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posted by n1 on Thursday June 01 2017, @04:44AM   Printer-friendly
from the Smart-move!-Very-good-for-America. dept.

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


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  • (Score: 0, Troll) by jmorris on Thursday June 01 2017, @05:39AM (23 children)

    by jmorris (4844) on Thursday June 01 2017, @05:39AM (#518717)

    Scientists have formed a theory, designed experiments to test that theory, and have analysed the results to confirm and/or adjust their theory.

    Nope. They had a theory, designed some computer models to attempt to test the theory, they were all outside the error bars so they ignored them and then started rewriting the historical record in attempts to salvage their gravy train. The only way to 'test' AGW theory is computer modeling, all models old enough to have predictive power have come up outside their error bars predicting far higher than what actually happened. Newer models may or may not be better but we won't know for twenty years.

    But then it got worse. As the Earth simply refused to warm on demand they morphed the scam to Climate Change. Well of COURSE the goddamned climate has continually changed since the Earth cooled enough to have a climate. What they did was nothing less than double down and make a claim that literally was not falsifiable since absolutely any result would 'confirm' it. Tell me what could possibly happen to falsify "Climate Change?" Do you know what you call a belief, unsupported by quantifiable evidence, that isn't falsifiable by any evidence or argument? I will tell you, we normally call such a belief a religious belief. And that is the optimistic view, that they are simply deluded. The more likely explanation for why trained scientists would abandon the Scientific Method is politics and money. Remember that there are literally trillions of dollars at stake in this latest International boondoggle and every other one. Plus the almost unlimited political power, enough to make their Marxist dreams come true. Might powerful temptations to be resisted, pretty easy to see why they succumbed.

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  • (Score: 4, Informative) by Soylentbob on Thursday June 01 2017, @05:53AM (16 children)

    by Soylentbob (6519) on Thursday June 01 2017, @05:53AM (#518720)
    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 01 2017, @06:20AM

      by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 01 2017, @06:20AM (#518724)

      "That graph looks fake. It must be made up." -AGW denier

      The above statement seems to be the only basis for climate change denial.

    • (Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 01 2017, @06:56AM (14 children)

      by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 01 2017, @06:56AM (#518730)

      XKCD's cartoon looks like the hockey stick. For example, the little ice age is smoothed over so much that XKCD guy has to put an arrow there to remind himself where a historic weather event should be.

      Activists hate the more accurate one drawn by Josh.
      https://wattsupwiththat.com/2016/09/20/josh-takes-on-xkcds-climate-timeline/comment-page-1/ [wattsupwiththat.com]

      There was a reason the Romans and Greeks wore togas 2000 years ago!

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 01 2017, @07:59AM (5 children)

        by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 01 2017, @07:59AM (#518744)
        • (Score: 0, Flamebait) by khallow on Thursday June 01 2017, @12:40PM (4 children)

          by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Thursday June 01 2017, @12:40PM (#518816) Journal
          Typical ad hominem fallacy. Because a venue has been "criticized for inaccuracy", then we can outright ignore everything posted on that site. Do you know what else has been "criticized for inaccuracy"? Climate researchers. Should we as a result ignore everything ever done by a climate researcher? At some point, we should actually consider the claims made and the supporting evidence, such as it is, provided, rather than base our conclusions on tribal politics.
          • (Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 01 2017, @12:50PM (2 children)

            by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 01 2017, @12:50PM (#518822)

            Ad hominem, but not necessarily a fallacy. Depends on who does the critising.

            • (Score: 0, Flamebait) by khallow on Thursday June 01 2017, @06:49PM (1 child)

              by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Thursday June 01 2017, @06:49PM (#518987) Journal

              Ad hominem, but not necessarily a fallacy. Depends on who does the critising.

              Duh. But since it's not me committing the fallacy, then it's a fallacy.

              • (Score: 2, Insightful) by aristarchus on Thursday June 01 2017, @10:27PM

                by aristarchus (2645) on Thursday June 01 2017, @10:27PM (#519075) Journal

                Typical ad hominem fallacy.

                Not so typical, more of a trifecta of a non-fallacy. Climate change denial? Check! Brietbarf News? Check!! khallow coming to the defense with a badly thought out accusation of ad hominem? Ding! Ding! Ding! We have a winner! Not a fallacy. Fake news.

          • (Score: 2) by aristarchus on Saturday June 03 2017, @08:28PM

            by aristarchus (2645) on Saturday June 03 2017, @08:28PM (#519973) Journal

            Because a venue has been "criticized for inaccuracy", then we can outright ignore everything posted on that site.

            Not so much the "inaccuracy", my dear khallow, more the mendacity. Hanlon's razor applies in most cases (do not attribute to malice what can be explained by incompetence), but in the case of these sources it does not because it has become fairly obvious to anyone arguing from good faith that these sources have been intentionally inaccurate, on purpose, with malice aforethought, and therefore calling them out is not an instance of an argumentum ad hominem. They are lying. Yes, scientists may occasionally be inaccurate, but for the most part, and by common consensus, they are not doing so intentionally, except in the tiny minds of twisted climate deniers, like some people who post here on SoylentNews. Allow me the privilege of not having to name names.

      • (Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 01 2017, @12:42PM (7 children)

        by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 01 2017, @12:42PM (#518818)

        For example, the little ice age is smoothed over so much that XKCD guy has to put an arrow there to remind himself where a historic weather event should be.

        So you say that smoothing removed extremes from the curve? Well, that makes the fact that the current warming survives that smoothing just more significant, doesn't it?

