Saying that 0.2°C is accurate but needs context is like saying that I’m exactly 2 inches tall, which is perfectly true except I forgot to mention the “context” that I’m not measuring it from the ground but from the top of my bookshelf!
The important thing here is not the pretext that the Paris accord would only achieve a 0.2°C reduction in temperature rise over pre-industrial or even present temperature, which is an outright lie because it’s relative to the 2009 COP15 targets. The important thing, besides the fact that this was yet another Trump lie, added on to the job loss lie that we’ve already talked about, is that the true reduction in temperature rise would likely be closer to 1°C than 2°C, which is what I was implying in this post I linked to previously. This is a problem, because the Paris accords have set a temperature objective, but meeting it would require at least adherence to the RCP 2.6 emissions pathway which assumes very aggressive mitigation.
So once again the question is, if only the most aggressive of the mitigation scenarios will achieve the necessary stabilization goals, which speaks to the urgency of immediate action, what should we think about the fact that the Koch brothers have directed the buffoon in the Oval Office to do nothing at all, and in fact to increase coal and oil production, increasing emissions more than ever?
“broadly accurate but needs some additional context” is PolitiFact’s judgement. Your insistence that it was “yet another Trump lie” makes you seem … unserious. I genuinely like discussing climate change with you. It’s an area you have a lot of knowledge in and I learn something new in most of our conversations, but here I think you’re letting your personal antipathy towards Trump cloud your judgement.
Well, I think that however taking into account that what Trump did was a Gish gallop, the truth is the first casualty. Again:
Point being that that being factually inaccurate, as in being very wrong, may not be a lie *; but in the context of all the other lies the fact that Trump is not going back to correct how wrong he got this one, tells me that there is no intention whatsoever to make a correction.
That then turns it into a lie now.
Of course if one wants to continue insisting that Trump “just” got it wrong, then the issue of not being the sharpest knife when surrounded by misleading sources of information is an item that would not fill me with confidence with the future of this presidency. Of course, many already knew that…
My antipathy towards Trump has nothing to do with it. When someone talks about a “reduction” without any reference point, the reader will assume some natural reference point such as “the present time” or (in the case of climate) “pre-industrial temperatures”. Notwithstanding the mild words from Politifact, omitting to mention that the reference point is in fact the most recent established target from the last major climate conference in 2009, and that this is a meaningless reference point because there was no commitment whatsoever to achieving it, makes the claim the worst kind of intentional deception, this is really the dictionary definition of an outright lie. The Paris accords, IOW, were “only” 0.2 degrees less than a made-up artificial target that never existed and that no one had ever agreed to.
Now I genuinely wonder if, as a rational intelligent person who resides on this planet, you’d care to venture an answer to the question in the last sentence of my previous post. Better still, let’s leave Trump out of it, and I’ll quote the question from the other linked post:
The question that Americans should be asking is this: if we are already at the point that it may take the most optimistic and aggressive mitigation policies to bring climate change safely under control, isn’t doing nothing – and indeed mining for more coal and trying to grow fossil fuel use – the most reckless and stupid policy imaginable?
The Paris accords leave lots of opportunity to analyze mitigation costs and adjust targets within the broad context of an international solidarity towards a common goal. Instead, from the US alone, among all major nations, we have nothing.
It depends. It’s probably a legacy of all the times I’ve seen politicians react to some shooting incident with ‘we’ve got to do SOMETHING about guns!!!’ and more often than not, that ‘something’ ends up being a proposal that would not have prevented the problem and is harmful in other ways, but I’m inclined to be a bit more restrained in calling for government action, and a bit more willing to analyze the proposed solutions before just jumping on the bandwagon. According to this website, the USA’s INDC was
Were there any proposals for how we were going to accomplish that? What was that going to cost, in terms of economic impact and disruption?
I’d like to know some answers like that before I say, “yes, we should definitely do (some vaguely defined) that”. I don’t have those answers, but I suspect you might.
