Corporate CEOs, French and German leaders, and the general crowd of Al Gore brainwashed global warming fearmongers are up in arms over Trump pulling out of the Paris Global Warming Accord.
The Financial Times reports G7 Allies Lead Anger at Trump’s Exit from Paris Climate Agreement.
French President Emmanuel Macron issued a video statement in English urging US scientists to relocate to France.
Heads of Germany, France, Italy Issue Joint Statement
The Heads of State and of Government of France, Germany, and Italy issued a Statement on the United States of America’s announcement to withdraw from the Paris Agreement on climate change.
It raised quite a diplomatic stir when Theresa May refused to sign the statement.
Collective Dismay
PRI reports World Reacts to US Climate Deal Withdrawal with Collective Dismay, Determination.
European Commission chief Jean-Claude Juncker said there could be “no backsliding” on the deal. Excuse me for pointing out the obvious, but “backsliding” just occurred.
Trump stated, “I was elected to represent the citizens of Pittsburgh, not Paris.” In response the mayor of Pittsburgh Tweeted:
Make Our Planet Great Again
In a TV broadcast both in French and English, French President Emanuel Macron told climate defenders to “make our planet great again.”
Arnold Schwarzenegger Delivers Video
Loyd Blankfein, Goldman Sachs CEO Chimed In
Allegedly, that was the first ever Tweet by Blankfein.
US Rivals Fear Uneven Competitive Field
The Wall Street Journal reports With U.S. Firms Freed of Paris Accord, Rivals Fear Uneven Competitive Field.
Reverse Paranoia
The WSJ also states “Others say they see a risk that American firms may end up missing out on opportunities created by governments trying to get a handle on climate change.”
The Carbon Disclosure Project, a London research group that pushes for consistent emissions disclosure from companies, said that Mr. Trump’s decision opens the door for businesses and other world leaders “to act in order to protect their assets.”
The group warned that the U.S. may end up suffering competitively by pulling out, by leaving on the table billions of dollars in cost savings the group says is associated with climate-change reduction. Lance Pierce, president of the CDP in North America, said that 190 of the U.S.’s Fortune 500 companies have already saved $3.7 billion a year by focusing on climate-change-reduction measures like energy efficiency.
Unilever PLC Chief Executive Paul Polman, a longtime advocate of the commercial benefits of corporate sustainability efforts, said U.S. companies might miss out when it comes to new growth opportunities as governments accelerate their efforts to reduce emissions to meet the accord’s aspirations.
Tech Companies React
Supply Chain reports Technology Companies React to Trump’s Decision to Withdraw From Paris Climate Agreement.
Google CEO Sundar Pichai
Apple CEO Tim Cook
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg
“Withdrawing from the Paris climate agreement is bad for the environment, bad for the economy, and it puts our children’s future at risk. For our part, we’ve committed that every new data center we build will be powered by 100% renewable energy.
Stopping climate change is something we can only do as a global community, and we have to act together before it’s too late.”
Momentous Implications
The fearmongers at Climate Interactive on the U.S. Role in the Paris Agreement state the “implications of this decision will be momentous for the US and for the world.”
“The world would warm an additional 0.3°C (about one-half a degree Fahrenheit) by 2100,” according to the report.
Momentous Math
0.3°C over 82 years is .003658536 degrees a year. Donald Trump will likely be gone in 4 years, but let’s assume 8 years.
Mercy!
Can the earth take it?
This is all so stupid, it’s hard to know where to start, but here is my checklist.
- Models cannot possibly predict anything to this degree of accuracy.
- The shift to driverless vehicles alone will likely do far more for emission reductions than has been factored in.
- The earth has gone through major cooling and heating cycles over hundreds of millions of years.
- Attempts to predict the next 100 years are far beyond absurd.
- The global warming fearmongers have changed their models and doctored the data so many times, no one in their right mind should accept any of their predictions.
For the record, I am in favor of reduced pollutants, especially from coal, for health reasons, not global warming. The focus on CO2 is a joke.
In case you disagree, I leave you with one final question: When has such mass hysteria ever been right?
Mike “Mish” Shedlock
Lots of money off the table now.
*sniff*
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Yes. It is about saving money and about helping Exxon, The Kochs and Russia. Perfectly understandable.
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Actually, no. It is about the fact that most people don’t know the difference between government and society. Read the twitter posts again…Companies are going to continue to seek more efficient energy plans and continue to seek more efficient waste management and production means. This is the correct way.
But why are they doing so? Because it makes a great deal of economic sense for them. Efficiency can lead both to cost side savings and production side value when done right.
What is needed is not law and crony redistribution of taxpayer wealth–which is all the Paris thing is–but for companies and even cities to make decisions.
True liberty thrives where decisions are local. Corruption thrives where decisions are centralized. Liberty leads to wealth and wealth leads to a cleaner environment. Corruption leads to poverty which leads to Detroit or the Leipzig brown field.
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Dr. Strangepork I do believe you have a point. So far I haven’t heard Trump say anything that would inhibit any of the crybabies from using their own money and initiative improve emissions of any sort they wish.
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Trump not participating with the Paris Accord was the right thing to do. He did it for the wrong reason, however. He made the decision based on renegotiating the terms in the future, not based on principle, i.e. that AGW and the long term effects have not been proven. I suspect he will capitulate and agree to something to appease the leftists and the heads of states.
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The Paris Agreement is a dud already. From way before trump spoke
https://benjaminstudebaker.com/2017/06/01/the-paris-climate-agreements-failure-was-structurally-inevitable/
And again;
http://www.politico.com/agenda/story/2015/11/why-the-paris-climate-deal-is-meaningless-000326
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Hopefully pulling out of the Paris Agreement will r result in political climate change! These self important CEOs and politicians have led us down the wrong road every time without fail. The crazy thing is, the Paris Agreement if enacted may reduce US greenhouse gas emissions, which are currently at 15.6% of all global emissions, but would legitimize and legislate the increase of global greenhouse gas emissions! China is currently the largest polluter which emits 22.9% of global greenhouse gas emissions and the Paris Agreement will let them continue increasing emissions without punishment!
The Paris Agreement legislates the increased greenhouse gas emissions by allowing the 107 countries that it has deems in development to continue increasing their greenhouse gas emissions. China and India are included in the developing countries list.
The 42 developed nations, of which America is included in, would pay fines to a global governing body for not reducing their carbon emissions by 80% by 2050, which would transfer wealth to developing nations and also requires developing nations to finance the transition to renewable energy in developing nations, prior to transitioning to 100% renewable energy in our own country.
We can state with 100% certainty that we are unable to rely on our government and global institutions to tell us the truth. The almost 100% of our representatives and senators don’t even bother reading the legislation. They have admitted this. It is every Americans civic responsibility to read the legislation put forth by our government and global institutions such as the UN, IMF, WTO, and World Bank.
UN list of 107 developing 107 developing countries and 42 developed countries:
http://www.un.org/en/development/desa/policy/wesp/wesp_current/2012country_class.pdf
https://unfccc.int/resource/docs/2015/cop21/eng/l09.pdf
http://unfccc.int/kyoto_protocol/items/2830.php
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_greenhouse_gas_emissions
Z
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Correction it requires developed nations to finance the transition in developing nations.
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In full disclosure, I was a republican who abandoned the RNC after TARP, voted for Nader in ’08, Stein in ’12, campaigned independently for Bernie in ’16 and voted for Trump in the general election.
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You’d probably be shocked how many Democrats voted for Trump.
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The last time the government was in charge of climate change legislation we got the farm lobby ethanol mandate bill. Higher food costs and no CO2 reduction. Worthless PITA. Google, Apple, and Facebook will do a much better job of it.
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I love your blog but feel you are missing the boat with regards to climate change. I guess some choose to follow science when it’s convenient. You would have been in the earth is flat camp back in the day.
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99 percent of the climate fearmongers do not even know that only a few thousands years ago the climate on Earth was way, way warmer than today. These idiots like to use the word ‘science’ but are completely ignorant of what hides behind it.
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Actually, it’s because of climate scientists that we even know this factoid, and none of them are drawing the same conclusion.
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Ha! good one. The like climate science when it proves their world view.
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99 percent of the climate fearmongers think that CO2 is a pollutant. Brainwashed by CNN, MSLGBT, ect.
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And Trump is tricking the right wing like Penn and Teller tricks the left, so what? All you proved is that people, like yourself, can be conned.
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I’m conned?
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Just proves that gullibility knows no bounds and the left is way more guilty of it by far.
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Guess you must have missed Mish’s point 5 above. Sums up your so-called “science” nicely.
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The Cubs couldn’t have played in Chicago 10,000 years ago because it was under a mile-thick glacier. It’s gone now so I am assuming that global warming made it disappear. There weren’t enough people to cause it so I’m assuming that the earth warmed for other reasons. Global warming means increased agricultural production among other things so I’m looking forward to more tomatoes per year and Monsanto is looking forward to more corn and soybean profits. In my view, if global warmers are so worried about sea-level rise, the sooner it happens the better. Otherwise, there will only be more people to relocate later on. The “science” of global warming is about controlling the masses, period. Whatever is going to happen will happen, we humans can’t do but very little one way or the other. Temperatures have been cycling since the earth’s crust cooled billions of years ago. If the earth is in a warming phase now, I say, bring it on!
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Cubs win third World Series in 10,000 years.
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@permanent weekend — where is this “science” you insist on quoting (without any source)?
If you ever pull your head out of Al Gore’s rear end, you might notice how often the local weather forecast is wrong … really wrong.
What kind of idiot puts faith in an unproven (and unprovable) **MODEL** of global temps 100 years from now, when the experts can’t even get the local forecast correct a few days in advance?
If you even took a science class in your life, where is the control for your so called experiment?
US companies can (and should) try to limit / eliminate pollutants. Better / smarter irrigation would be great. More efficient machines / engines are a good thing.
But taxing everything to fund expensive boondoggles for unelected bureacrats? WTF? Why do you hate your fellow Americans so much that you will put Americans out of work so you can hire some more useless unelected bureaucrats?
Paris accord (never ratified by Congress, so was never binding anyway) is about destroying US jobs. Its not even about the environment.
The unelected bureaucrats know that stupid people in the US won’t read beyond the headlines. It has the word “climate” in the title, and that is as much thinking as you can handle?
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This is so ignorant and bogus. Weather is produced by the interaction of chaotic systems. That does not mean there are not trends. Winter follows summer, no matter how haywire the weather can act locally and temporarily. Putting more cars on the roads will lead to more traffic jams, even if you can’t predict in advance where and when those traffic jams will occur. Warmer oceans (which can be measured) will add energy and water to the atmosphere and weather patterns will shift.
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Seriously MISH … you have a group of these Soros trolls that comment on here and just write absolute crap. Its one thing to have a debate on subjects (its a good thing), but it really lowers the intelligence level of your blog when you allow these Soros agents to constantly parrot bullshit.
Its your blog Mish, you should want to protect it
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Actually, it runs in cycles. There are scientists who don’t believe in the AGW hypothesis. The guy who runs the UAH satellite data series is one of them. The IPCC itself says that the period of similar warming experienced between about 1880 (end of the little ice age) and 1940 was natural. This was followed by a 40 year cooling trend. we’ve only had planet-wide reasonably accurate temperature readings for 35 years; and the satellite readings are not surface readings, but atmospheric. We still don’t have full planetary land surface coverage, and ocean coverage is even worse. Since the 1880’s we’ve seen an increase in AVERAGE planetary temps of roughly 3 degrees Fahrenheit. This is conceding that the concept of an AVERAGE planetary temperature even has real meaning; which is itself debatable.
No one bothers to mention that in geologic terms we are still in an ice age (not glacial episode, but ice age) as we have permanent ice caps at both poles. Nor is it reported that both Greenland and Antarctica have both increased ice mass in the past decade. We are in an inter-glacial period of the Holocene ice age, which started roughly 2 million years ago. This inter-glacial is already about 10,000 years old, with prior inter-glacials lasting anywhere from 7 to 15,000 years. Peak temperatures for the current period are estimated to have occurred about 5,000 years ago.
The current fears are driven (or so I believe, anyway), by a combination of ego, group-think, and turf protection; aided by ideology and a messiah complex of some top climatologists.
One lart point. If CO2 is the driver, this implies that heating on the ground should be caused by a warming atmosphere. There is no evidence for this, though. A major prediction of AGW theory is that a hotspot would develop in the tropical Troposphere. We still don’t see that.
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You are better informed than most here, but the ice sheets have lost mass, so say the grace satellites and other measures of mass. The total mass is hard to estimate, but recent data is rather more accurate and shows the oppositie trend to what you are saying. There is a hotspot at around 12km. The warming trend is 70-80% higher (0.25°C per decade versus 0.14°C at the surface). The hotspot is at the boundary between the troposphere and the stratosphere and is fluid, somewhat changeable with conditions, and varies (a lot) with latitude).
