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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. . . .
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.
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?
"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.
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.
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.
They'll blame the democrats, because the party of personal responsibility likes to make other people responsible.