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