Trump and the Greatest “Con Job” Ever
Trump goes full on climate denier on a big stage.
President Trump dismissed climate change as “the greatest con job ever perpetrated on the world” in his address at the United Nations General Assembly today. I would say he has finally said the quiet part out loud, but anyone who has followed Trump’s career knows he was merely repeating himself, though this time he was speaking on one of the biggest stages in the world. No backsies now. And anyone who has been following his administration knows that his environmental policies are essentially predicated on this belief—or, if not this belief, then guided by some concern apart from its reality and importance. Of course, it’s possible he believes that climate change is real but values corporate profit more highly, for example.
Trump also criticized nations for investing in carbon-reduction policies and urged them to turn back from such strategies. He warned, “If you don’t get away from this green scam your country is going to fail.”
Whether you agree with him or not, one is forced to admit that the evidence he brought for his beliefs was scientifically sound. I’m lying, of course. He adopted a posture of derision, mocking past predictions that “were made by stupid people.” The idea of a carbon footprint, he said, was “nonsense”—a “hoax made up by people with evil intentions.”
All of this is regrettable, to say the least. More than ever we need robust and creative conversations to deal with what I believe will be the most significant problem of 2100, if not sooner. One way I’ve found it useful to get my head wrapped around climate change discourse is to break the topic into semi-discrete questions. Here are some questions that can guide our conversation:
- Is the planet warming?
- To what extent is recent warming caused by human activity (anthropogenic greenhouse gases and land-use change)?
- What are the main physical consequences of that warming for Earth systems (temperature, sea level, hydrology, ecosystems, extreme weather)?
- What are the most likely social and economic impacts of those physical changes — both harms and any localized benefits?
- Which countries, regions, or social groups are most vulnerable to those impacts, and why?
- If we weaken current policies or fail to adopt new ones, how serious are the likely consequences for human welfare and global stability?
- Is it still possible to avoid the worst projected outcomes (e.g., very high warming scenarios)?
- How urgent is it that governments and societies act now — i.e., what’s the window for effective intervention?
- What policy measures (e.g., carbon pricing, regulation, R&D, infrastructure, adaptation funding) are likely to be most effective at reducing risks?
- Which of those policies should we actually pursue given trade-offs of effectiveness, cost, feasibility, and equity?
This may seem like a lot of questions, but I’ve actually left out some of the thorniest questions such as those about national responsibility and how the burdens of mitigation should be shared among countries.
From the evidence I’ve seen, the first two, possibly three, questions above are hardly interesting at this point as points of debate. Good-faith disagreement about policy in response to climate change is possible, but good-faith disagreement about climate change’s reality, its principal cause (human activity), and its overall effect on humans (net negative) is dubious. How we answer questions nine and ten does not flow automatically from our answers to the first eight but depends on our particular values. Agreement on the science is insufficient to forge agreement on policy, but policy agreement (or even adopting sensible policy at all) is virtually impossible if the established science itself is rejected.
Here Trump not only gives cover to corporations with perfectly understandable self-interested reasons to minimize the effects of climate change policy, but he—yet again—legitimates doubt among many Americans who already question the authority of experts as biased elites. Whether such skepticism is sometimes warranted (it is, occasionally), there is no doubt that our ongoing well-being as a society is predicated on the existence—and recognized authority—of experts.
But that’s a column for another time.
What are the most likely social and economic impacts of those physical changes — both harms and any localized benefits?
I don’t think we have enough data or analysis to be able to be very specific. But one very likely outcome is famine, certainly in Africa, possibly in south Asia, possibly in South and Central America, and if you think the US and Europe are having trouble controlling illegal immigration, you ain’t seen nothing yet.
Which countries, regions, or social groups are most vulnerable to those impacts, and why?
If we weaken current policies or fail to adopt new ones, how serious are the likely consequences for human welfare and global stability?
The most vulnerable countries are the ones that are already food insecure. Coastal flooding has been over-emphasized in the conversation. Unpredictable weather effects may help agriculture in some areas, and the rich countries may do as Netherlands and Spain have done and greenhouse some crops, but you can’t grow millions of bushels of corn that way. This is not a flooding story, it’s a famine story. I think we are going to be seeing decades of video of desperate, dying people being denied entrance to the developed world. Then we’ll tune that out and make excuses and in the end come to the conclusion that it’s someone else’s fault.
Is it still possible to avoid the worst projected outcomes (e.g., very high warming scenarios)?