There are a number of markers for human-caused CO² as opposed to variation in the natural carbon cycle, and all have been discovered and reconfirmed by many parties: 1. Carbon isotopes; 2. Faster night than day time warming; 3. Faster warming at the tropopause.
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Didn’t those vaunted climate models fail to predict the recent 17 year warming hiatus? Even though CO2 went up? And you expect them to be accurate for the rest of the century?
This is nothing more than a cover for getting control of the world economy. A ploy by the God Complexers to gain control of 70+ trillion dollars.
Liberal control freaks have no other way of doing it except this since their economics is an abysmal failure. They have almost reached their end.
Thank God.
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The global warming models failed to predict the 17 year hiatus for the exact same reason the Fed’s economic models failed to predict every single recession since the Fed was created.
They are political models, not science.
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There is no hiatus, that is just cherry picking dates to compare. The trend is warming since 1998.
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“There is no hiatus, that is just cherry picking dates to compare. The trend is warming since 1998.”
Of coarse there was a hiatus. Dr. Jones at one point said, “where’s the warming?”
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We have terrestrial temperature records for about 150 years. The Earth is 4 billion years old. Just once I’d like a climate ninny to explain how they know that the climate of the last 150 years is the Earth’s optimal climate. Let’s dispense with the arguments over how all the temperature data sets have been corrupted by ‘scientists’ editing the raw data. Let’s ignore how ‘scientists’ have refused to reveal their methodologies. Let’s ignore that the ‘peer review’ process has been corrupted to exclude any scientist who is not on board with catastrophic climate change. Let’s ignore the fact that the climate models are designed to produce a hockey stick regardless of the inputs because they use unproven, highly debatable factors for system feedbacks. Let’s ignore the question of whether CO2 is a lagging or leading factor in warming (hint: CO2 levels were 10x higher in the past and lagged the temperature rise). Let’s ignore the fact that climate change is now a $1.5 TRILLION dollar / year business–dwarfing by a factor of 100x the amount of money spent by the carbon energy extraction industry–and yet we’re supposed to believe that all the government grants to researchers is not a rice bowl issue for these pure, altruistic people.
Climate has been changing for billions of years. Man made no appreciable contribution to climate change until 150 years ago. Man’s percentage contribution to change since record-keeping began is unknown. That much we know–and not much else.
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Global warming reports are inaccurate. Current reports do not contain any data of heat reflected to the atmosphere from the mass amount of solar panels, glass buildings, roads,etc. that act like mirrors and magnifying glass. Carbon created from so called green electric cars needing massive batteries, and all other batteries that inefficiently use fossil fuel to to charge and redistribute gas, coal, oil and other blamed fuels that without these fuels there would be no batteries. These false reports are engineered and used by political bully groups, G7,g20 etc, to impose various carbon TAXES and so called green companies and organizations for profit. These groups are Ignorant or purposely producing misleading climatic lopsided reports.
I can go on & and on about these government paid hyped reports that use bios so called scientist that need to go back to school and not pick and chose the data they like.
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I’m guessing none of you are actually scientist but I guess it’s fun to play one in real life. 😉
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Rare commenter and know you weren’t (aren’t) a big Trump fan, but this is spot-on. Can disagree with Trump on many issues, but his actions on the Paris Agreement and your summary are absolutely correct.
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If Trump does nothing else ……. withdrawing from the Paris Accord, nominating Neil Gorsuch and keeping Hillary out of office ……. I have gotten all that I could ask for with my vote for Trump.
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Amen Brother.
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When has mass hysteria ever been right?
Well probably during the days of the Black Plague, and the Spanish Flu, two name two. Probably when the Mongol Army had your city surrounded, just for another.
Of course this is just a pejorative question to make people who have actually read the science and talked to climate scientists stay away from this board or decline to comment because there are a lot of climate deniers around here.
I like your financial market observations Mish, but some of your conspiracy theories (I could have been pejorative and said “tin foil hat stuff” but didn’t, see how that works?) make me double check a lot of your financial ideas and propositions and I never feel 100% comfortable.
I guess you have to choose – is this the “Whole Mish” blog, or the “Financial Markets Mish” blog.
I’d vote for the latter.
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I’ve “read the science” too. What is the science of “climate change”? seems the “mass hysteria” is all on the warmist/believer side. Michael Moore’s head is exploding now. You want to commit billions of U.S. taxpayer dollars to a fr*udulent cause that he supports?
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There is no science in this debate. Its 100% politics and taxes and wealth re-distribution by socialist thugs.
Any real science experiment would have to have a control to establish causality — there is no control here.
Real scientists are already embarrassed that they screamed hysterically in 1970s about the start of a mini ice age — writing endless reports and warnings sponsored by the UN (unelected bureaucrats).
Real scientists know the weekend forecast has an enormous error term, and any forecast for 100 years from now has an error term that dwarfs the base measurement. Any real scientist would have to admit the global warming forecast is +3 degrees +/- 15 degrees (at least).
As we discuss on this blog often, economic models developed by expert PhD’s are (ahem) often less accurate than flipping a coin. Now imagine trying to estimate economic “cost savings” 100 years from now, based on a weather forecast that is usually wrong even for shorter time periods.
This isn’t about science. This is corrupt socialists taking advantage of people who don’t or can’t read beyond headlines (the same scam victims who paid $100K per year for safe spaces and gender normative studies at “college”)
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Could the Paris Accord supporters please comment on what they think science is.
I want to see the basis of your beliefs.
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Search potholer54 on youtube for a fun high level intro, then read the peer reviewed papers cited in the credits. That will act as a starter.
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I want to see what YOU think the Scientific Method is.
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The so called scientific method is probably an invention of the government public school system that has been instituted for the purpose of turning inquiring minds into controllable cogs. Getting utility out of information probably has more with being able to weigh information under various states of emotions and being aware of what the emotions are than by using the state manufactured so called “scientific method”. For a look at the so called “scientific method” look in a dozen or so textbooks. I reviewed science textbooks to compare versions.
Did Einstein check off his mental process according to a list of “scientific method” steps? I doubt it.
Having just one or just a few states of mind “emotions” most of the time is an indication that an individual might come to biased conclusions.
Susan David has books and media on emotional agility and a book by the same name. Weigh concepts and variables while under the influence of various emotions and see what happens.
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Climate science is about basic physics and chemistry. The jet stream was discovered by the Air Force in WW2 in the war against Japan. The Air Force applies such basic physics to make heat-seeking missiles which aren’t blinded by CO² absorbing radiation in certain spectra.
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You are a limp dick socialist, and don’t deserve the respect that I would give a real human being.
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@webej: Fully half of the CO2 absorption spectra (if not more) is also absorbed by water vapor; which is a far more geo-effective “greenhouse” gas due to it being far more than just a trace gas. I would also point out that whether the affect is to retain heat or reduce heat depends on just where in the atmosphere it is.
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Clouds reflect heat, but far less than water vapour absorbs it. You are right, water vapour is a much more potent green house gas than CO², and having a little more CO² produces warming which puts a lot more water vapour in the atmosphere, amplifying the effect. At lower altitudes it is true that most (not all) wavelengths at which CO² absorbs radiation are saturated by water vapour, but not further up in the atmospheric column where there is little water vapour. This point was something that was a current issue in climate science around the turn of the century (before WW1).
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“CO² produces warming which puts a lot more water vapour in the atmosphere, amplifying the effect.”
Yet California was supposed to be under a permanent drought.
Under a super El Nino there was supposed to be exceptional rain, yet there wasn’t, except way to the north. This last winter, which was a non El Nino year, L.A. got above average rainfall, which tends not to happen in non El Nino years and northern California had exceptional record rainfall. Climate did what it wanted to do, not what it was predicted to do.
After Katrina, the 2005 hurricane season was supposed to become the norm. Climate decided not to cooperate. There has not been a CAT3 or higher hurricane to hit the U.S. in a record 11 years and counting.
Tornado activity has dropped off as well, despite the claim that climate change causes extreme weather. But Warren Buffett has not raised his insurance rates, as there hasn’t been an upsurge in weather related damage.
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A little perspective, PLEASE – https://www.armstrongeconomics.com/uncategorized/noaa-continues-to-try-to-justify-its-criminal-activity/
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Why is there no dispute that there is a 300 year Sun cycle? Where is the evidence and do you have any peer reviewed papers you can point to?
Also the Greenland chart – well Richard Alley was asked about that, and there were a couple of errors in the way this was presented that he’d like you (and your blogger) to know about:
1. Present: isn’t 2000, it is 1950
2. Present is the 1950 core reading, it takes about 100 years for snow to turn to ice, so this is in fact the reading from around 1855, and there has been a 1.4C climb since then to 2009 in the same area as the GISP samples.
You really need to dig in to these charts and read the papers behind them, and the follow up questions, etc. There are a lot of people motivated for reasons beyond me who are either inept or deliberately misleading in the climate arena.
But kudos for posting at least a reference.
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Here is a corrected version of the Greenland GISP chart:
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“Here is a corrected version of the Greenland GISP chart:”
If that is a correct chart, we are at the lower portion of the temperature scale, which means that the current temperature is below average for that 10,000 year period. Temperature still needs to rise, just to get back to average, let alone above average.
Notice also that the temperature plot constantly zig zags up and down.
Climate is ALWAYS in the process of changing.
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Nobody says that the climate is static. This is a red herring played out by the denier community. But you already know that and don’t want to believe the evidence.
The other graph in this article is the RSS feed that purportedly shows a “hiatus”. This is one measure modeled from the feed from a series of satellites. The UAH data use the same feed and their model is significantly different from RSS (remember this is like two people looking at the same thermometer and recording different values, but a lot more complex because they need a model to transcribe a series of readings into a resultant temperature). Just for fun, the satellites themselves disagree and need overlapping series to calibrate the next satellite from the last (they have a limited lifespan). They also switch from MSUs to AMSUs, have to correct for diurnal drift (UAH and RSS use different methods to compensate for this drift) and there is no way to calibrate the MSUs or AMSUs after they are launched (you can’t just send a repair man).
So every time you see somebody base their whole climate analysis only on RSS you know two things:
1. They cherry picked RSS because it is the closest to the end result they want to get to
2. They place far too much trust in a very complex model that already differs from another model that uses the exact same data
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@themonosynaptic
And you put your faith in complex models based on incomplete information that cover a century?
I just gotta laugh.
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Not really – the climate forcing model is pretty simple. You just don’t want to believe the evidence because Algore Liberals Hillary Obama Point-headed East Coasters, etc.
You live in your silly bubble, I’ll live in reality 🙂
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Reality says that climate has always been changing and those who says that global warming of 2-3 Celsius degrees would be a disaster, is a sheer idiot. How do you know that today’s climate is best for mankind? Did you ever think of a huge landmass in Canada, Russia that would be available for agriculture because of global warming? All this climate fearmongering is nothing but alarmism, most stupid I’ve ever seen.
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Er… apparently left comment before TPW’s comment showed up. Since “Climate Change” is a political and ideological policy to redistribute wealth from rich countries to poor countries and has nothing to do with science, the comment makes no sense.
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Perhaps some would believe climate change if the scammers were not trying to use it to skim other people’s tax dollars. If the climate accord was such a good thing Obama would not have had to implement it by executive order. In my book this was the right move. Best indicator that this is the right move is all the grifters complaining.
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So let me get this straight. If the article is correct, now “the U.S. may end up suffering competitively by pulling out, by leaving on the table billions of dollars in cost savings the group says is associated with climate-change reduction.”
OK I thought that companies DO act in their own interest, and would LIKE to save big money. Unless of course the ‘cost savings’ means that the companies’ products are not slapped with a penalty for not following other countries rules.
Question: Has the Paris treaty ever been ratified in the USA? Is it the law of the USA? Of any country? Or is it just an agreement framework for now? Is China, the world’s biggest polluter part of this ‘agreement’? Is India? You know, they’ve been known to pollute a bit as well.
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(1) The Paris accord was NEVER ratified. It never even went up for a vote. To give context, the other wealth distribution scam masquerading under climate change was the Kyoto accord, which was defeated in the US Senate 99-0 (one absent). Every single Senator present (both parties) shot the stupid thing down.
That is why the socialist Obama agreed to the deal PERSONALLY, not as president — because the president is not authorized to ratify a treaty. It must be ratified (or not) by the Senate.
Obama hates America, and wants to implement George Soros’ global socialist government. Good riddance to a horrible man.
(2) China signed on to the accord (or one government rep did anyway). Again, never ratified in the People’s Congress — although I don’t know if Chinese law requires it or not.
China has a pollution problem, as they admitted during the Beijing olypmics. China agreed to clean up their pollution problem — because it is in their self interest to do so.
China has zero CO2 obligations under the Paris accord — which is just more evidence that the accord is about stealing wealth from “rich western” nations (eg the USA) and transferring wealth to socialist countries.
If the accord was about the environment, China would have a lot of obligations — they have none. Instead, China is going to do what is in their own self interest
(3) India has few actual obligations under the paris accord — nothing to do with CO2. India is supposed to clean up the Ganges River and tributaries that feed into it — something they have to work on with or without the paris accord.
