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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: 2) by kaszz on Thursday June 01 2017, @05:45AM (15 children)

    by kaszz (4211) on Thursday June 01 2017, @05:45AM (#518718) Journal

    The skin cancers in Australia are dependent on the CFC pollution? if so, cause of death over decades should hint to this.
    People tend to get the nasty malign melanoma there.

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  • (Score: 5, Informative) by Soylentbob on Thursday June 01 2017, @07:11AM (14 children)

    by Soylentbob (6519) on Thursday June 01 2017, @07:11AM (#518733)

    Skin cancer is correlated to UV-radiation, which is correlated to ozone-depletion in higher atmosphere, which lags behind CFC polution by 20 years as parent poster already suggested. So, according to the expectation voiced by the scientist, with the ban of CFC in the '80s we should see an ongoing incline of melanoma cases until ~2000, after that a stagnation, and with some luck a decline once the ozone layer rebuilds.

    Here are some actual statistics [canceraustralia.gov.au] (and here [canceraustralia.gov.au] is a deep-link to the graph proving the former hypothesis voiced in the '80s).

    There are some logical connections that can be assumed true even if not proven by experiment. If you know that people need to breath to survive, and you know by experience they drown after some time under water, you don't have to repeat the experiment with alcohol, oil and other liquids to prove that they will drown there as well. If it is known by experiment that uv-radiation increases the risk of skin cancer, it is known that ozone filters uv-radiation, it is known that CFC destroys ozone, it is known that it takes 20 years to go up through the atmosphere, then you don't need to wait for statistics to prove that CFC pollution will increase the risk of skin-cancer.

    Same with global warming: Some of the mechanisms are known. There are some mitigating effects (e.g. the sea dissolving some of the CO2), and probably not all of them were considered in the previous model. Some might delay the warming, other effects might speed it up (e.g. the methane released from the thawing former perma-frost areas in Siberia), some of them might cause additional problems (e.g. the CO2-levels in the seas can kill the corals, could bring the fish-population out of balance). AFAIK, no one claims to understand all interconnections to the last detail, and the models are adjusted when new influences are found. But the tendency is clear.

    • (Score: 2) by jmorris on Thursday June 01 2017, @08:09AM (9 children)

      by jmorris (4844) on Thursday June 01 2017, @08:09AM (#518747)

      There are some logical connections that can be assumed true even if not proven by experiment. If you know that people need to breath to survive, and you know by experience they drown after some time under water, you don't have to repeat the experiment with alcohol, oil and other liquids to prove that they will drown there as well.

      Actually, yes you do. Because there happens to be substances mammals CAN breath in, I'm sure you too have seen the video of lab rats swimming fully enclosed in a vat of liquid, which just happens to be a CFC if I recall. So yes Science requires you to actually test everything because every time we actually do the science right that way we end up discovering new stuff.

      • (Score: 4, Informative) by Soylentbob on Thursday June 01 2017, @08:57AM (8 children)

        by Soylentbob (6519) on Thursday June 01 2017, @08:57AM (#518755)

        Nice niche-example, but wrong conclusion. They didn't emerge rats in random liquids to see if they will always drown, instead they analysed the effect of drowning, analysed the build-up of the lung, devised a liquid which might work as well, and tested that hypothesis.

        I was suspecting someone would come up with it, but dismissed the thought because anyone informed enough to know about this effect could be expected to be intelligent enough to see how bad an argument it is. But if you insist on testing everything before taking it as fact, maybe you can submerge yourself in your filled bathtub for half an hour. I expect, no-one ever drowned in that one, so maybe it is safe :-)

        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 01 2017, @01:56PM

          by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 01 2017, @01:56PM (#518850)

          He knew this. Just thought he could put it in and none would catch it. Same with Hannity. Leave out key aspects add in leftist .... faux news.

        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 01 2017, @03:08PM (1 child)

          by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 01 2017, @03:08PM (#518881)

          Dude, you got red-herringed.
          Who the fuck cares if rats can breath a CFC?
          That's got zero to do with UV exposure and skin-cancer rates.
          Jmorris can't refute the facts, so he zeroes in on a completely irrelevant side-issue to steer the conversation away from him being wrong.

