Trump kept a campaign promise and pulled out of the Paris Climate Change Accords. The reaction on the left in this country was apocalyptic and amusing to watch. The biggest humbug on the planet today is global warming. Among global elites the belief in climate change is one part religious faith to two parts cynicism. A minority embrace climate change with a religious fervor. The cynics find it useful for fund raising, to enlist foot soldiers in political crusades, and to engage in Eco-profiteering, Al Gore serving as the model for this.
The Paris Accords allowed global elites to be on the side of the green angels while committing their nations to nothing. The US under Obama, waging war against its domestic coal industry, was one of the few nations taking this tripe seriously. For the junk science of global warming Americans were to lose jobs while India was allowed to double its emissions and China had to do nothing at all until 2030. No wonder this agreement was never submitted to the Senate where it would have been voted down overwhelmingly.
Donald Trump, to his everlasting credit, refused to go along with this nonsense. What he did was the green equivalent of spitting in the Holy Water for a Catholic, and Trump was obviously having a good time while doing it. Pope Francis hardest hit. Well played Mr. President, well played!
Bravo President Trump!
I’m pleased that the President did this, for multiple reasons. Of course,
I’m pleased that we’re no longer tied to an agreement that would be bad
for our economy, all in the name of some very dubious “science”. And
Trump is seen to have kept a campaign promise despite the opposition of
our own political and cultural elites.
One other reason I’m glad this agreement has been binned is that, no
matter what Obama called it, this was a treaty, and it undermines the
prerogative, the duty of the Senate to vote on its ratification when
a president is allowed to deem a treaty an “agreement” simply to avoid
submitting it to a Senate vote as required by the Constitution. Shame on
both sides of the Senate aisle for rolling over and letting Obama do that.
So yes, today was a very good day in DC, for several reasons. Bravo
President Trump!
I was impressed by his speech, which articulated, in words that normal Americans understand, what a sham the “treaty” was. He articulated the hamstringing of our own energy production while allowing China DN India to increase. He articulated the environmental disaster China would be allowed to continue while we suffered. He articulated what a loss of industry would be forthcoming. Steel, paper, concrete, all too expensive to make here, and the downstream effects would be devastating.
It isn’t hard to hear him and believe he means it. That he means our country and our people deserve to be first to our elected leaders.
And while the eyes of the nation were focused on the withdrawal from the Paris climate accord, Moody’s used the occasion today to drop the State of Illinois’ bond rating yet again (8 times in 8 years, now Baa3 rating, one level above junk) .
The state owes $14.5 billion in past due IOU’S and will owe $300 million in interest and fees on the unpaid IOU’S by June 30th, deadline to negotiate a new budget.
Bravo to Donald Trump for removing the hoax of global weather/whatever from the Liberal pantheon of false gods. Wouldn’t it be delightful if Pope Francis had as much guts and insight.
Global warming is crap. Even Trump knows it.
I was interested in the Vatican response. Sadly I have concluded that many there think of the Church as a kind of NGO, or at best imbued with the mysticism of Teililhard De Chardin.
A strange thing. Everyone seems shocked when we all know he said this is what he would do. It reminds me of something someone told me on my blog. The debate was somehow about gay rights or the other. At one point it came down to bigots being against gay marriage. Someone – maybe me? – asked why Obama wasn’t called a homophobic bigot in 2008 when he said he wouldn’t support gay marriage. One of the commenters said it’s because they assumed he was lying. I’ve thought about that since then. Was a time when thinking our politicians were liars was a downer. This person seemed almost ecstatic about the thought that Obama was lying. Perhaps that’s the shock. Media elites and others not just assume, but hope, pols are lying. When one keeps his promise, it’s like a foreign language.
Heard on the news this morning that a group of various groups and states– like my former residence of Washington– are gathering to “assure” the UN that they’ll “do their part” to cut CO2, and my former governor had a clip about how “and there’s nothing (Trump) can do to stop us!”
I did not tell the radio that we didn’t object to THEM doing it, we object to THEM forcing US to do it!
Obama used his pen and his phone and left his constituents in the dust as Obama gave our tax dollars away. President Trump brought our tax dollars back to America.
If liberals really believed in anthropogenic global warming from emissions off of the cunbustion of fossil fuel, then they would advocate an immediate full conversion to a nuclear – hydrogen economy where nuclear energy generates both electricity for the electric grid and hydrogen gas from splitting water molecules for combustion in transportation vehicles and aircraft.
Liberals however oppose nuclear energy tooth and nail. So their wailing about climate change means nothing.
