Last week director of the White House National Economic Council, Gary Cohn, said aboard Air Force One: “Coal doesn’t even make that much sense anymore as a feedstock,” he instead praised natural gas as “such a cleaner fuel” — and one that America has become an “abundant producer of.” Top Trump aide: Coal doesn’t make ‘much sense anymore’.
United Nations Secretary General António Guterres had a warning yesterday for nations that choose not to rapidly shift away from fossil fuels: ‘Get on board the climate train or get left behind’.
Our Dear Leader and climate change denier Donald Trump, who abdicated the U.S. role of “leader of the free world” last week in his first foreign trip, apparently has decided that the U.S. should be left behind.
The New York Times reports, Trump Poised to Pull U.S. From Paris Climate Accord:
President Trump is expected to withdraw the United States from the Paris climate agreement, three officials with knowledge of the decision said, making good on a campaign pledge but severely weakening the landmark 2015 climate change accord that committed nearly every nation to take action to curb the warming of the planet.
A senior White House official cautioned that the specific language of the president’s expected announcement was still in flux Wednesday morning. The official said the withdrawal might be accompanied by legal caveats that will shape the impact of Mr. Trump’s decision.
And Mr. Trump has proved himself willing to shift direction up until the moment of a public announcement. He is set to meet Wednesday afternoon with Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, who has advocated that the United States remain a part of the Paris accords and could continue to lobby the president to change his mind.
Even as reports surfaced about his decision, Mr. Trump posted on Twitter that he will make his intentions known soon.
Still, faced with advisers who pressed hard on both sides of the Paris question, Mr. Trump appears to have decided that a continued United States presence in the accord would harm the economy; hinder job creation in regions like Appalachia and the West, where his most ardent supporters live; and undermine his “America First” message.
Advisers pressing him to remain in the accord could still make their case to the boss. In the past, such appeals have worked. In April, Mr. Trump was set to announce a withdrawal from the Nafta free trade agreement, but at the last minute changed his mind after intense discussions with advisers and calls from the leaders of Canada and Mexico. Last week, a senior administration official said Mr. Trump would use a speech in Brussels to make an explicit endorsement of NATO’s Article 5 mutual defense provision, which states that an attack on one NATO member is an attack on all. He didn’t.
The exit of the United States, the world’s largest economy and second-largest greenhouse gas polluter would not dissolve the 195-nation pact, which was legally ratified last year, but it could set off a cascade of events that would have profound effects on the planet. Other countries that reluctantly joined the agreement could now withdraw or soften their commitments to cutting planet-warming pollution.
“The actions of the United States are bound to have a ripple effect in other emerging economies that are just getting serious about climate change, such as India, the Philippines, Malaysia and Indonesia,” said Michael Oppenheimer, a professor of geosciences and international affairs at Princeton, and a member of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a United Nations group that produces scientific reports designed to inform global policy makers.
Once the fallout settles, he added, “it is now far more likely that we will breach the danger limit of 3.6 degrees.” That is the average atmospheric temperature increase above which a future of extreme conditions is considered irrevocable.
The aim of the Paris agreement was to lower planet-warming emissions enough to avoid that threshold.
“We will see more extreme heat, damaging storms, coastal flooding and risks to food security,” Professor Oppenheimer said. “And that’s not the kind of world we want to live in.”
Foreign policy experts said the move could damage the United States’ credibility and weaken Mr. Trump’s efforts to negotiate issues far beyond climate change, like negotiating trade deals and combating terrorism.
“From a foreign policy perspective, it’s a colossal mistake — an abdication of American leadership” said R. Nicholas Burns, a retired career diplomat and the under secretary of state during the presidency of George W. Bush.
“The success of our foreign policy — in trade, military, any other kind of negotiation — depends on our credibility. I can’t think of anything more destructive to our credibility than this,” he added.
But Mr. Trump’s supporters, particularly coal state Republicans, cheered the move, celebrating it as a fulfillment of a signature campaign promise. Speaking to a crowd of oil rig workers last May, Mr. Trump vowed to “cancel” the agreement, and Stephen K. Bannon, Mr. Trump’s chief strategist, has pushed the president to withdraw from the accord as part of an economic nationalism that has so far included pulling out of the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a multilateral trade pact, and vowing to renegotiate the North American Free Trade Agreement.
