US Politics: Terminal America

[Mexal]

Yahoo reporting tonight that Trump's team immediately tried to ease sanctions on Russia when he became President. Quid pro quo? Yet another coincidence I'm sure.

[Jaxom 1974]

3 hours ago, Tywin et al. said:

Thankfully there's an individual on this board who you can blame for all of this.

Was it worth it, @Jaxom 1974?

Since the world is soon to burn, at least I saw the Chicago Cubs win the World Series before I die.

[Zorral]

2 hours ago, Ormond said:

Oh, the "total number during a season" predictions have never been very good. Once one forms, though, I think they are better at predicting its path than they used to be. 

It has been broadcast on news programs and in the papers for the last two days -- because hurricane season officially begins today.  Guess you don't live where hurricanes strike commonly. 

https://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2017/05/25/us/ap-us-hurricane-forecast.html

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/25/climate/2017-hurricane-forecast.html?_r=0

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/17/your-money/hurricane-insurance.html

 

[LongRider]

Guess even the Pope couldn't influence the Orange Shit Thingy on climate change, he'll burn in hell for that, for sure!   

[Kalbear]

5 minutes ago, Nasty LongRider said:

Guess even the Pope couldn't influence the Orange Shit Thingy on climate change, he'll burn in hell for that, for sure!   

Per reports, him pissing off European leaders was seen as a benefit, not a drawback. 

 

[LongRider]

Just now, Kalbear said:

Per reports, him pissing off European leaders was seen as a benefit, not a drawback. 

How so?

[Kalbear]

Just now, Nasty LongRider said:

How so?

See the above with an edit. He wanted to piss off Merkel and Macron and the pope. He likes doing that sort of thing. People forget how much he actually loves doing shit like this against people who make him angry, how petty and weak he is. This is one of the reasons that he gets along with Bannon and the alt-right - because 'pissing off other people' is one of his main joys in life.

[The Anti-Targ]

3 hours ago, Kalbear said:

I think you underestimate the anger European nations have for the us about this. 

Impotent rage IMO.

3 hours ago, Tywin et al. said:

The retaliation can occur in several ways: omit the U.S. from trade deals, withhold intelligence and military cooperation, uninvite us from major summits, etc. I don't think many countries will directly sanction us, but the rest of the world won't take this lying down.  

The US is already omitting itself from trade deals. But I don;t see any of the major countries suddenly deciding they don't want an bilateral FTA with the USA. I don't see us suddenly pulling back on that work, and well, I will know before anyone else since my department is one of the key negotiating ministries on FTAs and my role is US and Canada market access.

Intelligence and military cooperation, I don't think any of the US's key intelligence and military strategic allies will be at all interested in sacrificing these pillars of security on the altar of the environment.

Major environmental summits, yes I can see the US being uninvited. But will Trump and his supporters care? Not likely. Other major summits on other topics of actual strategic interest to the Trump administration? We'll see, but I doubt it. This is the most likely direct "punishment" to occur, but it is a meaningless petulant gesture that will fail to exert any pressure on the US to change tack.

It's up to you (US) folk to correct this problem at the ballot box. The US isn't going to accelerate the ruin the global climate in any significant measure within the next 4 years. Probably not within the next 8. Stop electing climate change sceptics and deniers to high office. If you string too many presidential terms together with climate change deniers in control then you will start having a significantly more detrimental effect on climate.

In any case, I do wonder if the Paris accord would have achieved what people want / need it to achieve even with US commitment. I still think the odds are quite in favour of a climate catastrophe. And from a completely objective point of view, climate change can solve itself by killing a few billion people in a short space of time.

[Fragile Bird]

20 minutes ago, Zorral said:

It has been broadcast on news programs and in the papers for the last two days -- because hurricane season officially begins today.  Guess you don't live where hurricanes strike commonly. 

https://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2017/05/25/us/ap-us-hurricane-forecast.html

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/25/climate/2017-hurricane-forecast.html?_r=0

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/17/your-money/hurricane-insurance.html

 

The article you should add to your list is the one about how no one has been appointed to head either FEMA or NOAA yet.

http://www.tampabay.com/blogs/the-buzz-florida-politics/hurricane-season-starts-with-nobody-in-charge-at-fema-or-noaa/2325887

[LongRider]

4 minutes ago, Kalbear said:

See the above with an edit. He wanted to piss off Merkel and Macron and the pope. He likes doing that sort of thing. People forget how much he actually loves doing shit like this against people who make him angry, how petty and weak he is. This is one of the reasons that he gets along with Bannon and the alt-right - because 'pissing off other people' is one of his main joys in life.