To however debunk objections to nuclear energy, the following is provided based on a discussion I had the other day with a Deacon in the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church:
There is no meme or slogan that can distill the truth into a mere sound bite. I base what I write on 40+ years experience as a reactor operator and reactor instrumentation and controls engineer.
The issue of “nuclear waste” is one of misnomer. First, there is low level radioactivity and second there is spent nuclear fuel with high level radioactivity. I will deal with both.
Regarding low level radioactivity, coal combustion releases far more radioactivity into the environment from the naturally occurring uranium, thorium and radium in coal than any nuclear power plant does. Also, fracking for natural gas and oil releases far more radioactivity in the form of naturally occurring radioactive isotopes of radon and argon. Fossil fuel releases far more low level radioactivity into the environment per megawatt than any nuke.
Regarding high level radioactivity in spent nuclear fuel, current US light water reactors (BWRs and PWRs) use only 5% of the energy content in the fuel; the rest is left over un-burnt in the fuel rods. If the spent fuel is recycled and reprocessed in fast neutron burner reactors – e.g., high temperature helium cooled reactors, molten salt homogeneous reactors, sodium cooled reactors or lead-bismuth cooled reactors – then the long lived actinides like Americium and Neptunium and Plutonium which contribute so much to long lived radioactivity can be completely consumed, obviating the need for a million year national geologic repository. We do not have a waste storage problem. We have a human greed problem that would rather focus on instant profit from natural gas spinning reserve for useless, worthless wind and solar than the responsibility of recycling and reusing our used nuclear fuel.
Now a few words about waste in general. One pellet of uranium the size of your thumbnail equals the energy content of 3 barrels of oil each containing 42 gallons (that’s a total of 126 gallons), 1 ton of coal or 17000 cubic feet of natural gas. No matter what is done, waste is produced. From the numbers above, fossil fuel produces a lot more waste than nuclear per joule of energy generated. In fact, a 1000 megawatt coal plant dumps millions of tons of radioactive coal ash sludge into sludge ponds with nary a whimper. A 1000 megawatt gas plant dumps millions of tons of carbon pollutants into the atmosphere without a whisper. Yet every wind farm and every solar station requires gas backup spinning reserve for the 70% of the time when wind and sun are insufficient. And all this occurs while the spent nuclear fuel that the US generates from it 99 reactors would fit in a single football field to a depth of 8 feet, and all that fuel is sequestered from the environment, and all that fuel is resource for advanced fast neutron burner reactors. A few facts are in order:
(1) Current high-level waste volume after 40 years of operations would fill an area about the size of a football field five yards deep
(2) To replace US nukes with wind turbines requires land area the size of the state of Minnesota.
(3) To replace US nukes with solar farms requires land area the size of the state of West Virginia.
(4) Wind and solar have < 30% capacity factor, which means that 70% of the time fossil fuel spinning reserve is required.
(5) Nuclear is the safest of all power generation. Nuclear has 0.04 fatalities per terawatt hour (even including TMI, Chernobyl, and Fukushima) compared to coal's 244, oil's 52, gas's 20, biofuel's 50, hydroelectric's 0.1 solar's 0.1 and wind's 0.15. Think on that – nuclear is an order of magnitude SAFER than renewable energy. Please see http://www.nextbigfuture.com/2016/06/update-of-death-per-terawatt-hour-by.html
We do NOT have a nuclear waste problem. We have a human greed and ignorance problem. Gas companies want nukes shutdown so they promote useless, worthless wind and solar. In that way they maintain their profit off the ignorance of the average American.
I have stood above freshly discharged spent nuclear fuel at both a Westinghouse PWR and a GE-Hitachi BWR. If high level nuclear waste were such a problem, then why am I not dead?
Glenn Reynolds will sometime make a note of the travel schedule of some environmental poseur or the square footage of their home and says “I’ll believe it’s a crisis when they start acting like it’s a crisis’.
I have no understanding of old people who wish to own large homes, other than inertia (in the case of someone like Bess Truman). Al Gore, George W. Bush, Mike Huckabee, and now Barack Obama are living in mansions and / or own multiple homes (and Gore’s all by his lonesome, give or take a masseuse). Richard Nixon had the sense to downsize; it’s a good thing too. He owned two homes (both in warm-weather climates), one of which encompassed 9,000 sq feet. Gerald Ford and his wife occupied a 6,300 sq foot ranch house.
I haven’t felt this relieved since November 8, 2016! Donald Trump is our George Washington for our time.
How many other treaties disguised as accords or other misnomers are out there? President
Trump should rescind them all.