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Climate Deal: US and China Join Paris Climate Accords (bbc.com)
An anonymous Slashdot reader quotes the BBC:
The US and China -- together responsible for 40% of the world's carbon emissions -- have both formally joined the Paris global climate agreement... It will only come into force legally after it is ratified by at least 55 countries, which between them produce 55% of global carbon emissions. Before China made its announcement, the 23 nations that had so far ratified the agreement accounted for just over 1% of emissions. This will put pressure on G20 nations over the weekend to move faster with their pledge to phase out subsidies to fossil fuels...
There's a G20 summit starting on Sunday, and the BBC's environmental analyst reports that the accord "will just need the EU and a couple of other major polluters to cross the threshold." Its ultimate goal is to stop global temperatures from rising more than 2 degrees Celsius -- "well above the aspirational 1.5C heating that the UN accepts should really be the limit" -- though U.K. researchers report that already 2016 temperatures may be rising 1.1C above pre-industrial levels.
There's a G20 summit starting on Sunday, and the BBC's environmental analyst reports that the accord "will just need the EU and a couple of other major polluters to cross the threshold." Its ultimate goal is to stop global temperatures from rising more than 2 degrees Celsius -- "well above the aspirational 1.5C heating that the UN accepts should really be the limit" -- though U.K. researchers report that already 2016 temperatures may be rising 1.1C above pre-industrial levels.
Now please quit arguing that since China isn't doing anything, there's no point in the U.S. doing anything either. Fact is, the U.S. and China together are responsible for more than 38% of global greenhouse gas emissions, more than the EU, Russia, India, Japan and Brazil combined. We have a unique responsibility in the fight against global warming.
Anyone who has ever done the classic experiment of heating ice water while recording the temperature increase will know that the word "already" has no place here.
The temperature dynamics of the earth's biosphere are a Rube Goldberg contraption. It's not even clear that adding heat couldn't lead (for some period of time) to a temperature decrease.
For example, let's suppose that the gas trapped in the permafrost was not methane, but a methane-like gas that promotes a net global cooling (under the condition of maximal sustained release); however, the net cooling effect is not evenly distributed, the permafrost at the poles continues to melt, this entrenched source of anti-methane is ultimately exhausted, and then the earth's temperature begins to warm again, now in a rapid rebound.
This story is not even a huge change in the particulars as we found them.
Just imagine if scientists were presently gasping in alarm at a global cooling of 1 degree C which presages (in accepted theory) a rapid rebound in the other direction. Then we'd be writing (perhaps correctly) that we've already experienced a fatal 1 degree C of cooling en route to an impossibly dire 2 degree C global warming.
The word "already" is being used here to cue the naive reader into the lazy presumption that we can cast off the nefarious ashes of system theory, and bust out instead narrative compass and straightedge.
No. We. Can't.
The US 'formally' joining the Paris Accord is based on Obama's claim that it's not actually a treaty, and therefore doesn't actually require Congressional ratification, despite the fact that that it incorporates compulsory actions on the part of the signatory countries, and is therefore a treaty.
Well it doesn't have any penalties. JFK could say "we will send a man to the moon by the end of the decade" without any legal problems of binding Congress and future presidents because it's no more than a statement of intent. The Paris accords are pretty much the same, we promise to work to reduce climate change. If we don't... we don't. Nothing has been explicitly regulated or banned, no money has been explicitly promised, it's basically a statement of good intentions put to paper. It's a symbolic agreement with less teeth than the Kyoto protocol exactly so it can pass anywhere, like the UN declaration of human rights even though they're regularly violated in many countries of the world.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
Is that the relevant point? You don't think that agreements should be ratified when they don't have penalties? You're saying it's okay for the president to speak for the country and make agreements without oversight? Could there be any bad consequences down the road if we let it pass this one time?
Well, it'd hardly be the first time (source):
You kinda left out this part:
Controversy surrounds the legal authority of the president to make executive agreements. The practice of unilateral presidential accords with foreign nations conflicts with the constitutional emphasis on joint decision-making, and with the Framers' understanding of the reach and breadth of the treaty power, which Hamilton described in a letter under the pseudonym "Camillus" as "competent to all the stipulations which the exigencies of national affairs might require; competent to the making of treaties of alliance, treaties of commerce, treaties of peace, and every other species of convention usual among nations. And it was emphatically for this reason that it was so carefully guarded; the cooperation of two-thirds of the Senate with the president, being required to make any treaty whatever."
The BEST defense of Obama that you can muster is "others have done it too!!!!"
REALLY?!?!!