Trump Misunderstood MIT Climate Research, University Officials Say (reuters.com) 361
MIT officials said U.S. President Donald Trump badly misunderstood their research when he cited it on Thursday to justify withdrawing the United States from the Paris Climate Agreement. From a report: Trump announced during a speech at the White House Rose Garden that he had decided to pull out of the landmark climate deal, in part because it would not reduce global temperatures fast enough to have a significant impact. "Even if the Paris Agreement were implemented in full, with total compliance from all nations, it is estimated it would only produce a two-tenths of one degree Celsius reduction in global temperature by the year 2100," Trump said. "Tiny, tiny amount." That claim was attributed to research conducted by MIT, according to White House documents seen by Reuters. The Cambridge, Massaschusetts-based research university published a study in April 2016 titled "How much of a difference will the Paris Agreement make?" showing that if countries abided by their pledges in the deal, global warming would slow by between 0.6 degree and 1.1 degrees Celsius by 2100. "We certainly do not support the withdrawal of the U.S. from the Paris agreement," said Erwan Monier, a lead researcher at the MIT Joint Program on the Science and Policy of Global Change, and one of the study's authors. "If we don't do anything, we might shoot over 5 degrees or more and that would be catastrophic," said John Reilly, the co-director of the program, adding that MIT's scientists had had no contact with the White House and were not offered a chance to explain their work.
Not "misunderstood" (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: Not "misunderstood" (Score:5, Insightful)
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Name me a binding agreement between two countries, then.
Re: Not "misunderstood" (Score:5, Informative)
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Why would the other country care if it's been ratified by a congress that isn't theirs? That congress has no authority over the other sovereign state. What is the Finland going to do if Russia says, "Well we know we had agreement, but we're not going to honor it." Absolutely fucking nothing, that's what.
Any treaty between two sovereign powers is non-binding because the other can just ignore it if they REALLY feel like it without being held directly accountable by anyone except the other party, who must reso
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Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations - ratified by the United States Senate unlike the Paris Accord.
Which funny enough let China keep growing emissions for another 13 years, and funneled US money to India forever while Russia just would ignore it as there was no teeth behind the accord.
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I want to know how King Stupid is 100% confident in that "two tenths of one degree" figure but 0% confident in all the others.
Let's focus on the trivial (Score:3, Informative)
Science or not, funneling American wealth to third world countries via a non-binding agreement is enough of a reason to oppose participation in this treaty and to be glad it was never submitted to be potentially ratified.
The amount of "American wealth" that is "funneled to third world countries" is so small a number that you can't even see it in the pie chart of the government budget expenditures. It is absolutely and completely negligible.
If that's your objection, you are focussing on the trivial.
(The one exception here is American aid to Israel, if you want to call Israel a third-world country; totaling $127.4 billion. But most of that it military aid, not energy.)
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Remember, when dealing with pseudo-skeptics, all that counts in their eyes is that they made an objection. The objection may be absurd, it may be outrageous, it may in fact be an outright lie, but so long as they can say they objected, they somehow believe they've falsified an entire field of research.
Re:Let's focus on the trivial (Score:5, Insightful)
How is disagreeing with the political solution akin to "somehow believe they've falsified an entire field of research"?
You can think AGW is real and disagree on funneling money to poor nations. In addition, you can disagree with how much foreign aid Isreal receives and disagree on money transfer in the Paris Accord. These things are not mutually exclusive.
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It's MightyMartian. Don't even try.
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The Paris agreement proposed sending $100 billion per year to developing countries. Now, how much of that would have come from the US is obviously not known, and of course it'd probably never have reached $100 billion, but that's certainly not negligible, but any stretch of the imagination.
On a side note, the US currently spends ~$40 billion in foreign aid per year, of which ~$3.1 billion goes to Israel. Whether you consider ~$40 billion "negligible" is, of course, a matter of perspective.
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how much of those $40Billion return to the US because they are managed by US personal to acquire US based companies services and goods?
It is always so easy to forget the grand picture when you are focus in a detail
Re:Let's focus on the trivial (Score:4, Insightful)
Republicans love saying things like foreign aid and welfare as they get reported in dollars where as military spending that only gets reported in percentages that make little sense unless you have seen the entire budget breakdown. Letting them argue over pennies when thousands are being wasted elsewhere.