No, it is not possible. China and India are still building new coal-fired plants and with the US now actively opposing efforts to limit the impact, that leaves only Europe even attempting to do anything. I never thought mitigation efforts were likely to succeed, I’d have said maybe a 10 or 20% chance. And now it’s zero.
How urgent is it that governments and societies act now — i.e., what’s the window for effective intervention?
Irrelevant, they won’t act except to deal with localized effects – flooding for example. And Elon will talk nonsense about moving to Mars for the weather.
What policy measures (e.g., carbon pricing, regulation, R&D, infrastructure, adaptation funding) are likely to be most effective at reducing risks?
Well, it’d be great if someone invented a practical fusion reactor, preferably one that doesn’t require decades to build out and bring online. Long-term, as in 50 years from now, human population will have declined from low birth rates, starvation and the disease and war that inevitably come with starvation. That should help ease some of the pressure. Eventually.
Which of those policies should we actually pursue given trade-offs of effectiveness, cost, feasibility, and equity?
How about a crash program to develop GMO solutions for crops that will have less water, less fertilizer and longer shipping times?
Human greed sealed humanity’s fate. Now we even celebrate greed and excess. Trump is Greed manifested.
@Michael Reynolds: Kind of a ridiculously thorough and thoughtful response for being so quick after I posted the thing. I wish I could write quickly like you. Not one of my gifts.
Thanks for the comment!
@Michael Bailey:
Thanks. I learned to write cranking out 120-140 page manuscripts in three weeks. If you want something that’s 100% beautiful and perfectly polished. . . eventually. . .you call my wife. You want it 80% right now? That’s me.
Trump is simply acting as a principled Republican. Republicans have long held to a deep seated principle that all current revenue streams are sacred. Especially those well backed by lobbyists. Michael B’s questions, even the first two, simply don’t enter into Trump’s “thinking” unless the climate lobby has somehow gotten a whole lot more money.
And in the same speech, Trump asserts that Europe is collapsing due to “uncontrolled migration”
Contrary to MAGA mythology, Europe does not have “open borders”, externally
That Europe is buying oil and gas from Russia.
True; but the main buyers, in fact, are the MAGA favourites, Hungary (and Slovakia).
The EU cannnot legally compel them to cease such purchases.
Whereas the US, being itself an exporter, does not import.
The US has generally resisted extreme sanctions on Russian hydrocarbons, because of the likely consequences for global consumer prices.
Of London’s Mayor and Councils:
Yet another US-right trope that has been in circulation since about 2001.
There are no serious elected politicians in London that wish to “go sharia law”, and absolutely zero prospect of it happening.
In general, Trump seems, as ever, to fall back on the nonsense that predominates on TruthSocial, and the assertions of his more dim-witted advisors and their penumbra.
It is amusing to contemplate the likely reactions of MAGA in general, and Trump in particular, if any European leader pronounced analagous nonsense about the US in front of the UN Assembly.
Trump’s mindless ramblings serve only to decrease the US’s standing in the world, which does not stand around waiting for our Dear Leader to speak before busting their own moves.
China still does build a few coal plants, but only where there for the moment no other logical choice. Busy shutting them down and cleaning them up, they are. The Chinese, for sure, seek to reduce their strategic vulnerability to importing fossil fuels ASAP.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=909LMl-cpBo
@Michael Reynolds:
Some might say we already have one: called the Sun.
More seriously: solar power plus grids and storage is adequate for most general purposes in most regions.
There are two major exceptions to this:
1) Northern Europe in winter simply does NOT have sufficient solar wattage per unit area per day.
For the simple reason that even absent cloud (and trust me, nw Europe in winter is seldom absent cloud) due to latitude the day length is too short, and sunlight angle of incidence too shallow.
London in midwinter, for example has about 0.55 kWh/m² of solar energy per day.
Comapred to about four times that in New York in midwinter; and ten times greater in Los Angeles, iirc.
2) Concentrated power for VERY high demand electricity users eg bauxite convertors and aluminium smelters, and similar. In such cases transmission loss is a bitch.
However, in both cases, fusion power is not an absolute requirement for solving the problem.
Fission reactors and/or “deep hot rock” geothermal bores can get the job done.
As regards food production, the possibility that really worries me is that rainfall pattern shifts could periodically bugger up the major current grain production zones in the US west, north west Europe, Australia, etc.
