Donald Trump sits alone while the world's leaders talk with each other.
ALAS, the G20 is now the G19. The United States has abdicated any leadership role in the community of nations. The meeting in Germany of the 20 top economic powerhouses in the world underscored the futility of Donald Trump's America First campaign. As Trump was complaining about the "bad deals" the United States have been part of, such as NATO and NAFTA and the scuttling of a similar agreement with Asian and Pacific nations, Europe and Japan signed a major trade treaty that in the past, the U.S. would have been a partner. While Trump walked away from the Paris climate agreement, 19 of the nations -- including Russia and China -- were signing on the dotted line to reduce the factors that is hastening of the melting of the polar icecaps affecting climates and shorelines around the world.
RELATED: Is Trump calling for a new Crusade?
While the world's -- not the just the U.S. -- intelligence agencies confirm Russian meddling in America's election process, Trump accepts without question the denial by Russian President Vladimir Putin. In fact, Trump wants to let the fox into the henhouse by teaming up with Russia to create a cyber watchdog to prevent any future Internet interference. Really? The commentary below by Australian commentator Chris Uhlman went viral worldwide. He sums up what the rest of the world thinks of Donald Trump. Sad.
What San Francisco's waterfront could look like if no action is taken against climate change.
THERE'S NO way of parsing words to say this diplomatically: Donald Trump announced today (May 31) to pull the United States out of the Paris Climate agreement may be his stupidest action yet.
Front page of the Daily News
Stupider (is that a word?) than hiring Michael Flynn at national security chief even though the FBI and a then-cooperative President Obama warned Trump not to do it? Stupider than hiring Steve Bannon, a white supremacist, as senior advisor? Stupider than firing James Comey, who was in the middle of the investigation of the extent of Russia's role in messing around the U.S. presidential elections? Stupider than putting Betsy Devos, a woman who doesn't like public schools - never attended a public school, never sent any of her children to public school, - in charge of the Department of Education? Stupider than - in a show of playground braggadocio - than revealing classified information to the Russians? Yes. That's a lot of stupid, (and I can go on and on) but pulling out of the Paris climate accord hammered out after years of negotiations and signed on by every country on the planet (except Nicaragua, which actually wanted stronger sanctions, and Syria) tops them all.
"This is a reckless and foolish mistake, and our kids will pay the price.," said Rhea Suh, president of the Natural Resource Defense Council. "The Paris climate accord is a triumph of American leadership. It’s about doing what’s best for our people at home—spurring clean energy innovation and creating millions of good-paying jobs, while protecting our children and communities from pollution. And we got the whole world to join us. “This is not putting America first: It’s putting fossil fuel profits ahead of the national interest," said Suh, one of the most prominent Asian/American figures in the environmental movement.'
"The world is a very complicated place these days for a lot of reasons, but climate change is the one thing the world agrees on. North Korea signed the Paris accord. Everybody agrees on this," said Suh.
An excellent article by Skeptical Science on the so-called debate over scientific evidence of man's influence on climate shows that it is really no debate at all.
This so-called debate, a fore-runner of the "fake news" strategy being employed to discredit any news artucke critical of the present administration, called for another study for a consensus on the numerous studies being used to argue for or against climate change.
What was concluded by the study by climate scientists - EXPERTS, mind you, not people off the street in disagreement - is that the so-called studies being cited by climate deniers like Trump and EPA Secretary Soctt Pruitt, are from non-experts, as opposed by the studies by the EXPERTS, which say man is a huge factor in the warming of our planet.
"Pulling out of the Paris Agreement is an irrational decision that is a disastrous step backward, threatens the future viability of our planet for future generations, and abdicates our role of leadership," said California Sen. Kamala Harris.
We all have a stake in stemming the warming temperatures of our planet. Outside of the obvious - that we have nowhere else to go - Earth temperatures are rising faster than normal and will have disastrous impacts around the world. Among the earliest victims of climate change are the island nations such as the Philippines, Samoa, Fiji and the Maldives.