The whole us budget is online in lots of charts and grafts. I encourage people to take a look at the entire budget what comes in what goes out and what is the total spent on various aspects. Forget any political sound bite that shows just how screwed up Washington is.
We start the year in a hole because Washington assumes 3-5% growth in taxes to start budgeting. Then you have politicians using GDP when they mean annual revenue. The military is 11% of the GDP but 30% of revenue. GDP doesn't apply to capitalist countries. Using it as a meteric is misleading at best and close to outright lying
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Here, take a look at this chart [cbo.gov] - it's from the CBO, and all numbers on it are relative to GDP.
The military is 11% of the GDP but 30% of revenue.
See above chart - "Defense" is $582BN, which is 3.3% of GDP, but represents 18% of the $3.2T Revenue the government collects - I'd love to see where you came up with "30% of revenue"...
"Defense" accounts for 15% of the federal budget.
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Hmm...then you'll be wanting to accept climate refugees graciously into your home when the U.S. has helped put them out of their home countries due to climate induced changes, yes?
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nope, they can move to syria or iraq -- thus completing the circle of strife.
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and then join ISIL and attack US related targets
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Science or not, funneling American wealth to third world countries...
Well, it sure is good that the USA didn't do anything stupid like spending a trillion dollars trying to impose democracy on Iraq. :)
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Science or not, funneling American wealth to third world countries via a non-binding agreement is enough of a reason to oppose participation in this treaty and to be glad it was never submitted to be potentially ratified.
I wish I had mod points for you. You get it. Sadly, many here do not. America is not a charity for the rest of the world. It's not a matter of wanting to be either. It's logically not possible for one country representing a small fraction of the world's population to prop the rest of the world up. It's a nice idea, it just doesn't match reality. To quote one of my favorite songs by RUSH, "You can twist perception but reality won't budge."
Re: Not "misunderstood" (Score:5, Informative)
"Per capita, however, the U.S. pumped out more CO2 than China and India combined in 2015. On average, each individual living in the United States contributed 16.07 tons to the country’s total. But each individual living in China and India contributed 7.73 and 1.87 tons on average, respectively." quote from https://www.usatoday.com/story... [usatoday.com]
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Why are you using per-capita output? The atmosphere doesn't care about per-capita output.
And China and India are INCREASING their emissions and will continue to do so as they develop and each capita demands a higher standard of living. Their options are to increase pollution or kill a bunch of people. (Or, considering their governments and social structures, why not both?)
Re: Not "misunderstood" (Score:4, Insightful)
Why are you using per-capita output? The atmosphere doesn't care about per-capita output.
And China and India are INCREASING their emissions and will continue to do so as they develop and each capita demands a higher standard of living. Their options are to increase pollution or kill a bunch of people. (Or, considering their governments and social structures, why not both?)
What else than a per capita output?
Would you give Luxembourg the same CO2 allowance as india?
Kepping less developed countries down by restricting their CO2 output to a fraction of those in the US won't fly this day and age.
Re: Not "misunderstood" (Score:4, Interesting)
Why are you using per-capita output? The atmosphere doesn't care about per-capita output.
And China and India are INCREASING their emissions and will continue to do so as they develop and each capita demands a higher standard of living. Their options are to increase pollution or kill a bunch of people. (Or, considering their governments and social structures, why not both?)
What else than a per capita output?
Would you give Luxembourg the same CO2 allowance as india?
Kepping less developed countries down by restricting their CO2 output to a fraction of those in the US won't fly this day and age.
How about per-industrial-GDP? India has about 1/2 the CO2 emissions of the US, but only 1/9 the industrial-GDP** and 1/5 the exports...
By simply using per capita measures, you ignore that some countries have more export and more industrial GDP per capita. By simply assigning CO2 emission targets per capita for a country, you are essentially transferring the equilibrium industrial and export-related jobs from one country to another country. Depending on your politics this is either the only fair thing to do, not fair at all, inevitable, or unfortunate.
