Russell is saying what I think he is, then he’s right IMO. If Russell’s not saying what I think he is, then I’m saying it and he’s on his own.
What I, for one, am saying is that technological development comprises multiple anastomosing threads, as it were, each extending ahead either more or less independently of other threads. Since most if not all technology threads are (again, more or less) driven by “markets”, older but still economically competitive tools and techniques can persist indefinitely alongside the “bleeding edge” of other developments.
As a case in point, this article in the Business section of the NYTimes last week, titled The Biggest, Strangest ‘Batteries’, may interest BBD especially. On that particular edge, it appears a lot of the prerequisite bleeding may already be done. In any case, IMHO it’s important to understand (I’m not saying BBD doesn’t, mind) that the crucial transition to a carbon-neutral society will not entail mass exsanguination 8^|!
An excellent analysis of wrong-headed thinking about manmade climate change existing within the Trump Regime…
From ‘it’s not real’ to ‘it’s not urgent,’ take a tour through the many shades of climate change denial wielded by Donald Trump’s administration.
5 Shades of Climate Denial, All on Display in the Trump White House by Marianne Lavelle, InsideClimate News, June 9, 2017
Kudos to Jeffrey Sachs for telling it like it is!
President Donald Trump’s withdrawal of the United States from the Paris climate agreement is not just dangerous for the world; it is also sociopathic. Without remorse, Trump is willfully inflicting harm on others. The declaration by Nikki Haley, the US ambassador to the United Nations, that Trump believes in climate change makes matters worse, not better. Trump is knowingly and brazenly jeopardizing the planet.
Trump’s announcement was made with a bully’s bravado. A global agreement that is symmetric in all ways, across all countries of the world, is somehow a trick, he huffed, an anti-American plot. The rest of the world has been “laughing at us.”
These ravings are utterly delusional, deeply cynical, or profoundly ignorant. Probably all three. And they should be recognized as such.
Trump’s Climate-Change Sociopathy, Commentary by Jeffry D Sachs, Project Syndicate, June 7, 2017
Here’s another one paragraph summary of Trump’s decision to begin withdrawing the U.S. from the Paris Climate Accord that resonates with me…
Or, at least it used to be the country they are taking down. Now it’s the world. With the president’s destruction of the Paris climate change accord, American conservatism is now bringing it on a planetary scale. Could this possibly be more jaw-dropping in its sheer stupidity? We are talking here about a phenomenon that literally threatens life on this planet, and conservatives – who are otherwise so consumed with fear so much of the time – insist on rejecting slam-dunk scientific evidence and making sure that we perish instead. Again, the pathological psychology of these folks is the only way to understand such a suicide mission, such an act of terrorism on a global scale. The president’s speech was entirely laced with the rhetoric of bogus grievance – about how the United States is the laughing stock of the world because we’re being duped and cheated by smarter, tougher, more cynical countries, and blah, blah, freaking blah… Apart from the sheer absurdity of this trope on the basis of any sort of actual logic or fact, there remains this outstanding question: Even if it was all true, who the hell cares? If the planet winds up being destroyed, does it really matter whether in the preceding years one country’s GDP grew a half-percent slower than that of some other countries? What’s that old line about deck chairs…? Could there be any other accurate term for a belief system that so jeopardizes an entire planet than ‘death machine’?
Stop Legitimizing ‘Conservatism’: It’s Not an Ideology – It’s a Goddamn Death Machine by David Michael Green*, Common Dreams, June 5, 2017
*David Michael Green is a professor of political science at Hofstra University in New York.
“Buy ethical oil from Canada instead.”
http://dilbert.com/strip/2006-02-19
Tillerson wanted the US to stay in the Paris accord.
Tillerson has known since the 80’s that climate change is real – his science staff informed him.
You don’t get to be CEO of a $40 billion a year profit company by hiring scientists from Trump U.
Tillerson was smart and treacherous and spent <0.1% of the profits(chump change) to spread Fear(you'll lose your job!!!) Uncertainty(Models are inaccurate, therefore the risk is too small to take action) and Deception(Donors Trust, Heartland Institute, Mark Morano, Willie Soon) polarizing and paralyzing the body politic, delaying action and protecting Exxon's profits.
Tillerson has a plan, and the continuing evolution of the Paris accords will be more effective without the US at the table. Tillerson undoubtedly has a plan B, because that Trump is an arrogant, willfully ignorant, egotistical buffoon comes as no surprise.
There will be a great interest in the remaining signatories to Paris to Carbon tax the wealthy – which is US,