Trump Misunderstood MIT Climate Research, University Officials Say (reuters.com)

MIT officials said U.S. President Donald Trump badly misunderstood their research when he cited it on Thursday to justify withdrawing the United States from the Paris Climate Agreement. From a report: Trump announced during a speech at the White House Rose Garden that he had decided to pull out of the landmark climate deal, in part because it would not reduce global temperatures fast enough to have a significant impact. "Even if the Paris Agreement were implemented in full, with total compliance from all nations, it is estimated it would only produce a two-tenths of one degree Celsius reduction in global temperature by the year 2100," Trump said. "Tiny, tiny amount." That claim was attributed to research conducted by MIT, according to White House documents seen by Reuters. The Cambridge, Massaschusetts-based research university published a study in April 2016 titled "How much of a difference will the Paris Agreement make?" showing that if countries abided by their pledges in the deal, global warming would slow by between 0.6 degree and 1.1 degrees Celsius by 2100. "We certainly do not support the withdrawal of the U.S. from the Paris agreement," said Erwan Monier, a lead researcher at the MIT Joint Program on the Science and Policy of Global Change, and one of the study's authors. "If we don't do anything, we might shoot over 5 degrees or more and that would be catastrophic," said John Reilly, the co-director of the program, adding that MIT's scientists had had no contact with the White House and were not offered a chance to explain their work.

Comments

Not "misunderstood"

[XXongo]

I don't think Trump "misunderstood" the science; he didn't have any understanding of the science in the first place.

Re: Not "misunderstood"

[negRo_slim]

Science or not, funneling American wealth to third world countries via a non-binding agreement is enough of a reason to oppose participation in this treaty and to be glad it was never submitted to be potentially ratified.

Re: Not "misunderstood"

[Anonymous Coward]

Science or not, funneling American wealth to third world countries...

Well, it sure is good that the USA didn't do anything stupid like spending a trillion dollars trying to impose democracy on Iraq. :)

Re: Not "misunderstood"

[zifn4b]

Science or not, funneling American wealth to third world countries via a non-binding agreement is enough of a reason to oppose participation in this treaty and to be glad it was never submitted to be potentially ratified.

I wish I had mod points for you. You get it. Sadly, many here do not. America is not a charity for the rest of the world. It's not a matter of wanting to be either. It's logically not possible for one country representing a small fraction of the world's population to prop the rest of the world up. It's a nice idea, it just doesn't match reality. To quote one of my favorite songs by RUSH, "You can twist perception but reality won't budge."

Re: Not "misunderstood"

[Anonymous Coward]

America is not a charity for the rest of the world.

But it is, and Trump is signaling that he thinks Americans should continue to live off the rest of the world.

Re:Not "misunderstood"

[Ichijo]

"It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it!" --Upton Sinclair, 1935

Re: Not "misunderstood"

[Paradigma11]

Why are you using per-capita output? The atmosphere doesn't care about per-capita output.

And China and India are INCREASING their emissions and will continue to do so as they develop and each capita demands a higher standard of living. Their options are to increase pollution or kill a bunch of people. (Or, considering their governments and social structures, why not both?)

What else than a per capita output?

Would you give Luxembourg the same CO2 allowance as india?

Kepping less developed countries down by restricting their CO2 output to a fraction of those in the US won't fly this day and age.

Re: Not "misunderstood"

[jwhyche]

This is the big issue. It's not that Trump wants to destroy the planet, like some snowflakes keep yacking about. It's the funneling of a hundred of billion dollars into third world countries where it won't mean a damn.

What if instead we took that 100 Billion and put it toward domestic improvements in our own carbon emissions. You know, clean up our own crap instead of paying someone to clean up theirs.

Re: Not "misunderstood"

[quantaman]

Try reading it.

India specifically gets US dollars to fund it's green industry pretty much forever. China gets to keep uping emissions for 13 years and then the US pays them to use green energy that they are already building. Russia just gets to ignore the entire thing.