        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 01 2017, @02:08PM (6 children)

          by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 01 2017, @02:08PM (#518854)

          The original hockey stick models were producing hockey stick graphs regardless of the data fed in, so... not necessarily

          • (Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 01 2017, @02:19PM (5 children)

            by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 01 2017, @02:19PM (#518856)

            The original hockey stick models were producing hockey stick graphs regardless of the data fed in

            You make that sound like inputting random data produced the same result. That's basically a lie.
            The truth is that using different, internally consistent, data sets of actual temperature measurements produce basically the same result.
            That's confirmation of correctness, not disqualification.

            • (Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday June 01 2017, @07:41PM (4 children)

              by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Thursday June 01 2017, @07:41PM (#519008) Journal

              You make that sound like inputting random data produced the same result. That's basically a lie.

              From this summary [technologyreview.com] of the research in question:

              Now comes the real shocker. This improper normalization procedure tends to emphasize any data that do have the hockey stick shape, and to suppress all data that do not. To demonstrate this effect, McIntyre and McKitrick created some meaningless test data that had, on average, no trends. This method of generating random data is called Monte Carlo analysis, after the famous casino, and it is widely used in statistical analysis to test procedures. When McIntyre and McKitrick fed these random data into the Mann procedure, out popped a hockey stick shape!

              • (Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 01 2017, @08:03PM (3 children)

                by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 01 2017, @08:03PM (#519022)

                Do you know who you are citing in that article from 2004?

                Richard Muller: former climate change denier who now says that humans are almost entire responsible for climate change. [scientificamerican.com]

                • (Score: 0, Troll) by khallow on Thursday June 01 2017, @10:53PM (2 children)

                  by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Thursday June 01 2017, @10:53PM (#519085) Journal
                  That doesn't cancel out Muller's comments and thus is a red herring.

                  We should consider this warning sign. High profile researchers came up with a model of the past climate which was eventually shown to be heavily biased via its statistical processes to generate a hockey stick shape - a relatively flat model of climate change for a thousand years prior to the human industrial age and a sharp turn upwards afterward. Then when that research was discredited, suddenly several more studies with the same hockey stick curve show up to back the first bit of research. While that's not unheard of in science that some deeply erroneous work turns out to be on the right track, it is a curious coincidence that so much research backing that particular curve just suddenly shows up right when climate mitigation advocates needed a propaganda rebuttal to the Medieval Warm Period, which was prior to 1999 thought by many climate researchers to be a time when the Earth was roughly as warm as it is now (and implying as a result an inconveniently strong solar effect on climate).
                  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 01 2017, @11:25PM (1 child)

                    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 01 2017, @11:25PM (#519100)

                    > That doesn't cancel out Muller's comments and thus is a red herring.

                    No, what cancels them out is all the further research since 2004 that has verified the hockey stick graph.
                    Muller himself contributed to it.

                    > We should consider this warning sign.

                    You are a warning sign.

                    • (Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday June 01 2017, @11:49PM

                      by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Thursday June 01 2017, @11:49PM (#519109) Journal

                      No, what cancels them out is all the further research since 2004 that has verified the hockey stick graph.

                      Which isn't of much use, if the hockey stick isn't an accurate representation of the world's climate through the past thousand years. A key warning sign here is modern climate variations on the multi-decadal scale which disappear when one goes from the instrument record to paleoclimate data.

  • (Score: 3, Insightful) by Weasley on Thursday June 01 2017, @06:03AM (3 children)

    by Weasley (6421) on Thursday June 01 2017, @06:03AM (#518721)

    Plus the almost unlimited political power, enough to make their Marxist dreams come true.

    So climate change is a leftist conspiracy to seize power and then hand it over to the proletariat?

    • (Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday June 01 2017, @12:41PM (2 children)

      by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Thursday June 01 2017, @12:41PM (#518817) Journal
      Is handing power to the proletariat actually a dream of Marxists? It seems suspiciously absence in practice.
      • (Score: 2) by Weasley on Thursday June 01 2017, @03:26PM (1 child)

        by Weasley (6421) on Thursday June 01 2017, @03:26PM (#518890)

        Are there any national implementations of Marxism?

        • (Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday June 01 2017, @06:46PM

          by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Thursday June 01 2017, @06:46PM (#518984) Journal
          20th Century style communism was, for example.
  • (Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 01 2017, @06:05AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 01 2017, @06:05AM (#518723)

    "their Marxist dreams come true"

    Hahaha. This guy is just a troll. Ignore him.

  • (Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 01 2017, @03:01PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 01 2017, @03:01PM (#518879)

    But then it got worse. As the Earth simply refused to warm on demand they morphed the scam to Climate Change.

    The truth is that the term "climate change" was deliberately popularized by republican pollster Frank Luntz for Bush in 2002 [theguardian.com] in order to minimize the danger of the problem. But, by 2006 even Luntz was publicly saying that global warming is real and serious:

    REPORTER: Today, Frank Luntz says the advice he offered the administration on global warming, was fair when he gave it, but he's distanced himself from their policy since.

    LUNTZ: It's now 2006. Now I think most people will conclude that there is global warming taking place, and that the behaviour of humans is affecting the climate.

    REPORTER: But the administration has continued to follow your advice, they're still questioning the science?

    LUNTZ: That's up to the administration. I am not the administration. What they want to do is their business, it has nothing to do with what I write, it has nothing to do with what I believe.

    http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/panorama/5312208.stm [bbc.co.uk]

    Furthermore the whole belief that the earth stopped warming is nothing more than statistical innumeracy. In 1998 there was a local maximum in warming [wikipedia.org] - a peak that was substantially higher than before. It took about 10 years to hit that same level again, but since then we've zoomed past it. 2014 [nasa.gov], 2015 [nasa.gov], and 2016 [nasa.gov] were each the hottest year on record at the time.