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: 4, Informative) by Soylentbob on Thursday June 01 2017, @05:53AM (16 children)
Global warming as a graph [xkcd.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 01 2017, @06:20AM
"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)
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)
FTFY
(Score: 0, Flamebait) by khallow on Thursday June 01 2017, @12:40PM (4 children)
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 01 2017, @12:50PM (2 children)
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)
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
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
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)
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)
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)
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)
From this summary [technologyreview.com] of the research in question:
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 01 2017, @08:03PM (3 children)
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)
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)
> 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
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.