Trump and the Paris Accord

[techrtr]

So, it seems likely that the US will pull out of the Paris Climate Accord today. So what if they do? The rest of the world is still in with the exception of a few *bleep* ant little countries that aren't important. The Americans are just going to end up looking like morons. And really, how much damage can the US pulling out cause in 4 years?


https://www.castanet.net/news/World/198431/Climate-pact-waits-on-Trump

[Omnitheo]

It shakes would confidence in the US's word. Why deal with them when they will go back on their words at a whim? It demonstrates instability within the nation. There's a reason why most energy companies in the US actually supported the agreement and requested the US not back out. Of course, they've done the research themselves. Exxon's own studies have shown full well the effect that maintaining status quo will have on the environment.

I just can't believe the US wants to take a backseat to the world now. It used to be that the US was a nation of scientists, of innovators and inventors and people who kept the nation at the bleeding edge. The US government seems hellbent on putting a stop to that, letting China blaze ahead.

I hear the common argument that why should US bother as the second largest polluted in the world when China is number 1. We'll China is doing something about that. They have a billion and a half people to try and keep healthy, and climate change is going to make that far more expensive than working to prevent it. An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. The US ideology though seems to be. "We'll take a dollar today for $10 of our grandchildren's"

[OldIslander]

Well said, Omnitheo.

Trump is obviously a climate-change denier, and is making himself and the USA appear unbelievably ignorant with this move.

There is no denying that the world is warming -- the melting ice caps, melting permafrost, a visit to the Columbia ice field; will prove to the most pig-headed denier, that it is happening. The world is warming. Deniers will argue that the warming is a natural fluctuation of the world's temperature cycles -- the world has been a lot warmer before, perhaps many times. But the evidence that it's faster and destined to be hotter this time, due to carbon loading in the atmosphere, is compelling.

If the world cuts down on carbon emissions into the atmosphere but the current warming of the planet does turn out to be natural, there is no harm done. We've just made the air cleaner, and there are lots of good reason to do that. But if climatologists are correct -- carbon loading is contributing to massive disruptions to the world's population down the road -- then it is a crime against humanity and future generations, not to change the way we're using energy on the planet today.

[Glacier]

The Paris Accord is largely symbolic.

[The Green Barbarian]

We've just made the air cleaner, .

Reducing CO2 in the air does not make it "cleaner". One of the many misconceptions and outright fibs sold by Big Green and the entire Man-made climate change shyster establishment. CO2 is a harmless gas required by all plant life to live. The only way to make air cleaner is to rid it of particulate pollution. CO2 is not particulate and therefore not a pollutant.

[The Green Barbarian]

The Paris Accord is largely symbolic.

exactly. It's completely useless. But it sure will cost everyone a ton of money. For NOTHING.

https://mobile.twitter.com/DBloom451/st ... 29/video/1

[JLives]

Way to go to the USA for displaying their complete ignorance of science and assume their new status as no longer being innovators and world leaders. They are becoming a nation of the uneducated and the rest of the world will pass them by. There are no excuses for not accepting climate change is occurring and then to sit back and to do nothing. It's completely unacceptable and every other nation on the planet should be able to have legal recourse over this considering we share the climate. Sad day for our future.

[Omnitheo]

We've just made the air cleaner, .

Reducing CO2 in the air does not make it "cleaner". One of the many misconceptions and outright fibs sold by Big Green and the entire Man-made climate change shyster establishment. CO2 is a harmless gas required by all plant life to live. The only way to make air cleaner is to rid it of particulate pollution. CO2 is not particulate and therefore not a pollutant.

GB you keep saying this but you're flat out wrong. Yes plants breath CO2. They breath a certain percentage in relation to other atmospheric gases. Like we breath oxygen, but most of what we inhale is nitrogen. Pure oxygen is harmful to us, and increasing CO2 isn't going to help plants any further. Drinking water is good for you. Drinking too much is not. A doctor can give you a pill and say it will help make you healthy. Swallowing the whole bottle at once is not going to have the same effect. Your entire argument is flawed, and saying it repeatedly isn't going to make it suddenly true.

We are changing the composition of the air that all current life on the planet has spent tens of thousands of years of evolution adapting to. And we're changing it in the course of decades. Natural selection only works to adapt life to changing conditions over several generations. Evolution by natural selection is going to do nothing to help life adapt when these changes are occurring within single lifespans.

Your argument also falls completely flat when we start looking at other greenhouse gas emissions. Tell me how pumping more carbon monoxide into the environment is going to help plants too?

[Glacier]

GB you keep saying this but you're flat out wrong. Yes plants breath CO2. They breath a certain percentage in relation to other atmospheric gases. Like we breath oxygen, but most of what we inhale is nitrogen. Pure oxygen is harmful to us, and increasing CO2 isn't going to help plants any further.

How do you know? Are you just making up stuff again to promote the naturalistic fallacy? Look how big dinosaurs and plants got really big when CO2 levels were 5 times what they are now!

[rustled]

We've just made the air cleaner, .