Coal miners and coal company executives in states such as Kentucky and West Virginia have pushed for Mr. Trump to reverse all of President Barack Obama’s climate change policies, many of which are aimed at reducing the use of coal, which is seen as the largest contributor to climate change.
* * *
Although the administration has been debating for months its position on the Paris agreement, the sentiment for leaving the accord ultimately prevailed over the views of Secretary of State Rex W. Tillerson and Ivanka Trump, the president’s daughter and close adviser, who had urged the president to keep a seat at the climate negotiating table.
Other countries have vowed to continue to carry out the terms of the Paris agreement, even without the United States.
President Xi Jinping of China, the world’s largest greenhouse gas polluter, has promised that his country would move ahead with steps to curb climate change, regardless of what happens in the United States.
During a telephone call in early May with President Emmanuel Macron of France, according to the Chinese Foreign Ministry, Mr. Xi told the newly elected French leader that China and France “should protect the achievements of global governance, including the Paris agreement.”
But the accord’s architects say the absence of the United States will inevitably weaken its chances of being enforced. For example, the United States has played a central role in pushing provisions that require robust and transparent oversight of how emissions are monitored, verified and reported.
Without the United States, there is likely to be far less pressure on major polluting countries and industries to accurately report their emissions. There have been major questions raised about the accuracy of China’s emissions reporting, in particular.
Vox.com reports that Scientists are testing a “vaccine” against climate change denial but Trump is an anti-vaxxer as well, so whadaya gonna do?
Conservative never let facts stand in the way of their ideology, or their fetish with the extractive industries. The world will be moving away from burning fossil fuels whether they like it or not.
Liberal never let facts stand in the way of their ideology, or their fetish with the “Man is to blame” industries. The world will not be moving toward alternative energy sources whether they like it or not.
Can’t argue with that. Conservatives, moving as briskly as possible into their 19th century fantasy world, and wanting to drag the entire world into it, where workers are paid scraps, 9 year olds work in factories, non whites know their place, women stay at home with old white men making their reproduction decisions for them , and coal smoke fouls the air causing rickets in industrial cities.
And leftists always wander into their fantasy world where they think they know what conservatives want. Of course that means coming up with the most extreme, childish and idiotic things they can think of. They then blather on and on ad naseum about them as if they actually represented something other than a straw man created so the leftists can feel better about themselves.
Frances, I would like to give you some kudos for something, originality, cleverness, word play, something…but I can’t. Your recitation of “Conservative characteristics” is the usual blather repeated so often on the pages of this blog that they have no punch left in them. Worst of all, they don’t even remotely reflect what conservatives want, and on some level you know that. You are too smart not to know that…and that is not flattery, it is just a statement of fact.
You can’t articulate what conservatives want because their actions and rhetoric reflect moving into some fantasy world that never existed and certainly doesn’t now. Treat workers like dirt, move jobs to China into name of profits, destroy the environment, have reproduction police, privatize education because of the bromide that, “the private sector ALWAYS does it better”. You can have incompetents teach, and the unqualified and dangerous do professional work in the name deregulation, along with tax cuts, both magic bullets in the economic development strategy of the right. Turn public lands over the States who can’t manage what they have. But whine like babies, when the Federal government won’t subsidize a none native trout fish farm on the Colorado. Need we go on? You can’t deny these. Conservatives have played the same tune so long, and it doesn’t work there, Paul Laffer, er, Paul Ryan, voodoo economists extraordinaire. The world will not go back to your Ozzie and Harriet/ Gone With the Wind, world. It’s the rank hypocrisy of conservatives that is most sickening.
