Trump seems ready to fight the world on climate change, and it could cost the U.S.

[Zorro]

Donald Trump is branded with all manner of unflattering labels, but one that hasn’t seemed to much bother him is “climate pariah.”

The president-elect is unabashed in his disdain for America’s global warming policy. He has placed a staunch climate-change doubter and antagonist of mainstream science in charge of reshaping — or as Trump has suggested, dismantling — the Environmental Protection Agency. He has talked frequently about reneging on the historic Paris global climate treaty the U.S. took a lead in drafting. And he has said he wants every federal green-energy program eliminated.

Environmentalists take little comfort in Trump’s recent comments that he accepts “there is some connectivity” between human activity and climate change and that he has an open mind about it, as what he’s said elsewhere and done so far suggests otherwise.

And even those comments gave scientists cause for alarm. “You can make a lot of cases for different views,” Trump told the New York Times, casting doubt on the finding by more than 90% of climate scientists that emissions are accelerating global warming. “I’m not sure anybody is ever going to really know.”

http://www.latimes.com/politics/la-na-pol-trump-climate-20161127-story.html

[LonePirate]

1. I honestly do not know how rank and file Repubs are still denying climate change.

I certainly understand why wealthy or powerful Republicans deny it. I simply am baffled by the reason for the typical Republican to deny it.

Is it a matter of reflexing opposing anything scientists or those of us on the left believe? Is it loyalty to their selfish party and industry leaders? Is there a religious reason for the denial?

I would think rural Americans, particularly farmers and farm workers, would be especially attuned to changes in climate and weather. I guess not or perhaps they simply do not care.

[meow2u3]

4. It's a matter of gigabucks being made in the fossil fuel industries

As long as those fossil fuel fossils can make billions--even trillions--of dollars in the fossil fuel industry, the money alone blinds the climate deniers to the truth.

[Wounded Bear]

5. And they are declining....

coal is all but dead with negative growth. Oil is the cheapest it's been for decades, and even nat gas is feeling the effects of solar/wind and other alternatives.

Fossil fuels are scrambling to get as much official government support to staying alive as they can.

[meow2u3]

6. Fossil fuels are dying a natural death

but the fossils running the industry are too willfully blind to see past the next quarterly earnings.

[ronnie624]

2. There couldn't possibly be a worse time in our history for an anti-intellectual as POTUS. n/t

[Wounded Bear]

3. Right in line with Dubya on evolution...

"Evolution is a theory, creationism is a theory."