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Comment by anon291 | Hacker News Reader

Greenhouse gas emissions dropped under Trump: https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/us-greenhouse-gas-emissions-...

And no... criticisms about the economic situation during covid should not count. Trump is criticized for covid, and people argue he is responsible. Then he should be praised for the good and criticized for the bad equally.

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Only because of covid and the major shock to commuting and production that it caused.

Greenhouse gas emissions rose each other year of his presidency.

> Greenhouse gas emissions rose each other year of his presidency.

Except they didn’t. The graph shows a rise and then a drop before COVID in a long term falling trend[1] that admittedly has little to do with Trump but wasn’t stopped by him either.

1. https://www.epa.gov/climate-indicators/climate-change-indica...

oh, you are right and I'm wrong here.

They only went up one year in his presidency. Appreciate the correction. I must have read something wrong.

You recognize the likely counter argument, and counter it by saying it "should not count", which I think is lacking as a counter argument.

At the end of the day, administrations are held responsible for their economic results, whether fully responsible or not. Trump isn't 'responsible' for COVID in the sense that he did not release the virus. His response can be criticized until the cows come home, but I'm just applying the same standard used for the economy to climate.

Recognizing fallacious reasoning and reapplying it in a different direction may be clever but is certainly more dubious than believing a fallacy out of poor reasoning skills.

So his exacerbation of covid is a good thing because it caused greenhouse emissions to drop? Is that a serious argument?

In the sense that regulation of the markets increases prices for emissions and this lowers economic output, I fail to see how the lockdowns are a whole lot different from an economic perspective. The effect of lowering economic output is the same. What I did think the lockdowns showed was how much the current economy would need to be shutdown to achieve certain emissions targets.

And how does that answer my question?

Your question presumes a black and white worldview which I do not share. Things can be good for some reasons and bad for others.

What exactly does my question presume that you think it means a "black and white" worldview? I'm well aware things can be good for some reasons and bad for others, nevertheless you made the argument you did. I'm asking if you are serious about it, because it's completely specious, and to your point, they aren't even necessarily related to each other, so I'm wondering if you are actually serious in putting it forward.

The covid response had some good side effects, such as increased savings rates, decreased pollution, etc. You asked me if I was 'being serious', implying that believing the covid response had good side effects is somehow 'unserious'. I am totally serious, despite being against the covid response in general. Because I'm not an absolutist.

> "In 2020, U.S. greenhouse gas emissions will be substantially lower than they were in 2019, but that's not because of progress that the Trump administration has made in reducing emissions”…

From the article. Trump loves to take responsibility for anything well in motion before he was involved, see also market/economy. He loudly undermined Covid response.

> Trump loves to take responsibility for anything well in motion before he was involved

That is a cliché about politicians in general since long before Trump existed.

> And no... criticisms about the economic situation during covid should not count.

What should count? Had Trump did something to bring emissions down? No, he did everything he could to bring them up, just no luck for him, Covid had broke his plans on speeding up global warming and destruction of humanity.

So because there is intellectual dishonesty on one side, it's valid to be intellectually dishonest on the other side?

itt people are talking about specific policy actions by Biden. Is there a causal effect we can attribute to Trump?

The economy is complicated. Emissions were in decline before COVID as well (as they have been for a while). Most emissions reductions are due to activity in the private markets.

> "In 2020, U.S. greenhouse gas emissions will be substantially lower than they were in 2019, but that's not because of progress that the Trump administration has made in reducing emissions," said Trevor Houser, an energy and climate analyst with the Rhodium Group, a nonpartisan research organization. "That's because we had the largest economic recession in a generation. So that's not exactly cause for celebration."

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