Arguments
Explaining climate change science & rebutting global warming misinformation
Scientific skepticism is healthy. Scientists should always challenge themselves to improve their understanding. Yet this isn't what happens with climate change denial. Skeptics vigorously criticise any evidence that supports man-made global warming and yet embrace any argument, op-ed, blog or study that purports to refute global warming. This website gets skeptical about global warming skepticism. Do their arguments have any scientific basis? What does the peer reviewed scientific literature say?
Claiming that Listerine alleviates cold symptoms is false: To repeat or not to repeat the myth during debunking?
Posted on 22 June 2017 by Stephan Lewandowsky
With terms such as “post-truth” and “fake news” becoming increasingly prominent in the media and public discourse, the ability to effectively correct inaccurate information has never been more pertinent. Unfortunately, the task of correcting misinformation is far from trivial. In many instances, issuing corrections remains only partially effective and people often continue to rely on outdated information. This is known as the continued-influence effect.
But this does not mean that debunking of misinformation is necessarily impossible: On the contrary, there are some known techniques that can help make a correction more effective, which John Cook and I summarized in the Debunking Handbook some time ago.
One recommendation in the Debunking Handbook is that it is best to avoid repeating the initial misconception while issuing a correction. This recommendation was based on data available at the time of writing, which suggested that the repetition of the misconception — even when it is corrected in the same sentence — increase its familiarity. For example, the statement “It is false to claim that Listerine alleviates cold symptoms” unavoidably strengthens the link between the two concepts, namely Listerine and alleviating colds, even though the statement seeks to correct that myth.
The potential problem that arises from repeating the myth to correct it is that people are more likely to think that familiar information is true. In consequence, correcting the myth may ironically strengthen its prominence in people’s minds, a phenomenon known as the familiarity backfire effect.
Recent research, however, has not found a familiarity backfire effect under conditions where it was expected. In a nutshell, two articles published by colleagues and I (with Ullrich Ecker and Briony Swire, respectively, as lead authors) found evidence for familiarity-based processing but failed to find a familiarity backfire effect.
You can read more about this latest research in a series of three blog posts on Shaping Tomorrow's World:
- Can Repeating False Information Help People Remember True Information? - published on June 19, 2017 by Tania Lombrozo
- Qualifying the Familiarity Backfire Effect - published on June 20, 2017 by Briony Swire
- Familiarity-based processing in the continued influence of misinformation - published on June 21, 2017 by Stephan Lewandowsk
What is the upshot of this latest research?
To lead on climate, leave the ivy tower
Posted on 21 June 2017 by Guest Author
America’s top universities expend considerable efforts to lead in the rankings, but last week they fell short—missing a critical opportunity to show moral leadership on climate change. If top schools want to lead on climate action, they should join the “We Are Still In” coalition, a collection of states, cities, businesses, and universities promising to support the Paris Climate Agreement.
President Trump’s decision to pull out of the international climate accord was swiftly rejected by local and state officials, as well as members of the business and academic community. Over 1,000 leaders have signed on to the “We Are Still In” pledge—including mayors and governors representing about 120 million people. More than 200 colleges and universities have joined. Leadership from these institutions sends a powerful message to President Trump and the globe: even if the federal government reneges on its international commitments, Americans are stepping up to fill the gap.
Unfortunately, our 11 academic institutions—the “Ivy-Plus” group—were not on that list (Columbia was the lone member of the Ivy-Plus group to sign both coalition statements). Instead, our universities—Brown, Cornell, Dartmouth, Duke, Georgetown, Harvard, Johns Hopkins, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Stanford, University of Pennsylvania, and Yale—signed a separate statement of support. Even though we applaud this affirmation of commitment to climate change, this action misses the collective strength of participation in the “We Are Still In” coalition, and it lacks the leadership we expect from these institutions. Sometimes absence can even be more telling than presence.