Reducing CO2 in the air does not make it "cleaner". One of the many misconceptions and outright fibs sold by Big Green and the entire Man-made climate change shyster establishment. CO2 is a harmless gas required by all plant life to live. The only way to make air cleaner is to rid it of particulate pollution. CO2 is not particulate and therefore not a pollutant.

GB you keep saying this but you're flat out wrong. Yes plants breath CO2. They breath a certain percentage in relation to other atmospheric gases. Like we breath oxygen, but most of what we inhale is nitrogen. Pure oxygen is harmful to us, and increasing CO2 isn't going to help plants any further. Drinking water is good for you. Drinking too much is not. A doctor can give you a pill and say it will help make you healthy. Swallowing the whole bottle at once is not going to have the same effect. Your entire argument is flawed, and saying it repeatedly isn't going to make it suddenly true.

We are changing the composition of the air that all current life on the planet has spent tens of thousands of years of evolution adapting to. And we're changing it in the course of decades. Natural selection only works to adapt life to changing conditions over several generations. Evolution by natural selection is going to do nothing to help life adapt when these changes are occurring within single lifespans.

Your argument also falls completely flat when we start looking at other greenhouse gas emissions. Tell me how pumping more carbon monoxide into the environment is going to help plants too?

OMG. No one's saying "Let's pump more carbon monoxide into the environment".
[ETA: or carbon dioxide either!]
Take a look at this story about people dying from pollution we could be doing something about, if we weren't spending our resources addressing carbon:
https://www.castanet.net/edition/news-s ... htm#198425
Note the attention-grabbing photo, showing steam vapour as though that's the evil to be fought against. How on earth did we become so gullible?

No one's saying it's okay to pollute. Some of us simply expect our governments to put our resources to practical use, cleaning up serious pollution, instead of tilting at windmills.

[Omnitheo]

Those atmospheric levels changed over the course of millions of years, not 200. There are a number of factors responsible for how those species evolved and adapted to their climate. Also the largest life forms to ever inhabit the earth live now, not then. Additionally we can look to the Permian extinction, also known as "The Great Dying" which was the previous era of rapid increase in CO2 levels to see the effect it had on life on earth.

I don't need to make stuff up. We have tens of thousands of scientists across the world studying various different fields in biology, botany, evolution, anthropology, geology, geography, meteorology, oceanography, palentology, astronomy, chemistry, physics, who are all able to find evidence in their own respective fields which corroborate the findings from other scientists and fit an ever growing model.

[The Green Barbarian]

GB you keep saying this but you're flat out wrong.

No, I'm not. You just don't want to believe it as it doesn't fit into your cult-like beliefs.

http://hockeyschtick.blogspot.ca/2013/0 ... lliam.html

[rustled]

Those atmospheric levels changed over the course of millions of years, not 200. There are a number of factors responsible for how those species evolved and adapted to their climate. Also the largest life forms to ever inhabit the earth live now, not then. Additionally we can look to the Permian extinction, also known as "The Great Dying" which was the previous era of rapid increase in CO2 levels to see the effect it had on life on earth.

I don't need to make stuff up. We have tens of thousands of scientists across the world studying various different fields in biology, botany, evolution, anthropology, geology, geography, meteorology, oceanography, palentology, astronomy, chemistry, physics, who are all able to find evidence in their own respective fields which corroborate the findings from other scientists and fit an ever growing model.

And yet, the models asserting human-source carbon dioxide is responsible have been falsified.

In the world of science, this means something. It's only in the world of politics that ideology trumps science.

[The Green Barbarian]

I don't need to make stuff up. We have tens of thousands of scientists across the world studying various different fields in biology, botany, evolution, anthropology, geology, geography, meteorology, oceanography, palentology, astronomy, chemistry, physics, who are all able to find evidence in their own respective fields which corroborate the findings from other scientists and fit an ever growing model.

and even if this is true, the Paris Accord would do nothing about it. At all.

[Glacier]

Those atmospheric levels changed over the course of millions of years, not 200. There are a number of factors responsible for how those species evolved and adapted to their climate. Also the largest life forms to ever inhabit the earth live now, not then. Additionally we can look to the Permian extinction, also known as "The Great Dying" which was the previous era of rapid increase in CO2 levels to see the effect it had on life on earth.

I don't need to make stuff up. We have tens of thousands of scientists across the world studying various different fields in biology, botany, evolution, anthropology, geology, geography, meteorology, oceanography, palentology, astronomy, chemistry, physics, who are all able to find evidence in their own respective fields which corroborate the findings from other scientists and fit an ever growing model.

Complete bunk. As rustled said above, we need to fight pollution (and in fact I voted Green this year). I'm totally for cleaning up the environment, but your pseudoscience will not help in that department. We need to reduce actual harmful pollution and work toward removing cars off the road with or without some stupid Paris Accord that won't be followed any better than Koyoto.

Is Trump motivated to cutting pollution? Well, not as much as I'd like, but if he signs on, he will be no more motivated than he is right now because he's proven that he has no shame and all the shaming in the world just causes him to dig in rather than do what he said he would do.