Trump Paris Meta-Decision

[robzo100]

Final-Fan said: Thank you for not only your civility but also your willingness to engage in discourse!  But I have to say I think you may have misread the article you cited.  

You said, "of the legit 100-billion pledge from theUS(this I was right on) there is a minimum of 6 billion promised of which we have supplied 3 billion so far."

The article said, "Grammatically speaking, “billions and billions and billions of dollars” is a minimum of $6 billion. As the New York Times reported Thursday, the U.S. has promised to supply up to $3 billion in aid for developing nations by 2020 to help them meet their emissions-cutting goals. That aid is part of a collective pool called the Green Climate Fund, as Trump says, which is administered by the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, according to the Paris Agreement. While $3 billion may sound like a lot of money to most people, for the United States government, which took in some $16.5 trillion in GDP last year, it’s a pretty paltry sum. And it isn’t even an annual contribution. As of May, the U.S. has kicked in a third of its $3 billion pledge to the fund, according to the Washington Post."

So as I read that article, the "$6 billion" is merely what would be grammatically necessary in the quote that President Trump provided.  "billions" is a minimum of 2 billion, so "billions and billions and billions" = 2 x 3 = 6 billion.  The actual amount the US has pledged, it says, is $3 billion, and it has paid $1 billion of that.  (Contrary to what you said, that we have "supplied" the entire $3 billion.)  I suspect Slate got that $1 billion number from the same Washington Post article I read. 

As for the $100 billion, even Donald Trump himself said that it's not the United States alone.  This is from the quote in that article of the President's speech:  "the so-called Green Climate Fund—nice name—which calls for developed countries to send $100 billion to developing countries all on top of America’s existing and massive foreign aid payments."  He does conflate "developed countries" and "America's existing [obligations]" a bit, but I think you'll agree that he didn't mean that each and every country in the agreement has to individually send $100 billion? 

Wikipedia says that the Green Climate Fund "has set itself a goal of raising $100 billion a year by 2020", which would mean collectively among all the donor countries.  Honest question:  is there a different $100 billion that I failed to notice in that article?  The only other 100 I noticed was 100 Million in U.S. aid to India. 

As for the science, I don't think it's as uncertain as you think, nor is 100% certainty on every single aspect necessary to take action.  If for instance, we had 98% certainty of what the problem was and 95% certainty that taking a certain action would have from X to Z amount of positive impact, most likely Y amount plus or minus W, then surely it would make sense to at least begin the process of putting the slow gears of civilization in action while we continued to check whether this was the correct course?  But, to be honest, such a wide-ranging topic as "the level of certainty in global climate change science" should be its own thread, at least. 

Technically speaking, we can't even be 100% sure that aliens haven't blown up the Sun.  It's about eight light-minutes away, after all. 

We're going to have to disagree on this 100-Billion aspect. This nugget has been addressed and mentioned repeatedly in almost all artices regarding this issue. The last articled I linked was quite anti-Trump but I listed it because it had the 6/3billion nugget. Also, I don't see how countries whose GDP's are only a fraction of the US's would pay the same 100 Billion - it's for the US as a "goal" with the minimum being 3 billion of which the US is paying 6 billion. That's how I see it now after repeated inevistigation.

Agreed that action and planning can take place withou 100-percent, but I still firmly stand that these climate issues are so complex and deep-rooted in nature that we can't simply say things like "we are 90& certain of xyz". Anyways, Trump's common strain among all his decisions is less reliance on government - without this loss of responsibility there is no incentive for individuals or individual entities(private organizations or sub-levels fo government like cities/states) to take up the matters themselves.

And like I said(maybe it was to another person) I see government and individual efforts as overlapping efforts and not cumulative, with the more efficient approach being the individual one, at least in thsi day and age of lopsided government control. Most people don't care as much about climate change as they expect their government to - a form of cognitive dissonance if the will of the people is supposed to be reflected in the will of the government. Individual responsibility fixes this.

Anyways, loved the debating and honestly feel smarter as a result of it ;)