New Video: John Cook and the 97 Percent
Posted on 20 June 2017 by greenman3610
This is a re-post from Climate Crocks
Scientific conclusions derive from an understanding of basic laws supported by laboratory experiments, observations of nature, and mathematical and computer modeling. Like all human beings, scientists make mistakes, but the scientific process is designed to find and correct them. This process is inherently adversarial””scientists build reputations and gain recognition not only for supporting conventional wisdom, but even more so for demonstrating that the scientific consensus is wrong and that there is a better explanation. That’s what Galileo, Pasteur, Darwin, and Einstein did. But when some conclusions have been thoroughly and deeply tested, questioned, and examined, they gain the status of “well-established theories” and are often spoken of as “facts.
“There’s no such thing as settled science” and “science does not work by consensus”, are things we commonly hear from people who really should know better.
Factcheck: Grenfell Tower fire and the Daily Mail’s ‘green targets’ claim
Posted on 19 June 2017 by Guest Author
This is a re-post from Leo Hickman at Carbon Brief
Three days after the devastating fire at Grenfell Tower in west London, much of the media coverage of the tragedy is now focusing on the possible causes.
A wide range of possible contributory factors has been cited – lack of sprinklers, lack of adequate fire escapes, no central fire alarms, etc. But there has been much speculation that the cladding, added to the building during a recent refurbishment, could have helped the fire to spread rapidly up the exterior of the building.
A number of newspapers have focused their investigations on possible cost-cutting during the renovation, as well as prior warnings by residents that safety standards were being ignored. For example, the Times today has a frontpage story highlighting that “contractors could have acquired the fire-resistant version [of the cladding used] for less than £5,000 extra”. The refurbishment of the building cost £8.6m.
However, the Daily Mail is making its own claim. On its frontpage it says there are “three lethal questions” that need answering; the first of which is: “Were green targets to blame for the fire tragedy?” It adds that “experts”, which the paper doesn’t name, are asking whether the cladding was “installed simply to meet environmental targets”.
On page eight is a full-page commentary from Ross Clark, sitting under the headline question: “So did an obsession with green targets lead to inferno?”
Clark, who has published various climate sceptic articles and written a book attacking regulations he believes to be “strangling” the UK, begins the article:
2017 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming Digest #24
Posted on 18 June 2017 by John Hartz
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May Continues a Ridiculous Warm Streak for the Planet
Another month is in the global temperature record books. While May just missed setting a record, the data is another reminder that climate change is making the world hotter and pushing it into a new state.
This May was the second-warmest May on record, according to NASA data released on Thursday. The planet was 1.6°F (0.88°C) warmer than normal last month, trailing 2016 by just a 10th of a degree.
This May was the second-hottest May on record. Credit: NASA GISS
Widespread hot spots stretched from pole to pole, showing no corner of the globe is untouched by the impact of rising carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere. Temperatures soared up to 13.8°F (7.1°C) above normal in parts of Antarctica while a wide swath of heat cooked northern Africa and western Europe.
With May in the record books, NASA data also shows that this was the second-warmest spring on record, again trailing only 2016. NASA climate researcher Gavin Schmidt said the first five months of the year make it likely that this will be the second-hottest year on record trailing only, you guessed it, 2016.
Last year’s record heat got a boost from El Niño. The absence of El Niño this year in some ways makes the planetary heat even more shocking, though it certainly fits a pattern.
After all, May marked an all-time monthly peak for carbon dioxide levels in what’s become an annual rite of passage. Scientists found that carbon dioxide at Mauna Loa Observatory, the marquee measuring station, reached 409.65 parts per million (ppm) last month. That coupled with the second-hottest May on record are major markers of the current state of the world’s climate.
May Continues a Ridiculous Warm Streak for the Planet by Brian Kahn, Climate Central, June 15, 2017
2017 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #24
Posted on 17 June 2017 by John Hartz
Editor's Pick
Warm Waters in West Antarctica
A recent paper in Reviews of Geophysics describes the atmospheric and oceanic processes that are causing ice loss in the Antarctic.