Well, since you like laundry lists, let’s go down a list of just some of the major accomplishments of the left:
• Since 1973, 92,400,000 babies have been killed in the name of “reproductive choice”;
• Since 1965, $7,100,000,000,000 has been spent on Johnson’s “Great Society” programs and the current poverty rate is higher than it was when we started;
• Since 1965, there has been an 11 fold increase in single mother households, which virtually guarantees a life of poverty;
• Since 1965, the promulgation of the mistaken fantasy that restricting individual liberty and private property rights will produce a better society with government efforts to manage economic and social structures;
• Since 1965, it espoused the mistaken belief that a mob of men is better at managing society than having core national values that protect individuals and their property and enforce laws that ensure equal protection of citizens while limiting government and allowing individuals to protect themselves;
• Since 1965, it pushed the mistaken idea that social safety nets imposed on the populace are more compassionate than allowing the individual the freedom to fail (or succeed) from one’s own life decisions;
• Since 1965, it has worked hard to push the mistaken belief that the involuntary re-distribution of wealth is somehow moral;
• Since 1965, that trite and antiquated terms like “Morality”, “Honor”, “Character”, “Patriotism”, “Duty”, etc., have no place in a modern society, and, in fact, are harmful to the greater good of society;
• Since 1965, it has essentially ostracized Christianity while embracing any other form of worship as long as long as it allowed them to demonize Christianity.
I could go on and on and on but I will stop here. As you will notice, most of comments start with 1965. Why? Because that was when modern liberalism began separating from classic Jeffersonian liberalism to become something that was almost the opposite of what it once was. What was once a vibrant, important political philosophy became something dark and almost enslaving. It’s sad what happened to liberalism since 1965, but feeling bad for the very real loss of something valuable should not get in the way of opposing what it became.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sa3bHKWZoJg&ab_channel=Adlerangriffe
Let’s cover the fraud again. 1) Ice is at or close to an all time record on the planet earth. Source: Laser measurements of the Arctic, Greenland and Antarctic. Morons can be easily deceived because they are not aware that the Antarctic has over 90% of the earth’s ice and they are also deceived by sea ice which is a small percentage of total ice.
2) To build their false reality, climate scientists went back and lowered all of the historical temperature records in a precise pattern correlated with carbon emissions that both enables them to claim that current temperatures are at an all time record and to prove that temperatures are correlated to carbon emissions.
3) To claim that sea levels are rising, when they are not – because no net ice has melted, they have produced geological models in which the floor of the ocean is falling. So, in their reality, the rising seas are really falling floors.
All in broad daylight and they can get you morons to slurp up this spew and spread it as gospel.
What we are seeing is the reestablishment of Greek mythology. The powerful sun god Apollo wreaking havoc, Poseidon bringing storms, the carbon god Hades, out to get us all.
Why spoil a good story?
Five companies now control over 50% of all research published and the profit margins are over 40%. These “premier” journals are no longer a search for truth, they are a search for power and money.
You all are right at home.
Cherry picking data and getting all Greek-y isn’t proof of a crime.
Where is the secret hideout for the criminal masterminds?
You are accusing thousands of scientists of fraud, where is the evidence of fraud?
Your “facts” are the same old debunked talking points spread by lazy liars, but let’s say they’re true, how is that proof of fraud? It’s not.
You have no proof of the crimes, of criminal intent, that you accuse thousands of people of committing because conservatives just make stuff up.
Here’s the deal to you and the other halfwit who trolls here. You own everything at the federal level, and over 30 of the states are in full GOP control.
What is stopping you all from starting criminal investigations of climate change fraud, Clinton’s many crime sprees, those millions of people committing voter fraud? Ballot buying? Or any of the other whacko conspiracy theories you idiots buy into?
The only thing stopping you from proving your case is the absolute complete lack of any evidence.
Now, we have plenty of actual posts from you proving that you’re a racist and a liar.
That’s how evidence works, Falcon9. Put up or shut up, demand action from your government, sic the FBI on them dirty scientists!
Or go back under your rock before you sunburn.
Lazy? None of this has been debunked and it is all on the record. The laser measurement research was paid for by a grant from the United Nations of all places.
Look up the temperature adjustment that NOAA made to temperatures recorded over the last one hundred years and find out the degree to which it is correlated to recorded carbon emissions.