Several other 3rd world countries also gets US dollars but not as bad as the above. It was a horrible accord that only an idiot would sign *John Kerry*

So what part do you disagree with?

1) The part that global warming is a real and serious problem.

Or 2) the part where the US helps other countries reduce their emissions, as a result of the US being one of the nations most responsible for the problem, who benefited the most from prior emissions, and who is most capable of dealing with the problem.

I think #1 is quite true, and once you accept #1 then #2 makes a lot of sense as well. For all the talk of cash transfers to 3rd world countries many on the right seem to think the only "fair" way to deal with global warming is for the West to keep living like kings while the developing world goes pre-industrial.

Huh?

[wbr1]

Misunderstood? Or willfully misconstrued to fit an agenda?

He Didn't Misunderstand It

[NicknameUnavailable]

That is a ridiculously and uselessly tiny amount of reduction. We'd be better off keeping industrial output the same as it is now and redirect a portion of it to climate engineering efforts like spraying silver dust into Earth orbit. The Paris agreement is equivalent to reducing industrial output by about half for what is likely to be less than 1 degree C of a net result, IF every nation on the planet adheres to it, that's insanity. 1% of our single nation's industrial output redirected toward climate engineering could get into the tens of degrees C within a decade, easily.

Re:Of course it was Trump

[thebullshitpatrol]

Holding the president accountable for decisions that his brand, and whoever is associated with it, makes?

Is there any president who we give a pass for making retarded world-scope decisions because of "jargon, confusing verbiage, and passive voice"? Maybe if the president of the united states and his advisors can't reason with jargon, confusing verbiage, and passive voice, they should look into alternate career paths.

Maybe Obama just misunderstood the TPP.

What *does* he understand?

[ilsaloving]

I think it would be easier to simply list the things he *does* understand. That should be an incredibly short list.

I'm assuming "tying my own shoes" probably aren't on that list.

Re:Let's focus on the trivial

[MightyMartian]

Remember, when dealing with pseudo-skeptics, all that counts in their eyes is that they made an objection. The objection may be absurd, it may be outrageous, it may in fact be an outright lie, but so long as they can say they objected, they somehow believe they've falsified an entire field of research.

Credibility

[Train0987]

It might be different if every single prediction made by the "climate scientists" over the past 50 years hadn't been completely wrong.

Re:Let's focus on the trivial

[penandpaper]

How is disagreeing with the political solution akin to "somehow believe they've falsified an entire field of research"?

You can think AGW is real and disagree on funneling money to poor nations. In addition, you can disagree with how much foreign aid Isreal receives and disagree on money transfer in the Paris Accord. These things are not mutually exclusive.

Re:Let's focus on the trivial

[peragrin]

Republicans love saying things like foreign aid and welfare as they get reported in dollars where as military spending that only gets reported in percentages that make little sense unless you have seen the entire budget breakdown. Letting them argue over pennies when thousands are being wasted elsewhere.

The whole us budget is online in lots of charts and grafts. I encourage people to take a look at the entire budget what comes in what goes out and what is the total spent on various aspects. Forget any political sound bite that shows just how screwed up Washington is.

We start the year in a hole because Washington assumes 3-5% growth in taxes to start budgeting. Then you have politicians using GDP when they mean annual revenue. The military is 11% of the GDP but 30% of revenue. GDP doesn't apply to capitalist countries. Using it as a meteric is misleading at best and close to outright lying

Re:Of course it was Trump

[Nidi62]

Not to put too fine a point on the issue but...

Was it Trump who misunderstood the study, or government advisers?

Many Trump advisors such as Musk and Iger, along with the CEOs of massive businesses including Exxon and Chevron (oil companies!), Microsoft, Apple, Goldman Sachs, GE, etc told Trump leaving the Paris Accords was a bad idea. Several, specifically Musk and Iger, have already stepped down from advisory councils. The only advisor Trump trusts is Trump. He has explicitly said so.