Trump administration’s delegation to UN climate meeting totals 7; France sends 42
By Chris Mooney
Washington Post
The United States government has sent just seven registered participants to a key United Nations meeting on the Paris climate agreement — a smaller delegation than Zimbabwe — underscoring the Trump administration’s deep ambivalence about the historic agreement.
White House officials are expected to huddle on Tuesday to discuss the fate of the agreement — with business leaders and the international community pressing the U.S. to stay in the agreement, and Trump’s conservative allies urging an exit.
The meeting in Bonn, Germany, represents the first of two gatherings this week where international partners will pressure the increasingly recalcitrant U.S. to affirm its role in the agreement of more than 190 nations.
Other industrialized nations such as China, France, and Germany each sent dozens of officials — the French delegation alone had 42 official participants. The U.S. sent 44 official participants just last year.…
Warmist Katharine Hayhoe: Don’t call skeptics ‘deniers’ – More accurate to call them ‘climate dismissives’
Should We Call Climate-Change Deniers “Dismissives” Instead?
A renowned scientist proposes an alternative to a contested word.
NPR’s Rachel Martin had a fascinating interview on Tuesday with Katharine Hayhoe, a renowned climate scientist and evangelical Christian, in which they discussed the toxic nature of the world “climate denier”—a word that environmental reporters, including me, use all the time to describe people who don’t accept the scientific consensus that climate change is real, man-made, and dangerous. Hayhoe argued that calling people deniers is “a good way to end the conversation,” and that it’s actually more accurate to use the word “climate dismissive.”
Hayhoe’s terminology comes from the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication, which last year published a report on how Americans view the threat of global warming. It concluded that America was divided into six categories: alarmed, concerned, cautious, disengaged, doubtful, and dismissive, the latter being people “who do not believe global warming is real and are likely to believe in various conspiracy theories about the issue.”
I’ve struggled with whether to use word “denier,” especially because of the common accusation that it’s meant to invoke Holocaust deniers. That’s not accurate, as Peter Dykstra explained at Scientific American: The word refers to a type of psychological defense mechanism first conceived by Sigmund and Anna Freud, where “an unpleasant reality is ignored, and a realistic interpretation of potentially threatening events is replaced by a benign but inaccurate one.” That’s why I think of “denier” is the most accurate term for people who ignore, misrepresent, or generally discredit the field of climate science—whether it’s because they don’t like the proposed solutions, or because they just can’t accept reality.
But another compelling reason to use “denier” is that the alternative terminology is inadequate. I won’t use the word “skeptic” because it distorts the meaning of skepticism within science. Climate scientists are skeptical by profession, and yet, a vast majority of them concluded that global warming is
Bill Nye the Eugenicist, ‘Sex Junk,’ Social Justice Warrior
Bill Nye (center in bow tie) is everywhere these days, and he’s out to “save the world.” He’s a frequent talking head on CNN, FOX, NBC, PBS, etc., usually on the supposed need for draconian regulation of humanity to stave off imminent global-warming apocalypse. On April 22nd (Earth Day) he led the March for Science in Washington, D.C., an event that drew thousands and inspired hundreds of copycat marches in cities across the country and around the world. And of course, there’s his new, sensational platform, Bill Nye Saves the World, on Netflix.
Nye and Netflix, no doubt, will insist the title of the new series makes use of obvious hyperbole for over-the-top cheeky humor effect, but the episodes released thus far reveal an aging social justice warrior (SJW) and wannabe hipster with a messianic complex who is peddling an authoritarian ideology/religion under a camouflage of pseudoscience.
Bill Nye the Science Guy has transmuted into a screechy, preachy ubiquitous presence who wants to penalize you if you have more than two children, jail you if you disagree with his global-warming catastrophism, and stigmatize you if you don’t adopt his transgender views or embrace his dogmatic religion of evolution. Even many of his liberal-left comrades are expressing concern that Nye’s strident, condescending new persona is annoying and alienating, and suggest that maybe he’s not the ideal candidate to be the public face of the climate-change/environmental movement. Besides noting that he has failed miserably in television debates, many of his allies acknowledge that Saves the World substitutes ideology and pseudo-science for real science, and that the program is replete with cringe-inducing segments that are embarrassing to watch.
“Bill Nye Is Not the Right Guy to Lead the Climate Fight,” declares the title of an April 27 article critiquing the would-be savior in the New Republic. A review at Gizmodo.com entitled “Bill Nye Spends Most of His New Netflix Show Yelling at the Audience” is by Maddie Stone, a fellow climate alarmist who says “Nye and I are on the same team,” but nonetheless finds Nye’s program to be “patronizing,” “excruciating,” ”bombastic,” and “angry.” Even a generally positive review of Bill Nye Saves the World at the leftist-progressive Vox.com admits “his approach could use some refinement,” and dings him for “condescension,” “meanness,” and a “scathing and dismissive tone” taken toward those who disagree with his views.
