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President Donald Trump plans to make good on his campaign vow to withdraw the United States from a global pact to fight climate change, a source briefed on the decision said on Wednesday, a move that promises to deepen a rift with U.S. allies.
White House officials cautioned that details were still being hammered out and that, although close, the decision on withdrawing from the 195-nation accord - agreed to in Paris in 2015 - was not finalized.
[...] The source, speaking on condition of anonymity, said Trump was working out the terms of the planned withdrawal with U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt, an oil industry ally and climate change doubter.
[...] The CEOs of Dow Chemical Co, ExxonMobil Corp, Unilever NV and Tesla Inc all urged Trump to remain in the agreement, with Tesla's Elon Musk threatening to quit White House advisory councils of which he is a member if the president pulls out.
Source: Reuters
On Twitter, Trump indicated that an announcement was coming soon.
"I will be announcing my decision on the Paris Accord over the next few days," he wrote. "MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!"
[...] Opponents of the climate deal were concerned after White House economic advisor Gary Cohn told reporters that the president was "evolving on the issue" during his trip overseas.
His daughter Ivanka and son-in-law Jared Kushner reportedly channelled support for the deal behind the scenes at the White House, encouraging climate change activists that Trump might change his mind. Trump's Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, the former Exxon CEO, also supported remaining in the treaty.
Source: Brietbart
(Score: 3, Interesting) by takyon on Thursday June 01 2017, @05:07AM (16 children)
Is The World Better Off If Trump Bails On Climate? [ecosystemmarketplace.com]
These experts say it may actually be best if the U.S. left the Paris climate agreement [washingtonpost.com]
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 01 2017, @05:27AM (11 children)
Just like the summary, so much text without even any appeal to science. It is all how many people think this or that, which is creeping me out. I think Trump is pushing this narrative.
(Score: 4, Funny) by takyon on Thursday June 01 2017, @05:32AM (10 children)
If you want someone to tell you that the world will warm X degrees in Y years unless emissions are drastically reduced, in which case it will only warm 0.5*X degrees in Y years, then you can find that:
https://www.ipcc.ch/ [www.ipcc.ch]
That's the kind of scientific body that has informed the climate agreement. But actually implementing an agreement and keeping countries committed to it is a political, not scientific endeavor.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 01 2017, @05:46AM
Just read this earlier today: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14453512 [ycombinator.com]
Control the tone... it is now political rather than scientific. Bad news no matter what you believe.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by bradley13 on Thursday June 01 2017, @11:12AM (6 children)
The IPCC will tell me about projected warming? Sure they will. Of course, science is about having a hypothesis, making predictions, and having those predictions verified by reality. The IPCC doesn't do that.
They have no theory. Their predictions have been wrong [judithcurry.com] - with each revision to each report they have to reduce their projected warming [wattsupwiththat.com]. As for the great consensus: there are a zillion different models [typepad.com], which is rather like p-hacking. Just by chance, one or another of those models may match some future data.
Is the climate warming? Sure, it is. How much of that is due to CO2? That is pretty well-understood, and the answer is "not much". The IPCC projections and climate models assume positive feedback cycles [sciencedirect.com], which just stubbornly refuse to manifest. Instead, as just about any engineer or scientist ought to expect, the feedback tends to be negative - otherwise the Earth's climate would long since have destabilized.
As a nice overview, this cartoon by Josh does a pretty good job [wattsupwiththat.com]. When you see the data in a larger context than just a few decades, there is simply no reason to panic.
Everyone is somebody else's weirdo.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 01 2017, @05:21PM
Bradley, at science suck you do. We will have to put you in the "deniers" category.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 01 2017, @07:11PM (4 children)
Terrible. There is no reason to expect feedback to be negative, that is 100% dependent on the actual mechanisms at work. The Earth has experienced Ice Ages and Heat Ages, but barring some wild shift the various feedback mechanisms end up resulting in an equilibrium state which then reverses. CO2 is a greenhouse gas, and the PPM in the atmosphere has drastically increased over the last 100 years.