Grains simply must have sufficient water inputs for the plants themselves, and for them to produce grain starches, GMO or not.
@JohnSF:
That’s one big worry.
Another is the expectation that colder lands might become prime agricultural real estate as the planet warms up. What if rains don’t cooperate with that?
There’s this rosy view that life can adapt to just about anything. It may even be true. What gets left out is how many species go extinct if they don’t adapt in time, and how many individuals in a species that successfully adapt die prematurely anyway.
I’ve no children. My plan is to hope the world holds on just long enough so I can die in peace.
Pakistan goes high on the list of most vulnerable countries. They will be one of the first places to experience sustained lethal wet bulb temperatures, the monsoon floods are getting much worse, and there’s few options for internal migration of their 250 million people.
@Kathy:
A major problem is, that even if the warming cooler area got enough rain for grain, the investment requirements of the agricultural infrastructure to shift production are enormous.
Not just the cultivating farms (possibly requiring large scale clearance of current forest) but the required pest-proofed barns, grain drying facilities, storage sites/elevators, roads, rail links and river transport terminals etc etc.
@JohnSF: I believe that grains produce less protein when grown at higher latitudes. Which throws a whole set of wrenches (spanners for you) into the works.
And by “I believe” I mean that this (or something like it) was taken as a given by the scientists when I was working at a company that was ostensibly working to boost crop yields in marginal areas through technology.
Also, you have not lived until you have seen a meeting derailed by people getting a database field and a field of dirt that things are growing on, and a database record that represents that plot of land, and a product with a similar name all confused. Just chaos. Stupid, stupid chaos.
@Gustopher:
Yeah, because apart from the question of temperature, you have the insolation related growing season. It’s not clear that combination of warmer weather with longer summer daylight can make up for the shorter growing season.
Though if the water supply is sufficient, I’d suspect GMO-ing about might get that done.
Some varieties of barley and oats are known to do OK in high latitutes, so wheat can probably be modded.
Maize, aka corn, perhaps more doubtful.
Humans seem to love fabricating conspiracy narratives about things in their lives that cause them fear or inconvenience, generally involving governments or other powerful actors. Thus the US government is concealing evidence of extra-terrestrial visits, the Jews run the global finance system, the Chinese government deliberately unleashed Covid to weaken America, and so on. Consequently it was inevitable credulous people would seize on a conspiracy narrative debunking the reality of global warming, even if the narratives that have been offered are absurdly implausible.
As with so many other developments since 2016, it’s astonishing and terrifying that the virtual dictator of the USA seems inclined to believe them all.
Here’s a couple of questions.
1. How many climate projections of the last 50 years have turned out to be generally accurate (actual results within 15% of prediction)?
2. How many climate projections of the last 50 years have turned out to be wildly inaccurate?
It continues to depress me how many people still cling to the Cult of Scientism, even after their priests repeatedly told them THE SCIENCE can’t distinguish between men and women and the Cult’s response to a global pandemic was to pull “solutions” completely out of thin air and then censor anyone who questioned THE SCIENCE.
@PepperPrepper:
People who think this is Drew, I think you’re wrong. Drew is dishonest and says stupid things, but this guy’s just a moron.
Here’s an actual MAGA brain at ‘work’:
Um. . . what? So random, so disconnected, this could actually be a direct quote from Trump. That’s how dumb it is. I mean, Drew is dumb, but I didn’t think he was as dumb as Trump. And of course he has no idea that he’s an idiot. He thinks he’s a genius! Hah hah hah hah. Paging Mr. Dunning and Mr. Kruger.
@Michael Reynolds:
You can’t really pull off that sort of condescension after you were 100% fooled by the fact-free “Russia Collusion” conspiracy theory.
What’s sad is that you absolutely understand the point being made but won’t engage with it because even though you’re a supposedly successful guy on the latter half of life, you’re desperately afraid people on the internet won’t like you.
You have less strength of character than an insecure teenager.
@PepperPrepper:
A childish and amoral pathological liar, just like Epstein-bestie paedofile Trump.
Ex-Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort admits sharing info with Russians (The Independent)
Once again: President Tariff Trumpflation publicly called for Russia to steal Hillary’s emails (which they did the next day), his scampaign met with Russian operatives in Trump Tower do discuss sanctions reductions in exchange for campaign assistance (after which Trumpers changed the GOP platform accordingly), and his campaign chair Manafort gave data to Russians to help them in their cyberwar (which he publicly admitted).