Time for Trump to Fulfill Promise and Withdraw From Paris UN Climate Agreement
By Nicolas Loris & Brett Schaefer
President Donald Trump has promised to make a “big decision” in the next two weeks on the Paris climate accord after promising to “cancel” the agreement during the campaign last year.
Fundamentally, the Paris Agreement is a costly and ineffective approach to addressing global warming. There are compelling economic, environmental, and legal reasons for Trump to make good on his campaign promise, and the commonly heard arguments for remaining in the agreement do not pass muster.
The Paris Agreement, signed by more than 170 countries, aims to limit global warming to 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels.
The means of accomplishing this goal largely center on reducing carbon dioxide emissions by transitioning the global energy economy away from affordable, dependable conventional sources of energy.
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Countries involved in the agreement each submitted nationally determined contributions, setting their respective obligations for keeping temperatures in check.
As a member nation, the U.S. also submitted its goals under the Obama administration. The domestic regulations listed by the Obama administration aimed to reduce greenhouse gas levels across the entire economy by 26 to 28 percent below 2005 levels by the year 2025.
The U.S. regulations alone would increase energy costs for U.S. families and businesses, causing an overall average shortfall of nearly 400,000 jobs and total income loss of more than $20,000 for a family of four by the year 2035.
Compliance with the Paris Agreement will cost the global economy trillions of dollars over the next 80 years. Yet the results will be almost zero reduction in projected warming, even if every country met their respective carbon dioxide reduction targets as promised under the agreement.…
Legislate the climate you want! Study: Laws to tackle climate change exceed 1,200 worldwide
OSLO (Reuters) – Nations around the world have adopted more than 1,200 laws to curb climate change, up from about 60 two decades ago, which is a sign of widening efforts to limit rising temperatures, a study showed on Tuesday.
“Most countries have a legal basis on which future action can be built,” Patricia Espinosa, the U.N.’s climate change chief, told a webcast news conference of the findings issued at an international meeting on climate change in Bonn, Germany.
She said the findings were “cause for optimism”, adding that laws were one yardstick for tracking action on global warming alongside others such as investment in renewable energy or backing for a 2015 climate agreement, ratified by 144 nations.
The study, by the London School of Economics (LSE), reviewed laws and executive policies in 164 nations, ranging from national cuts in greenhouse gases to curbs in emissions in sectors such as transport, power generation or industry.
Forty-seven laws had been added since world leaders adopted a Paris Agreement to combat climate change in late 2015, a slowdown from a previous peak of about 100 a year around 2009-13 when many developed nations passed laws.
U.S. President Donald Trump doubts that climate change has a human cause and is considering pulling out of the Paris Agreement but legislation is often complicated to undo.
“If you have that big body of 1,200 laws it is hard to reverse,” Samuel Fankhauser, co-director of the LSE’s Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment, told the news conference.
The study said that developing nations were legislating more but there were many gaps. Nations including Comoros, Sudan and Somalia had no climate laws.
“We don’t want weaklings in the chain,” said Martin Chungong, Secretary General of the Inter-Parliamentary Union. He urged all countries to adopt laws that help limit downpours, heatwaves and rising sea levels.
(Reporting by Alister Doyle; editing by Ken Ferris)…
WHITE HOUSE CLIMATE CHANGE MEETING POSTPONED
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WASHINGTON (AP) — The White House has postponed a Tuesday meeting to discuss whether the United States should withdraw from the landmark international climate deal struck in Paris under the Obama administration.
The White House said late Monday that the meeting would be rescheduled. This is the second time a meeting of top aides on the issue has been delayed. Donald Trump pledged during the presidential campaign to renegotiate the accord, but he has wavered on the issue since winning the presidency. His top officials have appeared divided about what to do about the deal, under which the United States pledged to significantly reduce planet-warming carbon emissions in the coming decade. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, the former chief executive of the oil company Exxon, said at his Senate confirmation hearing in January that he supports staying in the deal. But Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt has said the Paris pact “is a bad deal for America” that will cost jobs. Ivanka Trump, who serves as an adviser to her father, was supposed to meet separately Tuesday with Pruitt and Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska. That meeting is still expected to take place, according to a White House official who requested anonymity to discuss private talks. The Paris accord, signed by nearly 200 nations in 2015, was never ratified by the Senate due to the staunch oppositions of Republicans. It therefore does not have the force of a binding treaty, and the United States could potentially withdraw from the deal without legal penalty. A senior administration official said the president’s inclination has been to leave the pact, but Ivanka Trump set up a review process to make sure he received information from experts in the public and private sector before a making a decision. The official requested anonymity to discuss private conversations. As speculation continues about how Trump will handle the agreement, Tillerson is set to travel to Alaska for an Arctic Summit council this week amid concerns from other nations that the Trump administration will undermine global efforts to address climate change in the Arctic, where rising temperatures are having a disproportionate effect. David Balton, a top U.S. diplomat who works on environmental issues, said there would be “no change” in U.S. participation even if Trump ultimately decides to pull out of the Paris pact. “The U.S. will remain engaged in |
Killing the Paris Agreement is Not Enough
If President Donald Trump merely pulls the United States out of the Paris Agreement on climate change, it will be like cutting the head off a dandelion. It will look good for a while until equally bad agreements quickly grow back when a Democrat occupies the White House again. Trump needs to dig up the roots of Paris — the 1992 U.N. climate treaty — if he is to keep his campaign promise to “stop all payments of the United States tax dollars to U.N. global warming programs.”