In short, no emerging economies face any obligations under Obama’s stupid agreement. They are supposed to “work on” things they were going to work on anyway. The unelected EU gets to claim their endless regulations are mandated by a different unelected body.
Meanwhile the USA gets a stiff bill, plus loses a lot of jobs. The pseudo-science is unproven, and unprovable (show us the control for this experiment or shut up). Even if global warming has more validity than the ice age the same “scientists” screamed about in 1970s — the economic models are beyond flimsy.
Think about Fed economic models. Now think about the weekend weather forecast. Now imagine the Fed building an economic model on top of a weather forecast 100 years into the future.
Only an insane person, or someone who absolutely HATES America, would have signed off on the paris accord.
Meanwhile, US companies were and still are completely free to innovate on pollution controls — they don’t need permission from unelected bureaucrats in a foreign country
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Medex Man,
I would add that China has a lot to gain from the Paris Accord.
1. They have fought to be considered a developing nation (and not an industrialized one). That gets them off the hook until 2030 (or 2035) during which time they can produce as much CO2 as they want.
2. They look good. They can cancel coal plants (that were not needed because they planned too many) and look like environmental rock stars.
3. The production of solar and wind facilities is carbon and energy intensive. They have created an industry to supply the first world with renewable energy systems at prices which have bankrupted companies in those countries. Recent examples are solar companies in the US and Germany.
4. They gain an economic advantage by being able to use cheaper energy without paying carbon taxes. Also, countries that move to higher concentrations of renewables have high energy costs and an unreliable supply. Australia’s mining and refining sector is threatening to pull out and European companies are being forced to move off-shore.
5. By ensuring that other countries shut down coal-burning facilities, they get a bigger portion of the world’s supply and at a better price.
6. By being classed as “developing” they get a piece of the annual $100 billion (or $4 or $6 trillion). They have been asking for their money.
In other news, their leader has said that not all climate scientists agree, and the situation might not be as dire as some say.
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Actually, taking into account past history of fossil-fuel burning, the USA and the UK are bigger polluters than China to date,
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Mor0n!
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The U.S. can’t quit the Paris climate agreement, because it never actually joined
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/volokh-conspiracy/wp/2017/06/01/the-u-s-cant-quit-the-paris-climate-agreement-because-it-never-actually-joined/?utm_term=.70b91553a6b5
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If the U.S. didn’t join the Paris Agreement, were the $$ that Obama sent to the UNFCCC (or whatever) just before the end of his Presidency legal? If not, should Obama be called to account?
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wrong question re mass hysteria. either fore or against . wrong question which leads lesser minds into a non discussion of value.
this smells like a “hey look over here” at climate change and forget the man behind the curtain….ie, Russia gate. well at least a respected version of diversion…but still a diversion.
I see it for what it is. yawn
who knows the definition of climate change? we do know we have been pumping carcinogens out of the earth(oil)(uranium) (coal) etc, making plastic to beat hell , dumping it in the land and waterways and dumping chrome by products, etc in the great lakes ponds and stream…and many more places.
in short pollution.
but we like to have our own car so we look the other way, heat or cool to our comfort and hope the truth doesn’t exist.
I think that is called denial. or stupidity or death wish.
this whole thing is so laced with emotion it misses the whole point
I think taking a side on this issues misses the point of intellectual thought. any time there are only 2 answers, that is black and white thinking ….which is less than intelligent thinking.
but it sells newspapers
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You realize, I hope, that nitrosamines are carcinogens produced by the human digestive system. Hey, no matter, we just HAVE to eat those veggies. 🙂
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Every time a socialist manages to force Europeans to shut down oil and coal plants, and shut down nuclear plants — it invariably means Europe has to buy a lot more Russian natural gas.
All the GE wind turbines that were installed with great fanfare (and tax subsidies) power less than 15% of Germany’s energy needs — and we all know German industry is what makes the EU possible. Germany might be a world leader in “renewable” bird killing machines, but given the poor economics that isn’t saying much at all.
Russia now controls western Europe, and we have France’s Hollande and Germany’s Merkel to thank. If the EU headquarters want to run their A/C, heating, document printers, or just turn on the lights — they use Russian natural gas to generate the electricity.
Western Europe shifting to cleaner burning Russian natural gas means that western Europe has made itself into a giant Gazprom annuity. And it wasn’t even Putin’s doing (something I imagine he laughs about all the time!). Western Europe surrendered to Gazprom without a fight, they even helped finance the north pipeline!
Put that in your Russian conspiracy theory file Beth. Merkel and Hollande (with Obama’s full approval) turned western Europe into a Gazprom annuity.
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“we have been pumping carcinogens out of the earth(oil)(uranium) (coal)”
You forgot to mention when you prepare food. Such as charred, smoked or fried foods. Search PAHs in cooking. Thanksgiving day meal is a disaster.
Or that that possibly as many as 15,000 particles pass through your body every second.
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See the picture below, read and question.
Ask questions – https://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/11/18/ipcc-official-%E2%80%9Cclimate-policy-is-redistributing-the-worlds-wealth%E2%80%9D/
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DBO0RARXkAAO-mu?format=jpg
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There is fear that anyone not signing up will gain a competitive advantage and that must not be allowed under any circumstances.
Mantra is: “We don’t want a race to the bottom”.
Question I have is simple.
If the economics of renewable are so go won’t they be adopted anyway?
If so, how can there be a race to the bottom as the impetus will be to adopt.
Keep hearing about the cost savings they offer.
Are they BS’ing about the savings?
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There are a lot of savings (not to mention PR brownie points) to limiting pollution — which is why companies started building smoke stacks long before the socialists started building the EPA.
Smoke stacks were/are far from ideal pollution controls, but they were “state of the art” back when the private sector started building them — decades before the socialists at the EPA used quack science to raise more and more taxes to benefit themselves.
Pollution control makes sense in Beijing and in Pittsburgh — even though they don’t agree on a government system or food preferences or language.
Fake CO2 arguments are about tyrannical socialists taxing everyone under the false belief that they know better than everyone else — and they are going to eat 5 star catered meals (at taxpayer expense) behind a massive security screen (paid for by taxpayers also) while they arrogantly decide what is best for the people who did not vote for them.
The paris dictatorship tax accord is proof that Obama hates America. End of story. Good riddance to a horrible president and a horrible man who never liked the country that gave him opportunity.
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Show me a government bureaucrat and I will show you a parasite.
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No one has a job by professing how unnecessary they are.
Government is the ultimate scaremongering machine and it creates a LOT of jobs, most busily plugging holes in the dam that others were paid to drill.
If this was all harmless (which it is NOT) it would be one thing, but given it is an overhead burden that society must carry on its back, it is no different that slaves mining gold for their emperors vault while also paying for the guards to whip them to make sure they do so “efficiently”.
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The climate always changes with great changes in time. Over 10,000 years ago the Earth was covered with more glaciers. Obviously the Earth is warmer because most of the glaciers in the past have melted. We are obviously in a time of global warming. But the Earth goes through times of warmer climate and glacial ages because the Earth has cycles of global warming and global cooling. We are in a natural global warming period which has nothing to do with carbon dioxide global warming lies. Carbon dioxide is 0.04 % of the Earth’s atmosphere which is a very small percent of the atmosphere. Milutin Milankovitch described the changes in the Earth’s tilt and changes in weather . “Today, the Earth’s axis is tilted 23.5 degrees from the plane of its orbit around the sun. But this tilt changes. During a cycle that averages about 40,000 years, the tilt of the axis varies between 22.1 and 24.5 degrees. Because this tilt changes, the seasons as we know them can become exaggerated.” This is the cause of global warming and global cooling, just as the Earth warms in the summer and cools in the winter due to the position of the tilt of the Earth in relation to the sun. The summer is not caused by increased carbon dioxide just as the winter is not caused by decrease of carbon dioxide.
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Do you think that climate scientists have not taken into account Milankovitch cycles? Or the Sun? Or other drivers of climate? You are either saying that you understand science better than the climate scientists, or that the climate scientists are deliberately lying about their findings.
Disregard these questions, I’ve had enough of science deniers, I just wish Mish wasn’t one.
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I wish Mish would grow a pair and ban you from commenting. You really are a loser
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If he does, he does. Frankly, I’ll still read his blog for the financial insights. Interesting to see you don’t like free speech however.
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Commenter J has revealed the degree to which he (mis)understands climate science. You’d think people would take the trouble of reading up a little before they decide they’re more clever than physicists and astronomers. By the way, in terms of Milankovitch cycles the climate should now be gradually cooling, not quickly warming.
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Since you apparently can’t explain even the basics of “climate change” or define what constitutes a “climate scientist”, then yes, I think I do understand science better than climate scientists, and I think there is ample evidence (scientific term you may not be familiar with) that many (note, not all) are deliberately lying about their findings. The rest are just riding the gravy train.
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We cite consensus when we lack FACTS. Consensus is the weapon used to convince us that what is NOT true actually IS. We see this in polling where questions are formulated to generate the desired answers that are in turn used to claim consensus. Note how policy is driven by polling and not actual votes.
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This is for themonosynaptic:
Climate science is an interdisciplinary science. It includes atmospheric science, ocean science, biology, geology and branches of mathematics. It is difficult to have a deep knowledge of each field and keep track of advances in each one. There are many drivers of climate. Some are reasonably well understood and others are poorly understood. And by poorly understood, I mean that they don’t fully understand mechanisms or they don’t have good measurements that define the mathematical relationships.
Many of the climate models use similar assumptions. For example. they assume that the sun’s influence on climate is a constant and that ocean cycles have limited effect. There are many other simplifications. You need to simplify when producing complex models and it is difficult to do so without changing how the models work. There is some exciting science being done that is improving our understanding of some of the climate drivers–the effect of cosmic rays and cloud seeding being one of them. Being open to some of the new discoveries in science that challenge the assumptions of climate models, isn’t “denying” science. It is being open to discovery, which is science at its best. There will be a day when our models are much improved. Until then it is appropriate to question model projections that are out of line with current observations.
Many climate projections aren’t particularly alarming, and there are models (yes–by real scientists) that predict a period of cooling. There are those with vested interests who insist that we need to spend $100 billion, or $4 trillion, or $6 trillion a year (depending on who you ask) to avert certain catastrophe. When that kind of money is involved there should be more accountability than is now given about the assumptions being made, levels of uncertainty, where the money has gone and what it has accomplished.
BTW I have a PhD in Engineering and have worked with unsteady-state non-linear predictive models. I wish people who blindly rail against climate skeptics would take the time to understand some of the science they are looking at rather than mindlessly calling them science deniers.
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Al Gore proposed spending $90 trillion to eliminate cars.
I should have referenced this
https://mishtalk.com/2016/12/08/global-warm-ongering-what-happens-if-trump-takes-us-out-of-paris-agreement/
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Important clarification:
Al Gore proposed spending $90 trillion of OTHER PEOPLE’S MONEY on his political opinion. Not is own money; other people’s money. And he further proposed that those other people should get no say in the matter.
Never trust a chef that refuses to eat his own cooking.
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Write a paper documenting your claims with supporting points, submit it to a respected peer reviewed climate journal. If you are right and everybody else is wrong you’ll get a Nobel – no brainer.
Odd how all these experts litter comments around online boards instead of rigorously testing their ideas, isn’t it?
Cue theories claiming that the Journals are part of a giant conspiracy.
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Nobel prizes are only won by extreme left wing academics, and sometimes extreme left wing politicians who spent 80 days in Congress and have yet to even warm the chair in the oval office.
People with jobs in the real world haven’t been considered for a Nobel prize in decades
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If reducing co2 is critical, as quickly as possible, as cheaply as possible – why has the EU slapped tariffs on Chinese solar panels?
Shouldn’t they encourage the cheapest source of supply?
Hypocrits?
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Thermosynaptic,
I am referring to peer reviewed science. I didn’t realized that for you I needed to be explicit. There is quality science being ignored in order to support a bias. Supporters of CAGW may also be ignorant about work being done in other fields. Ignorance and bias is as much of a problem in science as it is in other fields, even among smart people.
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Peer review? You mean those people who are PAID for their opinions. Those people who only get funding if they are willing to pursue PROVING human caused climate change?
Please list the number of scientists who are paid to disprove it. When you do you will see a list of scientists who are disparaged for being in the pocket of industries like EXXON who strangely enough support the Paris accord.
This is a no win argument for the “deniers” as their science is dismissed because after all, it was funded by deniers, whereas those in support of climate change are pure as snow (yellow) because THEY are supported by government and PROGRESSIVE groups.
The whole conversation parallels our TRUMP scenario, where he can do things that the left has begged for and be murdered in the press for it….not for his policy choices but because he is evil, stupid, dangerous, insane……whatever. Policy, agenda, even MATH are dependent upon WHO is doing it.
