Trump and the facts of life

I am pessimistic that Trump will make good on all his promises to change the climate change policies of the US. He won’t be allowed to. He’s already making noises like “I’m examining [the Paris treaty] closely.” He’s surrounded by people who know how things work and they’re now teaching him the facts of life. Shame, but there you go. We’ll have to effect change the hard, old-fashioned way of struggle and slog, work and toil.

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35 Thoughts on “Trump and the facts of life

  1. Magoo on 23/11/2016 at 11:53 pm said:

    The way I see it Trump can do one of the following:

    1/ Leave the Paris agreement as is but ignore it.
    Will result in less political fallout internationally (for a while anyway), but might irritate his voters.

    2/ Send it to the Senate to be ratified.
    Seems like the right thing to do, but as things are supposed to originate in the House before being passed to the Senate to be ratified, it probably never would’ve gotten to the Senate in the first place had correct procedure been followed. I’m not sure about treaties, but the House proposes laws not the Senate, & the Senate ratifies them but doesn’t propose them.

    3/ Renege on his election promises.
    Due to Trump’s inherent Democrat pedigree I’m expecting him to renege on most, if not all, of his promises, or at least water them down until they’re pale imitations of his grand promises. I hope I’m wrong, but I’ve never trusted him (check out the 2 links below). Having said that the one thing Trump does seem consistent on is his climate change views, & the guy he’s installing as head of the Environmental Protection Agency is a climate change sceptic that’s scaring the crap out of the greenies. It looks like Trump might divert NASA’s climate change funding back to it’s original function of space exploration also.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5DDnvRjCU9A

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N5A02pNcGHs

    4/ Cancel the Paris agreement by presidential executive order.
    Could be a good option – Obama was the only one who signed without the consent of Congress, so he is more than welcome to stand by his own personal agreement with his own personal money. It’ll save the Senate’s time & money to use the executive order option but could be overturned by the next President.

    My bet is on either options 2 or 4, probably 2 as it will be difficult for the next President to reverse it. Hopefully he won’t get thwarted by the pathetic sellout RINO’s.

    BTW, there’s an article about the TPPA at Jo Nova’s website. I had a look at the agreement & there’s a section on the environment. Just as I suspected, Obama the sleazy dictator was trying to lock the Paris agreement into law by making it a breach of the TPP to pollute via ’emissions’, thereby avoiding the Senate.

    http://joannenova.com.au/2016/11/the-tpp-monster-has-5544-pages-a-real-free-trade-agreement-would-have-one/

  2. Andy on 24/11/2016 at 6:35 am said:

    I think a lot of these “Trump backpedalling” stories from the lying media can be ignored. I’ve seen a lot where the media edit the quotes to fit their narrative.

    The media have been the biggest losers this election. They haven’t learnt a thing

    The whole “white supremacist/racist” narrative is largely made up too, by focussing on a small group of extremists

  3. Magoo on 24/11/2016 at 9:42 am said:

    There’s no doubt the media are trying to undermine him with the backpedalling stories, and the white supremacist stuff is just laughable (especially coming from the Democrats who tried to block desegregation, the abolishment of slavery, & had close ties with the KKK), but I have many doubts about Trump & his long liberal history – I’ve always expected him to backpedal. He was a registered Democrat in 2000 which means he supported Al Gore, and there’s a good chance he supported Obama at least once:

    http://www.thesmokinggun.com/sites/default/files/assets/trump2001.jpg

    Like I said, I hope I’m wrong, but only time will tell. I don’t think there would’ve been any doubt about Cruz though – the US right wing screwed up big time there.

  4. Andy on 24/11/2016 at 10:34 pm said:

    This is quite a good article by Scott Adams (Dilbert guy) on Trump and cognitive dissonance
    http://blog.dilbert.com/post/153559105081/a-lesson-in-cognitive-dissonance

    Adams has been writing consistently good pieces on the Trump phenomenon during the election cycle

  5. Andy on 24/11/2016 at 11:50 pm said:

    Apropos of the above, Herr Thomas of Hot Topic is still ranting about Brownshirts, and calling me one too.
    I guess he has some personal experience

    I wonder how Herr Thomas would feel about me calling him a rape and paedophile supporter?
    Obviously, he hasn’t disavowed the supporters of the above (DNC operatives and Islamic Supremacists) therefore I assume he tacitly supports these activities, in the same way that he accuses me of tacitly supporting white supremacists because I haven’t disavowed them.