          • (Score: 2) by Soylentbob on Thursday June 01 2017, @06:10PM

            by Soylentbob (6519) on Thursday June 01 2017, @06:10PM (#518972)

            I found it amusing enough to answer for once :-)

        • (Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday June 01 2017, @07:51PM (4 children)

          by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Thursday June 01 2017, @07:51PM (#519010) Journal
          However, jmorris was right. I think a better analogy here is the flatness of the Earth. One doesn't need experiment to logically realize that the Earth must be flat.
          • (Score: 2) by Soylentbob on Thursday June 01 2017, @08:50PM (3 children)

            by Soylentbob (6519) on Thursday June 01 2017, @08:50PM (#519037)

            Actually you just have to look at the sea, ships coming into view tip of the sail first, to conclude earth is round. Humans did that more than 2000 years ago.
            Your analogy is even less fitting because it contains no element of conclusion, just first appearances. The equivalent to the flat-earthers would therefore be the agw-denier: Go by what they feel right, without any attempt to understand the reasoning behind the other side.

            • (Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday June 01 2017, @10:40PM (2 children)

              by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Thursday June 01 2017, @10:40PM (#519082) Journal

              Actually you just have to look at the sea, ships coming into view tip of the sail first, to conclude earth is round. Humans did that more than 2000 years ago.

              Why would we do that empirical nonsense when we can logically conclude the Earth is flat instead? So much less work, you know.

              Your analogy is even less fitting because it contains no element of conclusion, just first appearances.

              Even if that were true, that would be irrelevant.

              The equivalent to the flat-earthers would therefore be the agw-denier: Go by what they feel right, without any attempt to understand the reasoning behind the other side.

              You keep feeling that way. My point is that we have the same false certainty presented just as you presented in your first post. Now, I get you don't think you're an AGW-denier, because you don't believe the general theory is false. But accepting a theory on completely unscientific grounds is no different than rejecting it on completely unscientific grounds. Reality isn't going to be any different. Let's examine your assertions in more detail:

              Skin cancer is correlated to UV-radiation, which is correlated to ozone-depletion in higher atmosphere, which lags behind CFC polution by 20 years as parent poster already suggested. So, according to the expectation voiced by the scientist, with the ban of CFC in the '80s we should see an ongoing incline of melanoma cases until ~2000, after that a stagnation, and with some luck a decline once the ozone layer rebuilds.

              You made a very specific assertion about the effects of CFC pollution. Where's the evidence to support that assertion? And notice that this ignores human behavior. It's very easy for humans to change their behavior in ways that increase or decrease not only the incident of melanoma (by staying inside or outside, for an obvious example), but even its detection. So right away, we have a huge factor that by itself can confound the prediction. But moving on, we also have a huge disconnect between the production of CFCs and the destruction of ozone in the stratosphere. The problem is that you don't have a handle on how ozone is created and destroyed (which is a huge problem with greenhouse gases as well). For example, if the primary mode of destruction of ozone is upper atmosphere water ice, then things like ozone holes might be natural phenomena going back to when oxygen first appeared in the atmosphere a billion or so years ago. But it's not as sexy a story to sell to say that humans panicked on a global scale when they first measured ongoing billion year old phenomena, is it?

              I don't have a horse in this particular race, but it's interesting how confident these decisions were on the basis of a small period of time of measurement. I find that same overconfidence showing up once again with climate mitigation advocacy. There is a peculiar blinkered outlook such as you stating that one doesn't actually need to resort to evidence to make highly speculative claims:

              Same with global warming: Some of the mechanisms are known. There are some mitigating effects (e.g. the sea dissolving some of the CO2), and probably not all of them were considered in the previous model. Some might delay the warming, other effects might speed it up (e.g. the methane released from the thawing former perma-frost areas in Siberia), some of them might cause additional problems (e.g. the CO2-levels in the seas can kill the corals, could bring the fish-population out of balance). AFAIK, no one claims to understand all interconnections to the last detail, and the models are adjusted when new influences are found. But the tendency is clear.

              Let us note here your implication that the models are good enough to base policy on. But what is that based on? You made a point of stating that "logical connections can be assumed". But we see here that you don't know enough about the system in question to make that claim (and it's not looking good for climate modelers either - we need models that can predict, not models that can fit well to past data that might not be correct).

