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Trump Admits 'Some Connectivity' Between Climate Change and Human Activity (cnn.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from CNN: President-elect Donald Trump conceded Tuesday there is "some connectivity" between human activity and climate change and wavered on whether he would pull the United States out of international accords aimed at combating the phenomenon, which scientists overwhelmingly agree is caused by human activity. The statements could mark a softening in Trump's position on U.S. involvement in efforts to fight climate change, although he did not commit to specific action in any direction. During the campaign, he vowed to "cancel" the U.S.'s participation in the Paris climate agreement, stop all U.S. payments to UN programs aimed at fighting climate change and continued to cast serious doubt on the role man-made carbon dioxide emissions played in the planet's warming and associated impacts. "I think there is some connectivity. Some, something. It depends on how much," Trump said Tuesday in a meeting with New York Times reporters, columnists and editors. He has previously called climate change a "hoax" invented by the Chinese. Asked if he would withdraw the U.S. from international climate change agreements, Trump said he is "looking at it very closely," according to Times reporters Maggie Haberman and Mike Grynbaum, who were live-tweeting the meeting. He added that he has "an open mind to it," despite explicitly promising to withdraw from at least one climate accord on the campaign trail. The President-elect on the campaign trail repeatedly vowed to slash environmental protection regulations burdening U.S. businesses and said that beyond the consequences to the planet, he is particularly mindful of the economic impact of combating climate change. He said he is considering "how much it will cost our companies" and the effect on American competitiveness in the global market, according to a tweet from Grynbaum.
Running for President and being President are two entirely different things.
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
Trump is the best thing to happen to the socialist agenda. He is going to run up a massive deficit. How soon before the conservatives try to disparage him? It will be comedic gold. This is the guy they said is unafraid to speak the truth and can't be bought. Cause no matter what you believe if you say exactly what u think you're good .. right? I mean, nobody despicable in history ever said what they really think?
I thought he looked more like a waffle.
But I'm not gonna complain if he flip-flops away from stupidity and toward sanity.
There's a fact about Trump that's growing ever more apparent: his mouth is nearly useless. Only his actions matter (and they've yet to unfold).
Forrest Trump is like a box of chocolates: you don't know what you are getting until you bite into one ... or one bites into you.
Table-ized A.I.
Think of all the stereotypes you can think about with a politician.
Lying, manipulative, weasil-tactics, duplicitous, and so on.
Trump is pretty much all those things to a level we're unfamiliar with in the modern era. People tend to vastly overestimate how badly corrupted our system has become in the recent modern era, when seeing isolated incidents of outrageous things, such as lies before congress, violence, or right being ignored.
The thing is, if you've ever read any newspapers from the 1800s, or from earlier eras from most places, politics have always been truly horrible, to a much greater degree than we're used to. History is replete with millions of deaths for the sake of the worst kinds of political stupidity, Even the mythical ideals, such as Camelot, are filled with absurdly horrible acts as commonplace, when you read the versions not cleaned up for modern standards.
The return to commonplace racism, outright lying and fiercely punishing those who call you out on lies, and playing of all sides with open disdain is what we seem to be seeing here. A return to the 'good old days', well before the 1950s.
So yeah, if Trump find he can use the specter of global warming to push some part of his agenda, a nugget to throw to get someone in line, he'll play that card.
He just said whatever he thought would win him the election.
What he said has pretty much no attachment to what he will do.
He's a fast learner at becoming a typical lying establishment politician, after having been briefed on the actual facts of the nation and the world.
Of course the role dictates what you have to do in it, anyway. It's all part of the machine.
Enjoy the ride, suckers.
Where are we going and why are we in a handbasket?
On the one hand, it looks like Trump lied to a bunch of scared and vulnerable people to get elected (under the disguise of "not being another politician" and "not just being all talk"). . . On the other hand, a lot of his promises ranged from authoritarian to completely incoherent (Bring back jobs by attacking free trade when automation is the real job killer at this point? Bring back coal by attacking green technologies when natural gas is the true coal killer?).