Thwaites Glacier flows out into the Amundsen Sea Embayment where it floats on the seawater. The underside is being melted by relatively warm water. Credit: NASA
The vast Antarctic ice sheet contains about 30 million cubic kilometers of ice, which is 90% of the Earth’s freshwater ice. If it were all to melt, it would increase sea level by about 70 meters. Fortunately, surface temperatures across most of the continent stay well below freezing all year round so there is virtually no ice loss through surface melt. Instead, most of the ice loss is through iceberg calving and ocean-induced melting from the under-side of ice shelves.
One area that scientists are keeping a close eye on is the Amundsen Sea Embayment to the west of the Antarctic Peninsula. Here the ice is being melted from below by warm ocean waters at a greater rate than ice is added through snow accumulation, and this region is currently contributing about a tenth of current global sea level rise. A review article recently published in Reviews of Geophysics examined the complex atmospheric and oceanic factors that control the delivery of warm waters to the sub-ice region of West Antarctica and considered the potential for ice loss in the future. The editors asked two of the authors to give an overview of scientific research in this area.
Warm Waters in West Antarctica by John Turner & Hilmar Gudmundsson, Eos.org, June 16, 2017
Explainer: Dealing with the ‘loss and damage’ caused by climate change
Posted on 16 June 2017 by Guest Author
This is a re-post from Carbon Brief
Scaling down our emissions and building resilience against climate change can only take us so far. Some negative impacts and damages are now unavoidable. The inevitable consequences of human-caused climate change have collectively come to be known as “loss and damage”.
First emerging decades ago as a relatively obscure plea by small island states, loss and damage has now gained recognition as the third pillar of international climate policy, after mitigation and adaptation. But turning the concept of loss and damage into something more tangible for countries bearing the brunt of extreme weather or rising seas has proved more fractious.
As the latest UN climate change conference gets underway in Bonn, Germany, this week, Carbon Brief charts the journey of loss and damage through the international policy apparatus, and looks at the role that climate science (and scientists) can play in addressing it.
Climate risk
From contributing to shrinking the world’s glaciers to boosting flood risk in southern England, climate change is having discernible impacts across all continents and oceans.
While it’s hard to pin a dollar value on damages, economic models suggest climate change already costs hundreds of billions in damages globally during the 20th century through lost crops, rising seas and more extreme weather.
Looking ahead, the consequences will worsen as temperatures climb further. And with those facing the greatest risks often the least able to absorb the damage, climate change is expected to exacerbate economic inequalities and erode progress on reducing poverty.
The surest way to avoid future climate impacts is to reduce the greenhouse gas emissions that drive them – known as mitigation. But even with efforts to limit warming to “well below 2C” above pre-industrial times – the ambitious goal set out in the Paris Agreement – some climate impacts are unavoidable because of the warming already “baked” into the system.
SkS Analogy 8 - I'll take the specialist
Posted on 15 June 2017 by Evan
Tag Line
I’ll take the specialist, please.
Elevator Statement
Your child has an eye injury and needs a doctor. Who are you going to call?
| A Ph.D. in chemistry? | No, you need a medical doctor. |
| A family-practice medical doctor? | No, you need an eye doctor. |
| Any eye doctor? | No, you need an eye doctor who does surgery. |
| Any eye surgeon? | No, an experienced eye surgeon. |
Because this is your child’s eye, you decide to take your child to two, experienced eye surgeons to make sure they agree on the course of action. You want consensus from at least two recognized experts in their field of specialty before messing with something as precious as the eye of your child. You care about your child and are using common sense.
New research may resolve a climate ‘conundrum’ across the history of human civilization
Posted on 14 June 2017 by dana1981
Earth’s last ice age ended about 12,000 years ago. The warmer and more stable climate the followed allowed for the development of agriculture and the rise of human civilization. This important period encompassing the past 12,000 years is referred to as the Holocene geological epoch. It also created a “conundrum” for climate scientists, because global temperatures simulated by climate models didn’t match reconstructions from proxy data.
