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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. . . .
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!
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."
"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.
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."
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.