> Ultimately the only consequence of the move is optical and political.
Exactly. More faux outrage.
Exactly. More faux outrage.
Paris agreement is non-binding.
China has no obligation for 20 years.
It's not ratified by Congress.
Nothing from agreeing to this was going to affect your descendants other than draining American coffers of billions.
The actual wording of the accords has little to do with science and more to do with massive welfare obligations and handicapping the US economy with no requirements from China for decades.
*edited autocorrect typo
Science is anything that follows the scientific method.
One important step of the scientific method is "make testable predictions." Another step is "refine, alter, expand, or reject" hypotheses. Science rests on the possibility of falsifiability. If it can be tested, and found false, it is science. If there is no way to falsify it, it is not science.
For instance, evolution is falsifiable. We can expect that if we put certain organisms with rapid life cycles in a harsher environment, over a certain number of generations the population in the harsher environment will evolve to better suit that environment. If, say, 10,000 generations pass and the organisms in that environment are no better suited to it than a control population, we might conclude evolution has been falsified. Fortunately, we've done lots of tests like this, and evolution does indeed occur.
So I may better understand how this is science, can you tell me how the theory of manmade global warming can be disproved?
Lab tests that show CO2 is not a greenhouse gas?
Isotope concentrations that show increasing CO2 is not coming from anthropomorphic causes?
Evidence that the glaciers are melting because of some other reason than it's hot?
http://www.ipcc.ch/pdf/assessment-report/ar5/wg1/WG1AR5_SPM_...
Who cares? What matters is if it's working or not. Of course it's hard to untangle if it's due to accords, scientific/engineering breakthroughs, government investment, etc. but India and China are far ahead of their Paris targets: https://insideclimatenews.org/news/15052017/china-india-pari...
China has no obligation for 20 years.
This statement is wrong in multiple ways. As you noted above, Paris is non-binding, so there are no "obligations" beyond developing a plan and reporting on progress. Next, China's goals begin in 2030, which is 13 years away, not 20. Finally, according to the link above, China is on pace to meet its goals almost a decade (!) in advance, i.e. early in the 2020s. So even a charitable interpretation of your statement looks to be wrong by about 4x.
It's not ratified by Congress.
This is as far as I can tell, just a negative thrown in that has nothing to do with the thesis. Is agreeing to the accords bad for the U.S. (cost billions!) or does it not matter, because it's not ratified. Which is it?
Nothing from agreeing to this was going to affect your descendants other than draining American coffers of billions.
So basically every other country is willing to drain their coffers. Why is that?
Which was essentially the result of lobbying by the US. Most other countries wanted a real, binding treaty.
https://theintercept.com/2017/06/01/will-trumps-slow-mo-walk...