**the total GDP of the US is about 9x that of India and both India and the US have about 20% of their GDP as industrial GDP, so by extrapolation the industrial-GDP of the US also about 9x that of India...
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And you know why India and China are increasing their output? To produce all the shit Western countries, including the US have outsourced to them. Most of their exhaust by far is caused by Western countries buying the stuff they produce and hauling it over the whole planet.
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who should pay for fighting global warming? the country that do almost no pollution or the one that is huge polluter?
If the USA do not want to pay any money, simple, be totally green... if you do that, you can even get some money from the other polluters!
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Science or not, funneling American wealth to third world countries via a non-binding agreement is enough of a reason to oppose participation in this treaty and to be glad it was never submitted to be potentially ratified.
I wish I had mod points for you. You get it. Sadly, many here do not.....
I don't think you get it either. Where have you been in the last 16h years? The Iraq War, and the still on going may be escalating Afghanistan War has cost us over $2+ Trillions and counting. You think wealth didn't transfer from the American people into the pockets of the few who profited from the never ending war?
Charity goes both ways, immediately after 9/11, we were the biggest recipient of world charity. Some countries even sent their kids off to a foreign land to help us fight our war? ...hmmm..
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This is the big issue. It's not that Trump wants to destroy the planet, like some snowflakes keep yacking about. It's the funneling of a hundred of billion dollars into third world countries where it won't mean a damn.
What if instead we took that 100 Billion and put it toward domestic improvements in our own carbon emissions. You know, clean up our own crap instead of paying someone to clean up theirs.
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Convert away from coal to natural gas. Which is cleaner and the country as much more of than coal. Coal's day is done. It doesn't matter if Trump wants to save the industry. The market has already decided to kill it off. Trump may get a few more years out of it by mining it and selling it to China, but in the US its dead.
I would rather see that 100B put to use building more natural gas plants to replace coal. Or even better put into alternative resources like better fission, solar, or even fusion r
Re: Not "misunderstood" (Score:4, Informative)
Try reading it.
India specifically gets US dollars to fund it's green industry pretty much forever. China gets to keep uping emissions for 13 years and then the US pays them to use green energy that they are already building. Russia just gets to ignore the entire thing.
Several other 3rd world countries also gets US dollars but not as bad as the above. It was a horrible accord that only an idiot would sign *John Kerry*
Re: Not "misunderstood" (Score:5, Insightful)
Try reading it.
India specifically gets US dollars to fund it's green industry pretty much forever. China gets to keep uping emissions for 13 years and then the US pays them to use green energy that they are already building. Russia just gets to ignore the entire thing.
Several other 3rd world countries also gets US dollars but not as bad as the above. It was a horrible accord that only an idiot would sign *John Kerry*
So what part do you disagree with?
1) The part that global warming is a real and serious problem.
Or 2) the part where the US helps other countries reduce their emissions, as a result of the US being one of the nations most responsible for the problem, who benefited the most from prior emissions, and who is most capable of dealing with the problem.
I think #1 is quite true, and once you accept #1 then #2 makes a lot of sense as well. For all the talk of cash transfers to 3rd world countries many on the right seem to think the only "fair" way to deal with global warming is for the West to keep living like kings while the developing world goes pre-industrial.
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The part where there is no enforcement, no requirement to do what was promised, and the 1.2 trillion dollar cost over 20 years to pay other countries to pretend that they are doing something.
Well lucky for you there was no enforcement or requirement to do what was promised.
So if the US felt like the other countries weren't doing anything you could simply not pay them.
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More to the point, he cannot read very far into any document without losing his attention. First off, it doesn't mention "Trump" in every paragraph. Second, it refers to terms he's never seen before, like "science". Third, it probably contains mathematics which for him means if it isn't second grade math, he's lost.
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You assume that he attempted to read the document.
I doubt this. More likely, he was working from a briefing about the document from Steve Bannon or another advisor.
Re: Not "misunderstood" (Score:2)
I don't think Trump "misunderstood" the science; he didn't have any understanding of the science in the first place.
That's what the word misunderstood means. To fail to understand. Like if you misunderstood the meaning of the word "misunderstood", you would not have any understanding of it in the first place.