Lazy? I have spent hundreds of hours looking at this issue and reading through the studies.
Not only do these studies not reveal the truth, they are attempting to establish non truth as truth.
The truth is that the atmosphere is starving for carbon, CO2 and more CO2 in the atmosphere will be tremendously healthy for mankind. It will increase yields from food crops and growth rates of forests by up to 30%.
It will also result in a tremendous increase in arable land because higher concentrations of CO2 reduce water requirements for crops.
So why don’t you bring charges against the criminal climatologists who have been committing fraud and stealing taxpayer money?
Hey, losers, where are the charges? Why are you trolling here instead of demanding the DOJ and FBI investigate ClimateGate?
Not BS about ice, not BS about carbon, where are the criminal charges?
You can no longer blame Obama, demand Jeff Sessions charge the scientists who have defrauded the American taxpayer of billions of dollars.
Where are the criminal charges????
“Hey, losers, where are the charges? Why are you trolling here instead of demanding the DOJ and FBI investigate ClimateGate?”
What is the crime, Tom? The funding provided is always for experiments and research. They can arrive at whatever conclusion they choose based on whatever evidence they choose to use. The fact that the science involved with climate change is a little “squishy” hardly constitutes a crime.
So, I ask again, Tom…What is the crime?
Besides, aren’t the DOJ and the FBI both busy investigating the criminal Russian collusion with Trump in the last election? Of course, it shouldn’t take them long to investigate the evidence of that collusion because it is so obvious, right? At least that is what you keep saying to everyone here. Strange how it isn’t so obvious to the DOJ and the FBI.
You see, Tom? There is no point offering you proof. You either don’t read, ignore it, or set off on a tangent of some sort. When you question why people like me don’t offer proof, remember that offering proof to you is like telling you the Emperor has no clothes…you waon’t accept it.
You say you can’t imagine all these people are engaged in some sort of massive deception, but you ignore the nature of the science AND the real issue: Is the climate caused by man?
First, the nature of the science. The science is very nebulous and (if you truly truly want to talk about “cherry picking”) selects the science being used very carefully. (Aside: Tom, I am sitting here wondering I am even trying…you are already forming your response as you read this). Two issues that never appear in any climate study are the simultaneous warming of all the planets and the geological record of climate change, both of which cast doubt on the “Man is causing it” school of thought. Also, the “record” is a very short one spanning only a relative few years. In goelogical, and climatilogical, terms, that is nothing. And the basic data used by the climate studies has been revamped, revised and changed over time, depending on what the researcher was trying to prove. And never forget that the money is on the side of climate change. If you are a researcher in climate issues, you will starve if you try and find funding to look into the possibility that climate change is NOT happening.
“You are accusing thousands of scientists of fraud, where is the evidence of fraud?”
Why does it have to rise to the level of fraud? Climate change projections and offered solutions (which is what all the Agreements, legislation and discussions are about) stem from interpretations of studies that, in turn, are based on the evidence they collect. The nature of that evidence can be straightforward and factual (rare in climate studies) or interpolations made from best data available. In other words, these studies can be based upon data that leads to an expected outcome, but that is not necessarily fraud…it is just weak science.
“What is stopping you all from starting criminal investigations of climate change fraud, Clinton’s many crime sprees, those millions of people committing voter fraud? Ballot buying? Or any of the other whacko conspiracy theories you idiots buy into?”
Were it any else but you, I would assume it was a rhetorical question, but with you, I think you’re serious. Tom, you are probably the biggest purveyor of conspiracy theories on this blog. Obviously what keeps these things from being investigated is reality. Reality as in: Not enough interest; Not enough key people in the right places; Not enough will to purse it to the end; Not enough financial resources; Not enough support from the American people; etc. etc. etc.
You do realize, Tom, that being nasty and calling people names doesn’t add to your credibility or the strengthen your arguments, don’t you?
John, it is really a waste of time to offer up proof to these people. They either ignore it or find some way to distort it. That is why I don’t even bother any more. Tom can complain all he wants about climate deniers not offering evidence, but if he is honest with himself he will have to admit it wouldn’t make any difference to him. It will be interesting to see if you do get responses what tactic they choose.