“Smart people don’t like me.” – Trump this weekend. When he’s right, he’s right.
Perhaps you were looking for Breitbart and got lost? Because you are out of your depth intellectually here.
Lay off the meth, boo.
@PepperPrepper:
You can keep on pretending that Trump isn’t Putin’s bitch, just like you can keep on pretending you don’t know why Trump is concealing the Epstein files. (Hint: he was fucking 14 year olds.) But you know, and I know that you know, that Trump is human garbage, stupid, cruel, a pathological liar, and a backstabbing, treasonous pice of shit.
Oh, and Jesus, Drew, come on man, try harder. It’s not even a challenge to trick you. In the time I’ve dealt with you I swear your IQ has dropped a good five points a year.
How are the oil drilling stocks doing?
@PepperPrepper:
More lies from a compulsive liar.
Science can distinguish between men and women. Science just also recognizes that trans, intersex/hermaphrodite, and ambiguous hormonal identity has always existed — without much controversy until Republicans schemed to create a culture war issue out of thin air: to manipulate your Cult of Amerikkkan Stupids into voting to cut rich people’s taxes.
Epstein-bestie rapist Trump — who famously noted he “won with the poorly educated” — said in 2016 of trans folk that it wasn’t an issue, that they cause society no problems. Nobody batted an eye because of course: we have real problems to solve.
But since then, MAGA grifter remembered they can count on dumb rightwing bigots to fall for their scapegoat-0.01%-of-the-population distraction tactics. All so Non-Trans Billionaires get another chance to rob you blind, cut your healthcare, kill your jobs, block your paid leave, and tax the middle class into oblivion with tariffs. And you low IQ trained dogs fell for it. Again.
Some greedy straight-married white guy is behind every policy that has America lagging behind other majority-white developed nations in life expectancy, healthcare, housing affordability, transportation grid, happiness, and quality of life. But y’all are out here crying about brown immigrants and the 0.01% of the population that’s trans, just like your billionare masters tell you to. Idiots.
Unsurprising from conservatives who responded to a global pandemic by bringing back measles, because they’re too dumb to know guidelines on a novel coronavirus will of course change as more information is gathered?
@DK:
This bleat from Drew Prepper supports my point that MAGAts don’t actually have any core beliefs other than selfishness and subservience to their senile orange Jesus. You see how he has to frame everything in ‘whataboutism.’ It’s never, ‘this is right and that is wrong.’ It always comes down to, ‘Someone somewhere said something and therefore, as I am stating the opposite, I am correct.’ There’s never a level beyond resentment and an (justified) inferiority complex.
Their basic moral theory comes not from the Ten Commandments or the Beatitudes, it’s some version of, ‘Well, Jeffery Dahmer cut off guys dicks and ate them, so I a should be allowed to cut off guy’s dicks, too.’
I blame lead. We spent a fortune on the house we bought in Evanston doing lead-abatament so that our kids wouldn’t grow up stupid enough to be MAGA.
@PepperPrepper:
By the way, I don’t want you to feel bad about being my intellectual inferior. You didn’t have great luck in the DNA lotto. The sorting hat put you in Mediocrity House and you had a boring, inconsequential life as a money-grubbing drone. Whereas I had the absolutely unearned luck to be born intelligent, and I augmented that good start with a fantastically varied, exciting and even impactful life. I freely admit it was all luck.
@DK:
I kind of almost hate myself for writing things like the above. I could probably not do it, but it’s. . .fun. Still, sadism is not a particularly admirable trait. I sit here on my balcony with a joint in one hand and a Talisker 10 in the other, and laugh as I demonstrate that even half-lit, I can outrun this guy like the Roadrunner outruns Coyote. Meep meep. But that’s not nice. And I should not allow myself to feel joy from this. Bad Michael.
@Michael Reynolds: You nailed it. It must be lead or something chemical, because something is really off in these people’s heads.
Given the absolute mess Trump is making, what else can his obedient slaves do but change the subject while waiting on orders from their pedophilic, fascist orange God-king.
Trump and his billionares tell them trans people aren’t an issue and can use whatever bathroom they want because such a tiny sliver of the population is hardly problematic in the face of such serious challenges.
Drew and Co. reponds: “Yes, Daddy Trump, you’re right.”
A few years later, Trump and his billionares say trans people are America’s #1 problem.
