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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.
He's getting very good at emulating a pancake.
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?
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.
Obama and Guantanamo, for example.
It was obvious that he really wanted to close that thing. Who knows exactly what he learned when he was office, but you could just see that combination of "frustration" and "defeat" in him when the topic came up afterwards.
Wingus, Dingus! Listen up!
How do you walk back something you've given different answers for? He waffled heavily on the campaign trail also. He is consistently inconsistent. We shouldn't be surprised.
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?
I'm waiting for the Trump to state, "Climate Change is really huge, and you're going to love it."
I don't know what to think nor even if it's worth thinking about any more. Governance by RNG. Ignoring for a moment all those shadowy Republican puppet-masters that are a hell of a lot cleverer and more tenacious than Trump... this could actually be an improvement of sorts?
I mean, this is not actually flip-flopping any more. The term is simply not strong enough. What we have here is a flesh and blood expert system running some crude, buggy-as-shit genetic optimizing algorithm... and it's shortly going to be POTUS.
Huh.
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!
Obama is an insider Black man.
That's why we have an outsider White man.
Obama wanted out of Afghanistan and Iraq, he wanted to close Gitmo, and he wanted immigration reform and affordable health care.
He will have no legacy.
No president after him will, either.
The President has become the person who steps forward when a nation-state says, "I want to talk to America."
Other than that pageantry, the President offers condolences and empty promises of change to the families of victims.
It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
Some just wanted job protection, and others wanted to stick it to the establishment. Climate change skepticism was hardly on anyone's minds on the right. They're probably still euphoric from seeing the left break down in tears on election night, and will forgive broken promises for now.
You know what's funny? Seems like if you want to get things done, you need a Democrat to start wars, and a Republican to protect the environment. That way, the left largely stays silent as countries get attacked, and the right largely stays silent as regulations are imposed.
your thin skin doesn't make me a troll
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.
"Many people are saying climate change is a serious issue, many people. Nobody is better at fighting climate change than me. We're going to have the best carbon controls in the world. Obama was a total failure at fighting climate change. Total failure. The rest of the world is laughing at us...."
Maybe someone presented climate change to him as a jihadist terror plot. I can't wait to hear him repeat the phrase "radical Islamic climate change" ;)
Wingus, Dingus! Listen up!
Scott Adams predicted this in May.
Predicted that Trumps real position on climate change was actually "I don't know because I haven't looked into it," and that once he did, if he decided it was a problem, he'd be the only person who could convince the Republican base that it was a problem and that something needed to be done. That no Democrat ever could, but Trump could carry the Republicans right along because they see him as one of them, and very credible.
Mr. Adams is a very observant wingnut.
"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!
Can you explain how Obama is not a total failure at fighting climate change or cite links as to how he has had a meaningful impact on reducing global warming?
The fact that progressive policies have been implemented on working towards goals, open, rational and above all educated dialouge. Most importantly not idiotic pro-business, anti-middle class policies that counteract any attempt to deal with the main issues that would need to be in place for this: the consumer public and the actual economy, not the millionaire+ economy.
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.
"Why is his admission carrying more weight, than his denial would have?
Because during the campaign he said it was all a scam. Now he's contradicting himself. At the time, his denial carried a lot of weight.
I can explain using even shorter words, if that would help.
I've calculated my velocity with such exquisite precision that I have no idea where I am.
Interesting take, but wrong.
America is way long overdue for the needle to peg out to the right.
That's obviated by the results of this last election.
America needs Trump and everything he can possibly bring to the fight.
America needs to actually experience the fantasy of suicide so it can get a sour taste in its mouth and deal with that which has remained in the shadows.
The effort to convert America to Christianity needs to be exposed so we can get rid of the son of a bitches.
It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
Just because we might get out of the fire and back into the frying pan, that doesn't make it a good place to be.
Also, let's be clear what Trump actually said here. "Some connectivity." It's not like he's suddenly become an environmentalist.
I can just hear him tomorrow if he got too much push-back from conservatives: "Uh... yeah... I said 'some connectivity.' Not a lot. Like a phone -- when you got 'some connectivity' you might have one bar if you're out in the woods. Well, not on my phone, because my phone's awesome and I'm rich. But some people get one bar. That's 'some connectivity,' which is all there is with the climate change. Obama and ISIS, on the other hand -- there's FIVE bars of connectivity there."
Just wait for him to speak to a gay audience. He'll say he likes some butt stuff. Not too deep.