Re:Not "misunderstood" (Score:4, Insightful)
"It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it!" --Upton Sinclair, 1935
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So rather un-understood
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I don't think Trump "misunderstood" the science; he didn't have any understanding of the science in the first place.
Trump has been consistently wrong on every issue. I keep waiting for him to make a mistake and accidentally get something right, or perhaps just try it once just to see what it feels like, yet incredibly it hasn't happened yet. It's really extraordinary when you think about it.
Re:Not "misunderstood" (Score:4, Interesting)
That would only make him happy because then he'd be the greatest martyr that ever lived. If you really want to cause him pain, then it would be better if he were ignored and the rest of the country moved on without him and his alleged administration.
Re:Not "misunderstood" (Score:5, Informative)
If you want to hit Trump where it hurts, you get him in the one thing that he really values: himself. I don't want to see him assassinated. Beyond that fact that it's a bad idea to call for the death of any US President - no matter the reason - it wouldn't "fix" this problem. Instead, I want to see him kicked out of office, jailed, and for his name to become toxic. When people think "Nixon", they think of a crook. I want his name to represent so much worse to the point that nobody wants anything to do with the name "TRUMP". That would really hurt Donald as his name seems to be the thing he values above all else. (I will apologize to anyone who happens to have the Trump last name, though.)
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So...the study says, "...global warming would slow by between 0.6 degree and 1.1 degrees Celsius by 2100..."
But now he says, "If we don't do anything, we might shoot over 5 degrees or more..."
So is he saying that if agreement were fully implemented and everyone reached their goals, then we would shoot to only 3.9?
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Yeah, Trump says a .2 degree reduction in temperature isn't enough. .6 - 1.1 degrees is the anticipated effect, not a reduction in temperature.
TFS says a slow down (of the rate of increase) of
So maybe Trump got it wrong, but he got it wrong on the other side. He said something far better than the Paris agreement is not enough to justify handing over billions yearly (and increasing yearly) to third world nations. And he's right.
I doubt he cares, and I don't believe he's being honest/genuine about any of hi
Given what we've seen of Trump... (Score:2)
Huh? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Which is worse, liar or idiot? Or maybe equal parts of both.
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Capable? He wrote books on both
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Consequences? (Score:2, Informative)
Will Trump ever be called to account for these lies and distorted half-truths? His behaviour is going to cost many lives, and not just in the US. That amounts to something worse than criminal behaviour to my mind, and I would like to see him ultimately tried by an international court.
How diplomatic of them (Score:5, Informative)
What *does* he understand? (Score:3, Insightful)
I think it would be easier to simply list the things he *does* understand. That should be an incredibly short list.
I'm assuming "tying my own shoes" probably aren't on that list.
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Things Trump understands:
Angrily posting barely-coherent tweets
Committing sexual assault (AKA "grabbin' pussy" without consent)
Screwing over small businesses
The meaning of "covfefe"
How to make casinos go bankrupt
Doesn't matter ... (Score:2)
... Trump wanted to put one of his campaign promises in the "win" column.
America has spoken and that's precisely what America wants.
It is what it is.
Until America votes otherwise, we will continue to masturbate to thoughts of isolationism.
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At the end of the day it is what it is.
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You win. lol
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At the end of the day, it is what it is.
He didn't read the research (Score:2)
What part was "misunderstood"? (Score:2)
So...what part of MIT's work did the prez misunderstand here? (It seems he got his cost info elsewhere, but what part of the benefit did he miss, exactly?)
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So...what part of MIT's work did the prez misunderstand here?
The part that said if we do nothing, it's +5 degrees by 2100.
Re: What part was "misunderstood"? (Score:2)
No, that's implicit. We can either do nothing and warm 5.5 degrees, or sign the agreement + spend a shitload of mkney and warm 3.9 degrees. That's the comparison that leads to the conclusion that there's very little benefit.
Of course your response ignores a third option; don't sign this turd of an agreement and do something else instead.
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Of course your response ignores a third option; don't sign this turd of an agreement and do something else instead.
Do you actually think President "Moar Coal Jobs" Trump, advised by Steve "Who needs the EPA" Bannon, will do something about climate change?