Drew and Co. respond: “Yes, Daddy Trump, you’re right.”
I’m sure many are perfectly nice people. But politically? Just gullible, lazy, easily-manipulated morons with tongues firmly planted up a pedophile’s buttcrack. Sad.
Millions of Americans about to lose healthcare. Farm and construction industries being destroyed by tariffs and mass deportation. 1st and 5th Amendments under assault. Electric and grocery bills skyrocketing — again thanks to President Tariff Trumpflation + the gutting of cheap green energy. Housing still unaffordable. Ukraine still not properly supported to Biden’s eternal shame. Possible war looming with Venezuela and/or Afghanistan. Putin and Netanyahu digging in. Outbreaks of once-eradicated diseases thanks to the heroin addict at HHS.
What are Trump’s bootlicking beta male Philstines on about? Something something Russia hoax from 2016 something something trans something something COVID rules from 2020. Lol wut?
The USA is in trouble. Not to whitewash slave owners, but I understand why the Founders limited the vote. They were no saints in their criteria, but I see what they feared. These Yanks are dumb af.
@Michael Reynolds:
You shouldn’t be. Because this late into Trumpism, the willful stupidity is malevolent. There’s no excuse anymore.
I should think that most Germans who supported the moustache man c. 1935 knew by 1945 they’d made a terrible mistake. Granted, cities reduced to rubble will do that. But come on. They have had ten years to get it together. I know “liberal elites” are supposed to bow, scrape, and apologize, but I’m not doing it. I’m calling stupid people what they are from now on, because it’s absurd at this point.
Russia Collusion Hoax? In 2025? Sorry bro: you’re just an idiot. Like, developmentally-challenged. Just not a normal IQ level. It’s not nice, but it has to be said.
Anybody is nuts who thinks they are doing anything to the troll other than making him jump up and down on his chair in joyful excitement at the attention he’s getting.
@Ken_L:
I know the guy. I’m in his head, we have history, and I know how to land a punch.
@PepperPrepper:
It was predicted average global temperatures would rise due to increased atmospheric CO2.
They have duly risen
This is unsurprising; 1820s Jean Baptiste Joseph Fourier deduced a CO2 warming effect in the 1820’s. and Svante Arrhenius worked out the basics of the calculations of CO2 impact on Earth temperature in terms of degrees to percentages, back in 1896.
It was hoped that human CO2 emissions would be mitigated by increased carbon-cycle draw down; this has not happened, except in the case of oceanic absorbtion, which is not necessarily a good thing, as the resulting mild acidification can play hob with certain organisms and food chains and possibly even long-term carbon cycles
It was also hoped that CO2 induced temperature increase would be offset by water vapour reflection. But this also, does not seem to be working: indeed the water vapour may be acting as additional warming factor.
Science is not a unitary thing, nor is it a “cult”, any normal definition of “cult”.
Trying to shoehorn the rather weird obsessions of the American Right with sexual identity into a consideration of climatology, its potential impacts on humanity, and optimal mitigations thereof, is really rather odd.
I cannot be sure if this applies to you, but I have noticed a mind-set on the American right that regards their opponents as “atheistical socialist” and their beliefs as founded on some assumed quasi-marxist “scientific” orthodoxy that plays the same part for the left as evangelicalism for the right.
This is a category error: there is on the US left, it seem s to me, no really comparable coherent, organised and structured belief institution with a distinct political package.
There is no “Church of Science”; and though there certainly are Marxists, they hardly equate to much of a coherent movement, still less a mass one, more like a herd of cats, by and large.
Just to annoy some other people though: the interesting thing is that quite a few on the US left share some similar basic quirks with the US right.
Perhaps they are based on some common features of American culture?
Those being: a tendency to see disagreement, and those who disagree, as not just having a different point of view, or interests, or just mistaken, but as sinful, and if they persist, wicked
And also to engage in heresy hunts, attempts to enforce and police conformity, and the occasional witch trial.
Secular Presbyterianism is a sub-optimal approach to politics, imuho.
@PepperPrepper:
Most of the ones coming from legitimate climate centers have been quite accurate. Thank you for asking:
https://www.science.org/content/article/even-50-year-old-climate-models-correctly-predicted-global-warming
BTW, since you came up with the 15% of prediction thing and we’re talking about small misses, Hansen’s original model probably falls within that threshold.
It probably would be a good idea to understand basic science and statistics before asking questions that will end up embarrassing yourself.