It is, of course, reasonable to ask what the mitigation strategies should be. It is not, however, reasonable to view “doing nothing” as a viable default option, and it’s also misleading to imply that these are all net new strategies, because many of them were already in place under the Obama administration and are now being weakened or reversed. Appointing climate change deniers like Scott Pruitt to the EPA and Rick Perry to the Department of Energy and withdrawing from the Paris accord are a harbinger of more of the same to come.
I think a more appropriate and less politically charged analogy is not the gun control analogy but being in a leaking boat which all the evidence tells you is inevitably going to sink. You would certainly want to consider the best strategies for plugging the leak and/or bailing the boat, but what you would not do is sit there with your arms folded demanding a thorough analysis before you lifted a finger to do anything to help. And maybe meanwhile making the problem worse by bringing in buckets of water to do your laundry! No, rationally recognizing the problem and its implications, you’d get down there with a sense of urgency and start plugging the leak.
That said, a high level overview of some of the specifics can be found in the document Achieving the United States’ Intended Nationally Determined Contribution [PDF]. I’m sure that those already predisposed to ignore the whole problem will find reasons to dismiss it, but it’s a good starting point for understanding what’s already being done (or maybe I should say, what was being done before Trump came along) and future strategies. From the abstract:
Available analyses suggest that the United States could reduce emissions by more than 22 percent with policies either already in place or soon anticipated. Options for achieving further reductions to meet the 2025 target may include additional policies, technological advances, and stronger action by cities and companies. Concerted efforts across multiple fronts could reasonably produce the reductions needed to meet the goal.
I’ve done some searching, and other than references that there are a few other mines that may be opening, I can find no details or specifics. This tells me that they are in very early stages, and therefore, not really opening up, so much as plans are being drawn up for feasibility studies to show whether there is an economic ROI on investing in re-opening the mine. Once actual work starts being done, you can usually find better information about the actual locations and anticipated opening dates.
This may just be lack of comprehensive enough of a search on my part, so if you can find specific information on any of the other mines, then I’d love to hear it.
But, if not, then it is essentially like saying “Businesses in our community are opening up” while standing next to an empty field and pointing to preliminary RFP’s. Misleading at best, and really, IMHO, sliding into the deliberate and intentional lie territory.
This is compounded in the deception by talking about it in the same speech that he is talking about the Paris Agreement, that the two have anything to do with each other, which is not the case whatsoever. This mine would have opened regardless of whether we were still in the paris agreement, and the others would too.
Lets compare numbers then. In may, we added 138k jobs. This means 4600 jobs a day, 191.66… jobs an hour, or, 3.2 jobs a minute (generous, in that I am calculating this over the number of hours in a month, not the number of business hours, which gives about 12 jobs a minute). So, if he has spent 30 minutes on these 70 jobs, then he is falling behind.
So, we have him boasting about increasing jobs by an immeasurable amount, while taking credit for it, though he has nothing to do with it. And calling this a great success.
Does this actually strike you as being honest with the american public in any way? I can get how, if you are really wanting to defend him, then some of his statements contain enough truth to them that you cannot call them specifically lies on their own, but in the context they are in, they are absolutely meant to be deceptive, and to deceive the american people into thinking that something is the case that is not.
I don’t find such dishonesty to be a positive in a president, YMMV.
How anyone can look at Trump’s history and not expect some shade of falsehood in any claim he makes is beyond me. I guess there are just a lot of people for whom self-interest trumps reality (pun absolutely intended).
Let’s, (hopefully) put this craziness to bed once and for all. Trump’s speech included the line:
NPR (yes, frickin’ NPR!) backed that up with this statement:
That probably should have been the end of the matter, but you’ve persisted in calling it “IMHO, sliding into the deliberate and intentional lie territory”. I don’t know if you really are just this bad at using Google, or if you’re still trying to defend your earlier position that after “scouring” his speech you could only find one statement that could arguably be construed as true, depending on how one defines “tremendous”.