    I haven’t disavowed Genghis Khan either, but I am kind of busy right now

  6. Gary Kerkin on 25/11/2016 at 2:46 pm said:

    Time will tell whether Trump will keep any of the vague policy measures he mentioned during his campaign. The reality of sitting behind the desk in the Oval Office may well convince him to conveniently forget many of them. Not all the media is “lying”, Andy. The New Yorker recently published a good article which is worth reading http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/11/28/obama-reckons-with-a-trump-presidency.

    Like Richard T., I have little hope that he will manage anything constructive as regards the Paris “Agreement” and even less that he will be able to shake up much in the science establishment in the US. That some are “running scared” is evident from some of the articles published, such as that which appeared in Science Magazine detailing what the author thought were the only things a Trump Administration could achieve with regards to climate change (http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2016/11/what-trump-can-and-cant-do-all-himself-climate?utm_campaign=news_daily_2016-11-09&et_rid=17049947&et_cid=978678) or from this article which appeared in the Huggington Post http://www.huffingtonpost.com.au/2016/11/10/this-is-very-bad-for-the-fight-against-climate-change/. For what it is worth I have started to refer to the Huffington Post as “hufflepuffle” with apologies to JK Rowling. It will be most interesting to see how Trump and his administration manage to cope with the full weight of the AGW establishment.

    That said, what else does Trump offer to the likes of me, say? Not much. I find his stance on most topics to be egregious and although I have no wish to inflict my personal politics on a forum such as this I’d make the point that before I express an opinion about a politician, or cast a vote, I try to take into account everything such a person is saying. That’s not to say that I wished to see Clinton determining US foreign policy (more than she has already). Personally, I would not have liked to be asked to choose between the two!

    That it is the business of the American voter, not mine, or ours, doesn’t mean that we won’t be affected by what their chosen leaders do in office. Do we need America to be isolationist? It won’t do our agricultural industries any good. Their market is useful to us. Do we need the US to back out of the TPP? The TPP doesn’t exactly appeal to me, but do we want China to become even more dominant in the economics of the South Pacific?

    It will be interesting to see what evolves as Trump puts together his administration.

  7. Andy on 26/11/2016 at 1:03 am said:

    Not all the media is lying, but all of me has no trust in the media

    They completely shredded any credibility after the disgraceful bias in the US elections.
    How come I could see a Trump win ages ago yet the entire MSM believed their own propaganda?

  8. Mike Jowsey on 26/11/2016 at 6:29 pm said:

    How come I could see a Trump win ages ago yet the entire MSM believed their own propaganda?

    Correct. Paid tossers, deafened by their own echo-chambers.

  9. Simon on 29/11/2016 at 9:25 am said:

    I doubt that you really have greater insight into American voting patterns than the professional pollsters Andy. The big surprise was how few people voted. Maybe that shouldn’t be that surprising, especially when states like North Carolina cynically make it as difficult as possible for poorer parts of the community to vote. Both candidates were seriously flawed, which probably increased voter apathy.
    As for a lying media, in many cases they are simply regurgitating what vested interests want to tell them. The real problem is the lack of investigative journalism; that requires money which is difficult to find with the diminishing profitability of newspapers.
    It’s a post-truth world Andy, and people like yourself play a role in it.

  10. Andy on 29/11/2016 at 10:42 am said:

    No Simon I don’t claim to have greater insight

    However having followed Scott Adams, Mike Cernovich and others that had good arguments for a Trump win, Adams in particular predicting a Trump landslide over a year ago, I found their arguments fairly complellong

    The MSM in comparison had nothing. The usual sneering, pompous self opinionated
    Jackasses that bray about how superior they are to the “little people”

    We are of course well familiar to this type here

  11. Andy on 29/11/2016 at 11:23 am said:

    Apparently I’m part of the “post truth” world

    What the heck does that even mean?

  12. Maggy Wassilieff on 29/11/2016 at 12:22 pm said:

    @Andy

    Here … an essay on post-truth
    http://www.nature.com/news/post-truth-a-guide-for-the-perplexed-1.21054

    and in good future-truth fashion, it has a publication date of 1 Dec 2016.

  13. Andy on 29/11/2016 at 8:32 pm said:

    Thanks, the article looks interesting, though politicians lying is hardly new, especially when the Clintons are involved

  14. Andy on 29/11/2016 at 10:55 pm said:

    Did “post truth politics” come before or after “post normal science”?