Tom absorbs much more of the truth than you realize. You can tell by the way he answers. Also, we have a much bigger audience than you realize. He doesn’t persuade because most of the time because he brings no logic or evidence to the table.
When Karl Marx published his spew in 1859, his idea that government could do a better job of producing things (ownership by the workers) because of economies of scale enthralled people. A new system of organizing society that could produce a much higher standard of living for everyone. It was the age of ideas, coming out at the same time as Darwin’s book.
That moronic idea that something like the Motor Vehicle Department can do a better job of producing computers than the Apple computer corporation is still being espoused on these pages 130 years later.
Just twelve years later in 1871, Karl Menger wrote his brilliant Principles of Economics demolishing the entire intellectual structure of Marx.
The sneer was the weapon of choice even back then. They sneered at Menger because he was Austrian and Jewish (he was Austrian and came from a heavily Jewish community but was a Catholic) while Marx was German, a member of Darwin’s master race (Darwin had extensive correspondence with a German Scientist named Haechler and together they concluded that the Germans were the Master race referred to in the title of his book “On the Origins of Species or the Survival of the Favored Races in the Struggle for Life”).
They are still sneering at Karl Menger on these pages 158 years later. There is still an active post up right now “Great People you give $5 million to”.
So, Menger was sidelined by an intellectual mob but his analysis was spot on. When communism swept across Russia, industrial productivity dropped 80% and 40 million people starved to death.
Only 3,000 people read Karl Marx’s text in Russia but that is all it took for 40 million people to die and the potential of a great nation to wither on the vine.
The people on this blog are trying to do the same thing that Lenin did in Russia – sell rotten and corrupt ideas. All it takes is a few sentinels to block the effort by being relentless ambassadors for truth and good.
Menger and Marx and Apple Computer. Um, okay.
I ask for proof of the crimes you claim are happening all around us and you break into a late night college philosophy bull session.
Dunning–Kruger.
As long as we’re getting philosophical, here’s a philosophical joke for you.
What were Descartes last words?
“I don’t think so”.
I seem to recall that during his presidential campaign John McCain saying that if global warming is real then we need to act now to counter it. If it’s not real then at least we’ve left future generations a cleaner planet.
Which makes perfectly good sense even if cleaning up means less bloated profits for those who back the climate change denial industry. Guess it doesn’t make sense if you’re invested in and supported by the industries that continue to profit by fouling the air, water, and land.
“I seem to recall that during his presidential campaign John McCain saying that if global warming is real then we need to act now to counter it. If it’s not real then at least we’ve left future generations a cleaner planet.”
Good old Dumbass McCain. He can always be relied upon for a senile, stupid statement at inappropriate moments. No wonder the left loves him; They can pretend he is a conservative while the doddering clueless old man can be counted upon to suck up to the press.
“Which makes perfectly good sense even if cleaning up means less bloated profits for those who back the climate change denial industry.”
I see, so it is less about saving the planet than it is about class warfare. You’re right, that makes perfectly good sense given that hatred of the wealthy – at least the conservative wealthy – is always at the bottom of any liberal initiative.
Steve, do you really believe the partisan stupidity emanating from your keyboard? Or do you not have family that will be adversely affected by climate change? Guess when it comes down to it you’re just one of these Party over country clowns. And to think at one time you had earned a modicum of respect.
“Steve, do you really believe the partisan stupidity emanating from your keyboard?”
Wileybud, thereshouldn’t be anything “partisan” about the issue of climate change. Science does not tend to be a “right versus left” issue because science tends to follow empirical evidence. However, climate change is handled a little different because it is a basic tenet of the climate change philosophy is that man is the cause of whatever climate change is going on. I do not believe man has the power to change nature. If you recall, this was originally framed as as “global warming” until it turned out that the planet was not necessarily warming at all so the term “climate change” was coined to make certain that whatever happened, they were correct. But, even with that major change in mission statement, it is still understood by all, of course, that man is the culprit for the change. But to genuinely believe that requires you ignore significant evidence to the contrary, but for an issue that is more political than scientific, that is to be expected.