Most avid climate change embracers rejected the Paris accord as ineffectual regarding CO2. They want a BETTER agreement. Trump ends it claiming he wants a BETTER, more fair agreement and they claim he is killing the planet, the children and ALL human progress. The Paris accord had virtually NO effect on climate except the massive wealth transfer to the rest of the world and handcuffs on domestic companies in competition. The large multinational corporations have no problem with wealth transfer as they can transfer those costs directly to the consumer and given competition is severely limited and their size affords them near monopolies, they have NOTHING to lose and everything to gain.
The rest of the world is appalled as they are seeing the profits under attack. America First means they are NOT. The nature of life on this planet has always been winners and losers and it is this battle, this competition, that makes us stronger, smarter and more sustainable. Surrender, suicide, take that evolution in reverse.
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@ nosynaptic – wtf are we arguing here? Do you think in a comments section on economics we are going to resolve a piece of science? No. The problem that we are looking at is a global bureaucracy picking up one scientific viewpoint amongst several available, and forcefully applying a reaction to the conclusion of that viewpoint on society and the world. I deny them that route as stands, I don’t deny climate change as it is a given, but the results of the combined variables are beyond scientific conclusion, WITHOUT DOUBT. To even attempt the imposition you support you will have to come up with far stronger science than is available, and stop looking on society as idiot. Do you understand the negative that false or corrupt climate pursuit has on existing known environmental concerns? About the ONLY thing positive in all of this is that economy of scale was aided by legislation, BUT that would have occurred anyway and likely with far better detail if BUREAUCRACY had not ever sat on the sensible evolution of mankind’s adaptation to a cleaner and more efficient way of life.
You supporr the view that suits YOU. If you examined yourself honestly, you would understand WHY you choose that view. I am not here to listen to what a well meaning person you are, nor are many others who comment here.
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Follow the money, not your emotions. I hate to burst your bubble, but many so-called scientist, academics, politicians, and many others will sell their souls to protect their lifestyles. Man would like to believe they can manipulate climate and business cycles. Fortunately, the cycles of the universe don’t give a damn about man’s self importance.
https://www.armstrongeconomics.com/uncategorized/noaa-continues-to-try-to-justify-its-criminal-activity/
No one likes pollution, and there are existing laws to combat violators. If we get rid of career politicians that are easy to bribe, the laws might get enforced.
Prosperity allows for a clean environment, which is why the poorest countries are the most polluted. Maximum prosperity comes with maximum freedom, which means the smallest govt. The globalist / Collectivist, that are in favor of Paris Con, want maximum govt.
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The beauty of this is if the temperature falls they will claim success and if it rises they will declare crisis demanding even more draconian restrictions and TAXES.
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“Disregard these questions, I’ve had enough of science deniers, I just wish Mish wasn’t one.”
Bill Nye, the Science Guy, recently said that if not for man, the current climate would be like it was in the 1,700’s. That makes Bill Nye, a science denier. It is false to assume Earth would be in the Little Ice Age, except for man pumping carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.
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There is no enforcement policy, no actual goals, no actual proof the “agreement” does anything except give a bunch of camera-hogging politicians an opportunity to congratulate each other. This much is acknowledged when the TV lights are turned off. There is no there there. So WTF exactly does acknowledging in public that the emperor has no clothes actually do that is sooooo bad outside of letting the deluded rubes who believed this POS agreement is “important” in on the secret that the emperor is naked? Well, maybe THAT is it, eh?
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But if we comply, we pay and suffer. To NOT comply is to NOT agree to the commitments of the Paris Accord, which means we WITHDRAW, exactly what Trump said.
If we are to stay in and do NOTHING then how is that better that to demand a different and better deal?
Climate change is an emotional cause used to oppress OTHERS. ALL of these assholes pushing these themes are emitting massively more CO2 than the rest of us. Lets see a few of the butt-hurt assholes taking the train, or a commuter flight to Paris. MAYBE then, the rest of us MIGHT fall in with them. I believe in freedom and liberty and NOT force. If ideas have validity they should be led by EXAMPLE, not preaching, not force, not intimidation and denigration. I have heard of NONE of these people leading by example, not even in the smallest most transparent way. They are absolutely arrogant in their beliefs, much as the gold draped leader DEMANDS his subjects to sacrifice and submit for their deity. Wear rags among the people and maybe they will embrace, otherwise all you are left with is the religious zealots seeking to prove their superiority by crushing the infidels.
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Love you Mish but you are in denial of 95 percent of scientists today and your own eyes. You are wrong and we are really destroying Mother Earth at unpresidential rate. Mish. our generation has destroyed 1/2 the animals on Earth so get with the facts. Cheers
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That’s 97% of those scientist who self-identified as climate scientists and responded to one survey conducted by an Australian psychologist and a blogger. Considering only about 30% of those mailed the survey responded, I’d be careful about using that.
I should also point out that the Paris Accord wouldn’t have actually done anything except have signatories promise to strive for emissions reduction. OH, and provide money for bureaucrats.
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LOTS and LOTS of money for corrupt bureaucrats.
How many tens of thousands of poor people in emerging countries could have been fed for a year on the food budget for the socialists gathered to “negotiate” taxes on people they don’t represent?
Without this tyrannical agreement between unelected socialists, companies are still free to innovate and implement pollution controls that make economic sense.
And western Europe can continue to shift to more and more clean burning Russian natural gas — Gazprom loves all the regulations the EU forces on European taxpayers!!!
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Only a narcissist would believe they could destroy “mother earth”.
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The “earth” has been destroying itself forever, and like it or not we humans are part of this planet, as much or more so than any other living thing. Simply retarded progressive thinking that ultimately asks us to seek our own destruction as the only means of saving “others”.
I’m beginning to think we have been secretly invaded by Martians, given we have a class of “people” among us who seemed dedicated to our demise. Look at who they are seeking to replace us with. Definitely not educated, definitely not the “progressive prototype”, so what gives? Seriously they will give preferential treatment to Muslims who mutilate women….the same people fighting everyday for women’s rights…like Kathy Griffin, flailing about a bloody president’s head while decrying oppressive “older white men”. You have to wonder if they EVER look at themselves. They are destroying humanity…civilization in the claims they are saving…or actually “advancing” our civilization. This requires far more DENIAL than any climate change denier could muster. The brainwashing is epic, almost to a hypnotic state where they are being induced by certain key words to harm themselves:
Racist
Global Warming
TRUMP
Justice
War on women
Islam
It looks just like when I whisper “SQUIRREL” to my dog just to see her reaction.
One hell of an omelette they are cooking, busily breaking lots of eggs.
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Just the point Tim, climate change is a major distraction from dealing with so many other environmental problems – resources ARE limited.
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Trump is right to remove the US from the Paris agreement.
There is very little scientific support for the AGW hypothesis. Many senior physicists and climate researchers reject the hypothesis.
AGW is interesting only as a case study in the manipulation of science, the manipulation of information dissemination, and in the phenomenon of the deliberate manufacture of a mass hysteria.
The costs of the Paris agreement far outweigh the benefit even if one believes in AGW. The costs are completely absurd if one looks at the data and draws the conclusion there is nothing to worry about in the first place.
If global warming is so directly related to CO2 concentration in the atmosphere, it is difficult to explain the twenty year pause in temperature increase. It is equally difficult to explain the increase in ice at the south pole, resulting a net equilibrium in ice at the poles.
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It is laughable companies will leave “savings” on the table because the president backed out. Really?
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Phil is a Soros paid troll. Nothing more
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We have far larger problems than so-called global warming. I think a collapsing economy should take precedence.
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You only say that because you don’t realize what a Canfield ocean would mean for the economy and the purchasing power of money.
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But neither do you. Nor anyone else. Nor does anyone know whether the difference in fossil fuels burned, if restricted solely by extraction costs compared to some random Apparatchik Glorification Scheme like Paris; will cause a massive phase shift from unspoiled everything to the world morphing into battery acid. It’s all just wild speculation. At best. Purely imaginary hobgoblins, more realistically.
That’s not to say that “eco-awareness” is some bad thing. In general, there is a lot to be said for ancient rules of thumb about threading lightly and first doing no harm. Wantonly burning fuel just to flaunt one is a bigger hick than one has a dick, is unlikely to benefit anything. And much of CO2 reduction, does boil down to simply going about life in a more efficient and less invasive manner.
But there are other, much more insidious effects of the Western indoctrinati’s religious obsession with simple soda bubbles. Lots and lots of attempted CO2 reduction, ends up increasing emissions of much nastier stuff. Diesel particulates perhaps the most well known, right now. But DI gas engine particulates are starting to look less rosy as well. Ditto for interior climate in overtight and underventilated (to save on heating, hence CO2) buildings. Often trapping moisture transfer resulting in mold growth. In addition to basic offgassing from high R-value (insulation) building materials, due to less air circulation to dilute them.
Like everything else, while reducing CO2 emissions, all being equal, is probably laudable; all else is almost ever equal. There are always tradeoffs. And having the kind of self promoting yahoos that ladderclimb the highest in politics and bureaucracies make the tradeoffs for everyone else, is virtually guaranteed to lead to outcomes no less disastrous than back when the same cohort thought they understood what they, almost as fervently, believed was economic “science” well enough to plan others’ lives.
Instead of just letting people live and let live, as free people are supposed to. So that if some find their particular part of the globe has gotten too hot, they can move further from the equator. Or heck, barring that they can sit around and be boiled. Adding just one more way by which some decide to die, to the untold number of means already in popular use.
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How exactly are driverless cars going to reduce carbon emissions? I might see it on an 18 wheeler because of a slightly reduced weight if there is no driver. But the vast majority are going to be transporting people to work, vacations, shopping etc while they play tic tac toe.
Whatever happened to the rainforest scare 30 years ago” dire consequences were suppose to happen in 20 years. Did they?
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What happened to the “new” ice age that these very same global warming scientists warned the UN about in 1970s?
What happened to Al Gore’s ridiculous 3 degree temperature rise by the year 2005? The one where actual temps were 7 degrees COOLER than his bullshit model?
What happened to all the scientific evidence refuting global warming that the clown PhDs at Oxford omitted from their research publications? The quacks at Oxford got caught, but they still have their PhDs and are still accredited.
Global warming is about taxes and arrogant socialists dictating from their catered conferences.
Pollution is a real problem that companies try to solve whether socialists force them to or not (the companies, the shareholders and their customers do it because they want to — not because socialists force them)
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Using a term like “fearmongers” denigrates all the hard working scientists gathering data about our changing world. Those changes are happening now and calling it mass hysteria is disingenuous. Legitimate concern by those who study the reality of our effect on the planet’s climate is anything but hysteria. Scientists by nature are conservative and follow the data. The fact that they are so alarmed at what they are seeing should be a concern for us all. The data doesn’t lie. Major changes are happening whether or not you recognize them. Trump can put his head in the sand along with others of you, but it doesn’t change one iota what is in play here. I challenge those who deny that climate change is real to actually read the science – there’s plenty of it. Climate change is not a hoax, it is not hysteria, it is not fear mongering. It’s all too real. It is happening whether you “believe” in it or not. Are you a climate scientist? Do you study glaciers? Do you study the ocean? You get my drift. Then if not, it’s just opinion based on wishful thinking or propaganda from the oil industry and not actual fact. This is real, it’s occurring right in front of us and around us. It is the biggest issue facing us today. Ask the Inuit people who are watching permafrost melting or people living on islands who are increasingly inundated by the rising seas. Just because it isn’t happening in this moment to you, doesn’t mean it isn’t happening. But why waste my breath on those who have already made up their minds void of actual fact? You pride yourselves on your financial acumen, why not use your intellect to investigate the climate data? Just saying.
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Calling you socialists “scientists” is an insult
Go back to middle school and learn about establishing a baseline and having a control for your experiment. Until you have that, you are not a scientist at all.
Then stop telling everyone that the only solution to the problem YOU invented is higher taxes and bigger corruption.
You don’t deserve respect Ms PhD — you haven’t earned it, and you have lied to further your own politics.
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Ad hominem attacks like this, and others that you have launched, completely undercut any serious argument that you may have to offer.
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So let’s get this straight, you have some of the most qualified academics, major political groups, large business, all working on reducing co2 for the last two decades, and yet mankind still extracts and uses all the fossil fuel he can find, without pause.
I think they failed, no ?
But they did create a lot of legislation, channel a lot of attention and money.
Who is stupid here?
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Please explain where Trump has said he is withdrawing from the Paris Accord because he is denying Climate Change. He has gone mushy on this specifically to avoid these arguments, but it really doesn’t matter that most Climate Change activists saw the Paris accord as a big nothing-burger, empty rhetoric. But of course NOW, it was going to save the planet, right?
Simply because Trump said NO.
His SCOTUS choice was heralded by all until TRUMP spoke his name.
Comey was disparaged by all until TRUMP fired his leaking ass.
The six Muslim nations that were on Obama’s watch list as potential terrorist exporters were just THAT until Trump singled them out.
This is ALL SO MUCH BULLSHIT.