  15. Andy on 29/11/2016 at 11:02 pm said:

    This article on Stuff claims that the millions of fraudulent votes claim was a “lie” by Trump
    (as thus, I presume, a part of the “post truth” worldview)
    http://www.stuff.co.nz/world/americas/87014627/how-donald-trump-manipulates-the-media

    Wouldn’t it be more accurate to describe this as an as yet unsubstantiated claim, rather than a lie?
    There is some evidence of voter fraud, from illegal immigrants, dead people, and rigged electronic voting machines. I would have thought it in the interests of democracy to have a non-partisan investigation into these claims

    Jill Stein wanted a recount, so presumably she bought into the “lie” too.

    If the media keep spinning the idea that Trump is a liar, then it becomes a truth, or as we say, part of the “post truth”

  16. Dennis N Horne on 30/11/2016 at 10:57 pm said:

    http://www.nature.com/news/post-truth-a-guide-for-the-perplexed-1.21054
    Kathleen Higgins offers some explanation, dated 28 November 2016
    Scientists and philosophers should be shocked by the idea of post-truth, and they should speak up when scientific findings are ignored by those in power or treated as mere matters of faith. Scientists must keep reminding society of the importance of the social mission of science — to provide the best information possible as the basis for public policy. And they should publicly affirm the intellectual virtues that they so effectively model: critical thinking, sustained inquiry and revision of beliefs on the basis of evidence. Another line from Nietzsche is especially pertinent now: “Three cheers for physics! — and even more for the motive that spurs us toward physics — our honesty!”

    Incidentally, Dr Kathleen Higgins is a visiting professor at Auckland, as was her late husband.

    Truth and science go hand in hand. Bad judgement and bullshit go hand in hand too.

    Or is that foot in mouth? It certainly takes some contortion to believe you know more science than all the great scientific institutions and societies. A stance that might explain why truth leaps straight over your heads.

  17. Andy on 01/12/2016 at 1:44 am said:

    Of course Dennis, we are far too simple to understand philosophy and the scientific method.

    Incidentally, i am currently 60 minutes walk from the Climatic Research Unit at UEA, that great bastion of the scientific method and open and honest science

  18. Andy on 01/12/2016 at 1:54 am said:

    More on Dennis’ quote above

    And they should publicly affirm the intellectual virtues that they so effectively model: critical thinking, sustained inquiry and revision of beliefs on the basis of evidence

    That rules out most of climate science then

  19. Simon on 01/12/2016 at 10:02 am said:

    It’s important that the CRU is a bastion of the scientific method once the Trump administration knocks NASA and NOAA funding back. What is your tipping point for a revision of beliefs Andy?
    How about global sea ice > 5 sd from the mean?
    Global surface temperatures > 1C from the 1951-1980 mean?
    Global average sea level rise > 2mm/year?

  20. Andy on 01/12/2016 at 10:58 am said:

    I don”t have a set of beliefs.

    So there is no need for a revision of them.

  21. Andy on 02/12/2016 at 9:25 pm said:

    I hear there is a very large cold airmass about to hit the USA. Last week in Scotland was very cold (it hardly got above zero some days, with hoar frost at lunchtime)
    This week has been very cold in East Anglia.

    However, there is a downtick in Arctic sea ice, therefore we are all going to die from Global Warming.

    Think of the children.

  22. Maggy Wassilieff on 03/12/2016 at 9:11 am said:

    Interesting to read the editorial in the latest Nature Climate Change

    Folks are finally realising that others need to see all the data that has informed a scientific paper/discovery.

    http://www.nature.com/nclimate/journal/v6/n12/full/nclimate3177.html

  23. Dennis N Horne on 04/12/2016 at 8:55 am said:

    “Folks are finally realising that others need to see all the data that has informed a scientific paper/discovery.”

    It’s nothing more than a statement formalising existing policy:
    “At Nature Climate Change and the Nature journals, our policy has always been that data must be made available by the authors on request.”

    But, hey, I’ll drop a line to the Royal Society, National Academy of Sciences and American Association for the Advancement of Science (“Science”) and tell them how pleased we are are climateconversation that their scientists are finally realising what science is and how it works.

    Goodness, these folks might finally realise ten thousand climate scientists have been hiding the data and cooking the books and the problem of global warming would go away if funding stopped.

  24. Andy on 04/12/2016 at 9:07 pm said:

    It isn’t standard to provide data and code that backs peer reviewed papers.

