President spot on, but missed trick
Donald Trump is a dreadful president of the US. He is wrong in foreign policy, trade policy and economic policy. But he is right to withdraw from the ridiculous, anti-science Paris Climate Accord. Why didn’t he give the proper reasons for leaving?
Trump, in his usual blustering style, said he was taking the US out of the Paris agreement because it would hurt working people in the US, damage her economy and do precious little to reduce global warming.
The Paris agreement has no coercive authority. It consists of vague, voluntary promises. So every signatory could ignore it.
But if countries chose to honour it by reducing their cheap oil, coal and gas energy sources, it would indeed hurt their economies, and especially their poor working people. (The rich elite on the climate gravy train would have done just fine.)
So Trump was right about the possible economic damage.
But then he quoted an academic study showing that, if the Paris agreement were honoured, it would only reduce the rise in global temperatures by 0.2oC by 2100. Actually, it is doubtful if it would even have done that.
Mankind, mainly by burning gas, oil and coal, has increased CO2 in the air from the dangerously low level of about 280 ppm (parts per million) in the 19th century to the less dangerously low levels of 400 ppm now.
It’s the best thing we have ever done for the planet. Rising CO2 will have very little effect on the climate but a wonderfully beneficial effect on plant life. We can see the benefits already.
A thousand years ago, when CO2 was lower than now, temperatures worldwide were higher than now.
A thousand years before that, temperatures were higher still while CO2 was lower than now. Past records over millions of years show no significant effects of CO2 on global temperatures.
In the last 50 years there has been no increase in extreme weather events. Sea level rise, at about 3 mm/year, shows no signs of acceleration; by 2100 the sea will rise about 25 centimetres (10 inches). The oceans are not becoming acidic.
There is no scientific evidence that mankind is changing the climate in a dangerous way.
What a pity President Trump didn’t say so!