To be specific, the overall temperature change during the Holocene matched pretty well in reconstructions and models, but the pattern didn’t. The best proxy reconstruction from a 2013 paper led by Shaun Marcott estimated more warming than models from 12,000 to 7,000 years ago. Then over the past 7,000 years, Marcott’s reconstruction estimated about 0.5°C cooling while model simulations showed the planet warming by about the same amount.
A new paper led by Jonathan Baker may help to resolve that discrepancy. The scientists examined stalagmites from a cave in the southern Ural Mountains of Russia. The ratio of oxygen isotopes in the stalagmites can be used to estimate past winter temperatures. The Marcott study had one known shortcoming – the proxy temperature data they used mostly represented the summer season. And as Baker explained, changes in the Earth’s orbital cycles have caused summer cooling and winter warming during the Holocene:
The Trump Effect - Making Lemonade from Lemons
Posted on 13 June 2017 by BaerbelW
It may just be me but I get the distinct impression that - "thanks" to Donald Trump's ill-advised and shortsighted decision to withdraw the U.S. from the Paris agreement - people have been hearing a lot more about climate change since June 1.
As one datapoint, the topic got a lot of coverage on German TV on June 2 with for example about 8 out of 15 minutes dedicated to it in the main news at 8pm or 10 minutes out of 30 at 10pm. There has also been a lot of coverage in the international press as shown in this very helpful CarbonBrief analysis which lets you select articles by various attributes: Global reaction: Trump pulls US out of Paris Agreement on climate change.
We can also tell that there seems to be more interest in the topic by looking at the statistics for visits to Skeptical Science. We for example had 48,000+ and 57,000+ unique visitors on June 1 and 2 respectively which is more than twice as many as we have on average and between 3 and 4 times more than on those days a year ago.
One area where we've been keeping very close tabs are the daily views for our rebuttals and by now, we have collected more than 49,000 datapoints for them since the beginning of 2017. The "Trump effect" is clearly visible when looking at the number of rebuttal views from mid-May to early June:
Figure 1: Number of views for each rebuttal across the different levels available (basic, intermediate and advanced). Shown are only rebuttals with at least 500 views on a given day. The big outlier is the rebuttal for "there's no consensus".
Here are some other highlights captured in early June (so the data goes up to June 2). You can see the larger version of the graphics by clicking on them. The top-most viewed rebuttals are calculated by adding up the views of all three available levels basic, intermediate and advanced for each month:
The Larsen C ice shelf collapse hammers home the reality of climate change
Posted on 12 June 2017 by John Abraham
Very soon, a large portion of an ice shelf in Antarctica will break off and collapse into the ocean. The name of the ice shelf is Larsen C; it is a major extension from of the West Antarctic ice sheet, and its health has implications for other ice in the region, and sea levels globally.
How do we know a portion is going to collapse? Well, scientists have been watching a major rift (crack) that has grown in the past few years, carving out a section of floating ice nearly the size of Delaware. The speed of the crack has increased dramatically in the past few months, and it is nearly cracked through.
Crack in Larsen C ice shelf. Photograph: Ted Scambos, NSIDC
Project Midas provides frequent updates on the Larsen C shelf. You can read a summary there, which reports:
2017 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming Digest #23
Posted on 11 June 2017 by John Hartz
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June 2017 ENSO update: pancake breakfast
A change is afoot! After months of suggesting an elevated chance for El Niño to develop, the CPC/IRI forecast has flattened out, and neutral conditions are expected (50-55% chance) to continue through the fall.
A recipe for neutral
In fact, the Nino3.4 region (a key ENSO monitoring area in the tropical central Pacific) is hovering around 0.5°C warmer than the long-term average. Yep, that’s the threshold for El Niño, but surely you remember that ENSO is a seasonal phenomenon, meaning those warmer sea surface temperatures need to stick around for several months—long enough to provoke an atmospheric response.