“Or do you not have family that will be adversely affected by climate change?”
Of course my family will be affected by any climate change, just as we all will. But, despite all the doom and gloom of the climate change prognosticators, the change will not be all bad. Besides, my family will also be affected adversely by numbskull efforts to penalize and punish the United States for the success we have enjoyed in some misguided and pointless belief that we can stave off climate change by simply hurting ourselves and redistributing wealth. Perhaps you should consider for a moment that all of the “solutions” to climate change also happen to also be solutions for social change right out of the democrat playbook. Do you think for a second that there might be a little opportunism going on here? Maybe that is where your “partisanship” comes from. True science doesn’t tend to be partisan; climate change tends to be partisan because the left has forces it’s ideology into the “solutions” despite evidence questioning the entire hypothesis.
“Guess when it comes down to it you’re just one of these Party over country clowns.”
Hardly. As I have been repeating, I look at the science and it has nothing to do with politics. You don’t have to look too hard to see that much of what is being peddled as fact, isn’t. And you have to ignore some rather significant evidence to believe that what is being peddled as fact, is. There is a lot of faith being sold as science within the climate change debate.
“And to think at one time you had earned a modicum of respect.”
I am still the same person I have always been, Wileybud. Nothing has changed. I don’t seek respect by buying into a fantasy simply because the majority think it so. There are too many instances of “science” that was believed by the majority that proved to be wrong for me to be fooled by the mantra “How could thousands of scientists be wrong?” They can be and have been.
Originally, I was skeptical about climate change being real at all. But when I looked into it I realized that change was taking place. How much change and for how long, I can’t speculate, but there is some change occurring. But at the same time, I saw the manner in which politics pushing a leftist agenda started using the change to demand social justice. It could do so, however, only by ignoring significant scientific evidence that the change was a naturally occurring event, and NOT man made. And that is where we are today…
The fake conservatives who troll this blog are saying that climate scientists are committing fraud, lying about data to collect a check.
But these little troll boys offer no proof of the crime.
Because they can’t.
These trolls have no honor.
It is funny when lefties speak of “honor”, a concept they most often mock and one that often gets in the way of their agenda.
“Once the fallout settles, he added, “it is now far more likely that we will breach the danger limit of 3.6 degrees.” That is the average atmospheric temperature increase above which a future of extreme conditions is considered irrevocable.”
No prediction made by the climate disaster crowd has proven true in more than 5o years of such predictions being made, yet some people still continue to believe anything spouted by them despite their record of of “zero and whatever number you choose to insert”.
“The aim of the Paris agreement was to lower planet-warming emissions enough to avoid that threshold.”
No, the purpose of the Paris Agreement was to strip the rich nations of the world of their economic advantages and make wealth transfers to the poor nations of the world.
““We will see more extreme heat, damaging storms, coastal flooding and risks to food security,” Professor Oppenheimer said. “And that’s not the kind of world we want to live in.””
Professor Oppenheimer really wants people to do what he, and people like him, say because that means more money and power goes into their hands. He really has no idea what it means, but he only sees doom and gloom because that is the key to getting and maintaining control over the issue.
“President Xi Jinping of China, the world’s largest greenhouse gas polluter, has promised that his country would move ahead with steps to curb climate change, regardless of what happens in the United States.”
Yes, China has done so much in the past to cut back on pollution…NOT! Talk is cheap and China sounds good when they say what they are saying. The real proof will be if they do anything to live up to the Agreement. Traditionally, China does not live to agreements that hurt it’s economy or security, and the Agreement does just that.
As I always say, climate change IS occurring, by all the evidence, just as it has occurred hundreds of times over the last twenty thousand years (since the last big ice age), but the evidence it is caused by man is just not there. The “evidence” is pretty much prognostication based on flawed climate studies originating from a climate study done in the U.K. about 30 years, the bulk of which has been discredited and proven wrong. However, that little jewel of information is largely ignored because it so inconvenient.