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You don’t have to be a globalist to believe AGW is real and is a threat. But you should have sound scientific basis for reaching that conclusion. Despite the mantra that 97% percent of scientists believe that AGW will lead to catastrophic climactic events,
1) the statistic itself is false and based on unsound methodology;
2) while a large number of scientists would buy into the first part of the statement to a certain degree (mankind is changing the enironment … duh, that’s pretty much what all organisms do), the data is inconclusive as to whether mankind is causing unnatural warming, and there is nowhere near consensus that it could cause catastrophic impact to the planet.
3) at least 31,000 persons who purport to be scientists have flatly rejected that statement as you frame it. How many scientists are in the world?
If they were serious about the science of climate change, they would focus on reducing the emissions of water vapour. Carbon is only an issue because it is something the scammers can ably quantify, commoditise, trade, and use to fleece the proles by claiming it is their fault for generating it in the course of living. They can’t quantify and penalise water vapour with any reliability, and it is more certainly the greater threat.
Like “Bill Nye The Science Guy” I am/was an engineer; but I was an aerospace engineer; by contrast, he was a mechanical engineer, which is certainly a lower form of engineer and one less likely to appreciate the complexity of fluid and thermal dynamics. I would not trust Nye or the other clowns who are running the Climate Change kabuki theatre to correctly diagnose the problems of planet Earth, much less prescribe an appropriate course of treatment.
The fact that the entire EU high command and the global elite and their subsidised stooges, and particularly the Weather Channel, are aghast is a sure sign that Trump is moving in the right direction. What did Putin miss?
What should we do about it? Find good ways to reduce and diversify the by-products of human life so that they don’t cause irreversible damage, but do we really need a global accord and a grand Climate Politburo to help us figure out how to do that? Or do we let the little people tinker around the edges in the same way that we arrived at the industrial age and the electronic era and all the problems we have to this point identifed and to some extent already started correcting?
I’m not ready to wllingly submit to the Borg.
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–> “The fact that the entire EU high command and the global elite and their subsidised stooges, and particularly the Weather Channel, are aghast is a sure sign that Trump is moving in the right direction. What did Putin miss?”
Putin didn’t miss anything. The head of the Russian Science Foundation has said (jn Russian and in English) that global warming is political theater and not science. But Russia’s diplomats will vote in favor of global warming policy initiatives because in practice it forces European countries to buy more and more nat gas from Russia.
Thanks to Hollande and Merkel, western Europe is nothing more than a giant annuity for Gazprom. Putin is laughing at Europe … all the way to the bank
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What’s wrong with Trump. Everyone knows it is an established fact that the climate is changing. Unfortunately we cannot predict how it will change. Even three days from now. We need to stay in the accord to study and predict how the climate changes. That way somebody can tell me with some degree of accuracy if it is going to rain tomorrow. My local weather channel sure can’t.
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Climate Change is a FACT.
The problem is that there has been a great deal of “evidence” presented by “scientists” paid with our tax dollars to prove a political agenda.
Yup, fake science.
Yet there is real science conducted by “Real Scientists” that explains the benefits and costs of CO2 and proving that Man Made CO2 is a real problem.
This short video explains a lot in a short time and changed my mind and should change yours:
Neil DeGrasse Tyson’s Simple Explanation of Climate Change https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6VUPIX7yEOM
Sorry Mish, but you need to understand the whole picture.
The good news is advances in renewable energy sources will end much of the problem as “clean” will be cheaper than “dirty”.
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Neil Tyson is a socialist propoganda mouth piece… not a scientist
Telling us his left wing academic credentials, or listing the number of shows he has on socialist NPR or socialist PBS is not going to establish him as anything but a socialist mouth piece.
And if Tyson knew anything about science (he definitely knows about propaganda!!) he should be able to read past the headline.
Trump said he is opposed to kililng US jobs to benefit EU countries — and that is what the paris accord is about. Its a wealth transfer system and nothing else.
If YOU bothered to read past the headline, you ignoramous, you would have heard Trump say a renegotiated accord that focused on pollution should start right away. Naturally, the fascists running the EU want no part of an environmental accord or something that makes Europe pay its fair share. Not NATO, and not their silly paris tax accord.
Even Merkel the tyrant bothered to read that part, even though she claims there will be no renegotiation — kind of like she thinks England can’t leave the EU.
Socialism is evil, and you should stop lying about it
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The sky is blue is a “FACT.” The sun rises in the morning and sets in the evening (curiously enough, no matter where you are on the earth except brief periods of time above the Arctic and Antarctic circles) is a “FACT.” Water freezes at 32 °F (0 °C) is a “FACT.” “Climate Change” is is at best an hypothesis that has very little supporting empirical evidence. If you can’t even differentiate between a “FACT” and an hypothesis, then there can’t even be a discussion.
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Phil, please. in science fact are not “true” in the fact that it can never be changed. God you people need to read more than blogs and your own scrambled thoughts in your head,
Fact: In science, an observation that has been repeatedly confirmed and for all practical purposes is accepted as “true.” Truth in science, however, is never final and what is accepted as a fact today may be modified or even discarded tomorrow.
Hypothesis: A tentative statement about the natural world leading to deductions that can be tested. If the deductions are verified, the hypothesis is provisionally corroborated. If the deductions are incorrect, the original hypothesis is proved false and must be abandoned or modified. Hypotheses can be used to build more complex inferences and explanations
.
Law: A descriptive generalization about how some aspect of the natural world behaves under stated circumstances.
Theory: In science, a well-substantiated explanation of some aspect of the natural world that can incorporate facts, laws, inferences, and tested hypotheses.
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Noah Boshi,
“Phil, please. in science fact are not “true” in the fact that it can never be changed. God you people need to read more than blogs and your own scrambled thoughts in your head,
Fact: In science, an observation that has been repeatedly confirmed and for all practical purposes is accepted as “true.” Truth in science, however, is never final and what is accepted as a fact today may be modified or even discarded tomorrow.”
??? I don’t get your point. Everything I listed as a FACT exactly fits your definition as “…an observation that has been repeatedly confirmed and for all practical purposes is accepted as “true.””
I never claimed they were “Truths,” but they are accepted scientific facts, even by your definition.
I also believe my calling “climate change” an hypothesis is correct, even by your definition. Please provide one deduction or prediction concerning “climate change” that has been correct or confirmed.
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Tyson is an astronomer. Fact. Climate changes. Fact. How variable, and over what timescales, the current inter-glacial climate is, is unknown with any degree of certainty. Fact.
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Tyson is a TV entertainer, and a self promoting book seller. That is where his income comes from, and that is why you have heard of him.
As for his claims of astronomy, I am quite certain his guesses about black holes are based on conjecture and unverified models …. because no one has actually visited a black hole, no one has ever seen a black hole in person. No one can even detect a black hole directly — even your entertainer friend Tyson will tell you astronomers THINK they know where black holes are IN THEORY based on radiation readings.
Neil Tyson is a self promoting entertainer, who makes a LOT of money off taxpayer funded public broadcasting (and a little money off taxpayer funded student loans).
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Ever hear of photosynthesis? An equal amount of O2 is produced for each molecule of CO2 consumed by plants. All the carbon in our bodies comes from the plants we eat and the animals that also eat the plants. The globalist want to thin the herd, instead of planting more trees – https://www.armstrongeconomics.com/world-news/climate/scientists-first-predicted-ice-age-not-global-warming-in-1971/.
Temps and CO2 levels have been oscillating like everything else in the universe. Whether it’s light, sound, our heart; or the business, civil unrest, and war cycles, everything oscillates. We don’t study and learn from history that has repeated over the last 300 yrs, it’s not surprising that the sheeple will not consider the cycles over millions of years?
Pollution is something different, which everyone cares about, after they have sufficient food, water, and shelter. Pollution has been significantly reduced through technology, which comes from improved prosperity, which flurishes with freedom and the rule of law, that allows ideas and capital to flow freely. Govt is the antithesis of freedom and equal enforcement of the law. Global govt puts this disfunctional structure on steroids.
Fortuneatly, socialism is in the process of collapsing under its own debt weight, as it has repeatedly done throughout history. It would be nice if for once we could proactively cushion the blow, instead of suffering through the trauma of a crash and burn. To make matters worse, the coming mini ice age from another Maunder Minimum in 10-15 years will produce greater famine than any warming cycle has ever done. The Pharoah understood the cycles of feast and famine, which is why he headed Joesph’s warning. Why is our educated society so dumb?
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I think this is a baby and bathwater situation. I think you can continue to look at the more data based blogs from Mish, such as the “hard” data vs. “soft” data arguments, and the subsequent analysis of the growth numbers, etc. (the baby) from the dubious stuff (the bathwater).
However, as a fairly new reader of this blog, less than a year or so, it is telling that the community is so full of anti-science commentators, and that some think that opposing viewpoints should be shut down by Mish.
Perhaps there is a pattern of blocking commentators who don’t ascribe to Mish’s dubious viewpoints on climate and gold.
I guess I’ll find out.
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There is no science to your political opinion … and THAT lack of science is why low quality propaganda needs to be blocked.
Your quack science does not establish a baseline reading or a control — so to be blunt you couldn’t pass my middle school science class. I don’t care how many left wing academics have awarded you a certificate of completion, I question your scientific credentials.
Show us how you established a baseline reading — what the “normal” temperature would be like without your political interference. Every real science measure shows the Earth’s temperature has been much higher AND much lower and fluctuates all over the place for reasons real scientists don’t fully understand.
And show us the control you used to establish causality. Show us the planet, without the CO2 changes, and show us how that planet’s temperatures are different… You don’t even know about Earth never mind a control planet? yeah, that is why you are not a scientist, and neither is that quack entertainer Neil Tyson
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What is all the kerfuffle? Correct me if I’m wrong, but isn’t coal and auto emissions the leading cause of global warming? If so, then we ought to let technology and the free market do their thing.
1. California met its goal to produce about half the state’s electricity from renewable sources for three hours on March 11, a new estimate from the U.S. government shows.
2. But by 2030, a report from Argonne National Laboratory predicts, electric cars will make up 58% of the light vehicle market, and non-hybrid gas cars will only comprise 23%.
3. Bloomberg Energy Report: By 2040, zero-emission energy sources will make up 60% of installed capacity and wind and solar will account for 64% of the 8.6TW of new power generating capacity added worldwide over the next 25 years.
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Gosh! We can generate electricity without emissions reliably for the entire grid? And we can create batteries to store this “clean” energy without creating pollutants in their production or disposal? Sweet!
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https://www.armstrongeconomics.com/uncategorized/noaa-continues-to-try-to-justify-its-criminal-activity/
NO, coal and auto emissions are NOT the leading cause of global warming. It’s the energy output of the sun, which oscillates like everything in the universe.
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Well said Mish.
The surprising number of comments here from people who drink the climate change Koolaid is discouraging, as it evidences the number of folks who are unable to think objectively about even the data which the supposed “scientists” supposedly “agree” on (and that has been distorted beyond recognition).
If you’re concerned about 1/2 degree Fahrenheit changes over 100 years, you clearly don’t understand geology, the world’s physical history, or the difficulties of scientific models.
It would not surprise me that 100 years from now the earth might be 3 degrees C hotter OR colder.
Everyone ought to be concerned about air pollution, but the Paris “accord” is just one more exercise in very expensive (for the taxpayer) concentration of power in the global elites; most of whom I expect have never been close to a class on physics or other hard sciences.
And it is those global elites, and the lemmings which follow them, who feel their rice bowls are threatened along with their illusion of meritorious authority.
John Goodrich
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Like your comment…
…. don’t like the requirement to log in to faceplant just to “like” another user’s comment
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Everybody knows that we will only do the “right thing” if we are forced and as the “right thing” can only be one thing (no debate allowed), then it naturally follows that there can only be ONE real decider, controller, GOVERNMENT, which these globalist interests seek to impose their mandates with, not through democratic elections but by exactly these type of “agreements” that impose globalist’s initiatives upon nations everywhere that have had ZERO input, say or approval in it. Our president (Obama) can commit us to pay trillions of dollars in taxes and impose restrictions on businesses that employ us, with the scratch of his pen….and NOBODY should complain. After all, we’re saving the planet….but for WHOM? Surely not our children who will be burdened with unimaginable debt and limited possibilities to prosper.
The vision of Utopia is unclear but for a very few at the top.
Utopia is NOT a vision of millions of people crammed into ever smaller (efficient) spaces sharing in lesser and lesser wealth while completely dependent upon the generosity of a government who sustains itself by force and theft. The unnecessary and useless eaters will NOT be sustained in the end. We KNOW this. So, the plan must be to collapse this in upon itself while the very few of us “winners” are standing on the top of the heap.
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As Milton Friedman once said, if you put the government in charge of beaches, in ten years we would run out of sand.
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Yup — socialist Obama put government in charge of health insurance, and now most insurance companies are dropping out while deductibles tripple and premiums are skyrocketing 30% per year
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What is a science ?
‘Is science based on empirical evidence?’