Perhaps if I explain my methodology, it will help you in the future. Here’s what I did:
Given that NPR had offered some specific states, I decided to start there. I live next door to Wyoming, so I thought it would be fun to do that one. I googled “wyoming new coal mine”. Here is a smattering of some of the top results, which I’ve re-ordered chronologically for you
We could probably do something similar for the other states NPR listed, but I think I’ll let this soak in first before I spend additional time holding your hand through fact-finding missions. If nothing else, I hope this whole exchange causes you a serious bit of self-reflection on the limits of your own searching and scouring abilities.
Did you even read the articles that you linked to on that mine?
Do you realize that not a shovel has been put into the ground in the “opening” of this mine yet?
That it is not a given conclusion that this mine will open?
That there is no timeline for when this mine will open if it does?
That a large part of the opposition to the mine is from local opposition, not federal or international?
That none of these other mines are going to be opening anytime in the next year or more?
That is what I mean by saying that “mines opening up” is deceptive. It implies an immediate and inevitable action, not a possibility down the road.
And this is you focussing on a small part of my post and point, which is that these mines would have opened with or without the paris agreement. That is the part that is sliding into deliberate lie and deception territory.
Do you think that his speech was supposed to give the impression that pulling out of the paris agreement was the cuase of these mines opening, and that his actions would then lead to even more mines opening? And that due to mines opening due to his actions, we would have many jobs created?
This is the deceptive part of the statement. The part that you have yet to have tried to defend, because I think that even you realize that it is an out and out lie. But you have yet to have acknowledged it as deceptive.
It is as if trump said, the sky is blue, and therefore, everyone will get a pony.
We are concentrating on the fact that he lies when he said that everyone will get a pony, you are concentrating on the fact that his statement that the sky is blue is generally true, and (as far as the mines that are opening are concerned) I am just pointing out, in passing, that the day he said it, it was actually cloudy and grey.
Yes, although it wasn’t really the point. Yesterday you said “I can find no details or specifics. This tells me that they are in very early stages, and therefore, not really opening up …”. That strikes me as an especially stupid claim. If your remarkable Google prowess was unable to unearth the timeline, then it must certainly be “in very early stages, and therefore, not really opening up”?
I’m actually not clear either way on this. If the picture in this article is of the site, it looks like they might have done a fair bit of development already, but without a caption, I can’t be sure. Are you prepared to stake your sterling reputation on the claim that “not a shovel has been put into the ground in the “opening” of this mine yet”?
While I suppose anything is possible, we’re way past the “plans are being drawn up for feasibility studies” stage that you seemed to think they were at earlier.
Yes, there’s a timeline, although it appears to be behind schedule, like lots of projects. Another article
(as an aside, I’ve actually done IT work for Lighthouse Resources mentioned in this article)
Neither Trump nor I made any claims about the source of the opposition to the mine. WTF does this question have to do with anything?
The mine in Pennsylvania we discussed earlier is scheduled to open tomorrow. Here is another article about new mines in West Virginia and Virginia, from last September:
Frankly, your stubbornness on this point is nearly awe-inspiring. Most Dopers would have dropped it with a curt “point withdrawn” several posts ago. You seem to want to continue defending your factually-deficient position though, so I’ll continue destroying it.
I clicked the photographers name under the picture in your link to find that, btw.
ETA: If you had read your own cites, you’d have seen that the proposed Brooks Mine is not an open-pit mine and thus the photo could not have been of the Brooks Mine or the Brooks Mine site.
Thanks for the info about the picture. I was aware that the Brooks Mine is not an open-pit mine, although I’m not clear what sort of road-building, staging areas, etc get built for an underground mine. Am I to understand the “I am” to mean that you are in agreement with k9bfriender’s claim that “not a shovel has been put into the ground in the “opening” of this mine yet”? No exploratory drilling / digging, no prep work for supporting facilities, no ceremonial groundbreaking, nothing at all? For the record, I don’t know either way on this point, I’m just trying to understand the claim and who’s making it.