In a paper presented to a scientific gathering in Manila last month, Dr. Josefino "Joey" C. Comiso, a prominent and well-respected Filipino/American senior research scientist at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) of the United States concluded:
"At the current rate of decline, the perennial ice in the Arctic, which has persisted in summer for at least 1,450 years, is likely to melt completely within this century and cause drastic changes in the ecology of the region and alterations in the thermohaline global ocean circulation.
"The rate of sea level rise has increased from 2 mm/year to 3 mm/year but the main concern is the vulnerability of the Greenland and West Antarctic ice sheets which could cause a few meters increase in sea level causing big disruptions in coastal cities around the globe.
"Warmer sea surface temperature is also expected to cause a higher frequency of heat waves and of extreme events like super-typhoons and flooding. A warmer climate will lead to increases in areas affected by drought and fire and the loss of crop yields and biodiversity. Resiliency to catastrophic events and strategies for adaptation to our changing climate will be discussed."
Current data show an increase in sea surface heights. Scientists say this is due to the melting of ice sheets in northern portions of the globe like Antarctica and Greenland. Sea level rise by 4 to 6 meters can submerge low-lying communities like Tacloban City which stands only 3 meters above sea level.
The creation of tropical cyclones is already being recorded in areas where the phenomenon had never been observed. On Nov 8, 2013, Super Typhoon Yolanda (Haiyan), said to be the strongest storm in recorded history, devastated cities in the Visayas region.
NASA
Island nations will be the first to feel the impact of global warming.
If that sounds frightening, the impact on the smaller island nations will be even more disastrous. Kiribati, with a population of 11,000 in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, bought 20 square miles of land on Vanua Levu, one of the Fiji islands, about 2,000 km away as a possible refuge when their country goes underwater.
Other countries or islands in the Maldives, Polynesia and the Philippines will have to deal with mass migrations of people as they abandon their homes to the ocean. This drastic action will set off a chain reaction around the world dealing with climate refugees.
The United States will also suffer. Its coastal communities such as San Francisco and New York City, will have to mitigate the rise in their waterfronts, huge swaths of Florida and Louisiana will go under water including the cities of Miami and New Orleans.
The economic argument used by Trump and his supporters also ring hollow. His own economic advisors, including former Exxon chief and current Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, and corporate leaders like Tesla's Elon Musk and Disney's Bob Iger have argued to stay with the climate accord. Hours after Trump made his announcement, Musk and Iger resigned from Trump's council of economic advisors.
The job growth in the alternative energy industries are mushrooming and dwarfs any employment lost in coal mining jobs.
"You look at (it) economically — I talked about fuel economy standards. Tesla was just valued as the highest-valued motor company in the U.S.," said Suh. "That means renewable energy and the clean-tech economy is really present. It’s not just some far-flung thing, both within the context of electric vehicles and within the context of wind and solar. Beyond our electricity grid, we are creating millions of new jobs in the clean and efficient energy sector. Do we need the domestic leadership out of our president and the White House and Congress to take advantage of that and grow that more, or are we going to cede that economic advantage to countries like China and India? I think that’s the larger question."
But he's turned a deaf ear to the overwhelming evidence and advice in favor of short-sighted demagoguery and the quick and fleeting "win," with his base supporters. The anti-science and anti-intelligence attitudes that have been hallmarks of his campaign and presidency thus far, preferring to tweet those positions as "leftist elitism." Trump's announcement will undoubtedly please his base by turning the argument away from the science of climate change to the art of the deal. He claims the U.S. is being economically screwed by the agreement, ignoring the fact that the U.S. is one of the biggest polluters in the world but has profited most from dirtying the air that contributes to the changing climate. Trump did some bashing of China and India to justify leaving the accord saying these two Asian countries are not doing their share of cleaning up their own industries neglecting to mention that according to the Paris agreement, each country could set their own goals. He could easily have lowered the U.S. goals. (Incidently, blaming those two Asian countries also satisfies the xenophobes who are afraid of anything foreign.) The U.S. GDP dwarfs every other nation's, therefore it is only logical to have the country with the greatest ability to contribute, and the country that creates the much of the world's pollution do more and pay more to stem global warming. Trump tried to appear open to renegotiations but that rings hollow because Trump knows that the other industrial countries would not agree to that. If the world had to start from scratch to reach an agreement, it could be up to the next president to finish the negotiations.