Either way, the guy is a real douche in my book. . .
Sdelat' Ameriku velikoy Snova!
The concept of a Legacy is for suckers. Do what you need to do, while you're there. Trying to plan your life so someone 100 years from now will have something to talk about is ridiculous.
"outsider"? Trump? You mean the scion of a wealthy family?
He may have convinced millions of people that he is an outsider, but they are badly mistaken.
The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
At the rate of change we've seen out of him so far he's going to be left of Bernie in 4 years.
Hell I wouldn't be surprised if TrumpCare(tm) was single payer through some loopholes and careful wording. Marketing is everything.
Did anyone expect any different?
Twinstiq, game news
I'm expecting a lot more "reality checks" as he approaches the White House - like Obama's promise to shut down Gitmo, it sounds simple enough, until you learn all the facts.
Not so worried about him making crazy decisions.
Am still worried about him filling cabinet posts with dyed in the wool crazy career politicians - that's where some real damage can be done.
You have to feel for Trump voters. He is pretty much flip flopping on every one of the reasons they voted for him. As Obama said "whatever assumptions you bring into the office, this office has a way of waking you up."
Trump will follow in Hillary's, Obama's and Bush's footsteps because that what you have to do in politics to succeed. For some reason most people don't get this and actually think the change candidate can actually do anything different from anyone else.
One of the things that kind of puzzles me about the idea that being "pro business" and "pro not-fucking-up-the environment" being mutually exclusive is that potentially fixing climate change could be great for industry, if it got past its short sighted myopia.
Switching over to a low/no CO2 economy doesnt just mean shutting down coal plants. It means shutting down coal plants and building solar/wind/nuclear plants. Surely this counts as "economic activity". Those wind farms don't build themselves and those solar panels wont service themselves.
European countries that have put effort into transitioning over have generated a tonne of jobs, money and economic activity in the process , so it seems strange that people seem to think the US doing so would mean the opposite of that.
Excuse the Unicode crap in my posts. That's an apostrophe, and slashdot is busted.
For some reason most people don't get this and actually think the change candidate can actually do anything different from anyone else.
Well, actually it IS possible to change SOME things.
The problem with Trump, more than perhaps most candidates, is that many of his biggest campaign claims were completely unrealistic, but supporters chose to believe them anyway.
...and those that weren't completely unrealistic were completely unconstitutional, and therefore aren't going to happen either. Like locking up your opponent because you don't like that she was cleared of the charges against her.
Its not the career politicians that worry me, its the "maverick" ones. Washington wonks are at least a known quantity. They are versed in bureacracy and doing things the washington way. We know those guys, we've had them for over a century.
Its the non washington people, trump, the breibart and daily stormer whackjobs, and the like that keep me up at night. Because those folks have a plan, and I'm not sure we're going to enjoy that plan very much at all.
Excuse the Unicode crap in my posts. That's an apostrophe, and slashdot is busted.
Trump will follow in Hillary's, Obama's and Bush's footsteps because that what you have to do in politics to succeed.
Funny, I don't remember any white supremacists in Obama's cabinet.
I'm curious: when you look at a country like Germany or Sweden today, which has government running (i.e. regulating and to some extent providing) healthcare, employment, banking, housing, etc, do you genuinely think you're seeing a country that is essentially the same as Franco's Spain, Mussolini's Italy or Hitler's Germany? Or are you simply making some kind of rhetorical exaggeration for effect? Or do you think there is a meaningful distinction between what these modern European countries are doing and what US-style progressivism is trying to achieve? Or something else?
I'm asking because I genuinely can't understand your viewpoint: I can't follow the logic. So I'd be grateful if you could lay it out.
The non-politicians are even worse. The white supremacists, the alt-right hatemongers, the members of his own family.