I still see no details or specifics on this mine. Or any of those.
Specifically, what day is this mine proposed to open? How about a month? Nothing, then yes, early stages, not really opening up.
Click the link below the photo, it’ll tell you where it was taken. I clicked it, I know where it was taken, so no bets, but lets just say that if you had bet that that mine was in the US, you would have lost the wager.
You know why the used a picture of a mine in Mongolia, rather than a picture of the mine in progress? I’ll leave that to your imagination.
Is it a sure thing that this mine is going to open?
No, it is not.
If it does open, mining operations are at least a year off, if everything goes according to the current timetable.
You article claims it should be mining by now. But it’s not. You know what it is doing right now? It is trying to get right of way clearances from the other mining companies in the area before it can begin work at all.
Trump most assuredly has made implications that the Paris agreement was what was holding back the opening of new mines, and as you are defending his statement, you kind of are taking the same position.
Because, as the part of my post that you cut out explains, by using this mine in an example while withdrawing from the Paris agreement, he is indicating that this is the result of pulling out, and that there will be more mines, as a result of pulling out. Once again, I am pointing out that this is the deceptive part of the statement.
Lets see if you cut this out of my post again, because you know that you cannot argue against it.
Not that you are actually doing all that good on the other parts.
That would be a reasonable point if I had not used the words "none of these other mines ", but as I did, your statement kinda falls pretty flat.
The fact that you let trump take credit for mines that opened before he was even elected, and the fact that you consider mines that have not been dug or even tested to see if they are viable to be “mines opening up” does not put you in a great position in the debate.
But if that is what you consider to be the mines that trump was talking about, then I will let you take that position, if that lets you get to respond to the parts that I consider to be not just non-factual, but outright intentioanlly deceptive.
You have yet to have made a valid argument that there are any other mines opening any time soon. You have actually strengthened my position, as I said I did a fairly quick google survey to find any mines opening soon, and didn’t find any, actually kind of expecting someone to come up with some cites of mines that are actually planning on opening soon, like within months, or at least within a year. So, I initially clicked your links expecting to find mines that would be opening soon, but not so much, just mines that are in the planning and permitting stages.
You can absolutely win that part of this debate by pointing out a mine that will be opening up sometime in 2017, and I would be more than happy to withdraw that point to focus on the actual thrust of my argument that those words were meant to deceive, even if they had some general truthiness to them. It is only that you choose to focus on that part of this debate, and have failed to come up with a valid refutation, that this side part has gone on so many posts. I would be happy to drop it if you either prove your point, or drop it yourself.
As in every post, after proving my point, yet again, that there are not any mines opening any time particularly soon, I have also pointed out that the specifics of mine opening is just a distraction from the main point that Trump was being dishonest about the implication that withdrawing from the paris agreement was the cause of these mines opening, that he had anything to do at all with the mines opening, that the mines opening will provide a significant number of jobs, and that there would be overall more mines opening than closing over any particular period.
These are all lies and deceptions that you are defending.
So, one more time, and I am just going to cut and past, because I thought I got it well last time. Do you have any response whatsoever to the main thrust of my argument?
I can only imagine this must be because you’re willfully trying not to.
Here is a document from Ramaco from a couple of years ago with a bunch more details and specifics. Yes, they’re behind schedule, but to pretend they are still “in very early stages, and therefore, not really opening up …” is at odds with reality. They’re at the tail end of a multi-year process that they started back in 2014. I can’t tell you exactly when they’ll finally get through the last of the red tape, but I can tell you that they say they’re close, and their plan is to open this year.