  25. Dennis N Horne on 05/12/2016 at 6:43 pm said:

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=if9LBQm_yqA
    Climate psychology: Why our brains ignore climate change -and what to do about it
    SEI — Stockholm Environment Institute. Streamed live on Aug 30, 2016, with Per Espen Stoknes.

    1. Why rational facts are insufficient to create lasting engagement
    2. The 5 main psychological barriers stopping climate communications
    3. How to bypass the barriers with evidence-based communication solutions
    4. Under what conditions will humans take everyday action for the long-term
    5. How individual actions do not solve the climate problem, but do build bottom-up support for structural change

    Per Espen Stoknes, a psychologist with PhD in economics, director of Centre for Green Growth at the Norwegian Business School. A serial entrepreneur, including co-founding clean-tech company GasPlas, he’s also written several books, among them Money & Soul (2009) and the recent award winning book: What We Think About When We Try Not To Think About Global Warming (2015).

  26. Magoo on 05/12/2016 at 10:31 pm said:

    Ah Dennis dear boy, you’re back.

    Resorting to psychology quacks in lieu of any evidence of anthropogenic global warming now I see, but at least it wasn’t from the Guardian (snigger) this time though I suppose. You’re looking in the wrong place dear boy, it’s climate science not psychology, don’t you know the difference? Try the climate science in Working Group I from the IPCC’s last AR5 report, it clearly shows that evidence for catastrophic anthropogenic global warming is lacking, that there’s been barely any warming in the last 20 yrs or so, & all the computer models have failed.

    ‘… rational facts are insufficient to create lasting engagement’ indeed. The only thing worse than ignorance is willful ignorance dear boy. 😉

  27. Dennis N Horne on 06/12/2016 at 7:57 am said:

    Magoo mon cher trou du cul

    You throw the IPCC reports around as some sort of authority but ignore the conclusions drawn by nearly every climate scientist and informed scientist and their scientific institutions and learned societies on the planet.

    The purpose of science is explanation. Greenhouse gases explain the global warming and the changing climate. Nothing else does.

    Psychologists attempt to explain the denial, which has been orchestrated by the Koch brothers and their useful idiots, like my old mate Bob Carter and my new friend Mike Kelly, who also doesn’t know his rrrs hole from a hole in the ground.

    Donc, je tu dis, mon petit fou, “encouler!”

    XXX Dennis

  28. Andy on 06/12/2016 at 8:20 am said:

    The “denial” is simply explained by stating the simple fact that people aren’t interested anymore

  29. Dennis N Horne on 06/12/2016 at 8:39 am said:

    Denial is believing the Arctic anomaly of 20C and vanishing ice is not global warming. For example.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=12GeXlJpLI8
    Big Ice: Prof Richard Alley (October 2016). Understanding Climate Change. Published on Nov 18, 2016

    Don’t ask me to summarise it, Andy, if you want to learn then watch it. Oh, I nearly forgot, you’re not interested. Explains why you monitor these threads and make inane comments.

  30. Maggy Wassilieff on 06/12/2016 at 10:07 am said:

    “encouler” ????

    Not the way I would spell a French vulgarism.

  31. Magoo on 06/12/2016 at 12:41 pm said:

    Now, now Dennis dear boy, there’s no need for name calling and profanity, that’s no substitute for empirical evidence. I don’t see why you’re so upset, I just use the IPCC’s peer reviewed science – is there something wrong with the IPCC science?

    I understand your need to lash out with abuse is a deep seated frustration at a complete lack of evidence to back up your unfounded fantastical beliefs (even if if you don’t realise it yourself), & your weak appeals to authority are all you have to support your feeble case, but the hard facts of life are that empirical evidence Trumps all & it all shows AGW as a failed theory. Feel free to make a voluntary donation to the Greens if you think it’ll make a difference dear boy, every dollar counts.

    Never mind, the climate change scam is winding down now & will all be in the dustbin soon. Good news to know that the sky isn’t falling on our heads, don’t you think dear boy? 🙂

  32. Simon on 06/12/2016 at 2:23 pm said:

    It’s all good, Ivanka is onto it: http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-38211695

  33. Andy on 06/12/2016 at 8:01 pm said:

    Dennis
    I am currently cross country skiing in Norway and there is plenty of snow and it is failry cold
    I suppose if I went a few degrees further north I might find some global warming

  34. Andy on 06/12/2016 at 9:07 pm said:

    For the benefit of Dennis, the words “people” and “I” have different meanings
    This is in respect of the term

    “People are not interested “

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