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I wouldn't call a nearly 30% difference "very little benefit".
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And your response ignores "doing nothing" involves spending 10-100x that shitload of money building sea walls, dealing with flooding, more violent storms, and relocating millions of people when their homes/businesses are consumed by the ocean. +5.5 and Miami is gone. +3.9 and it stands a chance.
As for "do something else", you are well aware that option is something listed just to make you feel better, right?
Here's The Problem (Score:2)
I think the problem is that the issue was not reduced to 9 bullet points or less on a single sided sheet using only one and two sylable words.
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It also didn't use 6 of those bullet points to discuss how Trump is a winner.
That's Not News (Score:2)
It would be only news if Trump understood it. Or anything more complex than how to con people with simple tricks, really.
Tell me about the science he got right. (Score:2)
Because if you list the science he gets wrong, you will be here long after he is dead and buried.
He misrepresented (Score:2)
He didn't misunderstand it - he didn't care (Score:2)
Did you hear the people applauding him as he made the announcement? The smarmy waves of satisfaction coming off the man? That's what this whole thing is about. The science doesn't matter at all. Him understanding it or not doesn't matter at all.
This whole thing was about looking good in front of his base and gathering their applause. Nothing else. If he did understand the science or not, it would have been irrelevant to him. That wasn't the point at all.
This whole exercise was about standing on a
Trump Chose to "Understand" Something Else (Score:3)
Trump chooses to believe what and who he wants to believe. In this case, it was Kimberly Guilfoyle of "The Five" on Fox News [washingtonexaminer.com]. This is no joke. When it comes to big decisions, Boss-T, the President of the United States, is picking up the phone to TV celebrities on deliberately-biased cable news shows, rather than the leading tech executives in the country, international diplomats, and god knows who else, including, apparently, MIT Scientists.
If Putin invades Poland, I wonder who he'll call to ask whether he should push the button on Russia?
Big win for Kimberly, though... she's got her eye on replacing Sean Spicer in his thankless job as Trump's mouthpiece [washingtonpost.com], this making her the ONLY winner from this announcement.
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To be fair, this is actually a tactic that works politically. It doesn't work at making the world a better place, but it does work at staying popular because you are simply tapping into already popular opinion and re-enforcing it. It is the great flaw with democracy, you end up with the leadership you deserve rather than what you need.
I'm not convinced that this is a "tactic" that T or a crony actually thought through before he did it. I'm still of the barely-informed opinion that T's just winging-it up there, and these tweets and phone calls are childish and/or desperate attempts to get some positive feedback for doing something he's already decided to do [washingtonpost.com].
OTOH, I completely agree that, for whatever reasons he does what he does, it works, for now at least, tapping into an already popular opinion and re-enforcing it. The great flaw wi
"Trump misunderstood..." (Score:2)
Scientists write boring. SAD! (Score:2)
Maybe the scientists should have included more colorful charts, and mentioned Trump more:
National security officials put Trump's name in their briefings as much as possible so he will keep reading [businessinsider.com]
Follow the money (Score:2)
So let me get this straight: it's the scientists that are super-greedy liars, and it's the Corporate Execs (i.e. Billionaires and millionaires) that are on the side of reason and are looking out for humanity and the planet?
Are these are the same billionaires that told us lead in gas was safe and tobacco didn't cause cancer.
1/5 of a degree C is not a "tiny amount". (Score:5, Informative)
Sure, it makes no difference to whether you want to put a sweater on, but that's not the point. The troposphere is vast, and 0.2 C represents an immense amount of kinetic energy, which in turn drives dramatic changes in circulation and precipitation patterns. You can get a sense for this by calculating how much energy an average of 0.2 C represents.
Start with this: how much does a cubic meter of air weigh? Have you ever thought about that? A cubic meter of dry air at sea level weighs about 2.7 pounds. How much energy does it take to raise 2.7 pounds of dry air by 0.2 degrees? It turns out you can look that kind of thing up. It takes about 245 joules.