              • (Score: 2) by Soylentbob on Friday June 02 2017, @06:45AM (1 child)

                by Soylentbob (6519) on Friday June 02 2017, @06:45AM (#519241)

                I could now write some equally verbose explanation, but it boils down to this:
                We don't have a labratory-earth to experiment. But we don't have one to waste, either. That leaves two options: Either we don't bother at all and ignore any very likely risk, or we accept that science builds a model and tries to improve its accuracy incrementally by checking it against reality, and give it our best effort. Note that I still avoid any premise about the actual correctness of current prevalent models.

                It should be a no-brainer that the second postition is the only viable one. If you can't agree that far, we need to open a moral discussion, not one about facts.

                Assuming we agree on 2nd, you could still try to deny agw or ozone depletion due to CFC, but not just by pointing out how the current models lack accuracy or skew in one direction. In that case as a doubter you would have to propose a better model, which needs to be consistent with state-of-the-art physics (behaviour of infrared- and other radiation in CO2 and methane, liquid flow dynamics, etc.) and match past measurements. You could earn millions by that, given that large industries would profit from it. The fact that no-one came up with such model and agw is still focused on pointing out inaccuracies, although capitalism generates a strong incentive to oppose global warming, shows how unlikely such a model would be.

                • (Score: 1) by khallow on Friday June 02 2017, @12:15PM

                  by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Friday June 02 2017, @12:15PM (#519318) Journal

                  We don't have a labratory-earth to experiment. But we don't have one to waste, either. That leaves two options: Either we don't bother at all and ignore any very likely risk, or we accept that science builds a model and tries to improve its accuracy incrementally by checking it against reality, and give it our best effort. Note that I still avoid any premise about the actual correctness of current prevalent models.

                  Well, if we're going to base our decisions on such models, then let us note that a) the models don't predict consequences at present that are particularly severe, and b) such model building has a history of bias and exaggeration, meaning the consequences are probably less dire (particularly in the distant future where no one faces consequences for being deliberately wrong) than predicted. In the meantime, humanity has other, bigger problems that it needs to deal with. While a coherent, measured approach to climate change mitigation can help these bigger problems, I can't help but notice that just like the bias of the climate models, there is a consistent bias in favor of radical and unproductive climate change mitigation even to the point of making the bigger problems worse (such as a recent story where someone advocates that we need global food rationing because climate change).

                  And that sums up why I'm not on board. There is this myopic obsession with climate change as if it were the only problem that the world faces; there is this consistent bias in favor of exaggerating the problems of global warming and other climate change (which to make clear, I do agree exist, just not to the degree that it is the most important problem that humanity faces); and there are a variety of really poor solutions being proposed as a result which don't take into account the actual problems that humanity faces or the actual costs of the solutions.

    • (Score: 2) by kaszz on Thursday June 01 2017, @09:40AM (3 children)

      by kaszz (4211) on Thursday June 01 2017, @09:40AM (#518763) Journal

      I need statistics to figure out when the lowered CFC pollution will cause less skin cancers. Australia is almost like a gigantic no-go-zone. At last on daytime.

      Is the skin cancer rate the same for Aborigines?
      For them the individuals that could not handle it should been dead since thousands of years ago.

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 01 2017, @09:41PM

        by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 01 2017, @09:41PM (#519052)

        If the earth is flat then you need only pen and paper.

        Start at any point on the paper and draw east.
        You will run to the edge. And need a portal to get 'home'.
        If you home is (0,0) (which is easiest) this will work with any maintained angle.
        All needing a portal to get back home.

        On a sphere you don't need a portal.
        Having traveled around the world I have yet to enter a portal.

        Portals exist in magic. Thought magic was evil.

        Also see Foucault's pendulum for a simple to build proof.

      • (Score: 2) by Mykl on Friday June 02 2017, @12:20AM (1 child)

        by Mykl (1112) on Friday June 02 2017, @12:20AM (#519122)

        Skin cancer rates for Aborigines are much lower because they have much darker skin/more melanin than European-Australians, and are thus much less susceptible to skin cancer. This, of course, varies depending on heritage (e.g. someone who only has 1 aboriginal grandparent will generally have lighter skin and may be more susceptible)

        Even if Aborigines were susceptible to skin cancer, they wouldn't have been affected by CFC pollution thousands of years ago, because we only invented CFCs in the 20th Century.

        • (Score: 2) by kaszz on Friday June 02 2017, @01:00AM

          by kaszz (4211) on Friday June 02 2017, @01:00AM (#519138) Journal

          My thought on Aborigines were that they maybe have such good protection naturally that they aren't affected at all even by the modern CFC ozone depletion issue.