Monthly sea surface temperature in the Niño 3.4 region of the tropical Pacific compared to the long-term average for all years starting off from moderate-to-strong El Niño since 1950, showing how 2016 (blue line) compares to other events. Climate.gov graph based on ERSSTv4 temperature data.
Despite the warmer sea surface temperatures, the atmosphere is not behaving like El Niño. During May, the indicators that we track looked very average, including both the upper-level and near-surface winds over the equatorial Pacific and the amount of rain and cloudiness in the central Pacific and Indonesia. The indexes that measure the difference in the atmospheric pressure between the central Pacific and the far western Pacific, the Southern Oscillation Index and the Equatorial Southern Oscillation Index, were both close to zero in May, indicating, again: neutral conditions.
Most of the recent forecast models predict that the Niño3.4 region will move closer to average temperatures over the next few months. The average of all the dynamical model forecasts in the North American Multi-Model Ensemble flattens out at slightly above the long-term mean for the rest of this year. Averaging all model forecasts together usually produces the best forecast, because it reduces the noise and highlights the signal. Stay tuned—next month, I’m writing a post all about computer climate models. (Try to contain your excitement!)
Climate model forecasts for the Niño3.4 Index, from the North American Multi-Model Ensemble (NMME). Darker purple envelope shows the range of 68% of all model forecasts; lighter purple shows the range of 95% of all model forecasts. NOAA Climate.gov image from CPC data.
Combine these neutral atmospheric conditions, cooling forecasts, and the lack of any substantial warmth under the surface of the Pacific, and you get the current forecast of an approximately 50-55% chance of continuing neutral conditions through the fall.
June 2017 ENSO update: pancake breakfast by Emily Becker, ENSO Blog, NOAA Climate.gov, June 8, 2017
2017 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #23
Posted on 10 June 2017 by John Hartz
Editor's Pick
Trump’s Climate-Change Sociopathy
Win McNamee/Getty Images
President Donald Trump’s withdrawal of the United States from the Paris climate agreement is not just dangerous for the world; it is also sociopathic. Without remorse, Trump is willfully inflicting harm on others. The declaration by Nikki Haley, the US ambassador to the United Nations, that Trump believes in climate change makes matters worse, not better. Trump is knowingly and brazenly jeopardizing the planet.
Trump’s announcement was made with a bully’s bravado. A global agreement that is symmetric in all ways, across all countries of the world, is somehow a trick, he huffed, an anti-American plot. The rest of the world has been “laughing at us.”
These ravings are utterly delusional, deeply cynical, or profoundly ignorant. Probably all three. And they should be recognized as such.
Trump’s Climate-Change Sociopathy, Commentary by Jeffry D Sachs*, Project Syndicate, June 7, 2017
*Jeffrey D. Sachs, Professor of Sustainable Development and Professor of Health Policy and Management at Columbia University, is Director of Columbia’s Center for Sustainable Development and of the UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network. His books include The End of Poverty, Common WealthThe Age of Sustainable Development, and, most recently, Building the New American Economy.
SkS Analogy 7 - Christmas Dinner and the Faux Pause
Posted on 9 June 2017 by Evan
Tag Line
Saying “No warming” since the last El Nino is like
Saying “No weight gain” since the last Christmas dinner.
Elevator Statement
On Christmas eve you eat a big dinner, with lots of seconds, gravy, ooey gooey sweet potatoes with more sweet than potatoes. After the monster dinner, generous helping of pie, ice cream and lots more. You weigh yourself after the “dinner”. The next morning you find creative ways to get rid of the food you “ate” the night before, all of it (and more) ending up in the “waste” bin. You weigh yourself again, for comparison.
Hurrah, a new weight-loss technique. How to lose 5 lbs. (or more) in one delightful day. For the next month you note that you have not gained a single ounce since that gorging Christmas dinner. In fact, you’ve managed to keep your weight below the Christmas-eve measurement. Weight-loss is easy: just push your weight up momentarily to some unsustainably high weight, and then eat a more modest diet thereafter.