Looks like he will have to be forced to give up his business interests, but he has made it abundantly clear that he intends to use the presidency to enrich himself anyway.
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SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
They'll blame the democrats, because the party of personal responsibility likes to make other people responsible.
I'm curious: when you look at a country like Germany or Sweden today, which has government running (i.e. regulating and to some extent providing) healthcare, employment, banking, housing, etc, do you genuinely think you're seeing a country that is essentially the same as Franco's Spain, Mussolini's Italy or Hitler's Germany? Or are you simply making some kind of rhetorical exaggeration for effect? Or do you think there is a meaningful distinction between what these modern European countries are doing and what US-style progressivism is trying to achieve? Or something else?
I'm asking because I genuinely can't understand your viewpoint: I can't follow the logic. So I'd be grateful if you could lay it out.
Well, the countries you mention are centuries old. Capitalism and limited government such as the US used to have created the richest, most powerful, and most-free nation to ever exist in the space of less than 2 centuries, not to mention the most generous when it comes to helping nations in dire emergencies.
Capitalism and free markets have lifted more people out of poverty and lifted the standards of living of more people than any other system yet tried, combined. It has also advanced science, medicine, and industrial systems and technologies faster than any other system yet tried. Government controlled/run economies and societies cannot match that or even come close.
Another aspect is the size and diversity of the US and it's population compared to the countries you named. Until very recently those countries' populations and cultures were fairly homogenous as opposed to the US, therefor comparisons are apples-and-oranges.
The US was founded on the idea that power resides in the people, and a portion only temporarily and conditionally is granted to government to do only those things that a national government can do, like negotiate treaties, declare war, guard borders, etc. This was designed in part to assure the maximum amount of individual freedom and liberty possible.
It all depends on the goals, I suppose. If one values individual liberty, a free and open society, a high average standard of living, free and open political debate, and rapid advances in science and technology, a limited government, individual liberty, and capitalistic free markets are necessary to obtain the best results as US history has shown. History shows that the more-free a nation and it's people are, the more successful, peaceful, wealthy, and advanced that nation and society become.
No system is perfect, and capitalism and free & open societies carry risks and have their own problems, but they still beat any of the alternatives tried so far.
HTH
HAND
Strat
Progressivism (aka US 'Liberalism'): Ideas so good they need a police/surveillance-state to enforce.
The problem with closing Gitmo was what to do with the inmates. If you bring them onshore you have to give them trials. Some (perhaps many) will not make bail, many would be convicted - that means they have to be housed as prisoners afterward, the others you have to release.
That creates a double problem. No congressman wanted to have a bunch of convicted ex-gitmo terrorists in the prisons in his state. Nobody wanted his prisons to be housing the awaiting-trial ones, and nobody wanted the released ones living in their state.
Since the whole damn congress went NIMBY about it - Obama had nowhere to put the people in Gitmo - which made closing it basically impossible.
Now if congress wasn't completely obstructionist this may have been possible to work around. For example one may have sent a tribunal of judges to the Island to hold public trials there - with JAG lawyers prosecuting using whatever evidence they were holding them on. The judges would have a grand-jury style trial and then you only release the ones who are found innocent and the rest are already in jail. It would mean exploiting the "not America" loophole of Bush one last time to get around the bail laws but at least you could have gotten the innocent ones out and been able to say nobody is held without trial. That wouldn't be a 'closure' of Gitmo but it would have been a huge improvement and probably an acceptable compromise - unfortunately, not one Obama could take without congressional approval.
Unicode killed the ASCII-art *
>It was like they were all super villains not a bunch of terrorists that have been waterboarded all over the place and probably can't even think straight anymore.
Considering all these people are held without trial - NONE of them are terrorists. In the free world people are innocent until proven guilty and not a single Gitmo inmate has been proven guilty of anything, including terrorism.
Unicode killed the ASCII-art *
Real life politics is not as simple as "if a country is not purely capitalist it's fascist, because fascism and communism are the same thing".
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it