It should not be “science has shown” but “this experiment, this effect, has shown.” And you have as much right as anyone else, upon hearing about the experiments–but be patient and listen to all the evidence–to judge whether a sensible conclusion has been arrived at.
It is imperative in science to doubt; it is absolutely necessary, for progress in science, to have uncertainty as a fundamental part of your inner nature. To make progress in understanding, we must remain modest and allow that we do not know. Nothing is certain or proved beyond all doubt.
“It doesn’t matter how beautiful your theory is, it doesn’t matter how smart you are. If it doesn’t agree with experiment, it’s wrong.” Richard P. Feynman
Science is done by people; people aren’t objective. Scientists are just like other professionals – to use a telling contemporary parallel, scientists are professionals just like the wheelers and dealers on Wall Street: not exactly dishonest, but looking out first and foremost for Number One.
“In this day and age it can be fairly dangerous to ones career if you are a climate scientist and express some vociferous objection to the concept of dangerous global warming.”
Speaking of ranking the various disciplines:
… Politicians think they are Economists.
… Economists think they are Social Scientists.
… Social Scientists think they are Psychologists.
… Psychologists think they are Biologists.
… Biologists think they are Organic Chemists.
… Organic Chemists think they are Physical Chemists.
… Physical Chemists think they are Physicists.
… Physicists think they are Mathematicians.
… Mathematicians think they are God.
how many computer models are there on AGW ?
Garbage in, garbage out (GIGO) in the field of computer science or information and communications technology refers to the fact that computers, since they operate by logical processes, will unquestioningly process flawed, even nonsensical, input data (“garbage in”) and produce undesired, often nonsensical, output (“garbage out”).
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Heh, that’s funny but true. Where do geologists fit in?
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They don’t….they’re just “stoned”.
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I’m putting the geologist in somewhere between the organic and physical chemists, but I’m just guessing.
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uhm, the MIT scientists who made the study that Trump referred to have something to say. Maybe we should listen to them instead of all the non-researchers here:
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-climatechange-trump-mit-idUSKBN18S6L0
“We certainly do not support the withdrawal of the U.S. from the Paris agreement,” said Erwan Monier, a lead researcher at the MIT Joint Program on the Science and Policy of Global Change, and one of the study’s authors.
“If we don’t do anything, we might shoot over 5 degrees or more and that would be catastrophic,” said John Reilly, the co-director of the program, adding that MIT’s scientists had had no contact with the White House and were not offered a chance to explain their work.
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Isn’t MIT home to that con artist Jon Gruber? The man who Obama paid $500,000 to design Obamacare, and then tried to claim it wasn’t his doing? The man who belongs to a faculty that threatened to go on strike if they had to pay the same deductibles and premiums that Obamacare forced on the public? That MIT? That group of left wing socialists?
MIT, like many schools, used to be an institution of higher learning. But left wing faculty only allow other left wing faculty to get tenure — and the resulting intellectual incest (that’s what it is) has made academia into little more than a propaganda machine. And its customers (students?) into politically indoctrinated debt slaves.
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Sorry, that is a logical fallacy.
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Only if you are a left wing ideologue. Not the best group to tie you “logical” wagon to.
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Nice rebuttal. Very factual with all kinds of links to back up your point. Well presented….Not
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Intellectual incest is not logical — its why MIT can no longer be trusted as a neutral / objective source.
Sorry your public union schooling didn’t teach you reading comprehension; maybe they should have spent less time on safe spaces and gender norms and general left wing propaganda.
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Some sanity.
http://video.foxnews.com/v/5456566516001/?#sp=show-clips
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Understand, all of the catastrophy talk is based upon climate models, not observations, that cannot even hindcast where we currently are…… most folks think there is a linear relationship between CO2 and Temps. Ain’t the case folks.
The Paris thing was irrelevant to the proposed problem regardless. It was indeed just a stepping stone for global governance in the end. Just sayin, the ones who support it most, know the least about it, and would be the most disappointed in the end once that Epiphany moment hit!
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Come ON! All of their predictions have come true so far….er, well some of them….or at least a few.
Well I know it was warmer YESTERDAY damn it!
These are scientists….geniuses. Where the hell are we if we are going to question people who are certified by institutions as our superiors? The fact that they are paid to support a given theme and they and their administrations are actively disparaging and working to silence all those who do not agree, should in no way give us pause. These are men and women (definitional) of SCIENCE, infallible and unquestionable. What will it take for us to get with the agenda here? Damn IT, the debate IS over. We just need to shut UP and do as we are told.
I suppose we can’t really blame deniers as they have simply not been taught (indoctrinated) to the “new” definition of liberty and freedom. We have now “progressed” to have the liberty and freedom to AGREE.
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Here, have a look at your renewable energy substitutes. Not just electricity, energy use.
http://joannenova.com.au/2017/05/matt-ridley-wind-power-makes-0-of-world-energy/
Here is the link to the summary data. You think wind and solar are real players? Think again.
PDF file, so ensure you know that.
https://www.iea.org/publications/freepublications/publication/KeyRenewablesTrends.pdf
The stats don’t lie.
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There is overwhelming scientific evidence for AGW. However, $GNP/ton carbon has been improving. Photoelectric gets cheaper and cheaper, enough that neighbor covered his roof, not because he is a greenie but because he did the calculation, and has a nice return on investment. I have solar hot water heat, which is giving me a 3-9% (oil prices wander; there are error bars on the saving) ROI, no matter what the market and economy do.
Pulling out will surely not keep companies from doing things that save them money through energy efficiency.
Incidentally, “self-driving” and “all-electric” are independent issues in car design.
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Is this math dependent upon any government or electric provider kickbacks? If so, he is being subsidized by taxpayers or other electric grid users.
His math skills may be better than mine, but when I looked into it, the scheme depends on generating excess electricity in sunlight and selling it back into the grid and buying it when the sun doesn’t shine. This all worked great until I factored in that selling to th egrid was wholesale and the buying was retail….about three times the price. For the math to work it requires some pretty extended timelines that can be pretty undefined. When I was looking into it, solar was more expensive, but then so was electricity.
Our principle issue today is that government has entertwined itself into our economy to the point that it is almost impossible to know what ANYTHING truly costs. Aside from transparent rebates are government subsidies, tax deals, grants and protected monopolies that alter market forces and any real understanding of costs. How would Telsa be doing without government “crutches”. What really sucks is Elon’s smugness about his success……quite literally….he did NOT build this by himself. We ALL kicked in.
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““it’s a colossal mistake—an abdication of American leadership.
The success of our foreign policy
—in trade, military, any other kind of negotiation—
depends on our credibility.
I can’t think of anything more destructive to our credibility than this.” —Nicholas Burns
“retired career diplomat and an undersecretary of state for President George W. Bush”
Selected quotes from “Trump administration announces US withdrawal from Paris climate agreement” http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2017/06/02/pari-j02.html
Is CREDIBILITY even “a thing” anymore?
I believe we have moved on to the unbelievable.
Clearly marked in time with the quizzical proclamation to all
“I’m President! Can you believe it?”
This was a non-binding agreement. Nothing controversial.
Similar to everyone agreeing not to pee in the pool.
Everyone but Syria and Trump, that is.
Nicaragua wanted to ban farting, so I was going to leave them out of this analogy.
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A greenhouse effect is impossible without a glass enclosure around our globe. Earth’s climate is balanced between sunlight and radiation into space. A objects radiate heat at every frequency of light. This is well documented black body radiation. The warmer the object the more radiation goes into space. When carbon dioxide or more so water vapor in the atmosphere absorb a frequency of light then these molecules transfer their warmth to surrounding molecules at the speed of sound by collision. The other molecules radiate that extra heat to compensate for those that had absorbed and blocked some energy radiating into space.
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Add to that the uncertainty monster the forcings and feedbacks associated with clouds and nucleation at high altitude of cosmic influence, land use, UHI, dams, and on and on.
There is NO real verifiable consensus on climate.
The talking points have been generated from a few ideologically driven surveys and studies from the Green socialism globalist monster.
Look up the Doran/Zimmerman, and the Cook 97% studies, and you will find they would never pass audits for quality and relevance as have been shown repeatedly.
In the end, it’s all about perpetuating the funding when it comes to CAGW!
The Karl paper, 2015, was a desperate attempt to hide the 20 years of no statistically significant change in temps. Even though we had a 10% increase in CO2 over that time.
The numbers don’t show any other trends aside from another natural and recurring ENSO event.
Just sayin,,,,,,,
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As far as I can tell, all Trump did is publicly state that the United States is free to march to its own beat with respect to energy policy and CO2 emissions, and we are not necessarily willing to pay environmental reparations to other countries for past US emissions.
I know it is popular for many US citizens to scream that withdrawal from the Paris Accord is heresy, but lets not be too eager to sign away our sovereign rights and future to some unelected set of bureaucrats in a far off land who interpret the science of the day as they see fit, especially if their interpretation is likely to saddle the US economy with an undue burden relative to others.
The US declaring independence from this Gordian Knot is a good thing.
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Its the “not willing to pay environmental reparations to other countries” part that has the media and socialists in an uproar. The paris accord was never about climate or environment — it was always about taking money from US taxpayers and giving it to unelected bureaucrats to spend on themselves.
That (stolen US taxpayer money going to bureaucrats) is also why the unelected EU is so upset about losing another gravy train. First the British refuse to underwrite anti-UK rubbish, and now the Americans are refusing to underwrite anti-USA rubbish? If this continues, the EU would have to pay its own bills! That is the heresy that keeps Merkel up at night.
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Tiny increases in temperature involve huge increases in heat that is not felt at first as temperature. In physics heat and temperature are very different concepts but in common English they are used interchangeably. Because of the linguistic confusion publishing numbers such as concern about two degree temperature increase has confused a lot of people.
If you put heat energy into a cup of water that has ice in it the water will stay at the same temperature until the ice is melted. That is because the temperature gets “used up in order to melt the ice”. As the amount of ice in the world decreases to the point of being a small surface area will be little ice to absorb the heat. Then the temperature may soar far more than two degrees.
Unfortunately chemistry labs dealing with therms is no longer a part of most peoples education nor is chemistry. Chemistry has become an
“elective” instead of a requirement for citizenship. The government would rather force youth to take politically correct course work such as “political science” which of course is not a science at all but pure BS.
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Chemistry has suffered from intellectual incest, like most of academia.
Chemistry is now part of the political “science” department, which has become nothing but an political indoctrination camp. Chemistry USED TO BE a science, not anymore.
And it was corrupt teacher unions (of college “professors”) that made those “mandatory” courses. It may have started with the best of intentions, but the left wing cult that is academia realized they could use “core” courses to guarantee their own employment.
Anyway, stop calling chemistry a science — it makes you sound out of date.
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It does not matter because DT will soon be gone. Vlad has indicated that he is being dropped, probably because the job has been done now: https://foreignpolicy.com/2017/06/01/putin-changes-tune-on-russian-involvement-in-the-u-s-election/
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foreign policy magazine is published by WaPo — the former newspaper that has been hyping up a Russian conspiracy theory for a year without even a shred of verifiable evidence.
And for all your low quality propaganda — you cannot escape the fact that France’s Hollande and Germany’s Merkel have turned western Europe into a Gazprom annuity. Every canceled nuclear reactor, every dim-witted regulation on oil/coal fired plants… it all points to more and more clean burning RUSSIAN natural gas.
WaPo is getting really really desperate to remain relevant, and if you are honest they would already be gone if Jeff Bezos wasn’t propping them up using Amazon profits
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One world government requires a global crisis.
I give you …. anthropogenic climate change.
That’s what this is all about.
What do the global elite want? One world government!
When do they want it? A decade ago!
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President Trump has merely done what he said what he would do and who can blame him for that. However, the Mr. Mish Math for his 0.029 number is unaccountably “wrong”. The much discussed “Hiatus” post 1998 is also over. The prime reason for the coming boom in electric/hybrid vehicles and the clean energy transition is precisely because most people want to change what is happening. Calling it all a “Hoax” and using words like “Mass Hysteria” is silly and wrong: https://climate.nasa.gov/vital-signs/global-temperature/
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The only propaganda that compares to the foreign boogieman, is the continuous chant of man-made global warming. The poor countries of the world, which also have the least amount of freedom, get a twofer by blaming the US for global warming. The opportunist and sheeple that deny the climate has always changed, will realize man’s impotence against mother nature when we enter ANOTHER mini ice age in 10-15 years.
Unfortunately, the majority are easy prey for the propagandist and their globalist masters, who will continue their efforts to get rid of Trump so their corrupt system can continue. What they fail to realize is the anti-establishment movement will continue to grow as the economy declines, which is the direct result of govt desperately trying to hang on to power.
The establishment is fighting a losing battle, and they don’t care that it will lead to civil war, world wars, and the possible break up of the US. Career politicians are hopeless, which is why they must be voted out every election.
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Thus it has ended…but the end of one thing is the beginning of another,
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I just hope that Europe will follow this retreat from madness, the sooner the better. Maybe we a good economic downturn will help.