This tale would seem absurd, except this is exactly what educated, well-paid senators of the USA say on a regular basis. They substitute 1998 (the year of a monster El Nino) for Christmas dinner, they substitute temperature for body weight, and then say “No warming in __ years”, and neglect to note that the start of the “arbitrary” time period they’ve chosen was a monster El Nino. This Zombie Myth keeps on walking, eating the brains of many, despite the fact that we’ve notched record warm years 3 years in a row (i.e., 2014, 2015, and 2016). With the record warmth we’ve had, it’s possible we’re in the middle of the next Christmas “Dinner”.
Pittsburgh and Paris join over 200 cities and states rejecting Trump on climate
Posted on 8 June 2017 by dana1981
I was elected to represent the citizens of Pittsburgh, not Paris
So said Donald Trump in a speech justifying his irrational, historically irresponsible decision to withdraw the United States from the Paris international climate treaty. Of course, 75% of Pittsburgh residents voted for Hillary Clinton, and many city residents have since written about the outdatedness and absurdityof Trump’s invocation of Pittsburgh, which aims to be 100% powered by renewable energy by 2035. In fact, Pittsburgh joined 210 other “climate cities”representing 54 million Americans (17% of the national population), pledging:
we will adopt, honor, and uphold the commitments to the goals enshrined in the Paris Agreement. We will intensify efforts to meet each of our cities’ current climate goals, push for new action to meet the 1.5 degrees Celsius target, and work together to create a 21st century clean energy economy.
Yesterday, the mayors of Pittsburgh and Paris co-authored a New York Times editorial rejecting Trump’s efforts to pin the two cities against each other on climate change.
Additionally, 12 states (California, New York, Washington, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont, and Virginia) plus Puerto Rico created the US Climate Alliance, committed to upholding the Paris accord. These states represent 97 million Americans – 30% of the national population.
States joining the US Climate Alliance shown in green. Illustration: Dana Nuccitelli
Analysis: Meeting Paris pledges would prevent at least 1C of global warming
Posted on 7 June 2017 by Zeke Hausfather
This is a re-post from Carbon Brief by Zeke Hausfather
President Trump’s decision to withdraw from the Paris Agreement on climate change has raised questions about the effectiveness of the accord, and how that will change without the US.
In his announcement, Trump incorrectly claimed the deal would avoid just 0.2C of warming. In fact, nine separate studies show, on average, that full implementation of current climate pledges would avoid 1C of warming, compared to a business-as-usual world.
Analysis by Carbon Brief finds that if the US reneges on its Paris pledge and takes no action to reduce emissions, it could result in around 0.2C to 0.3C additional warming, whereas a delay in implementation of four or eight years would have minimal impact.
Carbon Brief explains how these temperature estimates are made and explores the impacts of Paris, with and without US participation.
Paris climate impact
The 2015 Paris Agreement was signed by nearly every country on Earth. Countries choose their own nationally determined contribution (NDC) to the accord, with limited enforcement beyond public shaming, for those that fall short.
The first round of NDCs run through 2025 or 2030 and are not sufficient to meet the overall aim of Paris of keeping warming well below 2C above pre-industrial temperatures. As part of the agreement, countries agreed to reconvene every five years to assess progress and ratchet up their efforts.
Nevertheless, the cumulative impact of the NDCs – which reflect both current climate policies and new commitments – is significant. At least nine separate groups have released white papers or published peer-reviewed research since mid-2015 assessing the impact of the Paris Agreement on future warming. A summary of their projections for a business-as-usual world without Paris and a world where countries meet current Paris commitments is shown in the figure below.
Estimates of 2100 temperatures in business-as-usual and Paris commitment scenarios, along with the difference between the two from Climate Action Tracker, the International Energy Agency, Fawcett et al 2015, Rogelj et al 2016, the European Commission Joint Research Council, Climate Interactive, MIT, the United Nations Environment Programme, and Lomborg 2015. Adapted and expanded from a prior compilation by Kelly Levin at WRI. Chart by Carbon Brief using Highcharts.