Trump can — and should — get the U.S. out of the Paris Agreement, of course. Besides the scientifically unfounded objective of “holding the increase in the global average temperature to well below 2°C above pre-industrial levels,” as if we had a global thermostat, the agreement lets so-called developing countries almost entirely off the hook despite the fact that non-OECD countries are now the greatest source of energy related emissions. Consider the agreement’s emission targets for the U.S. versus China, currently the world’s largest emitter, for example:
The Obama administration agreed to an economy-wide target of reducing U.S. greenhouse gas (82% of which is carbon dioxide (CO2)) emissions by 26%-28% below its 2005 level in 2025.
China agreed “to achieve the peaking of CO2 emissions around 2030” and to other measures such as those designed to increase the share of non-fossil fuels in primary energy consumption. Taking into consideration expected economic growth in China and other factors, their target translates into about a 70% increase above its 2005 level in 2025.
Yet writing in the Chicago Tribune, Paul Bodnar, a Special Assistant to former-President Obama and a key architect of the 2014 U.S.-China deal (which has the same emission targets as Paris), echoes the position of many opinion leaders when he asserted, “The Paris Agreement… puts China, India, and other emerging markets on equal footing with the United States.”
Obviously, nothing could be further from the truth. It will not even be necessary for developing nations to meet their weak Paris emission targets anyway. They have an out-clause, one not applicable to developed countries.
The Paris Agreement starts:
“The Parties to this Agreement, being Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change [FCCC], hereinafter referred to as ‘the Convention’…”.
Trump shadow hangs over UN climate talks opening in Bonn
By Matt McGrath
Climate negotiators meeting in Bonn have begun their work amid on-going concern about future US participation in the Paris Agreement.
These latest talks are aimed at developing the rules for implementing the accord signed in the French capital in 2015.
But there is a growing worry that President Trump might soon pull out of the historic deal.
Some delegates say such a move would be a body blow for the landmark deal.
The May meeting of the UN climate talks body is normally a pretty low-key affair but this is the first gathering of delegates since Donald Trump was inaugurated. Many are worried that it could also be the time the new president decides to pull the plug on US participation in the Paris deal.
“This was supposed to be a highly technical and uneventful meeting to flesh out some of the details in the Paris Agreement. But, obviously, the speculation coming out of Washington is now at the top of our minds,” said Thoriq Ibrahim, minister of environment and energy for the Maldives and chair of the Alliance of Small Island States.…
Scientists ‘More Confident Than Ever’ In Global Warming After Studying The Lack Of It For 15 Years
By Michael Bastasch
A new study examining explanations for the 10- to 15-year “hiatus” in global warming has scientists “more confident than ever that human influence is dominant in long-term warming.”
“In a time coinciding with high-level political negotiations on preventing climate change, skeptical media and politicians were using the apparent lack of warming to downplay the importance of climate change,” researchers with the Institute for Atmospheric and Climate Science (IACS) in Switzerland wrote in a study published Thursday in the journal Nature.
“A few years of additional data are unlikely to overturn the vast body of evidence that supports anthropogenic climate change,” reads the study, adding the recent El Nino and new data have them “more confident than ever that human influence is dominant” in global warming.
IACS’s study looked at different explanations for the “hiatus” in global warming, which the study defined as the 10 or 15 years after 1998, ultimately to put to rest arguments by skeptics the lack of warming during this time cut into theories of catastrophic warming.
Conservatives Urge Trump To Keep His Promise, Ditch The Paris Climate Agreement
Conservatives Urge Trump To Keep His Promise, Ditch The Paris Climate Agreement
Dozens of conservative and free market groups will send a letter Monday to President Donald Trump urging him to keep his campaign promise to withdraw the U.S. from an international agreement to fight global warming signed by the Obama administration. Representatives from 40 right-leaning groups told Trump a withdrawal from the Paris climate change agreement “is […]
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