@HurricaneDitka: Are you now prepared to say that yes, we should at least keep doing what we’ve been doing? That the US should have stayed in and at an absolute minimum continued mitigation on a best-effort basis? Do you now see that rather than some horrendous sacrifice, a lot of emissions mitigation simply consists of improved efficiencies, better fuel economy, and cleaner energy sources?
Did you notice that instead of the 16% increase in emissions predicted in 2005 by the Energy Information Administration that was supposed to happen by 2014, there was instead a reduction of nearly 10%? Granted, the 2008 recession probably helped, but per-capita emissions pretty much stabilized in 1990 and have been falling since 2000. Total emissions have been on an average downward trajectory since 2007. Real progress was being made. And then we got Trump, Pruitt, and Rick “Oops” Perry, who wanted to abolish the Department of Energy if he could only have remembered what it was called. And now he runs it. The triumvirate of stupid.
As we are specifically talking about this mine that is being held up due to local concerns about subsistence issues, and other coal companies are holding up it’s right of way passages before any work can even begin. Your document from Ramco actually points to this thread, but taking what you say about it, it’s not only 3 years old, but it is far further behind schedule than you think. They are, as of a week ago, still trying to get rights to even be able to get in and out of the mine. Their 3 year old document may indicate that they planned on opening this year, but I don’t see that as realistic at this point. Your comment about me not seeing this mine opening in the near future, due to me willfully trying not to, is extremely poorly founded.
In fact you could read my actual posts, and see where I was perfectly willing to concede that there may be mines opening soon, but that none of the cites that you posted said anything about that.
Now that you have found a news article that indicates that as many as 3 mines will be opened this year, assuming that when they say “mines it’s planning to open this year”, that means that they are beyond the planning stages, and actually realistically will be in operation, I will concede that there is more than one mine that is slated to be open this year.
I will not fault you for how long it took for you to find a reference to mines being opened in the near future, I spent a bit of time before my initial reply to you, trying to find indicators that there were more mines coming soon, but I did not find such. I commend you in finally tracking down info that I was unable to.
If you are up for making up rules at to winning and losing, sure. As the point that I could only find the single mine slated to be open was not the thrust of my argument, and that you snipped and ignored what I mentioned was the thrust of my argument to instead focus on this small bit that I acknowledged very early on was not only not the main part of it, but was not on solid ground, every single time, I would say that you have caught up a little bit at this point, but as you have ignored the main thrust of my argument in every reply you have made, you have quite a bit of catching up to do indeed.
So, now that we have gone all the way from 1 mine to 3, we can drop this, if you like, and you can respond to the main thrust of my argument, as it has been all along, that these mines were not because of withdrawing from the the paris agreement, they were not because of trump, and they are not reversing an overall downward trend in coal production, utilization, and job creation.
As the main part of my argument has always been that it was deceptive for trump to talk about this mine, and others like it, as if it were something that he did to provide jobs to Americans, and this is an argument you have not even quoted, much less addressed, and certainly have not refuted, I would say, that no, you do not win. (You may however, pass go, and collect $200.)
I didn’t make up the rules about winning and losing. YOU did, remember?
Not to put to fine a point on it, but from my perspective in this thread so far, you’ve stubbornly refused to acknowledge simple facts and plain reality to an exasperating degree, so I have no desire to engage further with you. I’ll note that the ‘main thrust of your argument’ (“these mines were not because of withdrawing from the the paris agreement, they were not because of trump, and they are not reversing an overall downward trend in coal production, utilization, and job creation”) do not appear to be contrary to any assertion I’ve made in this thread, so I’m not clear on why you think I ought to respond to it.
This is, however, a much more interesting thread of the conversation.
I confess, I was too busy looking up information on mines in Wyoming and West Virginia and I haven’t yet read the CCES report. I’ll go do that now.
Something to chew on while I’m doing that: Why does the President / federal government have to be the one that does all this? Can’t California and Walmart curb their own emissions? Aren’t they doing so anyways? If the answer to those previous two questions is yes, does it really matter if Trump pulled out of the Paris Agreement?