The day after withdrawing from Paris, Trump declared a flooding disaster in Missouri
Posted on 6 June 2017 by John Abraham
I was debating this article. Should I write about the news that just occurred, or the news that will occur soon? I chose the past event – flooding in Missouri, USA. I will save a soon-to-collapse portion of the Larsen C Ice Shelf in Antarctica for my next article.
It’s sad, but true, that there are mounting ironies around Trump’s scientific ignorance on climate change and his ditching of the Paris Accord to reduce global warming. Scientists know the Earth is warming and that humans are the cause. One consequence of the warming is that weather is becoming more extreme. This means we are getting more extreme storms, including rain and floods. As our nation and the world suffers from the extreme weather, we can reflect on how things could have been different had our politicians heeded the warnings.
While President Trump’s pulling from the Paris treaty was worldwide news, what was not covered as well was his declaration the very next day that the state of Missouri is a disaster area because of flooding.
Why is flooding a symptom of warming? As air warms, it holds more moisture - it’s more humid. As the Earth warms, it means that the atmosphere holds more moisture year round. That moisture falls during storms as rain. What’s interesting is that the result is more of the most severe rains. That is, when it rains, it’s raining harder. Consequently, more flooding occurs. And we are seeing that across our nation. If you look at the trends in the most severe downpours, they are increasing – everywhere.
Donald Trump vs Paris Climate Agreement
Posted on 5 June 2017 by Guest Author
2017 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming Digest #22
Posted on 4 June 2017 by John Hartz
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Paris Agreement: Trump's Climate Exit Risks U.S. Economy, World's Welfare
Trump said the United States won't be bound by any of the treaty's obligations while he backs out of the Paris Agreement. The crowd outside the White House for the announcement wasn't pleased. Credit: Andrew Caballero-Reynolds/AFP/Getty Images
By pulling the United States out of the Paris climate agreement, President Donald Trump has rolled a pair of dice, with high stakes for America's economic future and the welfare of the whole world.
First, he's betting on a domestic energy policy that strongly favors increased production of fossil fuels. "I don't want anything to get in our way," he declared.
Second, he's betting—at least so he said in his speech on Thursday afternoon in the White House Rose Garden—that the rest of the world will come back to the bargaining table for a new deal. ("If we can't, that's fine," he shrugged.)
Either bet could go wrong. Missed opportunities in the emerging green economy could end up outweighing any short-term gains from fossil fuels. Today's fossil fuels could even end up as stranded assets if the rest of the world does hold firm and weans itself off them.
Paris Agreement: Trump's Climate Exit Risks U.S. Economy, World's Welfare by John H Cushman Jr & Zahra Hirji, Inside Climate News, June 1, 2017
2017 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #22
Posted on 4 June 2017 by John Hartz
Editor's Pick
Carbon Dioxide Set an All-Time Monthly High
With May in the books, it’s official: carbon dioxide set an all-time monthly record. It’s a sobering annual reminder that humans are pushing the climate into a state unseen in millions of years.
Carbon dioxide peaked at 409.65 parts per million for the year, according to data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. It’s not a surprise that it happened. Carbon dioxide levels at Mauna Loa Observatory in Hawaii peak in May every year.
The news comes one day after President Trump announced his plan to pull out of the world’s main climate agreement, juxtaposing the severity of the problem with an administration that has shown little to no interest in addressing it.
While plants growing in the northern hemisphere will draw a few parts per million of the carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere over summer, make no mistake, human pollution is pushing atmospheric carbon dioxide ever higher. Mauna Loa Observatory crossed the 410 ppm threshold for the first time in recorded history in April. The May average is almost exactly what UK Met Office scientists predicted it would be in their first carbon dioxide forecast.
Carbon Dioxide Set an All-Time Monthly High by Brian Kahn, Climate Central, June 2, 2017