Got it, thanks.  Spiteful little man.

[Kalbear]

Just now, The Anti-Targ said:

Impotent rage IMO.

Perhaps, but there's going to be a lot of political pressure on other leaders to not make deals with the US, and the US has gone from being a typical, potent power to one that countries will be scrutinized on making deals with. We're already seeing this in Merkel's campaign with her rhetoric against the US - and she's doing that specifically because her opponent is stating emphatically how Germany and the EU cannot do deals with the US.

Canada is having to state how they'll work with the US on a state by state level. 

Macron is saying how France is simply not going to work with the US on climate issues.

While I don't expect this to cause massive economic upheaval, I do expect there to be small things like military sharing and intel sharing and standards that get pushed on just a bit harder than they would have. 

Mostly, I expect that nations will start making deals with countries that are simply more reliable in the longer term, and doing that at the expense of the US. I expect China to start ramping up some of their high-end value and some of their software work immediately. 

Just now, The Anti-Targ said:

In any case, I do wonder if the Paris accord would have achieved what people want / need it to achieve even with US commitment. I still think the odds are quite in favour of a climate catastrophe. And from a completely objective point of view, climate change can solve itself by killing a few billion people in a short space of time.

Well, it's almost certain that life on earth won't be destroyed; it's kind of a bummer to think that my kids will, though.

[The Anti-Targ]

8 minutes ago, Kalbear said:

Per reports, him pissing off European leaders was seen as a benefit, not a drawback. 

 

And you call it a secondary benefit because you believe, and in this case probably correctly, that those you've pissed of can't do anything to hurt you in return.

It's the classic bully mentality. You only hurt people who you know (or think) can't hurt you back.

[Altherion]

Michael Bloomberg gave an interview to the New York Times recently. It's mostly about health, but there's a bit of politics at the end:

Quote

Ah, politics. I knew we'd get there. Bloomberg, an independent who opposed Donald Trump, said that Democrats never found an effective message. “Hillary said, ‘Vote for me because I’m a woman and the other guy’s bad,’ ” he said.

They're still searching for the right issues and words, he said, and too many have visions of 2020 dancing in their heads.

“They’ll step on each other and re-elect Donald Trump,” he told me, estimating a “55 percent chance he gets re-elected.”

55% is a strange number; either he means "slightly more likely than not" or he has a fairly high precision estimate from the team working on this (and I have no doubt that he does have a team working on this).

3 minutes ago, The Anti-Targ said:

Major environmental summits, yes I can see the US being uninvited. But will Trump and his supporters care? Not likely.

Quite the opposite. If you read the relevant articles at Breitbart, they are positively gleeful over the European reaction to this. Their view of it is that the Europeans were going to rip us off and Trump stopped them so now they're angry. They're almost as happy about this as they are about the reaction of Hollywood celebrities.

[The Anti-Targ]

1 minute ago, Kalbear said:

Well, it's almost certain that life on earth won't be destroyed; it's kind of a bummer to think that my kids will, though.

Almost? I would say 100% certain. Life is extremely resilient and has survived through a helluva lot worse than human climate change. Survival of individual species is a totally different matter. They go extinct all the time and 99%  (or more) of extinct species are not at all our fault.

Unless that is you meant human life. In that case, yes, almost certain is a phrasing with which I agree scientifically. Religiously I'm 100% certain we'll make it through in some shape or form.

[Kalbear]

Just now, The Anti-Targ said:

Almost? I would say 100% certain. Life is extremely resilient and has survived through a helluva lot worse than human climate change. Survival of individual species is a totally different matter. They go extinct all the time and 99%  (or more) of extinct species are not at all our fault.

Unless that is you meant human life. In that case, yes, almost certain is a phrasing with which I agree scientifically. Religiously I'm 100% certain we'll make it through in some shape or form.

