Yes. NYT has a good editorial today about the withdrawal (money quote: Paris would not, in short, stop Mr. Trump from doing the dumb things he wants to do), but even there they come at it from the view that Trump based his decision on bad info about the accord's effect on the economy.

The Chait piece that circulated yesterday was well-written and correct, but its thesis struck me as highly obvious. How is it possible that presumably smart left leaners such as the NYT editorial board still subscribe to the belief that Trump goes through traditional policy considerations, when "eff Obama" explains ~all of his decisions and makes way more sense given who he is. Occam's razor, people!

No, it can't. Long term contracts for solar are already under 3 cents per kwh in the US, which is substantially cheaper than coal. Wind is also cheaper. Energy with storage, smart grid etc altogether will be less expensive long before things like new coal power stations can come online.

But, it takes a LOT just to replace the energy production in the US. It could take maybe a decade if a huge effort were made, but it could also take 50 years if the FF industry has its way. Or 100.

I suppose it is my own fault that what you took out of that was me calling all liberals dumb. My intention was to highlight the dumb strategy of the subset of liberals who criticized Musk for working on the council since it was in response to Riverman telling Musk to go **** himself.

In any case, comparing me to a Nazi propagandist is unwarranted.

Can someone explain to me Trump's decision-making process to exit Paris agreement. Ovewhelming pressure from the whole world but yet he gieas ahead with it. It really makes no sense. Is it some promise he made to Koch brothers and others during his campaign or just personal interest or both?

CNN turning positive news into negative news.

U.S. unemployment hits lowest level since 2001

But, these are the first few lines:

WTF CNN?! The economy is underperforming yet Trump still gets credit for job creation in your headline? **** you!

**** liberals.

Yeah Alito has delivered on all the terribleness we expected of him, over and over and over again. I expect nothing different here.

I think Josh Marshall calls it Trump's Razor instead.

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/...-trump-s-razor

Obama set it up
Merkel was mean to him
**** those two


That's it.

Kind of a dumb view. There's nothing wrong with telling a bad person to do better things. In fact, it's good to urge people to do good things. It's also good to resign when you give advice about an important issue that's not followed. It's not like Musk was out campaigning for Trump before he won.

but absolutely spew hate speech towards muslims, blacks and minorities. espouse white supremacy and nazi ideals. even hold rallies for it.

bc free speech amirite.

I agree with this take but it's a difficult calculation. I am also sympathetic to the point, though, that there's a certain threshold of badness which elites should have where they wouldn't work to try to help a bad person to do better things. At some point humans need to have a view of justice where some sins and behavior are simply beyond the pale.

I do think others are discounting that there are plenty of people where "we tried to help him but he is irredeemable so we quit" is politically more powerful than an initial "**** off, we're not in league with you" but I do think it's highly contextual. I could accept either posture with respect to Trump FWIW.

And now for something completely different unsurprising

While I mostly agree with this, you can't ignore the dark ages in this statement.

Doubt this is true. The US leads in technology but the rest of the world could catch up fast. Plus the US would be fighting on several fronts which would stretch its forces thin.

Of course the true answer for who would win is probably nobody.

I wasn't comparing you I was comparing those who work with trump on anything.

He is a very stupid person lacking all critical thinking skills or rationality. He makes all decisions based on the last bit of information he is presented with while having no ability to weigh the validity of said information.

Looking for a reason is a fruitless endeavour.

Mandatory reading for anyone who has to interact with a trumpkin over the next week regarding a few of the biggest lies from trump on his Paris decision

https://www.vox.com/energy-and-envir...p-paris-speech

Change=accomplishment.

He is dying for a "win". He can paint this as a win to the mouth breathers.

This is true, Joshua.

He could tell the mouth breathers tomorrow that he passed health care and tax reform and 75% of them would believe it.

How many Trumpkins actually listened to his speech or care about the facts used to justify it? F the Euros, F the liberals, yay America, etc. etc.

Those talking points just exist so they have something to say in response to snotty liberals telling them they should care about the planet. They don't actually care about the accuracy or the actual facts themselves. Notice that a lot of conservatives didn't even bother with this part of it and just skipped straight to "lol liberals are mad" because they do know one thing and that's their audience.

Really good simple explanation of the random walk.

For those of you inclined to think the withdrawal is not an big deal because the Accord was non-binding consider the following,

1) global warming is by definition global. All solutions require a global effort. This is especially true in the future if we try to employ geo-engineering solutions. These will require unprecedented global agreement.

2) the requirement for global agreement and cooperation extends beyond the global warming issue to things like ocean pollution, over fishing, trade, terrorism and global security.

3) environmental issues are externality issues. These are only solved with cooperation.

4) even the most conservative estimate place the toll of unchecked global warming at trillions of dollars and millions of lost lives over the next 100 years alone.

5) the previous stabilizing force of the US in these types of global agreements was paramount to their success.

6) never in history NEVER had every nation come together to agree on anything. The Paris Accord meant far more than a check on global warming. Most of its value was symbolic. But not in the sense of word that suggests meaningless. Quite the opposite. It was the most important global agreement since NATO was created.

7) the US withdrawl tells the world that cooperation is not very valuable and that they can agree to something and simply withdrawal on a political whim. Politics is about setting norms.

It is hard to think is something trump can do which would be worse in the long run than his actions yesterday.

https://twitter.com/AFP/status/868073544445562880