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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.
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Trump Misunderstood MIT Climate Research, University Officials Say

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  • by XXongo ( 3986865 ) on Friday June 02, 2017 @11:45AM (#54535765) Homepage
    I don't think Trump "misunderstood" the science; he didn't have any understanding of the science in the first place.
    • by negRo_slim ( 636783 ) <mils_orgen@hotmail.com> on Friday June 02, 2017 @11:52AM (#54535845) Homepage
      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.
      • Name me a binding agreement between two countries, then.

        • by butchersong ( 1222796 ) on Friday June 02, 2017 @12:09PM (#54536019)
          That would be pretty much any treaty that has properly gone through the senate.
          • 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

        • 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.

          • 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.

      • 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.)

        • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

          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.

        • 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.

          • I think the figure was about $3B from the US for the Paris agreement.
          • by higuita ( 129722 )

            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

        • by peragrin ( 659227 ) on Friday June 02, 2017 @12:21PM (#54536191)

          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

          • by kenh ( 9056 )

            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.

      • by gtall ( 79522 )

        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?

      • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

        by Anonymous Coward

        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. :)

      • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

        by zifn4b ( 1040588 )

        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."

        • by Barsteward ( 969998 ) on Friday June 02, 2017 @01:01PM (#54536605)
          Believe it or not, USA is NOT the only contributor to the Paris Agreement, the USA contribution is only 3% of the total figure. So you want to pollute and let everyone else clear up the mess. We all have responsibilities to this planet.
          "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]
          • 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?)

            • by Paradigma11 ( 645246 ) <Paradigma11@hotmail.com> on Friday June 02, 2017 @01:46PM (#54537135)

              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.

              • by slew ( 2918 ) on Friday June 02, 2017 @04:18PM (#54538457)

                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...

            • by tsa ( 15680 )

              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.

        • by higuita ( 129722 )

          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!

        • 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..

      • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

        by jwhyche ( 6192 )

        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.

    • by gtall ( 79522 )

      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.

      • 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.

    • 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.

    • by Ichijo ( 607641 ) on Friday June 02, 2017 @12:48PM (#54536469) Journal

      "It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it!" --Upton Sinclair, 1935

    • So rather un-understood

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      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.

  • Is there anything he DOESN'T misunderstand (aside from repaying favors perhaps...)
  • Huh? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by wbr1 ( 2538558 ) on Friday June 02, 2017 @11:49AM (#54535799)
    Misunderstood? Or willfully misconstrued to fit an agenda?
  • Consequences? (Score:2, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward

    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.

  • by chispito ( 1870390 ) on Friday June 02, 2017 @11:51AM (#54535821)
    There is a difference between "misrepresented" and "misunderstood."
  • by ilsaloving ( 1534307 ) on Friday June 02, 2017 @12:00PM (#54535925)

    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.

    • 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

  • ... 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.

  • I think the correct statement would be whoever read the research to told trump that deliberately mislead him. Trump doesn't read anything pass 140 characters.
  • MIT study says accord would yield a benefit of 0.6 degree and 1.1 degrees Celsius change by 2100. President weighs cost of implementing vs. MIT's expected benefit and says "too much work for too little effort."

    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?)
    • 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.

      • 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.

        • by Nidi62 ( 1525137 )

          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?

        • I wouldn't call a nearly 30% difference "very little benefit".

        • 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?

  • 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.

  • It would be only news if Trump understood it. Or anything more complex than how to con people with simple tricks, really.

  • Because if you list the science he gets wrong, you will be here long after he is dead and buried.

  • He didn't misunderstand, he misrepresented the facts to fit his narrative. I don't know if he knew what he was saying was not true or if he was simply regurgitating what his staff fed him, but the end result is the same.
  • 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 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.

  • Is the beginning of an infinite sequence.
  • 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]

  • 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.

  • by hey! ( 33014 ) on Friday June 02, 2017 @02:22PM (#54537461) Homepage Journal

    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.

Understanding is always the understanding of a smaller problem in relation to a bigger problem. -- P.D. Ouspensky

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