The cartoon by Josh is neat where the data isn't smoothed out, but what jumped out at me was how the spike in temperature increase is not found anywhere else except when the earth was really cold. So we're in a warm period but the temperature is increasing at a rate faster than ever before? Suspicious.
If nothing else I don't see how that is not a reason to panic. The Earth will be fine, but the millions of people who can easily be affected by major shifts in weather patterns are the ones who will not be fine. Then they will want to move somewhere less fucked up, and WE will be less fine. But hey, don't worry, God will sort it all out!
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday June 01 2017, @08:47PM (2 children)
That does sound like a thing to be concerned about. But we need to know more about past climate in order to demonstrate such a claim. It may be that there are many such spikes from high temperatures over the past few hundred thousand years.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 01 2017, @10:09PM (1 child)
Yes, we must prove beyond a shadow of a doubt to you and your ilk. You realize the only way to do that is to let it happen? Otherwise it is literally just models based on existing data, which so far overwhelming say the same thing.
Stop shitting in the yard, you're a bad boy khallow BAD. Stop it! If you're going to shit at least crap in your own room.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday June 01 2017, @11:45PM
And the fallacies begin. If you want to have an opinion, then no standard of proof is necessary. If you want my support on radical mitigation efforts for global warming, then a high standard of proof (really of evidence) is required.
Sure. I don't have a problem with that. If there was an urgent problem associated with global warming, we'd both know of it by now.
Yes, namely, that they don't know enough about future climate change to base world-spanning decisions on.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 01 2017, @10:12PM
It seems to be stable though. If not it is bizarre that I can say that venus is 0.723x closer to the sun than the earth,and plug into stefan boltzmann law to get sqrt(1/0.723)*288 = 388 K. Then look at the atmosphere of Venus at the same pressure and see the expected temperature. This seems to work for all pressures greater than ~ 100 mbar (which seems to be a universal tropopause pressure). How can the "unstable climate" idea explain this?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 01 2017, @03:43PM
No. The IPCC is not a scientific body. It may take input from science, but the IPCC by its very nature is a political body. From its own site, [www.ipcc.ch] emphasis by me:
And:
And:
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday June 01 2017, @08:38PM
The IPCC is a remarkably cheap propaganda investment. For me, the real problem is determining what will happen next. Currently, it looks like we'll just have to run the clock and see. The IPCC can't fake the future.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by kaszz on Thursday June 01 2017, @06:30AM (2 children)
Another approach is that Trump withdraws and the rest of the world sets up customs fees, lets call it CO2 compensation tax.
Speaking of CO2, these present permafrost dethawing near the north pole is serious business. If it reaches the runaway point such that releases CH4 increases the release of more CH4 due to the fact that CH4 is way more potent than CO2.
(Score: 2) by aclarke on Thursday June 01 2017, @11:53AM (1 child)
I'd like to see something like this as the partner to globalization. Sure we'll trade with China, the US, whomever, but there will be environmental and ethical surcharges applied. As countries, and industries within those countries, clean up, the surcharges get lowered. The true cost of our consumption needs to be internalized, and if that plastic thingamabob at Walmart cost $14 instead of $2.99, people would think twice about buying it.
Of course this isn't going to happen because the process will be politicized, and the US will put an environmental surcharge on Canadian softwood lumber because Canada is building too many cars in its factories or something unrelated to the environmental cost of Canadian softwood lumber, and so on. Canadians aren't a shining world example of environmentalism either, so a system like this might convince us to clean up our act too.
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Friday June 02 2017, @12:40AM
US pays customs fee for CO2 pollution and China pays customs fee for human abuse. That could work ;)
What needs to happen is to make manufacturers use production that pollutes less such that the plastic thingamabob at Walmart cost $5 instead of $2.99, and people can handle the cost. And the environment is sustained.
Maybe China will have the first self inflicted environmental disaster great enough to change policy. Another possibility is change of people at the top.
(Score: 2) by Sulla on Thursday June 01 2017, @04:02PM
Are we number two in total or number two on a per person basis?
Ceterum censeo Sinae esse delendam