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I find all this amusing. Can’t tell if science has become a religion or religion has become a science. Either way only a few seem to try and discuss their points without extreme emotion. Very funny.
While Macaroon is acting holier than Hades of the Paris Agreements, which are little more than vague suggestions and never had the force of law or treaty (like signing an absentee pledge to refrain from whatever sin is your choice), Most of France, even in Paris rely on firewood for heat in the winter. Germany still makes all those VW TDI diesels that are driven all over Europe in great numbers and still can’t our EPA emissions test (and I doubt any other car maker in Europe could, for that matter). And there are more contradictions indulged by the “New Leaders of the Free world” when it comes to pollution. Let us not start on Asia or Africa when it comes to climate agreements, ain’t never going to happen. And you climate alarmists want me to take your seriously, believe your ignorance is the solution to every possible question? Oh, please, spare me. If millions of climate alarmists died tomorrow from heart attacks or strokes if would be a great blessing for the world. We might be able to do about real pollution problems. We have a lot of water pipe that needs replacing, put the money there instead of constant increases in auto engine exhaust emissions. the internal combustion engine has reach its practical limits in that regard and future limits are like beating a dead horse, it won’t go anywhere. We still have a lot of old factory sites that need clean up. The list goes on and on. Ignoring these problems and pretending that we can magically solve all our pollution and climate problems by throwing a lot of money at them is never an answer. Unfortunately, for all those climate alarmists it is the easier answer even if it doesn’t work.
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Mish, you obviously have a short memory. Don’t you remember when millions of Americans starved to death in the 70’s, just as Paul Ehrlich predicted in his book, The Population Bomb? Or what about the worldwide crop failures that resulted from Global Cooling? Time Magazine predicted that. And Y2K? Remember when all the world’s computers imploded?
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In 20 years’ time, the idea that a trace essential gas controls the climate cycle will be seen as bizarre.
For most of geological history CO2 levels have been far higher than today’s value, and still ice ages came and went.
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The climate is changing, the climate is changing!!!’
‘So?? ‘
‘So Hands UP!!! Gimme all your money. ‘
Tax. tax. tax, You work. Government takes with a gun at your back. NO MORE.
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amen brother.. just unbelievable. if you’d the paris accord there is no enforcement mechanism anyway so everyone will cheat.. and 0.3 degrees to year 2100? i follow macroecon religiously and i can’t predict whats going to happen next month let alone in 2100
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“When has such mass hysteria ever been right?”
The continuing trivial exercise of manipulating clueless sheep, 6 out of 10 of whom only read news -headlines-, and who chase imaginary creatures meant to entertain children on their “smarter than they are” phones.
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Well, with Mattis declaring North Korea a “clear and present danger” …. DJT might single handedly stop … and reverse any global warming.
Nuclear Winter here we come …
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Zuckerberg: “Stopping climate change is something we can only do as a global community, and we have to act together before it’s too late.”
Climate change cannot be stopped, as it is a continuous ongoing process.
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Caterwauls On Paris
1 Jun 2017
https://market-ticker.org/akcs-www?post=232098
Intro excerpt:
You can’t possibly be serious.
The screamfest over Trump’s withdrawal from the Paris accord is amusing beyond words. Among the complainers is Tim Cook who I remind you makes his iPhones in China which was immune from mandatory carbon emission cuts. If Tim Cook cared about carbon emissions he would make them somewhere else.
But he hasn’t and he doesn’t.
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So is the US going to join the flat earth society as well. When the rest of the civilized world believes one thing and you believe another maybe you need to look in the mirror and reconsider the basis of your understanding. I’m not sure how polluting the planet can ever be a good thing. As usual with the US it is all about money.
However, this is not simply about climate change. This is about global leadership. The US was the leader of the world in a lot of areas. The US was leading the world down a path on a key issue and suddenly made a left turn….and nobody is following.
This combined with what Trump did at the UN meetings leaves the rest of the world basically saying that we can’t count on the US anymore and the extension of this thought is the premise that it’s time for someone else to lead. The next leader will likely be the European Union or some country with in it.
This is a big change to everyone’s world view and that is what is behind some of the hysteria.
This does two obvious things however, it weakens the US and it strengthens Russia and China. It is called divide and conquer and maybe it is part of a larger plan.
I’m not sure if isolationism is putting America first or going to make America great again. Being the leader of the free world has a lot of advantages. But isolationism certainly seems to be where Trump is heading.
This is part of the reason that these big companies are not backing Trump. These companies have a world view because they operate worldwide. Isolationism is not a good thing for a multinational corporation. There will be a backlash against US companies trying to sell their product overseas as a result of these policy changes.
If US companies don’t have to pay a carbon tax and foreign companies do that will be seen as an unfair advantage for the US and then the import duties and trade wars will escalate.
I wonder when a major US corporation will move its head offices out of the US not for tax reasons but for ideological reasons.
I think we are witnessing a slow motion train wreck here
The ultimate reality TV show! Stay tuned.
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Maybe what Trump IS doing is actually leading rather than following the corrupt herd.
How many “agreements” has America entered only to find it’s self the only one doing the work? NATO anyone? The terms we’re voluntary yet it is quite obvious from world reaction that ours was more mandatory. Why all of the sudden has it become necessary for America to lead when for years they have complained of our leadership, domination and interference…..at least until Obama. While he may not have been universally respected by the rest of the world, it is easy to see why so many loved him. Check’s in the mail.
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To follow your reasoning, if all the other kids are jumping off a high bridge (without bungee cords or parachutes), does it make you any sanet or responsible to join them?
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Ottmar Edenhofer, lead author of the IPCC’s fourth report. Speaking in 2010:
“One has to free oneself from the illusion that international climate policy is environmental policy. Instead, climate change policy is about how we redistribute de facto the world’s wealth.”
UNFCC chief Christiana Figueres in February 2015:
Our aim is not to save the world from ecological calamity but to destroy capitalism.
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Lowering Co2 emissions without government prodding is being done by many individuals and corporations. Nature abhors a vacuum. If we dislike being ordered by government then DIY is an option.
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Apparently you “chemists” don’t read?
No one said you enviro-terrorists can’t tax yourselves to death — go right ahead. You won’t effect global temps, but maybe you will stop trying to force yourselves on the rest of the world like tyranical losers that you are.
The problem is when you products of intellectual incest try to force everyone else to pay for YOUR dumb unproven idea.
When is academia going to pay ANY taxes at all? You ungrateful tax-evading deadbeats
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Saying we need to belong to the Paris Agreement to combat environmental problems is no different than the EU telling its members that they have to belong to the EU to trade. Hogwash.
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Mass hysteria vs. mass denial. Who will win?
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There is a difference between global concern and mass hysteria.
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Is it just me that notices our greatest threat is the least obvious or provable and those that just don’t believe it are ignorant deniers, yet the undeniable FACT of our financial disaster looming, with unimaginable debt, impossible entitlement liabilities is barely discussed and our learned financial scientists assure us that it’s never been better….no worries, just keep borrowing and spending. Our children and theirs face unprecedented debt and hardships while being denigrated if they are not worried so much about a 1 degree increase in temperatures. Somehow we are destroying the planet by “allowing” the earth to warm well within historical context.
Dummy me.
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Why do right wing US-Americans/Trump lovers…
– … claim that climate scientists are socialists who want to redistribute wealth? (What?!?)
– … deny everything that comes from government except when it means bombing other nations? Especially …
– … applaud Trump when he reduces “payments to Paris”, but do not call it “fear mongering” when he spends even more billions on defense?
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Only a globalist would not see the difference between spending on OUR military, creating OUR jobs and handing over trillions to Europe while also encumbering our employers with regs that no one else has.
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“Why do right wing US-Americans/Trump lovers…”
I’m a 100% pure panarchist and I think that the AGW true believers are as stupid and gullible (and dangerous) as the Saddam Hussein has weapons of mass destruction true believers.
– … claim that climate scientists are socialists who want to redistribute wealth? (What?!?)
Why do lefties in general go crazy over something that is impossible to prove and unlikely to happen*. Is it because, perhaps, that thousands of years ago their cultural/moral ancestors didn’t produce wealth, didn’t have a sophisticated concept of property, and lived off of nature as hunter-gatherers since their sole method of survival was provided by – the Earth. Gaia is their Goddess and provider. Not the free market.
– … deny everything that comes from government except when it means bombing other nations? Especially …
I deny the right of anyone to force their government on me. Unfortunately, government lovers are a large majority and show no chance of evolving beyond the alpha-male social model.
– … applaud Trump when he reduces “payments to Paris”, but do not call it “fear mongering” when he spends even more billions on defense?
See above.
*Barring annihilation by nuclear war, the next 83 years will bring incredible technological change. If you can predict that change (zero percent chance) and incorporate it into climate models, you may have something.
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“Why do lefties in general go crazy over something that is impossible to prove and unlikely to happen”
You prove my point. What does data on rising see levels, plants spreading more an more into northern regions etc. have to do with “lefties”? And if even Milton Friedman understands the relevance of a third party (government) – because the free market fails at pollution (defense by the way too – and any other public good) – what is leftie about that?
“Is it because, perhaps, that thousands of years ago their cultural/moral ancestors ..:”
Excuse me? You know that your (I assume US?) cultural ancestors are from European monarchies?
“I deny the right of anyone to force their government on me.”
Well then move to a region that does not have a government. Maybe Western Sahara. Yeah, these seem to work really well.
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Go ahead, prove that the global temp in 2100 will be what you claim it will be.
As for government, society is deeply flawed because it is created by government and run in such a way as to create the need for government. Society cannot evolve past wars and savagery simply because of its governments.
What the hell does European monarchies have to do with anything? Foraging is how our ancestors lived until about 12,000 odd years ago when settlements and conservative values started appearing. Hunter-gatherism is the default setting for mankind. You are just up close and personal with your hunter-gatherer ancestral morality. I, on the other hand, am definitely not.
Western Sahara? Sorry, I much prefer modern technological society. You’re the one that worships nature, you’d be much more at home there.
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Mish, I am so sorry to write this, but how can such a smart and far-seeing person in regards to so many economic trends be such an idiot when it comes to climate change a.k.a global warming?? So sad.
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Because the reality is that he IS smart.
Unlike you.
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not sure if this is hysteria, but Trump’s action hurt himself and future presidents in their ability to engage world leaders. from now on it would be very reasonable for world leaders to say to the u.s. don’t bother showing up unless you can submit this to congress and gain their approval
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(1) You really need to take a look at the US Constitution. It says the Senate has to ratify treaties with foreign powers — and it said that from the very beginning.
Its not Trump, its the Constitution, and you sound double ignorant not knowing how the US government has worked from the beginning. Obama broke the law, not that liberals worry about such things.
(2) the EU is bankrupt — obviously it is financially bankrupt, but it is intellectually bankrupt too. They have no common goal anymore except to avoid Eurocrats from losing their jobs — that is not enough to hold anything together. Brexit was officially first, but many other countries already ignore the EU.
Trump telling Hollande/Merkel to pound sand was not a first — most of the EU has been saying that for years.
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As a survivor of the Ice Age of the 1980s (predicted in the 70s) I remain skeptical, especially given the multitude of evidence of data fraud.
From an economic view, can someone please explain why we want people to burn less gasoline while simultaneously subsidizing it’s production?
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Wow. Lots of interesting discussion. To answer your question Mish, I don’t believe that I can think of a time when “hysteria” helped anything. I also have a question: When was the last time we had over 7 billion humans affecting our planet?
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When Obama signed the Paris Accord in 2015, he stopped in Malaysia before jetting off to Paris. Obama showed up in Malaysia one week after raining season had started. If he had shown up two weeks before, he would have seen the worst man-made natural disaster ever recorded.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/oct/30/indonesia-fires-disaster-21st-century-world-media
In just a few weeks, Malaysian, Singaporean and Indonesian corporations released more CO2 into the atmosphere than the entire U.S. economy in one year.
Obama flew into Kuala Lumpur in 2015, played golf with the corrupt Prime Minister there, never mention a single word about the fires (at least anywhere in the press), and then flew off to Paris to try and cripple the U.S. economy.
I was there. It was a horrific time to be in that country. If anyone wants to experience the devastation, the fires heat up in July every single year. Not every year is record breaking, but bad enough for someone never to forget–especially for someone who is worried about CO2 and the planet.
Trump was right to drop this treaty. This was not about saving the planet. This was about the continuation of a wealth transfer from the 1st world to the 3rd world.
Obama and his ilk are following a post-modern equity and social justice agenda which is nothing more than affirmative action on steroids.
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It is NOT a treaty for the US. It was never ratified by the US Senate, as required by the Consitution for the last 200+ years. Obama violated US law
Not even his own democratic party was going to ratify it (the Senate rejected the Kyoto accord almost unanimously — even John Kerry voted against the Kyoto accord).
Obama hates America and violated more US laws that Nixon. Shame on western media for looking the other way while Obama broke the law again and again.