No, I meant life. There's a nonzero chance that the Earth heating up causes us to go into a carbon-dioxide death spiral like Venus, and 900 degree ambient temperatures will effectively obliterate every life form on Earth - even the heartier ones. That's not a great chance, and I think that humans can do some things to fight that (including bizarre things like massive global nuclear war), but it's certainly within the predicted models. 

3 minutes ago, The Anti-Targ said:

And you call it a secondary benefit because you believe, and in this case probably correctly, that those you've pissed of can't do anything to hurt you in return.

It's the classic bully mentality. You only hurt people who you know (or think) can't hurt you back.

I suspect that Europe and China can do some fairly horrible things to hurt the US if they so choose, and hubris is ignoring this. In particular, I think China is salivating at the chance to fuck over the US here, and they're pretty well positioned to do it. Especially given that the US has a large amount of strategic and economic reliance on minerals that China has significantly better relations with the countries that produce them. Want to go to war in the Sudan over Gallium? That's gonna be fun. 

[Week]

11 minutes ago, Altherion said:

Quite the opposite. If you read the relevant articles at Breitbart, they are positively gleeful over the European reaction to this. Their view of it is that the Europeans were going to rip us off and Trump stopped them so now they're angry. They're almost as happy about this as they are about the reaction of Hollywood celebrities.

Apparently it really is true.  Ignorance is bliss.

[Altherion]

18 minutes ago, Kalbear said:

No, I meant life. There's a nonzero chance that the Earth heating up causes us to go into a carbon-dioxide death spiral like Venus, and 900 degree ambient temperatures will effectively obliterate every life form on Earth - even the heartier ones. That's not a great chance, and I think that humans can do some things to fight that (including bizarre things like massive global nuclear war), but it's certainly within the predicted models.

Do you have a link? Off the top of my head, this doesn't strike me as plausible. Remember, there was a time where there was a great deal more CO2 in the atmosphere than there is now -- it's only when plants came along that it got converted to oxygen. Venus has the runaway greenhouse effect, yes, but keep in mind that its surface pressure is roughly 100 times that of Earth. That is, there's a great deal more atmosphere there and its almost entirely CO2 whereas ours is mostly nitrogen.

[Manhole Eunuchsbane]

1 hour ago, Altherion said:

This is a bit difficult to evaluate without insider information, but yes, it looks that way. Obama had the support of the usual Democrat coalition and then some -- he raised literally twice as much money as his competition. Trump, on the other hand, was on the opposite side of that equation. More importantly, Obama had a much larger impetus for change to the system, but he stuck closely to the existing rules (even though they greatly limited him) whereas Trump is trying to push things such as the abolition of the filibuster (with mixed results, but at least he's fighting).

What does campaign funds have to do with any of this? This is about governance now. He is fucking clueless, and apparently has no interest in figuring out how this works. 

[Kalbear]

2 minutes ago, Altherion said:

Do you have a link? Off the top of my head, this doesn't strike me as plausible. Remember, there was a time where there was a great deal more CO2 in the atmosphere than there is now -- it's only when plants came along that it got converted to oxygen. Venus has the runaway greenhouse effect, yes, but keep in mind that its surface pressure is roughly 100 times that of Earth. That is, there's a great deal more atmosphere there and its almost entirely CO2 whereas ours is mostly nitrogen.

It's plausible but unlikely; we'd need a MASSIVE amount of CO2 to be added, and it would take a long time. SciAmerican believes it to be implausible unless far more CO2 is added, and even then probably not.

My concern is that humans end up wiping themselves out and the end result is an Earth that cannot adapt to the changes humans have wrought, with the result being a runaway venus sometime in the future. 

[Altherion]

38 minutes ago, Kalbear said:

It's plausible but unlikely; we'd need a MASSIVE amount of CO2 to be added, and it would take a long time. SciAmerican believes it to be implausible unless far more CO2 is added, and even then probably not.

My concern is that humans end up wiping themselves out and the end result is an Earth that cannot adapt to the changes humans have wrought, with the result being a runaway venus sometime in the future. 

It's only plausible if you think we can dig up 10 times more CO2 than is believed to exist. It's true that when the Sun heats up, life on Earth is toast -- but that timescale is altered only slightly (if at all) by human actions at today's technological level. Hopefully, but the time that happens, we will have figured out what to do about it.

The changes in temperature we can induce right now are likely to be small. The problem is that even, say, a 3°C change has significant consequences.