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Comment by s0uthPaw88 | Hacker News Reader

Here is a fact check for many of these quotes: http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/article/2017/jun/01/...

I think you might want to take a look at that, it supports what he's saying but as is typical of these fact checking sites, couches it in lots of "well yes but" or "broadly correct, but 'needs context'". I mean look at his statement on India:

> Trump: "India will be allowed to double its coal production by 2020. Think of it. India can double their coal production. We're supposed to get rid of ours."

> India does have plans to nearly double its coal production, and the agreement does not prevent that. But the Paris Agreement does not even mention the word coal, nor does it do anything to put a global moratorium on coal.

Oh the Paris Agreement doesn't mention coal so what he's saying isn't correct? The point Trump was making is that the Paris Agreement isn't stopping India (and China) from polluting. It stops _us_, but it doesn't stop _them_.

Amen. Every "fact-checking" site seems to go out of its way to editorialize the facts with what I should think about them, instead of limiting their purview to, you know, the facts in question.

What was Trump supposed to say? "The Paris Agreement doesn't have the word 'coal'"?

---

Don't forget: Being technically correct is the best kind of correct.

They are providing additional facts, which may or may not change your point of view. If the additional facts are not interesting to you, that's cool. But consider, maybe the information they provide is interesting to other people? For example, the top-level poster in this thread asked many questions which are explicitly answered in this article.

Context matters a great deal. If you treat facts as binary variables then you're not going to develop a very sophisticated understanding of any issue.

Agree but the picture they paint with this _is_ a binary one. Anything less than a "his statement is 100% factual, no additional commentary needed!" is treated as evidence that Trump is a big fat liar by people like OP.

You should try to separate out how you understand someone else's interpretation and what the article actually says. They are not the same thing.

Seems pretty straightforward as far as fact checks go. The Paris Accord says nothing about coal, it's all about emissions. We could increase coal use too if we wanted to, as long as our emissions go down. So really, the statement from Trump is true but misleading.

"It" doesn't stop us, we negotiated this as part of a global agreement to reduce emissions. Because we're the world's biggest source of emissions and also the richest, our responsibility is greater than that of a developing country like India that can't afford new nuclear plants and whose citizens can't afford solar roofs.

Okay..."India can double their emissions but the US can't. In fact, the US has to decrease theirs."?

Adding additional facts is valuable. To continue your India example, they have pledged to reduce emissions 33 to 35 percent of 2005 levels by 2030. So yes, they may increase their coal production, but now I know they are also taking other steps to reduce emissions.

Unlike the rest of the article, this section doesn't make an explicit summary claim about the truth or untruth of the President's claims. There is no "true but..." header.

If you think some of the facts that they provide -- such as the fact that the accord doesn't mention the word "coal" -- are irrelevant, that's cool. PolitiFact does not draw a conclusion from this fact, and suggesting it does and then blasting it for having done so is pretty frustrating.

I also feel that by cherry-picking this one instance, one misses the larger thrust of TFA. You seem to be frustrated that PolitiFact is saying "yes, but" a lot, but what's wrong with that? If the additional context is not useful to you, that's cool. You're entitled not to care. But to me, it's quite useful, and speaks pretty directly to many of the top-level poster's points.

Trump: The Paris Agreement would result in "lost jobs, lower wages, shuttered factories and vastly diminished economic production."

PolitiFact: "Take these statistics with a grain of salt." Followed by an explanation of where Trump's claim comes from and why it is weak.

Trump: "China will be allowed to build hundreds of additional coal plants. So, we can't build the plants, but they can, according to this agreement."

PolitiFact: "China has cut its use of coal three years in a row," with a citation.

Trump: "Even if the Paris Agreement were implemented in full, with total compliance from all nations, it is estimated it would only produce a two-tenths of one degree -- think of that; this much -- Celsius reduction in global temperature by the year 2100. Tiny, tiny amount."

PolitiFact: "[The Paris Agreement] shaves 0.2 C of warming if [it's] maintained through 2100, compared with what we assessed would have been the case by extending existing measures (due to expire in 2020) based on earlier international agreements."

IOW Paris gets us 0.2C under the previous agreement, but by pulling out of Paris, we get no agreement, not the previous agreement, which expires. "Needs context."

Trump: "At 1 percent growth, renewable sources of energy can meet some of our domestic demand. But at 3 or 4 percent growth, which I expect, we need all forms of available American energy, or our country will be at grave risk of brownouts and blackouts."

PolitiFact: Nobody seriously expects us to get 3-4% growth.

The statement is pretty clearly saying it does NOT tell the US to stop using coal. The poor phrasing confused you.

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