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Some very intelligent posts from many on the subject of climate change. Well researched and presented. Sadly, you are wasting your time. The climate change deniers on this site are not interested in science, logic, or even opening their eyes to what is actually happening in the world around them. They will rant and insult you and cling to their ridiculous conspiracy theories. They are like children, throwing a tantrum. And as islands disappear and coastlines get flooded, they will simply say that is all natural and probably a good thing! You can’t argue with stupid.
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Realist: I don’t believe in climate change. I believe there are too many humans on the planet and something needs to be done. It’s just that simple. And to try and paint it any other way is complete BS and spineless. This is why the Right and Left cannot find common ground. The Left, and their bleeding hearts, don’t want to hurt people’s feelings, especially the poor 3rd world, so they want to blame everything but the real issue. Moreover, the Left are self-loathing and self-deprecating, especially all the dimwits who make money from their face in Hollywood, so when you carry that burden you tend to like to dance around the truth.
The planet cannot withstand a hyper-active capitalist Asia. I’ve spent 20+ years in Asia, and the things I’ve seen would make anyone extremely scared for the future.
All that said, this is why that Paris Accord was thoughtless, useless, and pure evil on Obama’s behalf. His belief is to sacrifice the U.S. for Asia and this is utterly ridiculous and short-sighted. The U.S. with all of its dysfunction, and industrialism in the past, is nothing compared to the monster that is growing in Asia.
Mark my words, Asia will swallow the world within a decade if we continue on this path we’ve been on.
Even now, if we look at the chicken and palm oil markets in China, the distortions are incredible. Demand is so high that it’s fraught with corruption and price dislocations. This is starting to bubble over into every food product now in China. What happens in 5, 10, 15 years when Vietnam’s and Indonesia’s middle class start to grow? What happens when we add Cambodia/Laos, Myanmar, Philippines to this growing need? And then India starts to rev its engine again? (Jim Rogers is spot on when he says become a farmer.)
The answer is quite scary if we continue down this globalization path.
Globalization is the cancer, not the cure. Sustainability is localization, localization is sustainability. But you won’t hear progressives say this, because multi-national corporations are filled with these progressive left-wing lying nutjobs now, and for good reason, it’s the only thing left that justifies their international business model.
So, you want climate deniers on the Right to start listening?
Stop this politically correct BS climate change nonsense, and start talking straight forward. The Right doesn’t like West Coast progressive Newspeak, and the more they (you?) do it, the more you hurt your chances of finding solutions.
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You are confused. Why am I not surprised. I am neither left nor right. I do not live on the US west coast as you imply. I do not live in the US at all. I am not political nor an apologist for big business. I don’t care if Trump drops out of the Paris accord. In fact I don’t really care much for the Paris accord.
I agree with you that we have more than 7 billion people on our shared planet. And they (we) are all affecting our planet. You are simply wrong to deny that climate change is occurring right now. But I doubt you will ever understand.
I am indeed a realist. I am also a scientist. My first degree was in Chemistry. I agree with the 98% of the scientific community and the evidence that climate change is happening and that it will get worse. However, I will listen to the 2% of the scientific community that has their doubts as I always keep an open mind. I haven’t seen anything convincing to make me change my mind.
I agree with you that localization is a positive. But unlike you, I am not against globalization, though I suspect we differ on exactly what globalization is.
I don’t expect climate deniers to listen. That was the point of my post. There isn’t much to be gained trying to convince the ill-informed. As I said, you can’t argue with stupid.
And I don’t want to hear your “solution” to what you say is overpopulation of the planet. I have an idea what you mean. I suggest you start with yourself.
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I can tell you’re an unreasonable and unintelligent person simply by your last sentence. You’re assuming an awful lot about me, and my thinking, without ever meeting me or engaging in long conversations with me.
I’ve stated my solution: Sustainability via localization. This would solve many different issues, including the population problem.
I’ve been all over the world by plane, train, automobile, motorcycle, and even horse. I’ve spend 20+ years in international business and finance. I’ve been inside some of the nicest corporate HQ offices you have ever seen, and been on the ground of some of the most poorly run commodity producers in some of the poorest countries in the world. The one thing I know for sure is that “climate change” is a huge corporatist scam and wealth transfer. It’s just a way for these multi-national corporations to stay on top and to consolidate global business.
But, am I denying that the planet is being destroyed by man? Absolutely not!
But I do reject the term “climate change” and reject every single fraudulent person or company that peddles it. I’ve seen too much, and know too much, to believe in the smoke and mirrors being sold to the average person by governments and Fortune 500 companies.
Good day, sir.
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As you assumed a lot about me. Good day sir.
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An excellent retrospective. I do have to disagree on one point — driverless cars will not change the CO2 discharge rate. Passenger miles per year is based on travel demand not the number of vehicles.
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There will be more carpooling to work
More people in cities will shed cars altogether
Cars will be electric, not gas
Mish
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“Cars will be electric, not gas.”
Great, more reliance on a specific segment of national infrastructure. What will we do in the event of EMP attack or CME? This makes our system all the more fragile.
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Electricity is only as clean as the powerplant that produces it: In US 64% of the powerplants run on fossil fuel.
Also note that only 30-40% of the energy can be converted to electricity.
So: An electric car running on energy from a coal powerplant, produces much much higher emissions than a diesel truck.
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NASA proclaimed 10 years ago that if ALL emissions of greenhouse gases were stopped immediately, the temperature would continue to rise for a number of decades. Since China and India are free to pollute at will under the agreement, it is obvious that the Paris agreement was doomed to failure with regards to temperature reduction within the term of the agreement.
However, it probably would have been highly profitable for Goldman, Tesla, Ford, etc. who would make a fortune on trading “carbon credits.” Of course, politicians who take money from Goldman, et al would probably also enjoy greater receipts from continuation of the Paris agreement.
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Mises.org has a great story on this.
Studying the Climate Doesn’t Make You an Expert on Economics and Politics
* [3937546608_9706448391_z.jpg]
Ryan McMaken
In response to the Trump administration’s announcement that it was pulling out of the Paris Climate Accord, some of his critics declared that anyone who likes “science” would have supported the accord.
Not surprisingly, Neil deGrasse Tyson rushed to declare that Trump supported the withdrawal because his administration “never learned what Science is or how and why it works.”
But what does “Science” (which Tyson capitalizes for some reason) have to do with it?
We know that Tyson is of the opinion that there is global warming. We also know that many other physical scientists agree with him.
But, it does not follow logically that agreeing with Tyson on the matter of climate change must necessarily mean supporting the Paris Climate Agreement.
After all, the Paris Climate Agreement isn’t a scientific study. It’s a political document that lays out a specific public-policy agenda.
Agreement or disagreement with the accord might hint at one’s opinions about climate science. Or it might not. One can agree that climate change exists and that human beings have a large role in the phenomenon. Agreement on this matter, however, does not dictate that one must also agree with the political policies outlined in the Paris document.
The two are totally independent phenomena.
Science and Politics Are Not the Same Thing
An analogy might help illustrate further:
Scientific inquiry tells us that obesity is bad for one’s health. Let’s imagine then, that in response to rising obesity rates, a large number of politicians gather and sign an agreement â let’s call it the London Obesity Avoidance Deal (LOAD). The supporting politicians claim that the deal will reduce obesity and that failure to abide by the agreement will spell a health crisis for humanity.
Does this mean, then, that any politician who doesn’t sign onto the agreement is an “obesity denier”? Does a failure to approve of the agreement prove that the dissenters believe that obesity is not a real thing?
Obviously not.
Those who refuse to sign the agreement may be of the opinion that the LOAD does little to actually reduce obesity. Or, the dissenters may feel that the deal fails to properly compare costs and benefits when imposing its directives. Opponents may feel that “the cure is worse than the disease.”
In any case, dissent from the deal has nothing to do with denying the existence of obesity or the science behind the studies on the matter.
The Problem with Paris
The same is true of the Paris deal. Those who disagree with it may very well be â and probably are â taking issue with the specific provisions of the deal which may actually prove to be more costly to people than the presumed global warming itself.
But, for physicists like Tyson â i.e., people who know nothing about economics or political institutions â public policy is like a magic trick. A group of politicians get together, declare that they’re going to solve problem X, and then problem X is magically solved, so long as everyone supports the “solution.”
But what if the policy prescriptions of the Paris politicians are wrong? Or, what if the cure is worse than the disease?
Presumably, the agreement is supposed to improve the lives of real-world human beings by improving their standards of living.
If this is true, then, the Paris agreement must accomplish several things:
1. It must rely on good science about the climate.
2. It must accurately predict the effects of climate change on standards of living.
3. It must endorse public policies that will do something to mitigate the negative effects of climate change on standards of living.
4. It must demonstrate that these public policies will in fact mitigate the effects of climate change.
5. The agreement must demonstrate that the costs of the proposed public policies themselves are lower than the costs of the climate change.
If the Paris agreement fails to do any of these things, it should be rejected. If the net effect of the agreement is to make people poorer, then the agreement is of no value.
Now, without making any judgment about climate science itself, we can see just from looking at the Paris agreement that it could easily be rejected on the basis of numbers two, three, four, and five in our list.
After all, the agreement is based on policy predictions that are wildly speculative. They attempt to make predictions about the global economy decades in the future (a notoriously unreliable endeavor) and they fail to honestly take into account the true costs of imposing far-higher energy costs on most of the world’s poor and working classes â which is what the agreement would do.
RELATED: “The High Cost of Centrally Planning the Global Climate”
In fact, the agreement doesn’t even mention the cost to households that would face higher energy costs under the agreement. The only costs mentioned are the costs of adapting to climate change. In other words, the agreement assumes that there is no downside for households in the agreement’s provisions. That’s a huge red flag right there.
Also ignored is the opportunity cost of adopting the agreement’s provisions. In real life, adoption of the agreement’s policy prescriptions will lessen growth by reducing access to basic energy resources. In addition to reducing household wealth, this will also reduce tax revenues. Money spent on higher energy costs is money that can’t be spent elsewhere â on things like health care, and research into better agricultural practices. Yet, at the same time, the agreement calls for massive redistribution of wealth and large amounts of government spending on various programs such as “emergency preparedness” and more government “insurance” to pay for the effects of natural disasters.
Thus, the agreement calls for more spending, while reducing the ability of both the public and private sectors to engage in that spending. It’s a self-defeating endeavor.
Other opportunity costs include the impact on the production of fresh water. As I noted in a 2015 article:
A second major factor here in the necessity of energy is fresh water. The California drought has reminded us that fresh water is a scarce resource, even if the government likes to treat it as if it were not. But even as larger populations demand more water, fresh water can be produced through the use of energy via desalinization and pump-based aqueducts.
Today, most such schemes are still uneconomical because the problem of water scarcity can usually be solved through cheaper means such as importing food from wetter climates and through cheaper aqueduct systems that are primarily gravity-based.
In the future, however, as water does become more and more scarce as populations grow, the most practical answer will indeed become more energy-intensive solutions.
By centrally planning and artificially limiting energy usage, however, what the global warming lobby wants to do is raise the price of water processing, and by limiting the use of such methods, also inhibit technological progress by preventing practical experience in the use of water processing and fresh water production.
The Paris Climate Agreement supporters will no doubt retort that the provisions of the agreement will somehow amazingly prevent the need for more spending on clean water in the future by reducing global temperatures. Based on what evidence? Based on a computer model for what will happen decades from now?
With such flimsy evidence, it’s easy to see that it might be wiser to stick with policies we have now that are likely to produce a bird in hand â rather than the two birds in the bush merely promised by the Paris agreement.
We already know we can help the poor now with cheap energy, more productive capacity, and a robust economy. The Paris agreement only promises to help hypothetical people in the future based on a theoretical and untried public policy regime.
Many prudent people will elect to go with the former.
Moreover, many of the global warming lobby’s own people deny that the Paris agreement does much of anything to reduce temperatures anyway. Thus, prudence would dictate a renewed interest in investing in technologies and poverty-relief measures (such as those that encourage more trade and capital investment) that we know will help the poor right now. Adopting policies that cripple our ability to invest in these measures â as the Paris agreement does â only makes matters worse.
Nevertheless, in the imaginary world of physicists and climate scientists who can’t comprehend the complicated realities of economics and public policy, simply wishing something to be so makes it so. If we just wish really hard that all our problems are solved, surely the good people in government will make it happen.
(from Mises.org, 6/2/17)
Barry Rose, CBF
Credit Manager
Diamond Plastics Corporation
T: 308-385-4329
F: 308-385-4390
âThe difference between a welfare state and a totalitarian state is a matter of time. â ~ Ayn Rand
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Excellent post. I agree that the Paris accord is not a sufficient plan. But the world does need to plan to prevent the current and coming climate change impact. An ounce of prevention vs the pound of cure (assuming it even can be cured if we wait too long). And the cost won’t just be measured in hundreds of trillions of dollars, it will be measured in millions of lives.
Nonetheless, in the imaginary world of of economics and public policy, simply wishing for climate change to “go away”, won’t make it so.
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