Now take that 245 joules/m^3 and multiply it by the volume of the troposphere. As you recall from calculus, you can approximate this by taking the surface area of a sphere 6,371,000 meters in radius and multiplying by the troposphere's roughly 11 km height. You should end up with a figure on the order of magnitude of 10^18 joules.
Or you can think of that as being roughly the same as 20,000 Hiroshima sized bombs. Granted the density of air 10 km up is somewhat less, but we haven't factored in the gigatons of water vapor in the atmosphere. Or interactions with the oceans; most of the excess energy goes into the oceans, and that in turn affects climate in countless ways. That's how palm trees grow in Southern Britain, even though Cornwall's further north than Maine.
And yet... You just can't feel a 0.2C change. Then again you can't feel the Coriolis force either, but that can bend a subtle pressure gradient hundreds of miles long into a cyclone, a feat no human agency can resist, much less match.
Scale matters. If there's anything scientific and mathematical literacy should teach, it's that. That's why the future of the planet can't be trusted to a semi-literate ignoramus.
The source [Re:Of course it was Trump] (Score:3)
...Did the study use a lot of jargon, confusing verbiage, and passive voice? Did it make clear and specific projections, or was everything couched in "if this scenario and those people do that then something might change here to cause this effect"?
The study summary is here: http://meetingorganizer.copern... [copernicus.org]
The MIT press release summarizing results is here: http://energy.mit.edu/news/how... [mit.edu]
Re:Of course it was Trump (Score:4, Insightful)
Holding the president accountable for decisions that his brand, and whoever is associated with it, makes?
Is there any president who we give a pass for making retarded world-scope decisions because of "jargon, confusing verbiage, and passive voice"? Maybe if the president of the united states and his advisors can't reason with jargon, confusing verbiage, and passive voice, they should look into alternate career paths.
Maybe Obama just misunderstood the TPP.
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Was it Trump who misunderstood the study, or government advisers?
Seems kind of irrelevant. I mean, I don't think that anyone imagines Trump is actually reading scientific studies. Obviously someone is telling him these things. It could be advisors, but it seems just as likely it's something someone said on Fox and Friends. Regardless, his statements about the research were inaccurate.
Was it Trump who misunderstood the study, or did the study not communicate clearly?
Not sure if English is your second language or something, but in English, if you fail to understand something because it was not communicated properly, it's still proper to say that you
Re:Of course it was Trump (Score:4, Insightful)
Not to put too fine a point on the issue but...
Was it Trump who misunderstood the study, or government advisers?
Many Trump advisors such as Musk and Iger, along with the CEOs of massive businesses including Exxon and Chevron (oil companies!), Microsoft, Apple, Goldman Sachs, GE, etc told Trump leaving the Paris Accords was a bad idea. Several, specifically Musk and Iger, have already stepped down from advisory councils. The only advisor Trump trusts is Trump. He has explicitly said so.
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Fuck you. The "passive voice" is the best "voice".
It is perfect for writing which needs to be neutral, factual, and unencumbered by shitty spin or hyperbole. The fucking Word grammar check always harasses me about using a "passive voice" whenever I have to fire it up to write an evaluation or a technical document. If I knew how the fuck to disable that rule I would, but I'm not about to dig through the ever-changing options menus to find it for how infrequently I use Word.
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CO2 has the properties it has regardless of your views on international agreements or your favorite international conspiracy. The universe well and truly doesn't fucking care about your fantasies. CO2 absorbs and re-emits solar radiation as it does, irrespective of whether you think some evil conspiracy is involved.
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Then if it's so important, why not do without the gender bullshit?
And if we're all going to die now, well, Trump offered to renegotiate the accord in a way that's more fair to the US. And who knows, would maybe even get approved by Congress, and therefore be binding! And the Europeans told him to pound sand.
Why do the Europeans hate the world and want us all to die?
Re: Did he misunderstand the bit about gender equa (Score:2)
It's not a question of conspiracies; just read the damn thing.