Millions of people around the world took part in the Climate Change march held last April 29.
While Trump gives his supporters what they want, the showman may just be giving them a show. Under the terms of the Paris accord, the U.S. must wait until November 2019 to formally submit his intention to withdraw. At that point, the U.S. enters a one-year waiting period before it’s formally removed. The decision could be reversed by the next president -- or even Trump himself. As a result, the issue will certainly be used against the GOP in the 2018 midterms and in the 2020 presidential election campaign.
"Whatever is agreed within the United States today, with China (the two largest sources of CO2emissions), it will not have a bearing on our future, because already, it's too late for us ... And so we are the canary. But hopefully, that experience will send a very strong message that we might be on the frontline today, but others will be on the frontline next," said Kiribati President Enote Tong in an interview on CNN.
Trump's decision is just plain ... STUPID! But hey, the U.S. is not completely alone. Thank goodness for Syria and Nicaragua to keep Trump company.
EDITOR'S NOTE: For additional commentary, observations, rants and raves from an AAPI perspective, follow me on Twitter @DioknoEd
Josefino Cosimo, is considered one of the leading experts on polar science in the world?
A LOT of important people from around the world are gathered in Paris this past week and into next week trying find agreement on how best to slow down or stop the world's rising temperatures.
When scientists and climatologists talk about climate change, a lot of their conclusions are based on the work of a Filipino/American scientist, Josefino Cosimo, senior scientist at the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. Comiso is considered one of the world's leading experts on polar science. He said the NASA studies in the polar regions were based on expectations the regions are the places where early signal of a climate change can be found “because of ice-albedo feedback associated with the high albedo of ice and snow.”
"I’ve found that the Arctic perennial ice cover, the ice that survives at the end of the summer, is declining at a rate of 11 percent per decade. For about 1,500 years, the perennial ice has been observed, but if the current decline rate continues we would have an ice-free Arctic in summer within this century - it will be the first such occurrence in modern history."
Why does this matter to us ordinary folk?
"There would be more warming in the Arctic region and more melt in land ice that would cause sea level rise," Cosimo says. "There would be ecological changes, like primary productivity, that would spread to other parts of the world. The highest plankton (or chlorophyll) concentration has been near the polar regions in part because of sea ice. Melted sea ice water forms a stable water layer that is exposed to abundant sunlight and becomes a platform for enhanced photosynthesis and hence high productivity. The loss of the ice cover would mean reduced plankton concentration. Since the plankton is at the bottom of the food chain marine life would be affected and fishery production would be reduced."
Before you give up all hope, Cosimo says the pattern can be halted. "Modeling studies indicate that if we keep the level of greenhouse gases constant from now no," he says, "we will be able to keep the temperature from reaching more undesirable levels. The sea ice cover in the summer could be salvaged."
How did a scientist, who graduated from the University of the Philippines in Quezon City in the warm tropical Philippines, become interested in glaciers and other freezing stuff?
The Philippines, made up of 7,000 islands with the bulk of its population at sea level, like other island nations, will be among the first affected by the melting ice, the colder waters and the rising sea levels.
Comiso pointed out the irony that developing countries are the ones suffering more from the effects of greenhouse gas warming than developed economies.
“The Philippines is highly vulnerable to climate change. It is ironic that a country that is contributing to only a small fraction of atmospheric greenhouse gases will be among the most affected by greenhouse gas warming.
“My advice to the Philippine government is to focus on resiliency and adaptation. A large fraction of Filipinos live in coastal areas and there should be a plan for them to start moving to higher elevations,” he added.