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.
Two words:
Republican Congress.
'Nuf said.
Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom. It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves.
Indeed, and the loss of the moral high ground to the Chinese and the prospect of world wide vitriolic hatred for America might have had something to do with his conversion. He may be a lout and a bully but there is no sign that he is actually a moron, in fact quite the opposite his feral cunning in getting elected and dumping various fellow travelers is blatantly on show. The alt-right have just been told where to get off in no uncertain terms, he doesn't need them anymore. He means to be President for Donny Trump and nothing is going to get in the way of his personal success.
Facts are history now plebs have politics for religion on social media.
Gitmo is still open because of the legal clusterfuck that was the Bush administration, combined with a 100% obstructionist congress. Closing Gitmo was still a good idea, Obama just couldn't make it happen (without freeing some truly bad guys, I suppose).
Trump, on the other hand, is either an idiot who is finding out he was wrong, or a conman who no longer needs to keep up the con. Correct answer is conman. It's not like he's spent the last couple of weeks studying climate science.
Play Command HQ online
Right, like the fact that congress are pussies.. that they wouldn't pay for doing the transfer of prisoners to the super max prisons.. even the democrats. 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.
Here's an interesting idea... Maybe, just maybe, President-elect Trump is not the raving, selfish, hate-filled, idiot the media and his opponents have painted him as. Maybe he's actually a sane and intelligent individual with good intentions, who might not be an expert in all areas of everything (nobody is), but who does have lots of experience picking and listening to experts in their respective fields.
Maybe he isn't "flip-flopping", but just realizing that a man as persuasive as him might be able to turn some of the far-right around on issues like climate change and LGBT rights. In order to persuade someone to agree with you, you have to first convince them that you actually kind of agree with them. Perhaps Trump isn't as stupid as people think, and he actually knows this.
Perhaps he isn't just saying "what's in it for me?", and he actually feels some degree of patriotism (shocking, I know, that the president of the United States might actually like this country).
Maybe I'm being naive, but I honestly don't feel like Donald Trump is a dirty, lying, crook who's manipulating the American people for himself. I just don't get that impression of him, and I've been signaled out before for my keen ability to spot a lie. If you disagree, that's fine, but that doesn't make you smarter than anyone else. It doesn't make you better than anyone else. It doesn't mean you're 'above all the sheeple'. It just means you have a different opinion.
One thing that human beings will never get over is their need to be right. If they believe Trump is a bad guy, no amount of evidence to the contrary will ever convince them. They have to feel superior, every single good thing Trump does must be part of some evil master plan of his. So go ahead and downvote me, because that's easier than admitting you could possibly have misjudged the man based on a flood of lies and misinformation spread by people who thought he was "literally Hitler".
It's pretty easy to understand why Obama didn't close Guantanamo :
There are many innocent people there. If they weren't terrorists before entering there, they sure would be now after 15 years of inhuman treatments.
No country wants them, so they'll rot there for eternity without ever facing a trial.
Obama learned the lesson, and just gave the chairforce orders to use more drones.
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 *
Apparently - in America competence and experience is now actually a disqualifier for holding office. Nobody wants to vote for the "washington insiders"... an odd sentiment you do not find in any other field. Seriously when did you ever hear anybody say "I am having a heart attack -please get me anybody who is NOT a doctor !"
Well, you also have a large group of people who say "Government is useless. They can't do anything right." And we routinely elect - and re-elect - those people to government positions.
A cynic would have to wonder if you can truly expect success from someone who has a vested interest in failure.
That's more like the slashdot I like to read.
Agreed. Besides a handful of Trump/HRC fanatics, politics discussions on ./ have been surprisingly civil so far. Specially when contrasted, well, with the rest of the internet.
Actually, I see it running in the opposite direction. Reagan, IIRC reversed himself on some of his tax cuts.
George W Bush, on the other hand, was rather infamous for a stay-the-course-no-matter-what approach. In fact, I don't recall hearing the term "double down" in common usage until his last 4 years or so and it wasn't just him that went that route. Basically any time Republicans lost on something they didn't talk altering strategy, they talked "double down". Or "we need to educate" - meaning that the fault wasn't with them, it was with the electorate.
Bush, in fact, was infamous for refusing to accept data that contradicted his position. It was noteworthy when very late in his tenure, he said, somewhat grudgingly that "IF mistakes were made, they are my responsibility".