Here's the part he was referencing:
Parties acknowledge that adaptation action should follow a âoecountry-driven, gender-responsive, participatory and fully transparent approach, taking into consideration vulnerable groups, communities and ecosystems, and should be based on and guided by the best available science and, as appropriate, traditional knowledge, knowledge of indigenous peoples and local knowledge systems, with a view to integrat
Re:Did he misunderstand the bit about gender equal (Score:5, Informative)
Women commonly face higher risks and greater burdens from the impacts of climate change in situations of poverty, and the majority of the world’s poor are women.
and
Parties to the UNFCCC have recognized the importance of involving women and men equally in UNFCCC processes and in the development and implementation of national climate policies that are gender-responsive by establishing a dedicated agenda item under the Convention addressing issues of gender and climate change and by including overarching text in the Paris Agreement
So...my interpretation of the above is: don't just focus on the issues of a specific group but make sure this is for the common good, because lord knows the history of modern (or past) civilizations doesn't have a bad tendency to focus on certain groups which may be in power and not work for the common good.
yeah, I don't have a problem with what they are saying now that I understand it. They have an effing valid point.
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Well, you can a little bit now, or pay a whole lot later. Near as I can make out, we've only promised about $4 Billion, and $3 Billion was previously committed outside of Paris. You are aware that the U.S. total budget for 2017 is about $4 Trillion. Nice mathematical straw man you have there....you could work in the Trump administration, they have no mathematical literacy either.
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You sorta hit the mark. Just the wrong target.
1 - climate changes
2 - we are causing it
3 - the changes will be bad (for us)
The image I posted is about #2. Your post is about #3. An argument regarding #3, even one much better than the one you made, even the best argument ever heard by human ears, says nothing about #2.
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Right.
http://www.cnbc.com/2017/02/27... [cnbc.com]
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You need look no further than the Iran deal.
Obama needed a deal with Iran. He would not take no for an answer. The Iranians noticed this and held him upside down by the ankles and shook a billion dollars out of his (our) pockets.
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Just because you know that stepping on the brake won't stop your car in time to prevent you from going over the cliff doesn't mean you should stop and press on the accelerator instead.
The Paris Treaty wasn't very good, especially since countries were only going to make half-hearted attempts to make the goals that weren't going to prevent us from going over 2 degrees C. But trying to reach mediocre goals is a heck of a lot better than the status quo which is a hell of a lot better than what is going on in th
Can we have a +1 fucking stupid moderation? (Score:3)
Paris is about as strong as they could get without being a real treaty. It's all legal games to avoid having to really fight huge multi-national industries and their unprecedented power to corrupt and sucker millions around the globe.
Like the other lame "agreements" preceding it, Paris was just a step forward as the next agreements will gradually get stronger as the consequences motivate more and more people. Likely ending in global geoengineering efforts and a historic MESS which will be sold as "it coul
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The U.S. is the second largest carbon emitter in the world. And if you account for the global manufacturing that sells primarily in U.S. markets we are the largest. We are also the largest carbon emitters per capita, the American life style wouldn't scale to the world's population. We're not even sure if the American lifestyle will scale to the U.S.'s population in the near future.
Something is going to have to change and adapt, but by definition a Conservative is unwilling to make concessions that would alt
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Regardless of how you feel about CO2 concentrations affecting the climate, CO2 concentrations do drive ocean acidity.
Re:Comments from MIT Climate Scientist Dr. Lindzen (Score:5, Informative)
I looked into Lindzen's arguments ten years ago when he was the darling of the denialist movement. I stopped bothering when he made a statistical argument that was completely invalid for any data sample that has serial correlation. Any MIT student who'd passed 18.05 would be able to spot that.
He's a crackpot, like Andrew Wakefield is on vaccinations. Wakefield too had impressive academic associations; he got his medical degree from the Imperial College School of Medicine, which is harder to get into than Harvard Medical School, and was a fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons. He was also a crackpot.
The only difference between Wakefield and Lindzen is that science is a lot more tolerant of crackpots than medicine is.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
I'd say that Dr. Lindzen should put more effort into demonstrating the validity of his claims in the scientific literature, but frankly he's just not that good at it.
We've been trying for about 120 years to disprove the idea that CO2 can cause changes in climate, or longer if you want to start counting from Tyndall. And it was indeed considered to be proven false through much of the 20th Century. But the things that we thought would prevent this from happening turned out to be untrue, and the consensus grad