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US quits Paris climate pact

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Re: US quits Paris climate pact

#281

Post by barrkel »

mcphage wrote: post #121
rayiner wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If you believe the USA should be involved at all on the international stage, this creation of new public knowledge is a big detriment to that end. The belief that the U.S. needs to be involved in the international stage is based on the fallacious assumption that international cooperation can fix climate change. There is no scenario in which that happens. Without fundamental technological leaps, we'd have to decreas…

> The U.S. doesn't need to be involved on the international stage. Yeah, it really does. The US might be a big economy, but not-US is an even bigger economy.

And the US is an ever-decreasing share of the global economy - it's shrinking in relative terms. China overtook the US in World GDP share at PPP in 2014.

Re: US quits Paris climate pact

#282

Post by sverige »

maxander wrote: post #269
RcouF1uZ4gsC wrote: post #258

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the US was able to survive the loss of the Vietnam war and the Bay of Pigs where many people who bet their lives on the US died after being abandoned by them, the US will survive this as well and American credibility will be just fine in the long term. Basically, the rest of the world will have to learn that getting the US to agree to something that is opposed by a significant group of Americans is a losing propos…

Uh, the Paris accords are hugely popular in the U.S. [1]. The word is that even most corporations, oil companies among them, supported staying in the pact. Everyone was on board with this, except Trump and his far conservative base. And as long as power gets passed between groups with fundamentally different interests (or even basic notions of reality), no one will trust U.S. for basic security if they have half a ch…

"Hugely popular" is an overstatement. "Everyone" excluding "Trump and his far conservative base" lost the election.

And part of Trump's message was that the U.S. shouldn't be the guarantor of the security of the rest of the world. That was a hugely popular proposition with his supporters.

Re: US quits Paris climate pact

#284

Post by surveilmebro »

throwaway-1209 wrote: post #264
surveilmebro wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For anyone taking this comment seriously: verify the numbers for yourself. The poster has given the lower bound of the confidence interval in positing that we will see 0.3C warming by 2100. The latest assessment puts warming at 3.7C (6.67F!) under the "Business as Usual" RCP8.5 scenario. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Representative_Concentration_P... Edit -- not to mention that climate models are quite good at reprod…

That's if _everyone_ withdraws. That's not what's happening. 0.3 degrees is if the US withdraws but everyone else proceeds as planned. But we aren't even withdrawing per se. Immediately after announcing his decision, Trump also announced his willingness to re-negotiate the accords on better terms (by which I think he means not spending $100/B a year on something that other countries aren't even legally bound by). And…

Complete nonsense on both counts. First of all, consider that the most visible public debate about this has centered on whether it is even possible to limit warming to 2C. Start by reading the two links I posted. If you would like to learn more, the IPCC reports are genuinely well written and accessible: https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar5/

I would hope that at least on HN we could all agree on a shared objective reality and the validity of the scientific method. Your claims sound like something straight out of a Heartland brochure.

Re: US quits Paris climate pact

#285

Post by panzagl »

gonvaled wrote: post #230
panzagl wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And this is why the US has so much trouble with climate change as an issue- first it was sulfur dioxide, then lead, then CFCs, now it's CO2. The US has been doing this since the 70's. Now Europe and China want to pretend they care with words, and giving the US's money to the third world, yet every picture of a city in China looks like London in the 1890's and it turns out those oh so green Euro car makers were cheati…

What are you talking about? Lead is bad for your health. CFCs are bad for Ozone. CO2 is bad for global warming. All pretty much universally accepted. European cars, with cheating and all, are miles ahead of US cars. And they have been heavily fined for cheating, as they should. And China has not yet contributed a meager percent of the cumulated US CO2. Not to talk per capita. The planet is not yours.

Per capita and cumulated are BS measures to obfuscate that China is a bigger contributor, and likely to grow for a while. The first rule of getting out of a hole is to stop digging- the US has, China hasn't.

Re: US quits Paris climate pact

#286

Post by clumsysmurf »

370 upvotes in 2 hours with 268 comments (as I write this), yet this story is at the very bottom of the front page of HN at #28 (6:15 EST).

Does HN systematically penalize / shadow censor certain kinds of content?

Re: US quits Paris climate pact

#287

Post by scarmig »

RcouF1uZ4gsC wrote: post #258
scarmig wrote: post #51

This is one of those situations where you should be shaking your head, even if you're a climate change denying conservative or a fussil fuel industrial interest. The Paris pact was pretty toothless: it was a step forward, but heavily aspirational. Indeed, one of the stated complaints of conservatives was that it did nothing to enforce compliance. The Trump Administration could have just as well ignored it without for…

If the US was able to survive the loss of the Vietnam war and the Bay of Pigs where many people who bet their lives on the US died after being abandoned by them, the US will survive this as well and American credibility will be just fine in the long term. Basically, the rest of the world will have to learn that getting the US to agree to something that is opposed by a significant group of Americans is a losing propos…

In other words, the rest of the world has to learn that it's pointless to make agreements with the United States that have any political implications. Or even agreements that have bipartisan support (see: NATO two years ago).

Which puts us in solid agreement, but you're foolish if you think this doesn't seriously advantage countries that are capable of maintaining agreements over the USA.

Re: US quits Paris climate pact

#288

Post by [deleted] »

exclusiv wrote: post #174
zorpner wrote: post #9

Elon Musk just posted that he will, as promised, be quitting the presidential council: https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/870369915894546432

Kind of sad people quit/resign/temper tantrum when they discover opposing views or decisions. I think this was a dumb move by the president but Elon and others originally joined to try and provide insight and influence against opposing viewpoints. Did they expect to get their way all the time?

[deleted]

Re: US quits Paris climate pact

#289

Post by reirob »

xorcist wrote: post #278
scarmig wrote: post #51

This is one of those situations where you should be shaking your head, even if you're a climate change denying conservative or a fussil fuel industrial interest. The Paris pact was pretty toothless: it was a step forward, but heavily aspirational. Indeed, one of the stated complaints of conservatives was that it did nothing to enforce compliance. The Trump Administration could have just as well ignored it without for…

> The Paris pact was pretty toothless: it was a step forward, but heavily aspirational. It is important to know that the reason the Paris agreement is aspirational only is that it was necessary in order for the US to sign. And the reason for that is the US political system. Any commitments would have had to be ratified by the US senate, which was deemed unlikely. Actual commitments had to be deferred to later agreeme…

Exactly. See article [1], it lists all the weaknesses of the Paris agreement and why it was so weak. US, sorry, it's actually US' president, seems to act more and more selfish - it's almost humiliating to watch this as a European.

[1] https://theintercept.com/2017/06/01/will-trumps-slow-mo-walk...

Re: US quits Paris climate pact

#290

Post by neuronexmachina »

api wrote: post #268
scarmig wrote: post #51

This is one of those situations where you should be shaking your head, even if you're a climate change denying conservative or a fussil fuel industrial interest. The Paris pact was pretty toothless: it was a step forward, but heavily aspirational. Indeed, one of the stated complaints of conservatives was that it did nothing to enforce compliance. The Trump Administration could have just as well ignored it without for…

> he's seriously undermined people's ability to trust in the United States maintaining its international obligations What if that is in fact the goal? Many people in Trump's administration are openly anti-globalists and many of his voters and supporters have the explicit goal of "exiting" globalism.

Yup, it's a win-win from their perspective, since they consider both environmentalism and internationalism as evils.
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