Slashdot Mirror
Paris Climate Change Agreement Enters Into Force (theguardian.com)
The Paris agreement on climate change enters into force on Friday, marking the first time that governments have agreed legally binding limits to global temperature rises. From a report on The Guardian: The passage of the accord -- the fruit of more than two decades of often tortuous international negotiations on combating climate change -- was hailed by nations and observers around the world. Under the agreement, all governments that have ratified the accord, which includes the US, China, India and the EU, now carry an obligation to hold global warming to no more than 2C above pre-industrial levels. That is what scientists regard as the limit of safety, beyond which climate change is likely to become catastrophic and irreversible. Countries have put forward commitments on curbing carbon emissions under the agreement, but a report on Thursday found those pledges would see temperature rises significantly overshoot the threshold, with 3C of warming. Environmental groups urged governments to do more.
The term "Executive Agreement" covers the Paris agreement. The Executive Agreement is an end-run around the Constitutional requirement for Senate approval for treaties. It's a violation of the Constitution that a compliant Supreme Court agreed to. A perfect example of the erosion of the Constitution over time.
The bad news is that it's the law of the land now because the Court said that it was and the Congress rolled over.
HBI's Law: Frequency of calling others Nazis is directly correlated with the likelihood of the accuser being Communist.
...a report on Thursday found those pledges would see temperature rises significantly overshoot the threshold, with 3C of warming. Environmental groups urged governments to do more.
Oh, you mean like climate engineering to take positive steps to reduce the temperature and soak up excess carbon already up there and maybe prevent the damage already on track to happen? No?? That's so evil that we shouldn't even consider it?
How about nuclear energy? That doesn't fart out carbon, and then we can still use, you know, electricity rather than... "Unequivocally no" again? Oh, right, because Chernobyl happened that proves it can't work. I'm sure a similar nuclear disaster now is just as likely and would be much worse than a silly little 3 degree temperature rise.
So the solution is... wishes, everyone riding around on bikes, and moral superiority? Because it looks to me like we're stuck between a rock and a hard place. The rock of fossil fuel interests keeping us from actually doing anything before it's a crisis, and naive environmentalists groups who rule out actual solutions on the grounds that they might not be completely perfect.
Actually, Slashdot is becoming anti-religion, much to the Church of Global Warming's ire.
And by "flushed" don't you mean "burnt at the stake," Parson?
How about nuclear energy? That doesn't fart out carbon, and then we can still use, you know, electricity rather than... "Unequivocally no" again?
Actually, environmentalists are very split on this. Some still are anti-nuke, but a large number of enviornmentalists actually do endorse nuclear power because it doesn't emit carbon dioxide. That group notably includes James Hansen, the climate scientist that the deniers most love to hate.
Some links:
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/nuclear-power-must-make-a-comeback-for-climate-s-sake/
http://thehill.com/policy/energy-environment/189068-climate-scientists-to-green-activists-embrace-nuke-power
https://cna.ca/news/prominent-environmentalists-embrace-nuclear/
http://www.ucsusa.org/nuclear-power/nuclear-power-and-global-warming#.WBynCeErLOQ
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2015/dec/03/nuclear-power-paves-the-only-viable-path-forward-on-climate-change
I'm sorry, I totally believe that man is contributing to climate change but this story is so rosy eyed its downright dumb. We have NOT made progress. It's going to cost trillions and trillions of dollars to get where people want to go and not billions. The idea that major powers will voluntarily give up percentage points of GDP to reach even the low percentages of what scientists THINK will be needed is naive. Politicians that crave power and have made it are not dumb. They know this full well which is why I'm suspicious that these agreements are nothing more than power grabs to screw us all over. If it was a SERIOUS agreement that was ENFORCEABLE I'd think less so, but this one? Please! A carbon tax that effectively got what they wanted would drive up the cost of electricity in places like the UK by 50-75%. That's the sort of numbers that politics will now allow. Attempting to Modify human behavior is not going to solve this problem. Technology is the only way out.
https://www.nrdc.org/experts/david-doniger/paris-climate-agreement-explained-does-congress-need-sign
TL;DR everything in the paris agreement is already covered by a UN climate change framework that was ratified by the Senate.