Earth’s northern ice cap is heating up and melting down at an alarming, not previously predicted, rate. A paper just out in Wiley Interndisciplary Reviews: Climate Change, by Josefino Comiso and Dorothy Hall looks at recent historic transformations in the Arctic using satellite imagery, mainly from 1979 to the present. The decline of Arctic ice is so extreme that ice thought to have existed for over 1450 years is melting now. (None of the sea ice is really ancient, even the “old” ice recycles over geologically short time periods. But in the near future there will be virtually no “old” ice left in the region.) According to Cosimo, of NASA, who authored the study, “The Arctic region has been warming faster than anywhere else in the globe from 1981 to 2012. Such warming is manifested strongly in all components of the cryosphere in the Northern Hemisphere.” For those who want the cold hard facts, (my apologies, the topic is no laughing matter) the following is paraphrased from the paper:
Warming in the region has been amplified … with the rate of warming observed to be ~0.60±0.07 C per decade in the Arctic (>64 oN) compared to ~0.2 o C per decade globally during the last three decades.
Sea ice extent has been declining at the rate of ~3.8% per decade, while the perennial ice (represented by summer ice minimum) is declining at a much greater rate of ~11.5% per decade.
Spring snow cover [is] declining by –2.12 % per decade for the period 1967 to 2012.
The Greenland ice sheet has been losing mass at the rate of ~123 Gt per year (sea level equivalence of 0.34 mm per year) during the period from 1993 to 2010 for the period 2005 to 2010, a higher rate of (Greenland ice sheet) mass loss of ~228 Gt per year has been observed.
The average area of mountain glaciers has declined by as much as 10% per decade during the period from 1960 to 2000.
Increases in permafrost temperature have also been measured in many parts of the Northern Hemisphere while a thickening of the active layer that overlies permafrost and a thinning of seasonally-frozen ground has also been reported.
In conclusion, the arctic ice can be reestablished, we stop dilly-dallying around and start weaning ourselves from the use of fossil fuels.
UC grad Isabella Borgeson will perform her poem "Yolanda Winds" at the climate talks in Paris.
ISABELLA BORGESON, of the San Francisco Bay Area, is in Paris to perform her "spoken word" work at the summit where for the next few weeks world leaders and experts have gathered for the climate negotiations. The Filipina/American was one of the four winners of the Spoken Word for the World competition sponsored by theGlobal Call for Climate Action. Along with the other winners, Borgeson will be performing her piece in Paris during the 21st Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (COP21), where world leaders will discuss how to slow or prevent the global warming that is melting the polar icecaps, creating extreme weather events, and threatening to inundate coastal areas and island nations. The conference's ambitious goal: to limit rising global temperatures this century to no more than 2 degrees Celsius - or 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit - above pre-industrial levels.
President Barack Obama, who opened the conference Monday (Nov. 30), said that “the United States not only recognizes our role in creating this problem, we embrace our responsibility to do something about it.” But he stressed that all nations must act “right now.” A graduate of the University of California at Berkeley, Borgeson is a community curator for Adobe Systems, a multinational computer software company based in the Bay Area. Despite her Bay Area ties, however, she is representing the Philippines. Her entry, "Yolanda Winds," was inspired by Typhoon Yolanda, also known as Typhoon Haiyan, that devastated the central Philippines late in 2013. Burgeon and her mother, Geline Avila, spent the next two years helping rebuild that region, where her mother was raised.
In her statement to the Spoken Word for the World competition, she wrote:
“Learning about my family’s stories of death and trauma surrounding the ocean was a vivid part of my experience. In my community/family/motherland, climate change means re-learning the ocean … The Ocean is now a mass grave of family members and townsfolk, whose bodies were washed away by storm surge waves during the super typhoon. This piece titled ‘Yolanda Winds’ is dedicated to my mother, a survivor of the super typhoon, who struggles to forgive the sea. A reminder that we are a people of the sea. And for some of our families, sharing our stories about climate change, typhoon seasons and rising oceans is an act of resistance, necessary for our survival.”
